Tallulah Moonbeam[resurrected]
Synopsis
Tallulah grows up in a flat in a concrete building in Namsos, Norway. Her real name is Lilly Jensen. She takes on the name Tallulah Moonbeam, inspired by her father's Wild-West stories. He is an eager reader of Morgan Kane and Silver Arrow. She has many good childhood memories of her father, who loved to play Prairie with her and the neighbor boy, Kent. Her parents have a happy marriage, yet there are unsolved troubles anchored in the past. In her younger days Tallulah's mother, Alise, used to help the neighbor woman, Selma, with groceries. At some point the old woman hides an eggshell from a seagull in her soup, and from then on Alise believes she has been cursed. She has recurring nightmares and strange visions. At the engagement party of Tallulah's parents, a stranger appears and abducts the bride to be. The stranger is a man she has seen lurking around her before. He comes to the party in shiny leather clothes, usually worn by huntsmen. He asks her for a dance. What then actually happens is not clear. People who were at the party say that the dance became faster and faster, going in circles, until they could see the feet of the couple lift from the ground. The dancing couple continued spiraling up in the air. At last they disappeared through a window in the roof. After the abduction Tallulah's mother is gone for many weeks. When she returns, she has changed. She is bald, wrapped in a cow hide and her left eye is blind. When her hair grows out, it is thin and white. They still get married, and Tallulah's father accepts that his wife sometimes leaves the house in the night, and goes off to the forest. He never follows her, but sits awake and polishes the silverware throughout the night, until she comes back. One night, Alise has a very violent nightmare. When she wakes up, there is an x painted on her wrist. She remembers that she made it herself during her dream, to know whether it was actually dream or reality on waking up. She never tells anyone what she saw that night. At the age of eight Tallulah is out for a walk with her mother and grandmother. They are overcome by a heavy rainfall, and the street is instantly flooded. Tallulah's mother steps on a defect manhole cover and drowns in the underground. The child remembers that a cow appeared in the street right before the disaster. The cow walked towards her mother and “screamed” at her, like a warning. After her mother's death, Tallulah becomes a very lonely child. Her father withdraws to his study, where he collects and stuffs birds. Tallulah' spends more time at their neighbor Selma and her son Kent. Kent is very fragile and afraid of the dark. He doesn't really grow up, and remains a child-man. She takes on a protective role towards him. Selma becomes an important mothering figure for the little girl. One night in her early teens, Tallulah experiences the same “nightmare” her mother saw a long time ago. She finds herself standing on a field near the industrial area of the town. It is the middle of the night. She is barefoot and in her night gown. She realizes that she is holding the hand of a toddler, whom she recognizes as one of the neighboring children. Across the field comes a procession of people. They have a strange, shaky walk and burning eyes. She recognizes some of the people. Most of them are dead. She also sees her mother and Selma in the procession. The procession makes a hold in front of the two kids. Selma comes forward and asks if they want to “hop on”. Tallulah longs to go up to her mother, but Alise turns away, signaling that she does not want her there. The toddler lets go of her hand and disappears into the procession. In the morning she tells Kent of her dream. He passes the story on, which causes a massive stir as the toddler is found dead in his bed the same morning. Shortly after, people set fire to their house, and Selma dies in the fire. Her body is found with a brick in her mouth, signaling that people have taken her for a witch. Tallulah becomes depressed and withdrawn, blaming herself for the death of people close to her. At the age of 17 she falls in love with her art teacher, a young Russian painter, Vladimir. He finds her in her darkest hour and comforts her. She sees that Vladimir has an x marked on his wrist, just like her mother had. They then have a secret relationship. At some point he invites her to visit his homeland. He takes her to a cabin in the marshes of Belarus, the house that was his childhood home. When they arrive at the cabin, a group of people are waiting for them. Tallulah realizes that his purpose has been another. His people are some sort of pagan cult, and he has promised to bring them what he believes is a witch for their ritual. Tallulah knows that this means they will kill her. She begs for her life, and Vladimir gives her a chance to run for it through the marshlands. Vladimir, who is convinced that she is a witch, thinks that she will “float” in the swamp. Unfortunately Tallulah doesn't have such powers. She sinks in and drowns. A cow comes up to her in the last moments. The animal can not pull her up, but stays with her. After her death, Tallulah haunts her surroundings, her old home, and revisits episodes of her life. She runs into her grandmother, who she only remembers as a dement and quiet figure. In her death, the grandmother has turned into a vicious, teasing ghost, who likes to scare people by poltering. Tallulah and her grandmother love meeting in the grandmother old kitchen. They sit together at the kitchen table, then a strong wind comes, blows everything around and freaks out the people living there...
