Admit One: A Novelette

By Rachel H. White

A sullen drifter seeking shelter from a midnight thunderstorm in a small town must face his own failures through a musical onslaught from a host of supernatural entities. 9,570 words with digital paintings by the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rachel H. White
• Release date: Apr 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393998259

Rachel H. White

Writing is almost like putting together a puzzle, only it's more like taking a bunch of old family home movies, photographs, scrapbooks, and a dollhouse, and splicing them together, digitally retouching and altering them, dubbing in celebrity voices, and hand-writing the credits until you've made them into a major motion picture. I am a writer/artist of various types of speculative fiction but mostly modern fantasy. I have loved magic, and the people and creatures who live with it and use it, all my life, and writing and drawing these people in modern environments makes it all the more real to me. I am forever striving to rise above the mundane and surround myself with wonderful people and things, and succeed at this most of the time. My body resides in a house in Phoenix, AZ, with a cat, a snake and a man who is rumored to also be a dragon.

Book preview

Admit One

An Illustrated Novelette

Rachel H. White

Daylight was peeking through the window into the motel room when Adrian unwrapped the old violin. He opened the door and stepped out onto the landing, facing east where the horizon was bright with anticipation.

He fitted the instrument under his chin. An awkward position, but still familiar though he'd had much shorter arms the last time he'd done this. In the trees at the edge of the parking lot, a bird was singing, and another joined it, more birds answering them as the sky brightened. He plucked at the strings and twisted the pegs lovingly. He thought about everything he'd witnessed that night, about the resonance of the music, the way the performers had moved. He went back in his mind to – really? Just a few hours before? Through that music, something had poured into him. Something way beyond time. Something had remade him from what he had been.

Before...

Adrian pulled up his collar in an attempt to keep the wind off his neck. He'd quit trying to dodge the puddles an hour ago, sloshing through, feeling the squish of water in his boots in addition to it drumming on his head.

The only lights he'd seen for a while were the dull yellow street lamps that blurred in the wet and made things harder to see, made the darkness around them less shades of gray and more solid black.

He had money enough to buy a drink as rent on an indoor seat at a bar or restaurant, but not enough for a room at the dinky old motel just off the highway. He hadn't had that level of financial security for a week, what with the job market for people with no address being practically nonexistent.

But apparently this was one of those towns that rolled up the sidewalks too early: no bars open in the downtown area, which was only four blocks long. After that, it gave way to silent, old-money houses on one end and older mill houses on the other, all in a deep sleep. Even the chain fast-food joint where he'd risked a dollar on a burger on his way into town had shut their doors at nine p.m., hustling him out into an increasing drizzle. He could have found an empty shop doorway to curl up in, but a prowling cop car had made him think better of that. Some things were worse than being wet.

A distant streak of light suddenly blinked on. Squinting, unsure for a second whether it wasn't just an odd reflection of the streetlights, Adrian stretched his strides longer and faster.

After another block, he realized the light was from a row of tall windows, full of colors, and he stopped short.

Aw hell, he muttered, a fucking church.

A chill gust of wind shoved him, and he had to clap a hand over his hat,