Ravenwood
Walter Masterson had a secret he kept from everyone in his life for as long as he lived. He was a successful writer with a bevy of works on the market including a few that won coveted literary awards, one of which, his masterpiece, was even used in school curriculums. His career was flourishing, but that was no secret.
The secret that Walter kept from his family, his agent, his publisher, his fans, and every other person in his life was that his writing was a slave to geography. In fact, he never wrote a single worthwhile word outside of one place on Earth he found by happenstance.
During a long drive to clear his head of writer’s block early in his career, he came across a summer resort called Ravenwood tucked into the foothills of the mountains towering around it. Beautiful trodden trails were sewn with thoughtful precision through the natural wonders of this bountiful valley paradise, each leading to a place more spectacular than the next. Small, private areas of thought and reflection…some with a few chairs and a table for intimate gatherings and others meant for individual peace… were intermingled with cabins of all sizes and functions along the walking paths creating a grand tapestry of creative influences.
Some cabins were used as temporary residences for invited guests while others housed common areas including a mess hall, a quaint coffee shop, a general store, and even a small bar overflowing with worldly charm.
As unbelievable as the valley retreat was aesthetically to a budding creative person like Walter, it was the other summer residents of the valley that held the key to his personal paradise. The small seasonal population was limited to actors, directors, artists, and writers of all types: playwrights, screenwriters, novelists, and poets. It was a medley of creators bouncing ideas and notes off one another, all searching for the perfect piece of work: their masterpiece. Walter found it intoxicating, and he finished his debut novel by the end of his first summer in residence.
When he returned to his home in Solitude, Alabama, he found that the creative flow that sparked over the summer had stalled. His first novel was a grand success; and by the winter, he was feeling pressure from his publisher for a progress update on his second. He had signed a three-book deal, but he didn’t foresee the block that would crush his spirit after that first fateful summer at Ravenwood.
He made excuse after excuse to his agent, who was taking the brunt of the flack from the publisher, and pressed on until summer. When it finally rolled around, Walter returned to the valley and let the wonder once again wash over him. After long days sitting waterside swapping stories and ideas with poets, endless nights in the bar lending his ear to the actor that just couldn’t get a line right, and mornings sipping coffee with the songwriter that was struggling desperately to find the perfect hook, Walter had started, finished, edited, and completed his second novel. His sophomore work would become his most well known. It was the work that made him a household name.
From then on, fans understood that if Walter Masterson were to release something new, it would be in the fall. Everyone assumed that he wrote when he was locked in the study in his family farmhouse on the outskirts of Solitude, but he never wrote a word outside of Ravenwood. It was his secret.
~
Walter sat at his small desk looking out the window across the flowing brook that ran under his cabin on its way down the valley. He liked to work with his porch door open so he could hear the soothing sounds of the falling water as it hurried over the rocks rushing to its end somewhere far down the mountain.
He pressed his wrinkled hands against the face of the desk and pushed his aging body out of his seat. He creaked and cracked as he straightened before taking one last step out to the porch. The wood at his feet had grown coarse over the years and really needed to either be replaced or doused with water sealant to preserve whatever was left. He placed his hands on the railing and leaned forward to admire the brook a few feet below when a loud crack broke the serenity. He was just able to regain his balance before plunging face first into the rushing water. The railing wasn’t as lucky. That was close. He would report the need for maintenance at the front office before he left. He returned to his room and locked the door behind him.
When he stumbled home from the bar early that morning, all that was left to finalize his latest work was a few closing paragraph revisions – a project he easily completed with his morning coffee. He gathered the pages scattered across his desk and stuffed them in his attaché. He gathered the rest of his things into a small suitcase and closed his cabin for the summer.
The trail down to the community cabins wound along lazily through the trees and was quite comforting. It was the first time that summer he noticed that parts of it were somewhat overgrown. A fallen limb forced him off the trail at one point. He certainly didn’t remember that on his way home and surmised that it must have come down after he passed. He didn’t recall any bad weather, but sometimes nights at the bar had a blurring effect.
As he made his way around the fallen brush and back onto the path, he heard a voice call out from deep off the trail in the direction of a cresting sunrise that pierced the birch trees.
