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Tuesday, October 19, 2010
title: Voluntary Committal
author: Joe Hill
genre: horror/short story
published: 2007
first line: I don't know who I'm writing this for, can't say who I expect to read it.
Voluntary Committal is a short story from Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts. I read this collection of short stories a while ago and I did enjoy it very much.
In this story Nolan tells the tale of his younger brother Morris, who was a schizophrenic that went missing three weeks ago. Nolan's friend Eddie, was a troublemaker at school and had behavioral problems, also went missing years ago when Nolan was still in high school.
Morris builds these amazing tunnels out of cardboard boxes in his basement. Within these tunnels exists an almost surreal other world. Morris's tunnels are elaborate. He draws inside the walls, adding different effects to make them seem maze like and otherworldly. However, Nolan is creeped out by these handmade creations and dislikes being in the basement alone or entering the forts himself. The few times he's entered them, he's been disoriented and a bit shocked.
The box at the center of Morris's cardboard kracken was roomy enough to provide shelter for a family of five and their dog. A battery-operated lava lamp bubbled in one corner, red globs of plasma rising and sinking through viscous amber fluid. Morris had papered the inside of the enormous box with silver foiled Christmas wrap. Sparks and filaments of light raced here and there in trembling waves, sheets of gold and raspberry and lime, crashing into each other and vanishing. It was as if in the course of my long crawl to the center of the fort, I had gradually been shrinking, until at last I was no larger than a field mouse, and had arrived in a little room suspended inside a disco ball.
When Eddie does something terrible, and involves Nolan in the crime, Morris overhears the two discussing it afterwards. Morris knows Eddie will never leave Nolan alone and he wants to get rid of Eddie himself, permanently.
This is when Eddie mysteriously goes missing and only Nolan and Morris know where he went. When the boys are grown up and Nolan goes away to college, Morris moves out on his own and gets an apartment. However, shortly after that he voluntarily commits himself to a psychiatric hospital only to mysteriously disappear himself soon after.
All that is left is Nolan trying not to think about Eddie and his brother Morris, but being the only one to know exactly where they went.
In the end, people usually get a bit more of what they want than they can really handle, don't they?
I enjoyed re-reading this short story. I could imagine Morris's magical and creepy forts. As I was reading I did get the chills while author Joe Hill describes the basement and Morris's huge creations made out of simple cardboard boxes, yet leading to other dimensions. It was very much like an episode of The Twilight Zone.
Joe Hill is the author of a novel, Heart-Shaped Box, a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, and an occasional comic book series, Locke & Key. His second novel, Horns, will be available from William Morrow, in February of 2010. He lives in a small stone cell at the bottom of a chasm; there is only one steep, treacherous trail leading down to it, and the way is protected by fierce goats.
-quoted from the author's website
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