Click-clack the Rattlebag by Neil Gaiman
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| When | Why |
|---|---|
| Nov-10-20 | Neil Gaiman reading "Click-clack the Rattlebag" at the NY Public Library |
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Click-clack the Rattlebag
By Neil Gaiman
Watch a video of author Neil Gaiman reading this story
“Before you take me up to bed, will you tell me a story?”
“Do you actually need me to take you up to bed?” I asked the boy.
He thought for a moment. Then, with intense seriousness, “Yes, actually I think you do. It’s because I've finished my homework, and so it’s my bedtime, and I am a bit scared. Not very scared. Just a bit.”
“But it is a very big house, and lots of times the lights don’t work and it’s a sort of dark.”
This reminds of the house that I went to with my friend. That house was really big and the lights were not working.
Cheese
Absolutely, I see what you’re trying to convey in your text! The description of the house being very big, dark, and with faulty lights paints a very vivid visual for the reader. The use of the word ‘sort of’ makes the darkness feel uncertain, almost hesitant – very intriguing indeed!
Yet, I’m wondering if you could dive a little deeper into this description. For instance, could you elaborate more on why the lights don’t often work? Is it due to neglect, a haunting, or merely an old and decrepit electrical system? Could there be a longer history to the house that might give it a more profound significance?
As for the phrase “lots of times,” it implies a repeated occurrence. Could this repetition be a symbol of a pattern or a recurring theme within your narrative? It’s such phrases that can add depths of meaning to your story.
For example: “But it is an oversized house, steeped in years of history. Often, the lights would flicker and fail, shrouding it in an intimidating sort of darkness that echoed its past.”
What do you think about coming up with more descriptive terms to replace “very big” and “sort of dark?” How would you elaborate on the history and condition of the house while maintaining the mysterious tone you’ve set?
Remember, your aim here should be allowing the reader to feel the size and darkness of the house, instead of just telling them about it. Looking forward to hearing about your creative ideas!
What a wonderfully spooky scene you are setting here! The line, “But it is a very big house, and lots of times the lights don’t work and it’s a sort of dark,” does contribute to crafting a foreboding atmosphere that suggests suspense.
You have touched on the key elements that build suspense. For example, the ‘very big house’ suggests a space that holds many secrets or possible hidden dangers. The notion that the ‘lights don’t work’ adds to the element of the unknown, not being able to see clearly what’s in front or around us, and the extra detail that it’s ‘sort of dark’ gives this creeping uneasiness which is fantastic.
However, may I suggest that to heighten suspense further, think about diving deeper into the sensory experience. How might this darkness in the house feel? Is it pressing, heavy, disorienting? What does the character feel in response to this? A sense of fear, curiosity, or unease? Here is a revised example:
>"But it’s an enormous house, a labyrinth in its vastness. Often, the lights are fickle — unreliable, leaving the sprawling rooms bathed in an unsettling half-darkness that breathes unease."
Looking at your text from this perspective, how might you enhance the suspense in this paragraph? Remember, it’s about making your reader feel as if they’re right there with the character, their heart beat syncing with the unpredictability of the flickering lights. Would you like to give it another try?
I reached over and tousled his hair.
“I can understand that,” I said. “It is a very big old house.” He nodded. We were in the kitchen, where it was light and warm. I put down my magazine on the kitchen table. “What kind of story would you like me to tell you?”
“Well,” he said, thoughtfully. “I don’t think it should be too scary, because then when I go up to bed, I will just be thinking about monsters the whole time. But if it isn’t just a little bit scary then I won’t be interested. And you make up scary stories, don’t you? I know she says that’s what you do.”
“She exaggerates. I write stories, yes. Nothing that’s been published, yet, though. And I write lots of different kinds of stories.”
“But you do write scary stories?”
“Yes.”
The boy looked up at me from the shadows by the door, where he was waiting.
“Do you know any stories about Click-clack the Rattlebag?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Those are the best sorts of stories.”
“Do they tell them at your school?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“What’s a Click-clack the Rattlebag story?”
He was a precocious[1] child, and was unimpressed by his sister’s boyfriend’s ignorance. You could see it on his face. “Everybody knows them.”
“I don’t,” I said, trying not to smile.
He looked at me as if he was trying to decide whether or not I was pulling his leg. He said, “I think maybe you should take me up to my bedroom, and then you can tell me a story before I go to sleep, but a very not-scary story because I’ll be up in my bedroom then, and it’s actually a bit dark up there, too.”
I said, “Shall I leave a note for your sister, telling her where we are?”
“You can. But you’ll hear when they get back. The front door is very slammy.”
We walked out of the warm and cosy kitchen into the hallway of the big house, where it was chilly and draughty and dark. I flicked the light-switch, but nothing happened.
“The bulb’s gone,” the boy said. “That always happens.”
Our eyes adjusted to the shadows. The moon was almost full, and blue-white moonlight shone in through the high windows on the staircase, down into the hall. “We’ll be all right,” I said.
