I mentioned 'The Woman In Black' in my last post, and if I hadn't
been distracted by the thought of Christmas I would have gone on
about ghosts themselves. Funny creatures, those unquiet spirits.
The basic idea is this: We live here, in the sunshine, the summer,
and the morning dew, then we die. Our family puts us in a box, cries
and huddles around it for a while, then it goes into the ground. Our
grave gets flowers put on it once in a while, and people tell stories
either about how nice we were, or what a mean fill-in-the-blank we
were. The living move on.
We, on the other hand, don't. Not in this case. Our house feels
cold, no matter how much wood gets put on the fire. Silence hangs in
the air, strangling laughter. People get up suddenly to look behind
them, and then can't explain why. Conversation is hushed, just
because.
The reason is us, of course. We're still there, haunting the house
or the churchyard, or the where-ever. But our behavior isn't what it
used to be. These days the phrase 'unfinished business' gets used a
lot, and there's the concept of a spook hanging around to point our
hero or heroine to all the obvious clues which show just who helped
us unwillingly shuffle off our mortal coil. But those are more
convenient plot points than anything else, and ghosts like that don't
seem to truly terrify us.
It's the other sort that we're talking about here. The kind that can
also be neatly summed up in a sentence or two, but who are a lot
harder to portray effectively. This is the more dangerous kind,
because they don't give a damn.
What can the word haunted mean? In a B-movie or a B-grade book it
means sharing a house with someone who walks through walls, clanks a
really long set of chains, and wears clothing that went out of style
two or more generations ago. But we also use it to describe someone
who has had Death pay them a recent visit, someone who has lost some
person in their life that they loved so dearly that they took all the
meaning of life with them when they died. Someone left alone only in
the sad ways.
That's the human part of the equation: pain, loss, fear. Not the
normal sort that is everyone's portion in life, but the sort of
gut-wrenching injustice that kills a person's soul. In a lot of the
classic stories, our heroes and heroines are halfway dead, bringing
their own ghosts with them into the story. With that door already
open, what else can come through?
Why would it come? Why would it have never left in the first place?
Anger. Blind, mad, rage. The sort of virulent soup that you get
when you mix hate, loss, regret, and fear together, and then boil.
Not very sensible, is it? To stay here where people weep and get
hurt, when we have a ticket to a better place? Seems a bit petulant,
doesn't it?
That's why I said part, and only part of us stays. That's why we
feel ghosts before we see or hear them. That's why our belief
in them is stored down in our gut and in our spine, while our head is
full of reasons to not believe in them. Could non-believers, say
atheists, be afraid of them without believing in them or in any of
their related bumpers in the night? Oh hell yes. That's how
people's heads work.
Ghosts like this live in our ID, where we whine rather than ask,
scream instead of explain. They're what's left of a person when you
strip away reason, and then strip away every flavor of love. Imagine
a spoiled child that no one can control, and that no one can stop.
Ever sat in a restaurant, a bus, or on a plane with an infant that
did nothing but howl? Perfect. That infant is now somewhere in your
house, waiting for you to relax. Pleasant dreams.
As you can see, my thoughts tend to ramble a bit when I explore a
concept. Maybe I'll do it again.
Still writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment