Heavenly shades of night are falling, it's twilight time
Out of the mist your voice is calling, 'tis twilight time
When purple-colored curtains mark the end of day
I'll hear you, my dear, at twilight time
July 1970
Bubbles streamed up under the dock where Barbara Jagger sat, paddling her feet in the cool water. Suddenly a strong grip closed around her ankle.
"Tom!" Laughing, she drew her legs up under her. The diver surfaced and removed his breathing mask.
"I found something."
"Come up here and tell." Holding on to Tom's elbow, Barbara helped him climb out of the water.
When settled on the boards with a cup of coffee from the thermos, Tom opened his fist to reveal a small, shiny pebble. Barbara's eyes widened.
"Gold? How in the world…?" She picked up the piece to look closer.
"A treasure." Tom sipped at his steaming drink. "Underwater."
"Well, they say it is a magic lake." Barbara's smile warmed him. He could write a poem about how the moonlight bathed her features - but then he'd have to get up, wriggle out of the diver suit, fetch a pen and paper... Disturb the very scene he wanted to capture.
There was another reason for his reluctance as well.
June 1968
At first they seemed like chance happenings. Newly moved into Bird Leg Cabin and inspired by the vast lake outside, Thomas wrote the poem Wondrous Waters about iridescent fishes swimming in a rapid river. Two days later, a local angler caught an exotic-looking fish that shimmered like carnival glass in sunlight. Tom gave the newspaper paragraph only a cursory glance. He'd made friends with two rockers-in-training from town, and would meet up with them in an hour.
As the summer meandered on their triumvirate fished or solved world problems over a few beers, but once the Anderson brothers persuaded Tom to try "shrooms". The next twelve hours he lay splayed out on the couch, watching brilliant shapes crash, reform, and stretch into golden cobwebs across the ceiling. Flourished words revealed themselves in the wood grain. The episode resulted in one of his best poems to date. Yet he held no interest in taking another trip: that first onset of absolute conviction that spiders crawled under his skin overshadowed the later excitement.
Along with drugs and rock, Old Norse mythology held the Anderson brothers' keen interest. They would retell its legends as vividly as if they were self-experienced. Tom soon nicknamed them Tor and Odin. Influenced by their enthusiasm he wrote The Thunder Wagon, a poem where the infamous thunder god drove his wagon through the skies with a force that made lightning split trees down the middle.
Barely had Tom finished it when the brothers, on their way home from a late-night gig, crashed their Thunderbird into a young birch. Miraculously enough they escaped the smoking wreck with only minor injuries, and could leave the ER at dawn. They felt high and invincible, but Tom threw his poem straight in the wastebasket. For a long time afterwards his stomach turned whenever he passed the crash site, and saw how the collision had snapped the slim tree trunk.
The Anderson brothers took it in stride, and went on to devote the last weeks of summer to the art of moonshine-brewing.
Fall came, and Tom withdrew to work on his next title. The cabin had more rooms than it made sense for a single occupant to keep illuminated, and one gloomy evening he carried the typewriter down to the kitchen. It felt foolish to sit in a secluded study when no sound but the wind disturbed the silence. In the kitchen lamp's soft circle of light he wrote about an unnamed love interest - a benevolent queen, a muse, a soulmate - bringing some spark into his life.
Cynthia Weaver finally persuaded him to leave the cabin for Deerfest. "Come to the harvest feast, Tom, you'll turn into a hermit out here."
At last he gave in, threw on a jacket and tie and wandered down to the civic center. He didn't expect Providence to strike.
He got the three-time winner of Miss Deerfest as partner at the table. At the sight of her, Tom all but thumped down on his chair. Even crowned in cheap tinsel she stunned him, with wavy dark hair framing a face as smooth and chiseled as an ivory sculpture. Her blue eyes twinkled at him.
"Thomas Zane." He offered his hand, and when she shook it his whole arm tingled.
"Barbara Jagger. No relation to the musician, though."
"I would've guessed at Liz Taylor's younger sister." His own boldness surprised him.
She laughed good-naturedly, "You're flattering me, Mr Zane."
What began as polite small talk carried on till the tables were cleared and placed along the walls to make room for a dance floor. A band struck up. Melancholic guitars, a humming bass line, the vocalist singing about heavenly shades of night and his love calling out of the mist. Tom raked up every spark of bravado and asked Barbara for a dance. To his utter and pleased surprise, she accepted.
Barbara's pageant-sash fluttered around her, the tinsel crown at a jolly angle. Her soft curves pressed against him. She complimented his sense of rhythm. Still he assumed she'd change partner after the customary two dances, and the thought made his shoulders stiffen up. Many potential admirers sat in the bar. Barbara just patted his arm when he mentioned this. Once she slipped away for a few turns with Pat Maine, but came back when the band played the opening bars of Save the Last Dance For Me. Tom's feet touched the floor, but his mind was on cloud nine.
