A while back I started telling a story to my kids at bedtime about a boy named Cecil and his sandwich-shaped window. As most stories do, it grew in the telling — and I have been begged from my kids to hear more of it. Up until this point, it was just in my head and a few jotted down plot lines in my notes app on my iPhone. I have decided to try my hand at writing it out… I don’t know what will come of it and if I will ever finish, and there will most likely be changes and revisions from plot lines with the writing of newer posts. But the goal is not to complete it or make it perfect, but to write for the enjoyment of it.
So here’s to a new adventure… Enjoy and let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Cecil and the Sandwich-shaped Window
For any other kid, it would have been a very special day, but for Cecil, it was just another normal Tuesday out on the open sea. The cold spray of mist from each wave, the strong smell of cedar wood tainted with salt and the loud clanging bell signaling a catch — this all took up very little space in his mind that morning. Cecil was distracted and occupied with other thoughts and things. He couldn’t help but replay the strange events that took place late last night in his room.
It’s easy to believe you are hallucinating when all you see for weeks is an endless stretch of deep blue water. Maybe he was out in the sun too long, Cecil thought to himself. He had read many stories of weathered sailors coming back to land with wild tales on their tongues. While he ate up the legends and adventures, he knew all too well that they couldn’t be true (though something deeper in him wanted, even longed, for them to be so).
The images kept flashing through his mind as though they had been seared to his memory for years. It was all so foreign to him and yet felt inexplicably familiar. Two glowing golden lights peering through his sandwich-shaped window below deck. Cecil would later go on to describe them: “like the eyes of a god; piercing right through me and yet somehow still gentle and magnetic…” This wasn’t the only thing that caught Cecil’s attention, though strange it was. For the golden lights didn’t just pass by in an instant flash but lingered ever so slowly, as if they were staring, watching, searching for something, or, as Cecil later felt deep in his gut… someone.
Cecil rolled out of bed the next morning and ran straight to the makeshift calendar hanging on the wood-planked wall. Bright red marks were slashed through twenty-seven boxes under the bold block-lettered “September” and today, on the twenty-eighth box, there was a thick black circle around the date. It was Cecil’s favorite part of the month, the time when they returned to port for twenty-four hours.
Because of the unique life his parents had chose to live out on the sea, Cecil never had the normal experience of friends or school. The most exciting thing Cecil looked forward to doing every time they returned was visiting the local bookstore, The Dusty Shelf, ran by an elderly man named Malcolm. Besides Lars, a scrappy seagull that travels with his boat, Malcolm was who he shared his wildest dreams and questions with. If ever anyone had to find Cecil on the island, they knew where always to look.
Malcolm was a quirky but lovable old man with a warm gravelly laugh and an untidy white beard nestled carelessly over his customary tweed jacket. There wasn’t a day that Malcolm was seen without a pipe in his mouth and a book in his hand — the two great loves of his life, of course he would tell you after his true love and wife, Flora. If you asked around the village, no one quite knew how old Malcolm was or how long he had owned the bookstore — it was just an accepted historical fact that the two were inseparable from time out of mind.
On this particular Wednesday, Cecil ran down the dock with a greater urgency than ever before. His mind raced with the things he wanted to tell Malcolm from the other night as he jogged along the narrow stone streets. Where would he start? How would he begin to explain what he saw through his window, even more, what he felt in his gut? He knew Malcolm was well read and had an uncanny ability to recall nearly all the strange tales from his shelves. Maybe he had heard of something like this before. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation to it all.
Cecil pushed open the heavy-set wooden door to an all too familiar sight: there was Malcolm, reclining in his tattered red armchair with clouds of tobacco smoke twisting above his head like a thick haze of fog moving slowly towards the coast.
“Hello, my dear boy,” said Malcolm as he took a long draw of his pipe. “It has been too long since you have come in to see me last. What news do you bring from the open seas?”
Cecil closed the door behind him and walked over to the small leather chair across from Malcom. His head shifted back and forth as he eyed the newest piles of aged books that were scattered across the wooden floor. Somehow Malcolm always ended up with the strangest collection of books and stories.
“Oh, the last few weeks have been pretty normal and boring,” Cecil said nervously as he tried to figure out how to share his experience. His hands were starting to sweat and he didn’t understand fully why.
“Boring?” Malcolm chuckled as he shifted in his chair. “There are no such things as boring moments my friend, just moments where we are not present to the wildness of life around us.”
“Well, about that…” Cecil’s eyes flittered as he caught the curious gaze of Malcolm. “There is something that happened the other night and I want to tell you about it.”
“Yes, yes, go right ahead, lad.”
Cecil leaned forward, “It was late Tuesday night and I was blowing out the candle before going to sleep… and that’s when I felt, I mean, saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“Well, I don’t know how to describe it other than it looked like two golden lights staring at me through the sandwich-shaped window in my room.”
Cecil couldn't help but notice how Malcolm’s eyes grew ever so wider as he leaned forward. It was as if he knew something but was trying very hard to not give it away.
“Interesting,” Malcolm slowly muttered, now looking half distracted as his eyes glanced down the aisles of books behind Cecil. “How did you feel in the moment?”
Cecil had to pause and think deeply. The memory was layered with different feelings and he didn’t want to betray what he had genuinely experienced. “I…I felt like they were staring at me and at the same time through me,” Cecil stuttered. “If that makes any sense.”
“Yes, go on,” Malcolm said calmly with a strange air of confidence.
“They looked and felt like the eyes of a god glaring at me, and there was something magnetic that pulled me towards itself that I couldn’t resist.”
At the statement, Malcolm put his pipe down, waved at the lingering smoke with his hand and stood up. He was an elderly man and his movements were not often described as quick anymore, but this shift was abrupt, and it sent a shock down Cecil’s spine.
“What’s wrong? Where are you going?” Cecil blurted out, as his heart started beating faster.
“Come with me, my boy. There is a special collection I want to show you.”
Filled with a wild sense of curiosity, Cecil rose and followed Malcolm down one of the aisles into a poorly lit backroom. Malcolm walked over to the table in the middle where a layer of thick dust was resting over a handful of worn books. He leaned forward and gestured at Cecil, “Come close Cecil, it’s time I tell you another tale.”
I'm hooked! I gotta know. Can't wait to read more of it.