Shriek: An Afterword

Once it was clear the Shrieks would not be coming back, I pulled out the manuscript again and reread it. In the three years that had passed, many strange things had happened in the city, so that even the most bizarre parts of the account no longer seemed quite so ridiculous. But there was still the issue of its portrayal of Mary. I decided to show Mary the manuscript and let her decide its fate. It may seem that I abrogated my responsibility in doing so, but I felt I had no choice.

To my surprise, Mary told me Hoegbotton & Sons should publish it. She was quite adamant about it, and further instructed me not to delete or soften any references to her, regardless of how unflattering. She became very emotional on this point, and I had the impression she wished I had shown her the manuscript the day I had found it.

Obeying Mary’s wishes, I did not make many edits of substance in preparing Janice’s account for publication. I did, in some instances, smooth out the text—for example, fixing the grammatical errors in those sections written in exceptional haste. Likewise, I corrected all spelling errors. Where Janice had alternate versions of a page or scene—which occurred with some frequency—I chose the more polished of the two. I also untangled Janice’s handwritten corrections from Duncan’s comments, deciding that placing the latter in parentheses and removing parentheses from Janice’s text was the most elegant solution to a potentially wearisome problem. Where she spent too long on a subject, or lost focus completely, I did excise text, but the entirety of these deletions constitutes only five or six paragraphs in total. I may have erred too far on the side of preservation in this case—some of the discussion of Duncan’s theories strikes me as tedious—but better tedium than claims I was overzealous in my editing duties.

I also deleted Duncan’s final comment on Janice’s manuscript, which he wrote on the page following her last chapter. I did this not because I wanted to, but because I had to. The comment was illegible. I had several handwriting experts examine the sentence. None could come to any agreement as to how it might have read. The most coherent interpretation? “Confluence of light between towers and being there at the right time leapt forward.” I include the phrase here despite my best instincts to do otherwise. My sole addition to the text consisted of fleshing out one or two scenes where Janice’s descriptive powers deserted her, but only in cases where I had been privy to the same information.

A further complication concerned the fungal contamination of the pages, coupled with the haphazard way in which the pages had been stacked on the table at the Spore. On some pages, the words were barely legible, and many pages or sections were out of order, several lacking the page numbers that might have allowed me to easily sequence them. I erred on the side of chronological order—even though Janice did not always adhere to such an order—but it is possible I made a few errors in my sequencing.

Figure 2: A reproduction of a sample page from Janice Shriek’s manuscript. Despite Duncan’s admonishment about the unimportance of Janice’s description of a transformed Ambergris, I did not delete the text as he requested; nor did I delete anything in the manuscript that Duncan edited out. After careful consideration, I did, however, delete a half-dozen paragraph-length oddities that bore no discernible relation to the rest of the text, since I felt that these digressions would distract from the text more than they added to it. The careful reader will note that the page reproduced above contains one of these deleted segments.

Therefore, I have clearly made editorial decisions with regard to Janice’s manuscript which some may consider to be too invasive, no matter how slight. But what is not true, despite the rumors, is that An Afterword to the Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris represents an elaborate deception on my part. Not only is the manuscript genuine (see the reproduction of a sample page herein), but I had nothing to do with writing it. Nor is Hoegbotton & Sons only publishing it now due to the sharp upturn in sales of Duncan’s books.1

I have no doubt that the publication of this book will generate fierce discussion about the merits of Nativism, about the aims of the gray caps, and about the nature of the Shift that has increasingly disrupted life in Ambergris. Some will feel that Duncan is about to be vindicated in the most dramatic of ways.

In preparing the manuscript for publication, I have, for that very reason, experienced fresh doubts about making it available. We live in a very volatile time and I would not want this book to be a catalyst for extremism. Nor, I would hope, will readers jump to unsupportable conclusions having read it. I know that many people are clutching at whatever they can to make sense of the odd events that, on certain days, seem destined to overwhelm all of us. My sincere hope is that this book will not push anyone over the edge.

As to the current whereabouts of Duncan and Janice, I must fear the worst, although rumors,2 as rumors will, continue to flourish in the current atmosphere of paranoia and fear.

And yet, despite the strife and violence chronicled and presaged by this volume, the enduring image I have of Janice and Duncan is a peaceful one. It is, oddly enough, of Janice in that room in the Spore, calmly typing away—from the bar folks’ perspective, in a sliver of green light between the doorway and the corridor as once they saw Duncan, but farther and farther away, across green glass and green grass, and fading, fading as the light fails once more.

THE END