“Walter!” shouted a familiar voice. “Come over and give us some notes!”
Walter abandoned his luggage trailside and stepped through the trees to a spot next to the brook where two of the summer residents sat talking. It was a lovely spot hidden in the just at a turn in the waterway that he wished he had known about before that moment.
“Good morning, Madeline,” Walter began. “It’s lovely to see you on such a brisk and delightful start to the day.”
“You’re such a poet,” said Madeline with a smile. She sat crossed-legged on the bank too slight to cast much of a shadow. Her dark-rimmed glasses covered half her face.
Walter extended his arm, and she blushed while raising her hand to meet his proffered high-five. “Good morning, Walter,” she said.
Madeline was an aspiring director who dabbled in screenplay writing as well. She wanted to be the female Tarantino; and according to the residents Walter was around that summer, she was well on her way.
Walter shifted his look to the man sitting above her on the bench.
“Rod, after last night in the bar I’m surprised to see you up and at it so early this morning.”
“Inspiration doesn’t sleep, Walter, you know that,” replied Rod.
Walter had met Madeline for the first time that summer, but Rod had been coming to Ravenwood for over ten years by Walter’s estimation. He had become a regular in the late-night bar shenanigans and Walter was very fond of him. He was a towering black man in his mid-thirties that had a keen eye for everything performance-related. He was a teddy bear of a man that Walter had come to adore.
“Walter, help me explain to young Madeline here that it’s important for her as a director not to fall in love with what she’s written. She has to let the actors produce an organic interpretation or the work will come off stale.”
This artistic feud had been ongoing throughout the summer and was one of the many projects in which Walter had participated. Madeline’s passion was directing, and she was invited to Ravenwood to explore her gifts in that discipline. She came loaded, however, with a script she had written herself. Over the last few months, actors volunteered to be involved in her scene rehearsals as well as actual shoots that they analyzed in the screening room at night. Madeline directed the scenes but was having trouble letting the actors run with their own interpretations of her characters – something she would have to get better at if she were to create the next Reservoir Dogs.
“Walter,” said Madeline, lowering her head while waving her hand in Rod’s direction, “before you speak, Rod is right. I know that.”
Madeline looked down at the script in her lap; then clutched it against her chest before looking up to meet Walter’s eyes. She continued.
“He’s right, but how do you convince an artist to let go of something that grew up within them?”
Madeline stared at Walter, but didn’t expect an answer to the clearly rhetorical question. Walter’s quick voice surprised her.
“The only answer I can offer as a possible comfort is that every good artist in his or her time sacrifices a piece of themselves for the good of their work. In this case, you have to sacrifice one piece to allow the other to thrive. It will be your burden if you choose to continue along the dual path you’ve chosen, but it will be your passion to fight this truth that will make you great.”
Walter’s words seemed to land softly with Madeline; and after closing her eyes a few short seconds, she gave way to an accepting smile.
“Walter, how long have you been coming here?” Rod said, shifting subjects before Walter had a chance to start saying goodbye.
“I’ve lost count anymore, son.” Walter closed his eyes and stroked the underside of his chin. “Over fifty years, I guess.”
“As long as they keep inviting me,” Madeline began, “and I don’t get locked up for murdering menacing actors like Rod here, I can see myself coming back for fifty years. I love it here.”
“As do I,” Walter replied placing his hand gently on her shoulder, “and I hope to live long enough to see you here for many of those years.”
With that, Walter bid them both farewell and made his way along the remainder of the base path to the resort’s common areas.
A musty stench wafted from the bar as he passed by its trademark saloon doors, one of them dangling near the floor from a rusted hinge that must have come loose from the rotting frame sometime in the night. It was an odd scene, he noted, almost as if the place was deserted. Even with the early hour, something in the silence seemed off.
He continued around the corner to the reception cabin and found Jupiter, the resident handyman, hovering precariously at the top of a ladder in the doorway of the main lobby tightening the screws on the “Welcome” sign. It occurred to Walter that he couldn’t remember why everyone called him Jupiter, and whether or not he had ever known at all. He slipped it in the “it’s too late to ask now” file.
