Hair Rising, Heir Raising, Erasing

We meet Abraham Wilton-Cough as a skeleton in the feverish nightmare he is having on his death bed. Our Anti-Hero rise from his coffin to reluctantly follow the Widow Bates on a journey to discover what happened to his heirs.

The self centred and self satisfied Wilton-Cough would have preferred to remain in the cosy safety of his coffin to carry on ignoring the World. However Amelia Bates pushes him literally outside of his comfort zone and boundaries to face the music during that autumnal night of the dead. Her convincing arguments challenges the pride of Wilton-Cough enough to have him follow her. But instead of being proved right, Abraham is shown how wrong he has been during his life.

The story truly starts with what is troubling his conscience: the mistake he did one night with the Widow Bates. His refusal to admit it and the consequences of it are tackled by a crafty Amelia who appeal onto his great pride. If Abraham knows by heart his illustrious ancestors, acknowledges his important position in their lineage, he would recognise a descendant of his, who raises his pride.

That strategy doesn’t fail to bring the character following the footsteps of Mrs Bates to check out what became of his own two legitimate sons out of utter curiosity but also wanting to know more about his illegitimate daughter.

Abraham Wilton-Cough is a proud character yet he is not a proud father for multiple reasons which have more to do with himself rather than his children. One question haunting his dream is how he raised his boys. The answer and to his own admission was with partiality but also with some psychological pressure. His favoured eldest, Zachary was taught to become like him, strongly insensitive to become a prosperous man. Whilst his talented youngest son, Josiah, was strongly discouraged to follow his own heart, passion, and pursuit to follow the one of his father which was making money. The results of his fatherhood shown to Wilton-Cough in that staunch premonitory nightmare filled him with self-shame. The realisation that he lacked all his life the ability to comprehend his children hits him suddenly very hard like a slap across his face. It becomes a reciprocal emotional battering, from Josiah refusing to acknowledge him as a father to Zachary who sees his skeleton as potential food to feed upon, having become a materialistic dead: a zombie.

Last but not least as a man, Abraham is not proud to have fathered an illegitimate child for despite not being demonstrative, he dearly loves his wife Angela. To acknowledge his posthumous daughter is to acknowledge that he was far from perfect. In a nutshell, Abigail is the bombshell that makes him admit all his past mistakes and errors. She makes him lose his intrinsic pride to embrace for once in his life humble pie.

Wilton-Cough is far from being a proud husband, similarly it has nothing to do with his wife but all to do with him and own insecurities. This is where we meet the bitterness of the character. The physically unremarkable Abraham secured the attention of the beautiful Angela, an Italian shopkeeper’s daughter: he had no doubts it was all because of what his name and money represented to her. Under that misconception came the excuse for the treatment of his wife, jealously kept indoors only to be submitted to a daily mental battering. The cherry on the cake comes with his last will which will leave his wife and the son she likes most, Josiah, destitute and at the mercy of his eldest, Zachary. The consequences of that bitter written will of his are presented to him during his journey from grave to grave. His visit to Angela’s pauper’s mass grave and the knowledge of her fate affects him deep down. This is where the character meets full sorrow, ignored by whom he loved most but who he had also treated constantly in an overbearing fashion during his life.

In this whimsical nightmare, Abraham Wilton-Cough is almost the caricature of his more serious, stern and sarcastic real self. Creating this character has been a roller coaster ride of emotions. Writing him made me laugh but also cry. When the hero is pushed back to the realm of consciousness, and wakes up in an ordinary yet cosy bedroom of the 19th century, the seriousness of his state is clear cut. We have a dying man on his bed who has been shot. Bad or not, Wilton-Cough, despite him not thinking of himself as heroic, was wounded protecting his customers in his bank. He refuses to be acknowledged as a hero in an honest sarcasm who revealed his true motivation behind his action: his customers are useful to his business alive not dead. It makes money sense to protect them. This highlights his true character, nature and what motivated his entire life to the point where Wilton-Cough is very aware of the irony of his fate.

However late it is in his life to rectify anything, he makes the desperate attempt to do so with his last minutes. I had tears writing the character’s last lines and words in the part that constitute the ‘Erasing’ of the book title, the one where Abraham Wilton-Cough tries to erase what he can from the errors of his ways. This last part of the story is where the emotional journey of the main character ends after having him rewrite another last will which will create a better future for all the other characters, members of his family. That new future is scope for another story where Wilton-Cough maybe raised from the dead again as a ghost, haunting his loved ones to prevent them making mistakes… Dear Abraham until we meet again, I will forever cherish your memory as my first published main character.

This character has been inspired by Charles Dickens’s ‘Ebenezer Scrooge’. The main similitude is a proper wink, which is his profession as director of the first bank of Wilton Town, a banker. Finding a name that resonated right for the type of hero, Abraham Wilton-Cough was in my mind, posed no difficulty.
The morning of the dream, Abraham was created, almost like a corn will pop in a pan to make popcorn, like someone bursting to my psyche fully formed, with a delightful bite and crunch to him.

I put that character in the uncomfortable shoes I wore during my nightmare. I had to dress him with the feelings I had pushing the lid of a coffin, my coffin. Terrified and wondering about what was going on out there, yet cowardly willing to nestle back to the grave as the safest place on earth was one of them. Another one was the sentiment of being laid bare, exposed, yet not knowing what wrong did I do to feel that way, proudly I would have said, I have nothing to regret. Scratching my head to find any possible wrongs I could have done, the very morning I woke up, my answers came forward fast and clear, it had to do with family relations, your loved ones: things you do and don’t, like not talking to someone for seven years, for whatever reasons which brought the initial clash, with the pride and stubbornness on both part kept alive until it subsided back to love. Am I proud of that fact under my belt? The answer is no. So my Abraham is very much a family man who did cock things up a bit with his loved ones in ways which can be seen as acceptable in broad day light, as none dared to challenge him, yet the damages done in the heart of his family is profound. His heirs are drifting apart in the cemetery, with only two maintaining a loving relationship with each other, few and far between.

