This is just a preview of the very start of our prose novel SONG TO THE SIREN:
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CHAPTER ONE
If I reply to this email, thought Samantha, I’ll have to tell them what really happened. The whole thing. The slow way. Because if I just came out and tried to explain the truth to them all at once, they’d… She stared at the email that was waiting, on her computer screen, for her to reply to it…
Dear Ms. MacNamara… it began…
Samantha frowned. What would they do… if I really tried to explain what happened back then? What would anyone do? It’s why I’ve never told a single living soul...
She looked up above her monitor, at the wall of her home office, at the framed photograph of a handsome young man holding a guitar. His long blond hair was flying around as he played. He was smiling at the camera, at the person taking his picture… In the background was the rest of the band, with the drum set that bore the stylized logo of the Big Carnival. “Am I really sure I want to be interviewed, Reed?” Sam asked the young man in the photo. “Music press people, diehard fans, even people I trusted, I’ve never told anyone about… what happened. It’s amazing that after all of these years, people are still interested in you and the Big Carnival.”
She sat for a minute, as if listening for a reply that she knew would never and could never come… and then she sighed. “I’ll do it for you, Reed darling…”
Sam spent several minutes typing out a frenzied reply to the email. Then she went back and re-read the most provocative part of what she had written: I loved Reed Sinclair, but he was taken from me by another woman. It wasn’t someone made of flesh and blood—I could have handled that—but a woman made out of spirit… and hatred. She was someone who hungered for more than Reed’s blood. Belle hungered for Reed’s sanity. She took his mind, and then she took his life. The news reports back in the day said that Reed’s death was a suicide. But I was there. I know everything. Reed Sinclair’s death was cold-blooded, premeditated murder.
Sam began to giggle. The giggle turned into the type of raw, painful laugh a person laughs to try to avoid crying.
It didn’t work, though. Sam couldn’t help but let her laughter turn to crying anyway, as she’d cried so many times over Reed…
She took a few tissues from a nearby box, and dried her eyes. Then she began to delete her reply. She watched with grim resignation as every word was destroyed by the backspace key. When she was finished, she looked at the blank box where her initial response had been.
Then she clicked on another window, and looked at the information she’d found when she looked up the two young men who’d sent her the email. Ryan Torres, and Brandon Hawkins… They seemed like nice enough Midwestern boys… Brandon was about four inches taller than Ryan, with light brown hair and blue eyes… Ryan was on the thin side, but he was sort of wiry, too, like the sort of young person who might’ve run track in high school… In the first picture she’d found of both of them from one of Ryan’s many social media profiles, they were posing together and making zombie faces in front of a revival-house showing of Night of the Living Dead. In the second picture, the thumbnail of which was right below the zombie one, they were holding up two different Big Carnival albums, each young man wearing a gleeful expression on his face…
She looked back up at the photo of Reed. “I can’t hit them over the head with the whole truth. I’ll have to just lead them on a little. A… a warm, charming… evasive reply, but not to the point where anyone would realize it…”
She nodded a tight, determined little nod, and resumed typing. Dear Ryan…
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“She really said she’d do the interview?” Brandon asked.
“Yeah. We’ve got Samantha MacNamara for our documentary,” said Ryan. “Sam Mac. I am not kidding. This is really gonna happen.”
“How’d you get her to agree to talk to us? I mean… us? Sam Mac never talks to anyone about Reed and the Big Carnival.”
Ryan gestured at the computer monitor behind him, on the desk crammed with books on film, charging cables for a variety of electronics, Green Bay Packers memorabilia, and even some things like deodorant and mouthwash. Every inch of space in the very small apartment he and Brandon shared was filled, and if anything got knocked over, it often knocked something else over, too. “I obsessed for hours over what I was gonna say to her—I mean, this was Sam Mac! —but finally I just explained, y’know, that we’re two documentary filmmakers who got crowdfunding for a documentary about the band…”
“‘Documentary filmmakers?’ So you didn’t tell her that we’re just two guys who graduated from college a couple of weeks ago.” Ryan made a face that was just uncomfortable enough to confirm Brandon’s theory. “Ryan…”
“Have we started making a crowdfunded documentary? Yes. Therefore, we’re documentary filmmakers. My point is, I told her how important the project is to us, and how much it would mean to the Big Carnival fans out there if she’d talk about the BC, blah blah blah…”
“…And she said yes?”