“Morning, Jupiter,” Walter said.
“Good morning, Mr. Masterson,” Jupiter replied.
“I’m leaving for the summer and wanted to let you know that the railing in my cabin gave way this morning. Splinters of it are probably passing by us down at the stream as we speak.”
Jupiter looked at the weathered sign he was repairing and sighed.
“This whole place seems to be coming apart, Mr. Masterson. I can hardly keep up with it anymore. I’ll make my way on up the hill later today though and take a look.”
“Thanks, Jupiter. I know you’ll have everything in top order by the time summer rolls back around. I’ll see you then and buy you a beer for your troubles,” Walter joked as they shook hands.
“I’m gonna hold you to that, Mr. Masterson,” Jupiter replied.
Walter settled his account, turned over the keys to his cabin, and with his latest finished novel lying in the passenger seat next to him, left Ravenwood one more time bound for his Alabama home.
~
For over a year, Sharon Nappier prepared herself for the phone call that finally came on a Sunday afternoon. Even the loss of her father couldn’t shake the resentment for what could now be labeled as his final decision. A decision she had struggled to understand since they last spoke.
Her husband Stephen stayed behind to care for their three children. Sharon felt they were old enough to understand death, but she feared that they would never really get why their grandfather had chosen to spend his final days alone. She didn’t get it either.
Once she got her affairs in enough order to leave her life behind, she packed a few personal items and said her goodbyes. Cloaked in the privacy of her car, she pushed back the pain and pulled a crumpled pack of Salems from the glove compartment that must have been ten years old. Her hand shook as she lit one of them, fought back a high-school cough on her first drag, and pointed her car in the direction of the airport, bound to make arrangements for her father’s return to Alabama.
~
After a three-hour flight and a forty-minute rental car ride through the mountains of Colorado, Sharon pulled through the pristine entrance of Mountain Brook Village for the second time. The natural beauty on either side of the seemingly endless road leading through the wooded grounds was lost on her in that moment. The scent of the pines lingered without notice, and the streams whispered white noise. She could only think of how much she missed her father.
The base cabin sat solemn at the end of the long approach road, hugged by lush greenery that created a breathless juxtaposition of civilization and natural wonderment. There was no arguing how beautiful the place was, she thought, as she stepped out of the car and raised onto her toes to stretch her travel-weary legs. Other than the natural sounds of the setting, there were no signs of life.
Then Jonas Alexander appeared from around one side of the building. Sharon recognized him immediately from her initial visit and incidentally, the last time she saw her father. He greeted her with a comforting tone and asked the normal awkward questions that come with conventional small talk: How was the ride in, the flight, etc.? How have you been?
Jonas was a middle-aged man of average height, with horn-rimmed glasses and a tight, salt-and-pepper goatee. In both instances that Sharon had been in his presence, he wore a tailored summer suit that screamed Southern Gentleman – a look she assumed was rare in the area.
He directed Sharon into the building where she saw a few clinical-types working through their daily routine. One woman passed and gave Sharon a mournful hello with a look of condolence. She was wearing navy scrubs and carrying a clipboard, which in the cabin setting seemed painfully out of sorts. At the same time, it was the only thing about this place that made any sense to Sharon. It was the first moment she’d felt anything normal since passing through the main entrance gate.
Jonas led her into a small conference room off the main lobby. She settled into the same chair she sat in a year prior and stared blankly at the empty one her father once occupied by her side.
Jonah broke the uncomfortable silence.
“Mrs. Nappier, let me just start by expressing our deepest sympathies for your loss. We appreciate you taking what must have been a difficult journey all the way out here to take care of your father’s paperwork and release.” His tone was genuine and delivered with a soft voice. Sharon found it comforting.
“I only wish I could have returned under different circumstances, but my father had other ideas,” Sharon said in a monotone register fighting the urge to deliver the line with more of the angst she felt in her heart.
They went about the normal procedure she had anticipated; and after she felt like she had penned her signature enough times to own another home, she concluded her business with Jonah.
Jonah stood as Sharon gathered her things to leave.
“Mrs. Nappier, would you have a few minutes for me to show you something?”