After her death Tallulah transforms. She takes her place in the underworld where she rules the home of the departed. The spirit of the young girl enters all darkness in the world. She becomes the night, the shadows, the air in the deepest caves and unlit corners of our homes. Tallulah becomes our fears and nightmares. When Selma passes over, she travels with the Girl, her flock of lost souls and lynxes across the sky in winter nights.
Prelude, story of Selma.
Selma is from Namsos. She is born into a family of marginalized travelers in 1937. Towards the end of the war she gets pregnant. Rumors say she has been having an affair with a German officer, and that he is the baby's father. One night she is attacked by a group of locals who rape her and cut off her hair. After this incident she flees to Berlin where she moves in with the officer. Here she gives birth to her son, who is underweight and mentally challenged. Selma becomes very close with a friend of her new family, the Norwegian anthropologist Hans. Hans has been in Germany for decades. He sympathizes with nazi ideas of superhumans as well as their fascination for the esoteric, especially Heinrich Himmler's archive on witches. The ideas of Hans resonate with Selma, and they begin to develop their own pagan rituals in the Uckermark. Both of them are convinced she has a gift of certain powers. Life in Berlin is not easy for Selma. She is not sophisticated, and her new family looks down on her and her retarded child. She feels estranged and humiliated. In the end she decides to move back to Norway. As many women who went with German soldiers at the time, she was cut off from home and partly forgot her own language. On her return Selma speaks a peculiar mix of German and Norwegian. Back in Namsos, she moves into the concrete building in Overhallsveien 8, above the Moonbeam/Jensen family. She listens to her neighbors through the walls and from the balcony. Selma quickly figures out that Alise is a lost person who will be easy to manipulate. She stalks her, and drags her into her cult. Tallulah is conceived during a ritual in the forest, and Selma keeps a hand over the girl whom she believes is the real child of Belzebub (it is possible that Hans has followed Selma to Norway, that he takes part in the rituals in the forest, and that he might be the father of Tallulah) This story has no answers.
The Characters
Characters Tallulah Moonbeam Tallulah's real name is Lilly Jensen. She grows up in a flat in a concrete building in Namsos. Her childhood is filled with good memories of playing Prairie with her father and the neighbor boy Kent. At some point they start calling her Tallulah Moonbeam, inspired by the cartoons on Silver Arrow, and soon everyone uses this name for her. When Tallulah is 8 years old, her mother falls through a manhole during a heavy rainstorm and dies. Tallulah remembers a cow appearing in the flooded street, roaring towards them. When the remains of her mother are found in the underground, her father withdraws from the world. Tallulah is neglected and alone and seeks to the company of Kent and his mother Selma. But Selma is not the nice old lady she seems to be. She has been circling Tallulah and her mother for many years, with particular interest in the little girl. When Tallulah feels down, she hides in a room in her school basement and sits close to the wall. It has a broken water pipe. She feels better, when she can press her forehead to the wall and let the oily water from the leak run over her. One day her art teacher Vladimir finds her here. They fall in love and go to his village in Belarus together. After her death Tallulah transforms. She dwells in the realms between life and death. Here she keeps the world together by keeping the dead apart from the living. Tallulah becomes the ruler of every form of darkness. In winter she travels across the night sky with her group of lost souls and lynxes. Usually they are accompanied by Selma and the Ghost.
Alise
Alise is Tallulah's mother. In her younger days, she is abducted from her engagement party by a handsome man in shiny leather clothes. The man, apparently a hunter, appears out of nowhere. Later, everyone who was present in the room swears to have seen the same. The Hunter held Alice tight. They danced in circles, faster and faster till their feet lifted off the ground. They kept spinning in the air and then vanished through the roof. After the abduction Alise is gone for a long time. When she she returns, she is changed. Her naked body is wrapped in a cow hide. She is bald with one eye milky and blind. Steen, her fiance has been devastated by her disappearance. They get married, and he accepts that she sometimes wanders off into the night. Alise is drawn to cows and dogs and trees. She has long conversations with them, not knowing whether people can listen in, as she can never remember if she opened her mouth while talking. Alise is a troubled soul who has gotten herself completely tangled in Selma's net. More than often she drowns her sorrows in a bottle. Still, Tallulah will remember her Mother Alise as the most loving, perfect person.