In dawning April he helped carry her belongings up to Bird Leg Cabin. They were few and light, yet the ease with which Barbara made herself at home surprised him. She made the cabin feel like home, with her voice and laughter. Tom gave up the illusion of a poet's need for absolute solitude. He needed company, to hear someone else's thoughts than his own. Barbara inspired him. His creative vein ran high again, words flowing fresh and free like a spring flood. In Her Dreams To Prevail sprouted into a mixture of short fantasy stories and passionate poems. He wanted to amuse her and tell her how important she was to him.
"You are my muse, you know that?" Tom professed when Barbara with blushing cheeks read his lyrical declarations of love.
Indeed, he fell fast for her. But the love he gave and received was not like the fickle, all-consuming fires in his youth. When it steadied it was like a brick hearth, grounded, warm without burning him. He'd never felt so cherished and at ease with someone as with Barbara.
The Anderson brothers came back from the club gigs downstate. They grumbled a bit about Tom's quick shift from footloose and fancy-free to settled man, but let it slide once they realized Barbara still 'let him out' to fish. They had succeeded in their pursuit to make moonshine, and experimented with various ingredients.
"Reckon you can make moonshine outta that?" Odin gestured at the lake. Tom lowered the axe he chopped wood with to gaze at the waves lapping against Diver's Isle. The green surface deepened to blackness thicker than that of a humus-filled mere. Probably the lake was full of … well, what?
Thus it was with some hesitation he took the bottle of "homemade medicine" handed to him when the brothers left for Woodstock. Not knowing what to do with the bottle, Tom put it in the back of his desk drawer and continued to work on Mimer's Well.
For his next project Tom hired an assistant writer. Though not from the county, young Emil Hartman's avid interest in hunting soon gained him a thorough knowledge of it. Within a few weeks he'd joined the circle of hunters who slurped coffee at Oh Deer Diner during off-season. All of them were his seniors by decades, but they liked a youngster listening to their hunting stories - unaware that Emil fished for local tricks of the trade.
Thomas's writing came to an abrupt halt in late November, when he finished The Mischievous Reflection. The poem was based on old folklore about a faceless demon living in a lake. Impish in nature, it took on the appearance of anyone who looked into the depth. Once disguised, it went to town to steal chickens and burn down barns.
The demon's name was Scratch, and one overcast morning Tom spotted it under the bridge up to Diver's Isle. The lake lay unusually still, ready to freeze over. Half-expecting to see it happen he leaned over the wooden rail, his silhouette mirrored by the dark green surface.
His reflection raised its hand a fraction; startled, he dropped the morning paper in the water. The image cracked and vanished. Tom stumbled along the bridge, leapt up the steps to the house, heart in his throat. The half-forgotten bottle rolled forth when he pulled out the desk drawer in his study, and he downed a hearty swig to numb his nerves.
It was like the photo negative of his drug trip. Slowly the web of connections grew tangible. Tendrils stretched between memories, thin enough to be swept aside with a swift wave. But this time Tom considered them.
He wrote of strange fishes, and an exotic kind swam up the river. He wrote of Tor's thunder wagon, and the Anderson brothers crashed their Thunderbird into a tree. Poems about Mimer the giant were followed by sightings of Bigfoot, Will-o'-the-wisp by a UFO report. A chill spread in his chest.
It was the culmination of his fantasy writings. At last it began to dawn upon Tom that these were no chance happenings. Somehow his works of fiction connected to reality in a most inverted sense.
Emil suggested it was just performance anxiety taking its toll on him, but from that day Tom stayed away from the typewriter. All winter Emil tried to nudge and coax him in its direction, with hints that his avid fans were growing impatient. The assistant writer himself grew edgy, watching the deer season open and close while he waited around for a first draft to rewrite.
Strange fishes glide in the depths,
unfamiliar flowers glow on the shore;
I have seen red and yellow and all the other colours, -
but the gaudy gay sea is the most dangerous to look upon,
it makes one thirsty and wide-awake for waiting adventures:
what happened in the fairy-tale will happen also to me!
- Edith Södergran, 1916
A/N: The fic title and lyrics are taken from The Platters' version of Twilight Time. The poem at the end is what inspired Tom's first run-in with the lake's powers. The second incident ties in with another fic of mine, Godspeed, which I'll soon upload to Ao3.
I started on this already in 2010, which in part might explain any taste of purple prose this fic has even though I've tried to edit out the worst. In any case, I've had fun writing this - getting to research 60's pop culture, poetry and many other little things. Hopefully posting the first chapter will prompt me to finish this fic before the end of 2016.