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Sleeping Soldier Saturday, Chapter 2
Jul. 22nd, 2023 08:37 amOnward in The Sleeping Soldier! The book is set to release on August 7 (preorder here), so we'll get through chapter 4 before then.
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Caleb O’Connor first discovered the Schloss in October of his freshman year at Hawkins. His girlfriend Carol found a book in the library called Victorian Mourning Art, packed with photographs of dead babies (“Sleeping Beauties,” the caption intoned) and sunbursts woven of human hair.
There was also a photograph of a life-size waxwork: the Union soldier Russell Krause, so perfectly sculpted that he looked, at least in that black-and-white photograph, like a man asleep. His Civil War kepi perched on his curly dark hair. Thick dark eyebrows, round boyish cheeks, sweet soft lips that might easily part under the impress of a kiss.
“That’s right here in town,” Carol said, and Caleb jumped. He had forgotten that she was there, that there was anything in the world except the photograph of that beautiful boy. “See,” she said, and read aloud the caption: “This exquisite waxwork gave rise to the pretty legend that it was not a waxwork at all, but the boy himself, cursed to lie in an enchanted sleep that would last for a hundred years, unless he was awakened by a kiss of true love. It lies in state in Russell Krause’s childhood bedroom in the Schloss, high on a hill overlooking the Wabash in Aurora, Indiana.”
And there, on the facing page, was a photograph of the Schloss, with the street address underneath. “That house must be just up the hill behind Riley,” Caleb said, and then, with an effort, he grinned at Carol. “We ought to break in for Halloween. You could kiss him and see if he wakes up.”
“Oooh!” she said, and shuddered deliciously, and kissed Caleb. And he tried not to worry why her kiss didn’t thrill him like the photograph.
Of course they didn’t break in. But they stood a long time at the wrought iron fence gazing in at the Schloss: an enchanted palace, with the last few climbing roses peeping out among ivy turned scarlet with autumn.
They went back often. They both loved old things, old books, old houses, and this Gothic brick pile with its black fence and hexagonal tower fired their imaginations. It was ghostly in the moonlight at Halloween; soft in the first snowfall after they returned from Thanksgiving break. As the snow grew old and tired, the Schloss grew grim and brooding; and then the snow melted, and the ivy turned green, and the house looked almost friendly when the windows gleamed gold in the reflected sunset.
( Read More )
***
Caleb O’Connor first discovered the Schloss in October of his freshman year at Hawkins. His girlfriend Carol found a book in the library called Victorian Mourning Art, packed with photographs of dead babies (“Sleeping Beauties,” the caption intoned) and sunbursts woven of human hair.
There was also a photograph of a life-size waxwork: the Union soldier Russell Krause, so perfectly sculpted that he looked, at least in that black-and-white photograph, like a man asleep. His Civil War kepi perched on his curly dark hair. Thick dark eyebrows, round boyish cheeks, sweet soft lips that might easily part under the impress of a kiss.
“That’s right here in town,” Carol said, and Caleb jumped. He had forgotten that she was there, that there was anything in the world except the photograph of that beautiful boy. “See,” she said, and read aloud the caption: “This exquisite waxwork gave rise to the pretty legend that it was not a waxwork at all, but the boy himself, cursed to lie in an enchanted sleep that would last for a hundred years, unless he was awakened by a kiss of true love. It lies in state in Russell Krause’s childhood bedroom in the Schloss, high on a hill overlooking the Wabash in Aurora, Indiana.”
And there, on the facing page, was a photograph of the Schloss, with the street address underneath. “That house must be just up the hill behind Riley,” Caleb said, and then, with an effort, he grinned at Carol. “We ought to break in for Halloween. You could kiss him and see if he wakes up.”
“Oooh!” she said, and shuddered deliciously, and kissed Caleb. And he tried not to worry why her kiss didn’t thrill him like the photograph.
Of course they didn’t break in. But they stood a long time at the wrought iron fence gazing in at the Schloss: an enchanted palace, with the last few climbing roses peeping out among ivy turned scarlet with autumn.
They went back often. They both loved old things, old books, old houses, and this Gothic brick pile with its black fence and hexagonal tower fired their imaginations. It was ghostly in the moonlight at Halloween; soft in the first snowfall after they returned from Thanksgiving break. As the snow grew old and tired, the Schloss grew grim and brooding; and then the snow melted, and the ivy turned green, and the house looked almost friendly when the windows gleamed gold in the reflected sunset.
( Read More )