Sharon couldn’t think of a good reason why not, so she nodded and motioned for Jonah to continue.
“It’ll require a short walk, but I only ask because in your position it would afford me comfort.”
Jonah really was a lovely man, thought Sharon, well-placed in this natural haven to attend to lost souls. She followed him out of the conference room and back outside where they started down a worn trail that led away from the main building and past some of what she assumed were residential cabins.
The scenery was breathtaking. Dozens of bright white birch trees rose high along the path casting finger-like shadows all around them as they walked. A small brook curved below them to the right pushing out a gentle white noise that soothed Sharon enough to dull the slight chill in the air. The entire property, which seemed to encompass hundreds of acres, was framed with snowcapped mountains and the bluest skies Sharon had ever seen. It was untouched and clean.
After ten minutes of leisurely walking, Jonah stopped at a curve in the brook where a bench was sitting. The sun peeked just over the trees ahead and lit the dancing water and the majestic seat like a spotlight. Had it not made an abrupt turn, the brook would have run directly under it. It was painted white at one time, but years of wet and wind had penetrated its armor.
“This is where we found Walter.”
Sharon jumped unnoticeably, not ready for Jonah to speak as she absorbed the moment.
“I just wanted you to share his last experience and I hope that you’ll see, as I do, how blessed he was to go peacefully in such a picturesque place.”
Sharon searched for words. Tears, once damned by the confused eccentricities of her father, flooded her eyes.
“Jonah, I know that I’ve come off as a heartless bitch,” she blurted, leaning to grasp the bench’s backrest with shaking hands. “But please understand that as beautiful as this is, I have no earthly idea what I’m doing here. My father chose to leave his family when he needed us most, and for what? To come and live his final days in a place he’s never been?”
Jonah softly placed his hand on her shoulder.
“I’ve admired your father for years, Sharon, long before I ever had the privilege of meeting the man. I obeyed his wishes in his final days, and I’m well aware that those wishes seemed odd at first. But he was of right mind when he chose to come here, even though the disease was starting to escalate. I’ve never thought you heartless, not once. In fact, I admire your strength in letting him follow his own path.”
Jonas’s demeanor shifted suddenly as he seemed to brace for his next question.
“For my own curiosity,” he continued, “why do you think he chose to come here?”
“He told me that it reminded him of a place he used to visit,” she answered, trailing off as she shifted her gaze back to the passing water. “The man spent his entire life in Alabama, and to my knowledge never ventured farther than Georgia or Tennessee on family trips when he was young. His life was in our small town and was driven by his writing. My entire childhood was spent listening to the muffled sound of him pounding away on a typewriter in a dark room through a closed door. When he came out of that room, he was my father. He was nurturing and loving; and I didn’t mind the time he spent in there because of how good he was in the time he was outside of it. But he never left the house.
Sharon paused to compose herself. Jonah stood silent, allowing her the time it took to continue speaking.
“When he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I was overwhelmed. My mother died when I was in my twenties, and I was an only child. When we got the news, I didn’t have anyone to lean on outside my husband and a few close friends. Stephen helped me locate a special-care facility in our area so that we, along with our kids, could be as available as possible. It seemed like the right thing to do. All I wanted was spend as much time with the man as I could before it was all gone. Then on a good day, he showed me a “Mountain Brook Village” brochure; and the rest you know.
He insisted, and there was nothing we could do to change his mind. He wanted to say goodbye in Alabama, and come here to die alone. So here I am, enduring the fact that I’ll never understand now that he’s gone. Until you called, there was a glimmer of hope that one day it might be made clear to me.”
Jonas handed Sharon a neatly-folded handkerchief from his suit pocket.
“He wrote something,” he said, “during his time here.”
“What?” Sharon offered a barely audible reply while dabbing her eyes. “He hasn’t written in years.”
“There was a manuscript in his lap on this bench when we found him. It was handwritten and dedicated to you.”
Jonah watched Sharon closely with the hope that he wasn’t overloading her with information.
“I put it in the safe in my office before calling the attendants to care for Walter to ensure that yours were the only hands it fell to. As hard as it was for me not to, I didn’t read anything past your name. It wasn’t my place.”
