Something's down there.

Vicarious Descent

I was afraid of basements when I was a kid. Two in particular.

One was always freezing, with concrete floors, dark corridors, and a row of headless dressmaker forms watching me, like predators awaiting prey.

I knew there was something down there. Some presence. I felt it.

Then that scene in the cave in Tom Sawyer put me right back there. Joe chasing Tom and Becky through the endless dark with no escape. I watched with an afghan over my head, my eyes peeking through the holes at what would haunt me for decades.

Even still, I couldn’t look away. Not much has changed.

Walk alone at night and hear footsteps behind you. Your imagination doesn’t conjure a friendly librarian carrying a casserole. It serves up a green-faced witch on a broom. Or Duncan MacLeod brandishing his sword. Trailing you. Lurking just outside the light.

And then, instead of leaving well enough alone, some of us turn around. Why? Fear doesn’t diminish curiosity. It ignites it.

There’s a strange pleasure in confronting scary things from a place of safety, where we can close the book, turn on the light, pull the afghan back over our heads.

I eventually became a crime writer, so my response to creepy basements was to spend my adult life recreating them.

Fault Line

Peripheral vision has always felt like a chilling invitation.

The fluttered edges of dark wings. Eerie clicking sounds. The promise of something just out of reach.

Like shadows you can only see when you’re not looking. Turn your head and they’re gone.

Writing is like that. Sometimes a character arrives before I understand why. An image won’t leave me alone. A question keeps circling. Something is happening beneath the story long before I can consciously identify it.

And maybe that’s why I can never leave these things alone.

I’m a searcher. So are you, I suspect. If something keeps gnawing at the edge of my vision, I need to know.

Years ago, I wrote a thriller called The Unseen. I’ve been poking around in dark rooms longer than I realized.

And sometimes I wonder: Did I invent this, or did I uncover it?

Maybe that’s the definition of shadow. Not an answer, but a clue telling us where to look.

The Crucible

Now, dig deeper. Because here’s where things get more interesting.

Put a character under pressure and eventually something comes out that neither of you expected.

Defiance. Mania. Desperation. But also strength.

Pressure is a whetstone. Sometimes it breaks us. Or sharpens us. And sometimes it exposes an edge we didn’t know we had…or needed.

So maybe people aren’t so different.

We have this unquenchable hunger for clarity. Answers. Definitions. The boundaries that frame our ordered universe and tell us where everything belongs.

But some questions haunt us, refusing the labels we give them. And sometimes resolution can only come from an unfamiliar, dark path.

Maybe that’s part of what keeps me looking. Not just for what’s hiding down there, but to ask it what it wants.

What’s down there? That’s why I keep going back. Not because I love the dark.

Because I don’t like NOT KNOWING.

Story Impact Magazine | SHADOWS

Apparently, I’m not the only one poking around in dark rooms.

The October issue of Story Impact Magazine is SHADOWS, an exploration of what lives just outside the light: the things we fear, hide, imagine, and go looking for.

Inside these pages, writers explore the roads that led them here in The Dark Mile, what we hold beneath the surface in The Hidden Room, and the complicated territory of villains in The Moriarty Problem. You’ll also find original poetry, author interviews, industry insights, and an autumn reading list filled with books for darker nights.

Shadows aren’t the absence of the story. They’re where the story actually begins.

— Claire Ortalda, Award-Winning Author & Literary Editor

When was the last time you descended into your own basement? What did you find there?

Maybe sometimes we go far enough down to recognize something familiar.

Like home.

See you downstairs…

Lisa

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