Date:         Sun, 4 Oct 1998 22:07:09 -0400 
From: "the rags of time..." <mbarker@MIT.EDU> 
Subject:      [WRITERS] TECH: Ray Bradbury Quoth... 

in honor of the Halloween contest (what howling contest?  Take your browser
on a trip to <A  HREF="http://web.mit.edu/mbarker/www/hall98/hall.html">the
contest page</A> and see!)

Run Fast, Stand Still, or, The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or, New
Ghosts from Old Minds by Ray Bradbury

Run fast, stand still.  This, the lesson from lizards.  For all writers.
Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same.  Jump, run, freeze.
In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like
steam, here this instant, gone the next -- life teems the earth.  And when
that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same.
See the hummingbird, there, not there.  As thought arises and blinks off, so
this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a
leaf.  And where it was -- a whisper.

[Skipping a great deal of good...]

One of the nouns on my list in high school was The Thing, or, better yet,
The Thing at the Top of the Stairs.

When I was growing up in Waukegan, Illinois, there was only one bathroom;
upstairs.  You had to climb an unlit hall halfway before you could find and
turn on a light.  I tried to get my dad to keep the light on all night.  But
that was expensive stuff.  The light stayed off.

Around two or three in the morning, I would have to go to the bathroom.  I
would lie in bed for half an hour or so, torn between the agonized need for
relief, and what I knew was waiting for me in the dark hall leading up to
the attic.  At last, driven by pain, I would edge out of our dining room
into that hall, thinking: run fast, leap up, turn on the light, but whatever
you do, don't look up.  If you look up before you get the light on, It will
be there.  The Thing.  The terrible Thing waiting at the top of the stairs.
So run, blind; don't look.

[slip and clip...]

I leave you now at the bottom of your own stair, at half after midnight,
with a pad, a pen, and a list to be made.  Conjure the nouns, over the
secret self, taste the darkness.  Your own Thing stands waiting way up there
in the attic shadows.  If you speak softly, and write any old word that
wants to jump out of your nerves onto the page...

Your Thing at the top of your stairs in your own private night... may well
come down.

From How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction edited by J. N.
Williamson, ISBN 0-89879-270-3, pp. 11-19

Come live with me and be my love and we will some new pleasures prove of
golden sands and crystal brooks with silken lines and silver hooks.
        John Donne

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