Silent Partner

William Thornton, a once-revered literary star, loses his muse after personal tragedy. A mysterious typewriter restores his fame—but its gifts come at a haunting cost.

William Thornton had once been the darling of the literary world.

His rise was a story in itself. In the 1960s, he worked as an advertising copywriter, spinning catchy slogans and jingles for toothpaste and washing machines. He hated every minute of it. The deadlines, the boardroom critiques, the soullessness of selling soap—it gnawed at him. At night, he would sit at his kitchen table after putting his children to bed, typing furiously on his typewriter. Stories poured out of him, each one a rebellion against the banality of his day job.

His first novel, The Last Glass Window, published in 1971, was an unexpected hit. Critics called it a “literary triumph.” Readers devoured its pages. The royalties allowed him to leave advertising for good.

From there, his career soared. He wrote novels, short stories, and even screenplays. His prose was lean, sharp, and devastatingly honest. He captured human fragility with precision, exposing the cracks in seemingly perfect lives. Awards piled up on his mantle. His books were translated into dozens of languages. Universities invited him to lecture on the art of storytelling.

At home, he was the picture of success. His wife, Margaret, was proud of him. His two children, Susan and James, grew up in a comfortable house in Kensington filled with warmth and noise, with books and laughter. Family photos—vacations, graduations, Christmas mornings—lined the walls of his study. But their summers were something else entirely—a retreat to an ancestral manor deep in the rolling hills of Cornwall. The house, a sprawling estate of grey stone and ivy-covered walls, had been in Margaret’s family for generations.

It wasn’t just a house. It was a piece of English history.

The manor, known as Penharrow Hall, was said to date back to the 16th century. It had once belonged to a minor noble family, its vast gardens and shadowy corridors steeped in stories of intrigue and whispers of ghostly apparitions. The walls were lined with oil portraits of long-dead relatives, their eyes following you no matter where you stood.

The children loved it. Susan spent hours exploring the library, a room filled with shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling. James, ever the adventurer, roamed the grounds, climbing trees and venturing into the overgrown maze that bordered the southern edge of the estate.

For William, Penharrow Hall had been a source of quiet inspiration. He often brought his typewriter to the sunlit conservatory, where the scent of jasmine filled the air. Sitting there, surrounded by the history of the place, words had flowed effortlessly. His novels carried traces of the manor’s influence—descriptions of its winding staircases, its hidden nooks, its ancient, creaking doors. Readers praised his ability to evoke atmosphere, but they didn’t know those details came directly from Penharrow Hall.

But the manor was also a place of contrasts. Its beauty was undeniable, yet its age brought with it a certain melancholy. There were rooms no one used, their furniture shrouded in white sheets. At night, the wind howled through the cracks in the old stone, and the creaks of the floorboards sounded like footsteps in the dark.

Margaret adored the house, insisting they visit every summer. Even after her parents passed away and the upkeep became a burden, she refused to sell. “It’s part of who we are,” she would say, brushing her hand over the weathered banister as they climbed the grand staircase.

By the 1980s, William was no longer merely a writer. He was an institution. Reviewers praised his ability to balance prolific output with literary quality. He had the kind of career most writers only dream about, an endless string of bestsellers and critical darlings.

But success came with a price.

He had always been obsessive about his work, but as the years passed, it consumed him. His children noticed first. He was at home, but he wasn’t present. He’d sit at the dinner table with a distant look in his eyes, lost in some fictional world. Arguments with Margaret became frequent. She accused him of loving his stories more than he loved his family.

When Margaret finally left in 2003, it wasn’t dramatic. There were no screaming matches, no ultimatums. She simply packed her bags and walked out the door. The kids were already grown by then, living their own lives. They didn’t call much.

The divorce gutted him.

After the divorce, William never saw Penharrow Hall again. Margaret kept it, as was her right. He heard from Susan that it had been renovated, made modern, stripped of much of its old-world charm. The thought of it stung, though he pretended it didn’t matter.

Without the manor, without its history, without his family, even the memory of those summers felt unreachable.

He moved into a small apartment, bringing little more than his typewriter, his books, and a few framed photographs. His existence felt empty without the sound of Susan practicing piano or James arguing about comic books. Margaret remarried within a year. The children visited her for holidays, leaving him alone in his cramped apartment.

His writing began to falter.

At first, he managed to churn out a couple of novels. They weren’t his best work, but his name still carried weight. Publishers were happy to slap his name on the cover and call it a masterpiece. But the reviews were less kind. Words like “uninspired” and “formulaic” began to appear in critiques.

By the time he hit his sixties, his once-prolific output had dwindled to nothing. He spent hours staring at his typewriter, willing the words to come. They didn’t.

His agent tried to reassure him, suggesting a break. “Writers block happens to the best of us,” she said. But William knew it was more than that.

He stopped attending literary events. Invitations to panels and awards ceremonies went unanswered. Fans who once eagerly awaited his next book now barely mentioned his name.

The royalties slowed to a trickle. His savings shrank. His health began to decline.

The final blow came when Susan and James stopped visiting altogether. Their last calls were brief and awkward. Susan had a family of her own now, and James had moved to Scotland for work.

William stopped trying to reach out.

He spent most of his days alone in the apartment, surrounded by dusty bookshelves and old manuscripts. The framed photos on his desk—his wedding day, a family trip to the beach, Susan’s graduation—felt like artefacts from a distant life.

And so, on a cold winter evening, he found himself sitting in his dimly lit study. The blank page stared back at him from the typewriter which had once produced literary masterpieces. His eyes were hollow, his face gaunt. The small room around him was cluttered with empty coffee cups and crumpled sheets of paper.

The silence pressed against his temples.

It had been two years since his divorce and just as long since he had written anything worthwhile.

His bank account had dwindled to nothing. The landlord was threatening eviction.

Yet, the words refused to come.

That night, frustration boiled over. As he trudged to his bedroom, he stopped at the door of his room, He glared at the typewriter, as if it held the answers to his misery, and yelled, "Why me? Why now? You’ve always come through before! Prove it!"

He climbed into bed without another thought and fell into a dreamless sleep.

The next morning, he shuffled out of his bedroom, yawning. The blank page was still sitting in the typewriter. Except it wasn’t blank anymore. There, in neat, even strokes, were the words:

"Chapter One: The Stranger at the Door."