“She said yes!”
“…Lemme see the email!”
With a few careful maneuvers of his computer’s mouse, Ryan brought up the email for Brandon.
Brandon read:
Dear Ryan:
It’s wonderful to hear that the Big Carnival still have an enthusiastic fanbase after around four decades…
I sometimes have a hard time talking about the band. As I’m sure you’re aware, the Big Carnival’s bass player was my brother Pete, and Reed… well, Reed and I loved each other very much. It’s heartbreaking to me that my dear brother and my darling Reed aren’t alive today to see how much their band still means to their fans.
I am more than willing to participate in the documentary. But I have two conditions:
First, I’d like you and your friend Brandon to be my guests at my house in Bloomington. There’s plenty of room here, since my parents and my brother are no longer with us. I know that you guys must be on a tight budget, so staying here, instead of at a hotel, might help out with your money worries.
The second condition is that you allow me to tell you the whole story. You must film everything. I have never talked to anyone about Reed and the band, and I have a lot to say about both matters.
I warn you that the story I am going to tell you is… a bit odd. You may or may not believe a word of it. But I feel that it must be told.
If these two conditions are agreeable to you, please email me back at your earliest convenience.
Take care,
Samantha MacNamara
“…What does she mean by ‘a bit odd,’ d’you think…?” Brandon asked.
“Well, y’know, you’ve read about Reed online…” said Ryan, “about the drugs and the deaths and the tragedies that surrounded the Big Carnival… And some of those deaths and tragedies are what kept the band from becoming more than a cult favorite… I figured ‘odd’ meant she’s maybe gonna give us the inside scoop on all that crap—which is just what our documentary needs.”
“Yeah… yeah, okay…” Brandon looked at his roommate. “So we’re really gonna get to meet her?”
“We’re really gonna get to meet her.”
“…What’s the next step?”
“I write her back and say that yes, we accept her conditions, I tell her when we think we’ll be there, and then we drive there—and I say that we go right away. We don’t wanna give a recognized artist like Sam Mac so much time to think about this that she changes her mind, do we?”
“Hell no. Email her back and say that we can be there tomorrow…” Brandon opened his cell phone, tapped it a few times. “Wait, are we talking about Bloomington, Indiana?”
“No, this Bloomington is, like, a suburb of Minneapolis.”
“Well that’s even better, Madison to Minneapolis is about four hours. I’m gonna go pack.”
Ryan turned to reply to Sam Mac’s email. Should I ask her about what she meant by a bit odd? he wondered. Nah, we’ll find out when we get there, he decided.
He started typing his reply email.
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“…I’m nervous as hell about all of this,” Brandon admitted to Ryan the next day. “I mean, here we are standing on Sam Mac’s doorstep…”
“She seems like a really nice lady, so just play it cool, okay?” said Ryan. “Now, deep breath… You ready?”
“…Ready.”
“Okay, I’m ringing the doorbell…”
About 15 seconds later, Samantha MacNamara answered the door.
Brandon was surprised. Somehow, he’d wrapped his mind around the idea that he was going to meet the slim, serious-looking artist with the short hair from all the Big Carnival photographs—what few there were of her in front of the camera instead of behind it—but it hadn’t sunk in that she would be much older now.
Not that she looked bad now. Really, she was very well-preserved, for being over 60. Her hair wasn’t dirty blonde anymore—her hair was still short enough that it didn’t reach even halfway down her neck, but now the color was somewhere between gray and a shining silver. The wrinkles she had were deep, but very few. What kept Brandon from speaking at first, though, wasn’t shock at her being old, nor dignified, but the look in her eyes. Sharp, he thought. Smart. And… something else. Not hostility, nor caution, nor weariness, but… a kind of guardedness. Perhaps not against him and Ryan, but…
When he thought about it, that quality of being on guard had been there even more in the photos of Sam Mac from the old days, too.
What did she have to be on guard against, then? Brandon wondered.
But although, when the door had opened, Ryan had seemed struck by the same things as Brandon, Ryan recovered faster. “Hello… we’re here about the interview, ma’am,” Ryan said.
“So, you’re Ryan and Brandon… You’re so young!” At least she doesn’t make it sound like she thinks we’re too young to be filmmakers, thought Brandon.
