The Secret Of The Whistling Deer Head

“The whistling deer head is stuck to the wall.

It can not get you from there.”

Two children are kept in a dark basement and have never been introduced into to the real world. Their worlds are imagined and whispered between meals. There is a giant, terrifying deer head that is mounted on the wall. It covers a heat or cooling vent that is open to the outside world. When the wind blows, it makes this whistling noise that sounds like its coming from the deer. The boy hears the voice of the deer head in his mind one day. It tells him what must be done.

The girl never actually hears the voice, but she believes that her older brother has. The reader is supposed to think the boy is crazy, until in the end, they reach The City of Lost parents. I like to think the story is a metaphor for sheltered children finding their way. But I’m pretty sure the whistling deer head tells them much more. Because of the way they were kept at home, they have no sense of reality or even morality. They can be adorable murdering darlings and never give pause.

The black rabbits are a symbol. They are everywhere in this world. A kind of watership down influence, I suspect. Anyway, I’ll write this into a real story one day, perhaps a short novella.