I Survived the 2006 Maritime Writers' Workshop and Literary Festival - In the Dread of the Night

So there we were, thunder and lightning crashing and flashing all around us, in the second floor hall of Memorial Hall and Hunter Thompson has just yellow-panted Tolstoy, Dunne and Bronte. Surely we were doomed.

We fled the floor and gathered downstairs, huddling in the wind driven darkness, and horror of horrors, Hayter turned into a werewolf and ate Salinger’s head.

Sparkle Hayter writes vampire fiction by day; by night, she’s a werewolf. She eats the heads of famous dead writers.

As we chattered our teeth and shivered in the awful blood fest, the ghostly apparition of a CBC radio broadcaster appeared. Here’s a slice of his interview.

CBC Broadcaster: “What the hell are you doing here!”

Us: “Chatter chatter.”

CBC Broadcaster: “We’re the glue that binds the country, you know.”

Us: “Chatter, chatter.”

CBC Broadcaster: “You see any railroads around here, eh? I don’t. The rails are trails. There’s no railroad. We’re the only symbol left of Canadian Canadian-ness.”

Us: Shiver.

CBC Broadcaster: “Remember that. We’re the glue!”

And he disappeared in a shower of peacocks and railway ties. And then we noticed that Sartre was missing. Gone. Gone to the ice house? Probably not. Plath was waiting there in ambush. We heard a scream that seemed to rip straight from the bowels of the earth. Several famous writers soiled their pants. Some tried to revise the scream out of the evening. But this was real. No delete button. No undo. No Liquid Paper.

Another scream. God, it was Sartre. His scream was hideous. It reeked of damnation and … and … the sound of steps. We listened with bated (but not fully bated, having already lost several writers to bated) breath. They were steps of the foot type. Foot steps. Slow footsteps. From below us. And to the south of us. At a 30 degree angle. In a confined space.

We ran to the theater, crashed through the chairs, the storm gathering intensity in our faces, jumped onto the stage. Ferlinghetti and Wells tore the large cement cover off an ancient stairway. We gazed in. Those of us who hadn’t filled our pants, quickly did so. It was Sartre, climbing slowly, slowly up the winding stairs.

We back up into the storm swept theater, tripping and falling over each other, screaming and hollering. As Sarte's head topped the stage, we gazed upon the horrific truth. Sartre had been transformed into Faith.

Some would say that the current Faith might be an improvement on the old Sartre. Many would be eager to argue.

Postscript: In the following two days, at almost the same time, and in exactly the same place just outside Memorial Hall on the path leading to the Beaverbrook Residence, two members of the Workshop smelled rose water perfume. There were no rose bushes. No other reported smellings. No explanation … except … perhaps …

Next: Riverboat Mayhem