The Keepers
Mike Maggio
The Keepers
They’re up there. I hear them clamoring in panic. The rush of their footsteps resounds, as they scurry wildly through the garret, dash past ancient eaves, press against broken planks aching from years of settling—that groan from the flames.
Searching for escape! As the fire leaps and rises! As their startled voices cry out!
For fifty years I have listened to them, when the full moon gapes through the clouds, when they lurk about in the middle of the night—speaking softly now, now quarreling, their unhallowed voices echoing through the house.
“No,” one howls. ”It’s not so.”
“Yes,” the other shouts, making all who hear tremble as if the harsh wind of winter had just blustered through the house. “It ’tis,” she says. “And you shall see. I will make you see. And every last living thing in this wretched house shall see. Even she.”
“You will do no such thing. Not now. Not until the time is right.”
Then the squabbling. The hissing. The unbearable yowling that would drive even the sturdiest insane. And the fearsome forays from the attic: silently, down the dark stairs, creaking with fear, through the hollow hallways, past the keep where they stop and listen, stop and breathe, stop and stare with eyes that flash in the darkness—eyes now glowing, now suddenly black not even the hungriest owl, perched patiently outside the shuttered window, could detect.
isbn 1-59661-165-0
118 pages/$9
The Keepers has a tone of folktale, fantasy and waking dream. Even if the situation is present day, it feels like a tale that’s being spun for us. The stories are a force of writing with the consequence of characters guided by the author’s imaginings. Although there’s an emotional argument in each, kindness--more than not--defines the narrative; and our senses come alive with language, simple and true. The short story is said to be a courtship with the reader. If this is so, the reader will say, “Yes.”
--Grace Cavalieri,
Producer/Host of The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress
Note to fans of Mike Maggio’s arresting political poetry: On the surface it may seem the stories in The Keepers employ a comparatively conventional bag of tricks, but don’t think for a minute you won’t get caught in their grip. Mike Maggio the storyteller leans back in his comfy, authoritative omniscience and narrates in a voice that is familiar and charming. Of course a reader is immediately taken in, only later to recall that it is from the familiar that the surprise jumps out--and also, sometimes, the delicious terror.
--Madeleine Mysko,
author of the novel Bringing Vincent Home
Mike Maggio’s fiction straddles the line between the lyrical and the caustic. It captures something essential about these strange days. With the deft touch of a poet, Maggio writes imaginative fiction that pulls you in and won’t let go. These stories offer a rich landscape for those just now discovering his work.
--Nathan Leslie,
author of Night Sweat and Drivers