The Goats Knew

The Goats Knew: Notes and Credits

Spoiler alert: I tried not to include spoilers, but to be safe, read the story first

I found that writing a novel-length story was an interesting experience. I just thought I'd share a little of it.

First, I did not set out to write a novel. If you've been following me, or checked out my other stories, you know that, mostly, I write short science fiction. Most of that is based on prompts from writing challenges. But last October (2020. Yes, before the pandemic) I got an idea in my head to write an original, unprompted story.

I was standing at the kitchen sink, drawing water for coffee, and noticed that my wife's goats (yes, she really does have goats. That's Misty in the cover picture) were all out in the yard staring into the woods. From my vantage point, they all seemed to be looking at the same thing; something that I couldn't see.

I thought, "The goats know something's wrong. I'll find out later." Well, that was the thought that launched the project. But let me be clear; Goats was going to be a short story. It was October and I figured maybe I should try my hand at horror instead of SciFi. I figured I'd head out to the coffee shop, and bang out a cute horror story featuring the goats.

When I finished the first chapter (I didn't know it was a chapter at the time), and I didn't have a clue what the horror was going to be, I decided to do a little research. I live in Western New York where everything is named after Native American tribes, villages or geography.So naturally, I decided to look up Native American mythology, specific to the region.

That's when I discovered the Djieien! I was immediately drawn to it because of the likeness to the Djinn (the name, not the beast). On reading further, I found the spider references and, being a life-long arachnophobe, I couldn't resist.

So I went looking for more information about the Djieien and found the story of Ot'hegwenhda, a young Onandoagan lad whose family had been devastated by the Djieien. I changed the story just a bit to suit my needs, but you should read some of the account. It's fascinating to read about that culture in documents more than 100 yrs old. Much of it, apparently, in the words of the Onandoaga.

Credit: the story of Ot'hegwenhda was adapted from Seneca fiction, legends, and myths. The Thirty-second annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 1910-1911. I changed it up a bit to suit my story line, but please, read the original when you get a chance.

By the end of the second chapter I realized I would need an outline to keep my dates and names straight (most of my stories are written in one sitting, one chapter, so it's not difficult to stay organized). It took me two days to write up the outline and when it was done (it wasn't actually done, I hadn't decided on an ending yet) I had nearly 2000 words. The outline was longer than I had originally intended the story to be. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to finish for Halloween. :(

In the story of Ot'hegwenhda, the Djieien was described first as a tall man and later as a spider. Why a spider? It was never addressed (unless I missed something). This brought to mind the movie Mimic. Remember Mimic? The giant beetle that looked like a homeless man when it closed its carapace? I have a very clear picture of the Djieien in my mind. Standing between two birches in the dark. Holding its front legs tightly together and looking so much like a man dressed in black; until it moves and you see what the legs are connected to! I've not been able to do the image justice graphically, so I leave it to your imagination.

He had armed himself with a bow of hickory and arrows of red willow pointed with wasp stings. What an image! I envisioned Ot'hegwenhda, sitting at the fire, tying wasps onto arrows. But why wasps? I recalled reading about a wasp that kills spiders and soon found myself reading about the Tarantula Hawk. I like this twist, because so many species of spiders kill flying insects for food. This wasp kills huge spiders to feed its young. How could I not bring the T-Hawks north to help in the battle?