The Specialist’s Hat: A Noise like a Snake
“The Specialist’s Hat” by Kelly Link is one of my favorite short stories. Loosely, it’s the story of twin girls, Claire and Samantha, who move into a two-hundred-year-old mansion with their father after their mother dies. It is also alternately about a writer named Charles Cheatham Rash and his daughter, who both mysteriously disappeared a year after their wife/mother died. The twins’ father is studying Rash and writing a book about him. Left to their own devices, the girls wander the mansion, standing in the eight fireplaces, dueling with fire pokers shaped like snakes, feeling the wet wind rush up through the chimneys. They eventually get a babysitter who comes to watch them when their father begins to spend more time in the woods with a woman he met. With the help of the babysitter, the girls explore the house more deeply… And I won’t spoil the ending for you because it’s just fantastic. I will say, though, that this is a perfect story for Halloween. It would make a GREAT movie.
Overall, this story is tense, funny, surprising, and actually scary. It’s really an extraordinarily developed story for how simplistic it reads. The choice to write in the present tense was a good one. It suspends the story in time, which parallels the plot nicely. Link is sparse in her description, which works both to keep the story moving along at a brisk pace and to call attention to the details she does include, like the color of Claire’s and Samantha’s eyes.
“Mr. Coeslak can tell the twins apart, even if their father can’t; Claire’s eyes are grey, like a cat’s fur, he says, but Samantha’s are gray, like the ocean when it has been raining.”
This seemingly throwaway distinction between grey/gray is actually crucial to the rest of the story. What might seem similar on the surface is, in actuality, different. There are distinctions to be made. The twins and their father should be looking closely at their surroundings, should be carefully and cautiously differentiating between what things seem like and what they are.
I also really adore the inclusion of excerpts from Rash’s poetry and novel, The One Who Is Watching Me Through the Window. They’re jarring, eerie, and give us tastes of the strange events that unfold in the mansion. They also give us insight into the father’s possibly rapidly deteriorating mind.
I could talk about this story for weeks, analyzing every little word, interpreting every scene, casting the film… But I won’t here. It’s best experienced on its own.
Let me know what you think about The Specialist’s Hat in the comments below! I can’t wait to discuss it with you further. I hope you love it as much as I do.
Link to story: https://kellylink.net/specialists-hat