“Yes ma’am, that’s us,” said Ryan. “May we come in?”
“Of course. Would you like me to show you to your rooms, or do you want to start work right away?”
“We’d like to start right away,” said Brandon. “We have a ton of questions I want to ask you about the band.”
“Well, set up your equipment, and let’s get started,” she said. Ryan and Brandon stepped inside, and Brandon—who already had most of his equipment hanging off of him, such as the folded-up tripod, and some lighting stuff—put all his stuff down in the living room that was visible from the front door, and started getting ready. “Would you rather be in the den?” Sam asked, gesturing to a doorway. “Maybe you think the light would be better in there? It has more windows…”
Brandon went and looked through the open doorway, into the wood-paneled den. Over their shoulders, Ryan looked too. “Mm, no,” said Brandon, “it’s tempting, with all those great photos and stuff on the walls, but I like the color of the walls in here better… it matters, since the floors are all hardwood… and there’s plenty of photos on the walls in here, too. Not surprising, since, y’know. Photographer.”
“Yeah,” said Ryan. He walked over to a large bookcase. The left side of the top shelf had all of Sam Mac’s photography books: Early Work, Looking Back, The Colors of Samantha MacNamara, Looking Forward, Sam Mac’s New York… the rest of the shelf was books about photography by other people, and so was the shelf below it… but the middle and lower shelves were full of books about other things… Monsters of the World, Legends and Magic, Folk Belief, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Irish Myths and Legends, Folk Tales and Ballads, a Gaelic dictionary, The Complete Guide to Vampires, Celtic Folklore, The Pre-Raphaelite Movement, The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics, World Mythology, The Fey of Ireland, The Life of Biddy Early, The Fairy Folk and You by Cricket Hawthorne…
Well, after all, Ryan mused, just because there aren’t any books about the Big Carnival, why should every book in the house be about photography? He started looking at the various photos on the wall. The one near him that interested him the most was a picture of Reed Sinclair that he’d never seen before… It was Reed next to a statue… of Sherlock Holmes? From when they lived in London, Ryan thought. It was a color picture… it looked like it’d been raining, and Reed’s blond hair was pushed back out of his face and somewhat plastered to his head—
“—Ryan?” It was Brandon. Ryan looked over to his right. “We’re ready.”
Sam was sitting in a tall, very cushioned chair, upholstered with solid, off-white fabric, perfect for filming her in. Another chair had been moved facing her, but off to the left, out of the way of Brandon’s camera. Ryan sat in that one, leaned forward… and his eye was caught by another photo.
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Ryan: Is that a picture of your brother Pete and Reed Sinclair?
Sam: The one there on the coffee table? Yeah, that’s Reed and Pete in that picture, back when they were kids. Pete looks really different from his Big Carnival photos, doesn’t he? But you can still tell it’s him… the main difference is just that his hair’s so short, but most boys were like that then… but look at the wide little nose, and the big eyes… you can’t tell from the photo, but his hair’s the same medium brown he had all his life… except a little lighter from all the time playing outside… and you also can’t tell that that plaid shirt he’s wearing is blue, but I remember it because I was wearing it myself a couple of years later—I was such a tomboy that I wanted to wear all my brother’s hand-me-downs…
Ryan: Your brother has a black eye in that picture.
Sam: Yeah, but you can see that Pete’s smiling, and so is Reed. They’d had their first fight, but, you know how little boys are… that’s how they became friends.
Ryan: How’d the fight happen?
Sam: My family had just moved here to Bloomington, which is one of the oldest suburbs of Minneapolis. Pete was about eight years old. We didn’t know anyone, because we were new to the area. I was two years younger than Pete. I was one of those pesky little sisters that liked to tag along with their brothers. But Pete hated that, so I was stuck sitting on the porch, reading a picture book. Pete was roaming the neighborhood with the new camera our parents had bought him. I wanted a camera, too, but I was told, as I so often was, that I was just a kid. Ugh.
Anyway, there I was sitting when Pete ran up and said, “Come quick. Some jerk named Reed has taken my camera!” So I abandoned my book and followed Pete to somebody’s back yard, next door to our new house.
To purchase: www.amazon.ca/Song-Siren-Book-Barb-Lien-Cooper-ebook