Steen
Steen is Tallulah's father. The love of his life is Tallulah's mother Alise. Without her he is lost. Every once in a while, when the moon lights up the night sky, Alise silently gets out of bed, pulls a coat over her warm body and walks out of the flat. Through the window he can see her walk down the road and vanish into the woods. He suspects she will meet up with The Hunter and maybe others there. He never dares to follow her, but stays behind in deep agony, frightened of what she is sharing with them. Scared she will never come back, he makes the night pass by polishing the hundreds of pieces of silverware they got for their wedding. Every piece has their initials engraved. Every piece must be carefully cleaned, polished and laid out on the dining table. When it is all done, the rising sun shines through the window, and he can hear her coming in through the hall. He quietly goes back to bed, while she puts away the cutlery. They never speak of it. After Alise's death, Steen looses all interest in the world. He neglects his daughter and withdraws to his study, where he collects and stuffs birds.
Kent
Kent is Selma's son. After the war, Selma is accused of having had relations with a German officer. She is beaten and raped by locals. Kent survives in her belly. He never grows up and remains a child man. Selma is convinced he is the reincarnation of Balder, the norse, immensely beautiful god that no one could do harm. Kent develops an overdone self image. Only in the night he is troubled. He often has out-of-body experiences. His detached spirit is chased around the halls of the building by people he says are burning on the inside. He calls them the shiverers, due to their fragile stature and airy movements. Selma buys a dog to look after him, but the dog just hides under the bed, and is even more frightened than Kent. To make the shiverers go away, he takes out lightbulbs and crushes them with his teeth. Tallulah cares for him and protects him like a smaller brother. He loves and adores her more than anything in this world. Tallulah often sleeps over at Selma and Kent's place to keep him safe. When she is there, he is calm.
Selma
Selma is an elderly lady living in the flat above Tallulah's family. Alise often helps Selma with groceries and housekeeping. At one occasion Selma gives her a bowl of soup with hidden eggshells from a seagull inside. From this Alise believes she has been cursed. She has recurring nightmares and strange encounters. When Tallulah is born, the old lady hovers over the small family, and Alise fears that Selma has played a part in her abduction as well as Tallulah's conception. She senses that Selma has hidden interests in the child. Still, Alise continues to work in Selma's salon, and stays her closest confident and friend. After the war Selma spent a long time in Berlin where she married a German officer and gave birth to Kent. She developed a deep interest in norse mythology, and explored theories and rituals in the Uckermark together with the Norwegian anthropologist Hans, who was a recurring house guest at her husbands family.
Vladimir
In high school Tallulah falls in love with her art teacher Vladimir. He is the first man to care for her for years. She feels that they are both misfits, and he becomes a combined father figure and lover. Vladimir is much older than her. He was originally an offshore deep sea diver, who went into arts after a heavy blow of decompression sickness. He mostly keeps to himself, and is convinced that no one can understand him, as he sees hidden structures and conspiracies of this world that others don't. His real purpose in life, is his quest to restore his own health as well as the strength of the offshore industry and Norwegian economy. For this he is performing rituals in his cabin in the woods during nights and weekends, often with Kent as his assistant. Through Kent he finds out about Tallulah. When he hears that her mother Alise has been with The Hunter, and that the girl could be conceived on the other side, he gets new ideas on how to enrich his rituals. He seduces the girl in the school basement and brings her home to Belarus to complete his mission.
Varg
Varg's first state is the shape of a wolf. He holds the power of destruction behind his teeth. He loves Mahler and black metal, and to go on long strifes through crisp winter nights. Varg guards the limbo together with The Hunter. They move between the worlds, between dimensions and realities, change their shapes and stir up whatever situation they enter. Usually when they show up, it means trouble.
The Hunter
The Hunter is a real player. He likes women, to show off his beauty, to set people up against each other and to build intrigues. His favorite is to create entanglements that mess up the balance between the parallel realities. The Hunter keeps a hand over Tallulah, whom he loves, as he is certain she is his daughter. The Hunter guards the limbo with Varg.
The Ghost
The Ghost is the cosmic imprint of Selma. It exists in many forms, in all realities and is disconnected from time and space. The Ghost is Selma's own Dorian Gray image. It channels her drives and memories, especially the ones she would prefer to forget. Selma must always have the Ghost around.