Strident Caller is a short story by Laird Barron featured in the horror anthology [Nox Pareidolia](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53147667-nox-pareidolia), published in 2019. The story was later included in Barron's 2024 short story collection [[Not A Speck Of Light (Book)]]. The story revolves around a drifter named Jesse Craven who lives with an eccentric, retired actress in her huge mansion in [[Upstate New York]]. In the story, Deborah - the lady of the house - busts out an old recorder (not a flute!) and things go awry soon after. --- ### __Locations__ Craven has traveled a lot and has visited or lived in some recurring Barron locations. He mentions having been in [[Alaska]]. He's been in Seattle, [[Washington State]]. He's has hiked somewhere on the [[Olympic Peninsula]] and near the end of the story dreams of being hunted there. The events of the story take place in Deborah's mansion, somewhere twenty minutes West of the city of Kingston in the mid-Hudson Valley and somewhere East of the Catskills mountain range. --- ### __Characters__ Besides Jesse Craven and Deborah, other characters mentioned in the story are Victor, Deborah's departed(?) husband who was an entertainment lawyer and dabbled in the occult, and Deborah's weirdo gardener Andy. Deborah also mentions she has a son named Erik and a sister who lives in Alaska. There's also this utterance by Deborah that I don't know what to make of: "We had a third child, you know. Victor was a disappointment to our father." Regarding their children: the story only mentions Erik, who fled his parents to move in with his aunt in Alaska. I don't know who the second child is supposed to be. Let alone a third. Regarding the second sentence: am I reading things completely wrong or does the mention of '_our_ father' imply that Victor and Deborah are - besides man and wife - siblings? Deborah kinda fits the recurring character type of a [[Crones|crone]] that we see in a lot of Barron's stories. Another important character in the story is Artemis, Craven's pit bull [[Dogs|dog]]. Like many other dogs in Barron's stories, Artemis is named after a deity. Craven rescued her way back when she was a pup and she has been his loyal companion ever since. In the story, Artemis turns against Craven and is then taken from him by dark forces. Later in the story, Craven tries to bond with another dog and fails miserably. --- ### __Other Mentions__ Deborah possesses an object of power in the form of a musical instrument. The description she gives is too cool to leave out of this page: "Objects of power are always named. Strident Caller is a recorder, not a flute. My family has passed her down through generations. Hollowed from a child’s radius in the days of antiquity, she belongs to a set of nine. A recorder, lyre, didgeridoo, hichiriki, drum, whistle, sitar, violin, and a horn." It's a bit of a stretch, but Deborah tells Craven that the recorder was made in the 'days of _antiquity_'. I'm not saying that the instrument was actually made in [[Antiquity|an alternate dimension where the USA is a medieval dark fantasy world]], but who knows? After playing some more 'music' on her magical instrument, Deborah says: "The great dark is gathering around us." [[The Great Dark]] is a recurring theme in Barron's works and can be a signifier for [[Old Leech]]. Deborah and Andy also play a big role in the story [[Not A Speck Of Light (Story)]]. #Story #Speck