Jonah led Sharon along the trail retracing their steps back to Reception. She was shaken when she heard the news of her father’s death, but her feelings on the subject had remained numb to this point. Now she was experiencing an emotional flood alternating between confusion and flattery. The mere fact that she crossed her father’s mind at all was a welcomed relief.
They walked through the main entry, past the conference room and into Jonah’s private office. It was a room Sharon had never seen. It looked like a writer’s study with floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed with books of every genre. There were stacks of loose papers in orderly piles around the desk and a few of what Sharon recognized as mid-edit manuscripts marked heavily with pencil and highlighter notes.
“Are you a writer, Mr. Alexander?” Sharon asked as she took a seat in one of two leather armchairs facing Jonah’s desk.
“I enjoy writing, Mrs. Nappier, but I write for myself, with no aspirations that something of mine get published. I find that words flow from me much more easily in settings like the one we have here.”
Sharon continued to look around as Jonah moved to a small safe that was set on the bottom shelf of the far wall. There were pictures of well-known writers and a few portraits she didn’t recognize at all.
“Mr. Alexander, if you’re trying to make excuses for my father’s self-imposed exile by presuming that he came here for writer’s clarity and inspiration, I’m afraid you’re wasting your time. The man wrote every novel and short story in his portfolio within a five-mile radius of Solitude, Alabama. Whatever inspiration he needed, he had.”
Just then Sharon noticed a black-and-white photo of her father when he was much younger. It was positioned on one of the bookshelves in a small black frame identical to the others. Jonah returned to the desk with a bound stack of papers and followed Sharon’s glance to the photograph of Walter Masterson.
“As I mentioned, Mrs. Nappier, I’ve admired your father for a long time.”
Jonah reached across the desk and laid the manuscript in Sharon’s hands.
“Why he chose to spend his last days with us I can’t presume to say, but I’d like to think that it afforded him an opportunity to write one last time, yes. It may not make any sense, but here is the possible proof.”
Sharon looked at the title sheet now lying across her legs. Handwritten in the center was a one-word title: “RAVENWOOD”
She flipped to the next page and began to cry.
FOR MY LOVELY SHARON, WITH HOPE THAT SHE SOMEDAY UNDERSTAND:
“ALL THAT WE SEE OR SEEM IS A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM…”
“Poe,” Sharon whispered to herself but loudly enough for Jonas to hear. “He always loved Poe. I always found him entirely too dark, but my father idolized him.”
Sharon stood and excused herself after Jonas gave her a look of understanding. She walked back along the forest trail until she reached the bench where they found Walter Masterson. She sat in the middle of the bench, took a deep breath, and began to read.
Page by page she tore through the manuscript without looking away once. Each word was a weight she dropped into the brook; not the brook in front of her, but one that carved through the fictional hills of Ravenwood, a world her father conceived as an escape.
When she finished, she felt the wet blanket of resentment that had been draped across her shoulders for so long lift away and disappear into the trees that surrounded her. It was as if that magical spot had the ability to absorb anything. Tears were falling down her face, but she emitted no noise. She could only hear the sounds of nature living well in a pocket of the world that now embraced her. She felt her father right there in the scent of the flowers and the push of the light breeze that glided around the creek bank. She knew in that moment that her father’s talent came not from experience, but from imagination. She looked up at the birch trees and down at the brook. A butterfly came to rest on her knee for a moment before heading away with the wind. Mindful clarity overwhelmed her. It was a peaceful scene like the one she now found herself in which he lived all those years that he never came out of that study – a place so beautiful in every way that it could only be composed by an enlightened artist. A place he described vividly in this, his final work. It was suddenly clear to Sharon. His imagination was failing him, so he came as far as earthly limitations would allow. He came here, to this spot, like a dying dog seeking a comfortable place to lay his head one last time.
Sharon gathered herself enough to stand and take one last look around. Could this place truly be real, or was she having an out-of-body experience herself? She studied her surroundings intently because she wanted to remember this moment and everything about it. As she turned to leave, she noticed something carved on one of the bench planks.
NEVERMORE.
Poe, she thought, and smiled.
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