A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 14

Paper Secrets

When Johnny wrote the paper, he did his best to get everything in. He had become a master scribbler. He was an expert at making everything as concise as possible, reducing great events to little blurbs that hit home. He captured that convicting essence, so often standing just shy of the fray, so that he could put things at face value in a way that struck just the right chords.

But not everything made it into the paper.

Johnny left some things out.

That isn't to say that Johnny kept secrets, necessarily, although some might have accused him of such if they knew as much. And maybe he did keep secrets.

But not everything made it in because, sometimes...

Sometimes, there were just no words.

*

Unlike some others, Johnny had seen things shift. He knew what it looked like. He knew what it felt like. He knew how it tasted on his tongue, how it smelled in the air. He knew it like a sailor knew the ocean, like a mystic knew the stars.

Nothing that vast could be documented. Nothing that great could have any justice done to it.

Nothing that terrible could be fully disclosed in good conscience.

Some things were never to be spoken of, even for the great voice of an era. Some things would never translate on paper. They would never let a voice speak them.

So Johnny stood at the precipice of these things and watched them, solemn and darkly privileged, brokenly rooted with his heart both numb and raw at once as they played out before him. Here was the womb of history, and he was a witness – charged and tried.

Maybe he was even a child of it. A nurtured specimen of this tumultuous womb. A small, untouched heartbeat in the midst of it, as chaos reigned around him.

Untouched, that is, except for the illness that plagued him. But that was a secret he did keep. It would not make it into the paper that the man behind the voice that so many clung to had been stricken. They depended on him, and he would not have them worry.

After all, 'stricken' didn't mean dead.

But because of it, some things made it into the paper that might not necessarily have happened at all. Feverish things. Episodes that might bear resemblance to one Avante of Manor Dorn's kitchen nightmare dealing with spidery demons and phantom fingerprints.

So perhaps 'compromised' would be a better word.

Never mind that Avante maintained traces of evidence on her person.

The newsboy had been compromised.