Today I found, while I was doing some cleaning at the Chop Shop (my speakeasy), a stack of old books bound by a fading teal damp cloth.
I was listening to Beethoven on the radio and it was early morning, which gave me the sense of a particularly chilly atmosphere despite the summer time. The books turned out to be novels and diaries from Victorian times. I opened the bundle carefully and started reading a few pages from some of them and soon was engrossed in a story about a lawyer going to a desolate house in the country to assess the property. Curled up against the stage, a numbness gradually descended over my limbs, and my bones felt strangely cold; such was the power of the story. A woman kept appearing to the lawyer in ghost-like manner, and the steady creaking of an old rocking chair haunted the house.
I’m not one easily influenced by such literature, and yet, in the dark and smokey windowless room of the Chop Shop, I thought I could hear that same creaking, coming from the uninhabited rooms above…
Bea Shamrock 