“Yes,” said the boy, soberly. “I am very glad you’re here.” He seemed less precocious now. His hand found mine, and he held on to my fingers comfortably, trustingly, as if he’d known me all his life. I felt responsible and adult. I did not know if the feeling I had for his sister, who was my girlfriend, was love, not yet, but I liked that the child treated me as one of the family. I felt like his big brother, and I stood taller, and if there was something unsettling about the empty house I would not have admitted it for worlds.
The stairs creaked beneath the threadbare stair-carpet.
“Click-clacks,” said the boy, “are the best monsters ever.”
“Are they from television?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think any people know where they come from. Mostly they come from the dark.”
“Good place for a monster to come.”
“Yes.”
We walked along the upper corridor in the shadows, walking from patch of moonlight to patch of moonlight. It really was a big house. I wished I had a flashlight.
“They come from the dark,” said the boy, holding on to my hand. “I think probably they’re made of dark. And they come in when you don’t pay attention. That’s when they come in. And then they take you back to their… not nests. What’s a word that’s like nests, but not?”
“House?”
“No. It’s not a house.”
“Lair?”
He was silent. Then, “I think that’s the word, yes. Lair.” He squeezed my hand. He stopped talking.
“Right. So they take the people who don’t pay attention back to their lair. And what do they do then, your monsters? Do they suck all the blood out of you, like vampires?”
He snorted. “Vampires don’t suck all the blood out of you. They only drink a little bit. Just to keep them going, and, you know, flying around. Click-clacks are much scarier than vampires.”
“I’m not scared of vampires,” I told him.
“Me neither. I’m not scared of vampires either. Do you want to know what Click-clacks do? They drink you,” said the boy.
“Like a Coke?”
“Coke is very bad for you,” said the boy. “If you put a tooth in Coke, in the morning, it will be dissolved into nothing. That’s how bad coke is for you and why you must always clean your teeth, every night.”
I’d heard the Coke story as a boy, and had been told, as an adult, that it wasn’t true, but was certain that a lie which promoted dental hygiene was a good lie, and I let it pass.
“Click-clacks drink you,” said the boy. “First they bite you, and then you go all ishy inside, and all your meat and all your brains and everything except your bones and your skin turns into a wet, milk-shakey stuff and then the Click-clack sucks it out through the holes where your eyes used to be.”
“That’s disgusting,” I told him. “Did you make it up?”
When I heard a story from my cousin that make no sense and too imaginary, it hard to believe and think that not true.
We’d reached the last flight of stairs, all the way in to the big house.
“No.”
“I can’t believe you kids make up stuff like that.”
“You didn’t ask me about the rattlebag,” he said.
“Right. What’s the rattlebag?”
“Well,” he said, sagely, soberly, a small voice from the darkness beside me, “once you’re just bones and skin, they hang you up on a hook, and you rattle in the wind.”
“So what do these Click-clacks look like?” Even as I asked him, I wished I could take the question back, and leave it unasked. I thought: Huge spidery creatures. Like the one in the shower that morning. I’m afraid of spiders.
I was relieved when the boy said, “They look like what you aren’t expecting. What you aren’t paying attention to.”
We were climbing wooden steps now. I held on to the railing on my left, held his hand with my right, as he walked beside me. It smelled like dust and old wood, that high in the house. The boy’s tread was certain, though, even though the moonlight was scarce.
“Do you know what story you’re going to tell me, to put me to bed?” he asked. “It doesn’t actually have to be scary.”
“Not really.”
“Maybe you could tell me about this evening. Tell me what you did?”
“That won’t make much of a story for you. My girlfriend just moved in to a new place on the edge of town. She inherited it from an aunt or someone. It’s very big and very old. I’m going to spend my first night with her, tonight, so I’ve been waiting for an hour or so for her and her housemates to come back with the wine and an Indian takeaway.”
“See?” said the boy. There was that precocious amusement again. But all kids can be insufferable sometimes, when they think they know something you don’t. It’s probably good for them. “You know all that. But you don’t think. You just let your brain fill in the gaps.”
He pushed open the door to the attic room. It was perfectly dark, now, but the opening door disturbed the air, and I heard things rattle gently, like dry bones in thin bags, in the slight wind.
Click. Clack. Click. Clack. Like that.
I would have pulled away, then, if I could, but small, firm fingers pulled me forward, unrelentingly, into the dark.
[1] precocious - (adj) having or showing the qualities or abilities of an adult at an unusually early age
Added November 10, 2020 at 2:10am
by Anna Maine
Title: Neil Gaiman reading "Click-clack the Rattlebag" at the NY Public Library
General Document Comments 0
I wonder how he knew all these things and where he got those stories from?
I wish I knew
I think he knew all those things because that is what the boy does, he is the Click Clack in this story. Also the clue where the boy says that the Click Clack is what you don’t expect points towards this because the main character did not expect the boy to be the Click Clack.
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