His surname had to be double-barrelled to represent a sense of pride and patriarchal endorsement. He is part of the lineage which founded Wilton Town. I wore a double-barrelled name for nine months with some vanity. It made me feel more important than I was, especially that during that time I felt lower than I ever felt before. Abraham had to endorse the mistake that my double-barrelled name was, upon his heavy cloak. Let’s peel the onion of his created name. First there is the Wilton. In my mind it carries many meanings regarding to ‘Will’ and ‘Willpower’. It is ‘Will-ton’: The tune of one’s will. When there is a will, there is a tune singing somewhere of hope, good or bad. ‘Ton’ means tune in French. Wilton-Cough’s amount of will has the power to change the lives of his loved ones for the worse or the better. This first syllable of his surname also symbolise that formal piece of document, the one that carries your will to others beyond your grave, your last wishes. Some of us, organised and well prepared for any eventuality have those ready long before their last breath. The document represents your wishes at the point in time you formulated it. What happens if you moved on far from those wishes as you expire? Were they drawn in a bitter moment of your life where you cut out some totally, just to feel a little better? What if you are all reconciled and the forgotten will is unearthed and enforced like a battle axe destroying your own family at your death? What if you are dying with a ravaging bitterness, proudly unashamed? What is the tune of your own will?

Wilton-Cough represents all those questions which could be resumed to: Are your last wills for the better or the worse? Forgetting that, imposing your own will to others during your life, raise another question: the one of free will. The question of will runs through the story as the main theme and finishes with the character having the opportunity to change his at the last minute.

About ‘ton’ meaning tune: Abraham Wilton-Cough is facing the music on his death bed. From the cacophony he wakes up to in his grave, to the cuckoo clock striking 3 am, announcing he has only 13 minutes to live, passing by the forest clearance haunted by his son Josiah and his powerfully eerie tunes, the character is caught by the music. So much so that he choses his last tune for his body to depart, to be played by Josiah, ‘La Marche Funébre’ de Chopin, a funeral march created the very year of his death, 1837.

The Cough part in the surname is just a spitting out loud of everything that can make you choke: From the suppression of your own free-will by someone, family, peers, to cheer mistreatment if you do not follow their own wishes and wills. On Earth, sadly, some will accept your murder by overbearing criminals as the better option. For they do not know any better than a falsely created honour, pride which make them do crimes in broad day light or accept them as common currency. ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’ Luke 23:34.

Abraham has two sons which he raised with partiality. The eldest takes it all whilst the youngest fights to keep his mum and himself with some sort of living in the street of Wilton Town. Well those are the consequences foreseen in Wilton-Cough’s dream caused by his first last will. Now the choice of Wilton-Cough’s first name was inspired by the biblical patriarch. As Abraham was ready to sacrifice his god given son Isaac to god’s will, Wilton-Cough was ready to sacrifice his eldest son’s soul, Zachary by spoiling him by his own will. Abraham Wilton-Cough is visited on his death bed, in his feverish nightmare by his own daughter, the Angelic Abigail, who gives him back the few minutes of consciousness he needs to correct his will. Will that be enough to save the soul of Zachary?

After peeling the layers of Wilton-Cough, lets meet him in the core and in quotes:

-Well, well, well, I’ll be damned, we can’t sleep in peace anymore. What is that cacophony all about? A skeletal hand pushed open its coffin lid grumpily and a bewildered dishevelled skull appeared, peering outside full of suspicion.’

Then Abraham added with deep sadness in his voice, -Was I that despicable? I’d better do as he told me and wait to turn to dust.
Presenting her hand with a look full of kindness, Amelia Bates ordered,
-Come with me. Let’s find out together.’

Catching a last glimpse of his son, Abraham moved along the path, deeply sighing, and started to talk to himself to try to quench his incredible sadness,
-Yes, see you later. I thought you would appreciate to see me gutted somehow, my now little big fruit of my loins. Awesome ghost, you are, very… very scary. Look, I am somehow moving towards any of the directions you pointed to me tonight. Oh my, oh my, when I dreaded a slow dusting alone in my grave, now I am walking towards worse. What have I done? What have I done? Oh my, Oh my. It would be such a lovely evening to rise truly if I had not cocked up so beautifully my life. It is warm like an Indian summer. The moonlight is just, just mesmerising, glowing upon everything: the path, the graves and their robbers. Robbers, thieves, my grave, they are doing my grave among many… Oi!
Waving his arms erratically Wilton-Cough went running forward in an incentive to protect all graves and especially his own one. He tried the very fearsome and ghostly ‘Ouuuuh, ouuuuh’ and the more immediate ‘schoouuuh, schouuuuh’ but the effect was not what he expected.’

Wilton-Cough watching his last will burn to ashes offered a sorrowful smile to his wife and children, -Yes, I did say plenty of things along those lines, but the fact and the truth are as I am at my last minutes, that I must admit that I was entirely wrong many times, for I have no right to impose upon you to live your very own lives a certain way that suits me and no others. The three of you are free to live your lives as you desire, to follow your own dreams. Make the most of every minute for they do count and never forget that there is only one rule to be respected…
A painful burst of cough stopped his words as Abraham tried to catch his breath, with the desperate hope that it was not his last.’

Catch up Abraham Wilton-Cough’s last moments while you can and let him whisper to you what he learnt from his journey beyond the grave.