The Magnum Opus

“Robert, please go to sleep!” his wife pleaded with him. She pulled on his arm. It was no use; nothing she could say or do would budge him. “The doctor said it’s what you need!”

  “Shut up!” he fumed. He pulled his arm forcefully out of her grasp and resettled himself in his writing chair, in front of his typewriter. Those he knew had wondered why he wrote with a typewriter, but he maintained that it created the “perfect atmosphere”. For writing, he was a method actor. He paused a small while before speaking again. ‘What’s it to you? This is my life’s work! My culmination! I must make it complete!”

  “At least take your pills, dear…the doctor says…” she sobbed. Every night for the past few nights she had pleaded with him to come to bed, and every day to come and be with the family at least for a little bit; but tonight all she did was fill her doe eyes with resigned tears. In days past, not long ago, it would have broken his heart to see her like that. She sniffled, turned away, and left to go to bed alone. It had been at least two days since he had talked to his daughter, and his son he only talked to earlier that evening when he forced his way into the writing room and demanded to know what was keeping his father; he was harshly reprimanded for his trouble.

  “Now I may sit and concentrate on my writing.” he said to himself hushedly. He pulled his chair up closer to his writing table; the leather of the seat was molded to his spine after so many hours sitting in it. He paused for a while, thinking, before he placed his fingers down on the keyboard.

  The wind swirled in its tempest, calm yet unstoppable. Lightning flashed without thunder or rain. At the corner of his vision, through his only window that the moonlight slanted through, he thought he glimpsed a solitary flash; but there was no wind outside, and he put it out of his mind. He reached for his bottle of pills, which he kept always at hand. He cupped his hand and inhaled a few large white pills. He turned back to his typewriter. Had he looked out his window and up a little, he might have seen the Baron Reaper there, upon the roof of his house, standing straight like a weathervane, cloaked in blue so dark it seemed as black, clutching his scythe with a mottled hand, pale as one who has grown up in a cave. He was writing the story of the Baron Reaper, which he saw as by far the magnum opus of his works; he would finish it, and soon. With every word he wrote his excitement and anticipation for finishing it grew; it, and coffee, which was also right on hand, was all that kept him through the sleepless nights and unhappy days working for it.

At once Robert felt a splitting headache; it felt nothing like the headaches he had regularly. The sensation was like his skull was being peeled like a banana and his brain was being squeezed like a lemon. And he heard a voice in his head, deep and sonorous, at once both ominous and calming. It spoke slowly, and yet he felt the force of the words like a train.

  “I will end all that is yours, ere the night is through. Know that, little man.”

  Robert looked down at his typewriter; independently of his mind, his hands had written.

  The voice split through John’s head with a crushing force. “All that is yours I will end. Know that, little man.” John stood up and stumbled back down in terror.

  Robert shuddered, and quickly reached for a few more pills and another sip of coffee. He put the voice out of his mind and doggedly returned to his writing.

  John was seized with immeasurable terror. He ran out from the room he had barricaded himself in. as he ran out of the room he heard glass shattering in the room behind him; it must have been the window.

  Immediately as he finished the sentence, the moonlight streaking through the window was shadowed by something outside. Robert was filled with fear, and picking up his typewriter and pills, fled from the room (he never parted from his typewriter). Faintly over the sound of his footfalls he heard the sound of glass shattering behind him. A black form slinked out of the open doorway and disappeared among the darkness of the hallway. Robert tried to turn on the lights, and gasped when they did not turn on. He looked down and realized that again what he had seen he had written. He frantically looked down all the hallways of his house, which itself bordered distantly on a mansion, searching for a presence he thought he felt. 

  On his second look through all the hallways, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw, at the end of the hall, a black figure, a shadow darker even than the darkness around it, with his arm extended, drawing his cloak in front of something hidden. Robert could feel his fingers moving at his typewriter; he could not tell if he wrote before something happened or after. 

  As if pulled back by the wind itself, the figure’s hood flew back, revealing a face off white, almost like paper. He pulled back his arm, revealing through the darkness Robert’s wife. She levitated in the air with the reaper's scythe on her neck. Her face was stained with tears, and her expression was of complete terror.

  He was frozen, physically and emotionally. He looked down and saw that he had written; Wendy! No! Yelled John, and he lunged forward; but he was far too late. Robert looked up and saw his wife’s small body on the floor. Her blood looked black as it streamed onto the floor.

  He couldn’t react. He stumbled toward the stairwell. He dashed down the stairs and didn’t stop until he was in the downstairs living room. He panted, but stopped and recollected himself. He downed a few more pills. Suddenly he felt as if the darkness in the room was closing in around him and suffocating him. 

  He ran to the front entrance of the house and, hardly pausing, dashed outside. He saw on a far hill a great wolf, or at least it seemed like a wolf; it had no hair, and its skin shone silver. It howled toward the moon, but he didn’t hear it. He looked back down at his typewriter (he never parted from his typewriter).

  “God! The howling! The howling! No! Stop it!” John shrieked, and fell onto the ground.

  The thought came to Robert that he could write away all that was happening to him. He dropped his bottle of pills and clutched his typewriter tightly (he never parted from his typewriter) as he muttered under his breath what he was about to like. 

  “And the great terrible things all went away and didn’t come again and-no!” He suddenly shrieked, and dropped his typewriter. “I can’t! It would ruin the manuscript!” His desire to escape his visions of terror was beaten down by his devotion to his writing. 

  He didn’t know how long he sat there, but slowly or quickly the darkness grew heavy around him. And then he looked up, and stood up in shock, and the reaper was before him.

  Robert was found the next morning in his front yard, clutching his typewriter, dead from an overdose of antipsychotic medication. His wife was found under the wan lights of the upstairs hallway, her throat cut with a knife that had Robert’s prints on it. Years later his son would publish the manuscript; and you don’t want to know what became of him.