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Ghost Month

It's been a good month for spookers. Just yesterday, sitting and standing in my morning writing class, I started developing, out of the blue, it seemed, a new one about a mixed-race family stuck in the mountains of central Taiwan with a family of crash victims. It uses the idea of "hungry ghosts", spirits looking for new bodies. I kid you not: some people around here are afraid to go anywhere near a lying in state in case the departed's spirit is on the prowl for new digs. In two or three free moments, I jotted down the first three or four paragraphs. Before bed, though deadly tired, I wrote out the last two paragraphs.

The premise is that the husband/father in the family group, being a Westerner and no believer in ghosts, is entirely unaffected by the activities of the dead in Taiwan, but his wife and children are very directly affected. I don't want to spoil it for you, so I'll say no more, even though I believe a really well conceived and constructed story can easily stand a spoiling.

A Saving Vision of the Night

Praise God, whose is the might. If any should read this, be it known, when I returned from evening prayer, the last of my life, I found a man standing in my room. His skin was blackened and he smelled of smoke, but when I looked closely I could see his face and stature were my own. Upon his chest he wore a flaming sword.

I did not challenge him, for I knew before he spoke that he was a messenger, but whether of God (let him be praised, for he hath made the world and given us to cleanse it) or the Devil (let him be scorned, for he bringeth impurity into the world), I could not tell, for does not the scripture say: For my name’s sake even the angels have their wounds?

I waited and beheld. His appearance was of smoke, but of smoke so tightly bound as to resemble flesh. He regarded me silently, as if he, too, wondered whose servant I might be. Praise God, I am the Lord’s, as you shall know on the morrow, for his in all the universe is the might, to create and to destroy.

At last he spoke.

“Praise God!” he cried. “I am permitted to appear to you, from beyond the borders of the grave, though you shall have none, to warn and to plead, for the thing you design to do is not of God.”

At these words, I began to suspect that here was an angel of lies, for is not it written in the book of prayer: Oh, Lord, deliver me from mouths whose tongues are honeyed, but whose breath is poison to the lungs? But I could not yet be sure, for it is also said: The words of sorrow may be the words of life; words that seem arrows to the ears may be a soothing ointment to the heart.

I did not speak. Again he looked on me as if in doubt.

“Hear me,” he urged. “Hear me and be saved. It is in your heart that God has called you among all men to be the weapon of his ire. Your courage is acceptable to him. Your obedience to that which you suppose to be his will is acceptable to him. But life is not given you to take, for the scripture says: Hurt not the fruit of the woman’s womb. Life is the Lord’s. The Lord is life. By his command the elements combine. Only by his command shall they be sundered.”

He reasoned well, but the scripture also says: When I command it, strike. When I say kill, obey. You are the arrows in his bow. Your arms are the swords in his hand. By you shall he cleanse the earth and write his word in heart, on head and on the tongue. By you shall filth be rooted out, even by death if they will not repent.

Still I did not speak, for as the scriptures say: When angels call, men shall not answer with their tongues. And in another place: Join not the Devil in discourse. He that speaketh with the fiend walks by his own device into the snare. The snares of Satan are an iron band.

“Listen to me!” he railed, so like the noticed and rejected fiend. “It is not too late. Praise God, the merciful, who blesses with his might. I who have walked this path and tasted bile pled for grace and have been saved, but only if I turn you from the path. Praise God, for his might is in the miles and in the hours. He guideth suns and knoweth the secret ways of space, for all they are the craft of his hand, the thought and yearning of his heart. He reacheth all places and seeth all times. Nothing shall hide from him, in time or space. The sands do not stand or flow, but that he guideth them to and fro, but that his fingers feel each one, each in its stillness and its flight.

These were new scriptures. They rang true, but I had not read them in any canon. And I was no prophet that they should be revealed to me.

“No longer doubt!” he screamed. “All time is God’s to give and lend, but I have been given just this once and just this hour. Turn from the darkness and the fire. You have been deceived. It is God you praise, but the Devil you serve.”

I put my hands to my ears.  “Be gone!” I cried.

Panic seized him.

“Proud, blind fool! They said it would be so. You would not believe, though your own dead self returned from the scattered places of the grave. You will damn us both, for we are one. I have seen our error and by the grace of God come to deter you from your course, that the innocent may be spared and that we may yet kneel before God, not in shame, but in honor, for we may yet serve the Maker in life, whereas we only offend him in the death you choose.”

I confess, at these words I wavered. Is not the way of life the better way? Do not the scriptures say: Two paths there are, but one leads to rejoicing and one to endless pining for the first? But they also say: Let not the shadow guide the feet, let not the pressure of the wind lead you to right or left, let no lie tempt your feet backward from the path of right. Do they not say: Lord, I have set my course toward the sun. No wind, no wave shall overcome me now, for I sail to thee. If I fail, it shall be death that breaks me, not despair?

He continued to plead, but I knew him now. I shut my ears, my eyes and my heart. Though he shouted like thunder, I would not hear. Though his words beat like surges at the gate, the gate did not open and did not fall.

Yet I cringed in my anguish. “Be gone! Depart from me! Return to hell and tell your master, if you are not the master himself, no man of my house has changed his course once set. I serve the only God. Be gone!”

Silence surrounded me. I dared a glance. He stood as in defeat, his shoulders slumped, his hands at his sides like torn rags, his face as sagging as a flag, the flag of a defeated army on a carrion field, stirred by no wind and by no survivors.

“My own words,” he groaned. “Will you not listen, you twice-damned fool? But God is just. He knows our hearts.  Too late I see the evil in my heart. We cannot be saved. O God of mercy and of might, I surrender wholly to thy will!”

With that, he drew his sword, the sword of flame strapped like a breastplate to his chest. His fire was glorious, but I was not deceived. Does not the scripture say: Even the Devil flies in light?

Brain Bombs or How to Read My Stories

This afternoon I asked one of my mystery colleagues what he thought of "The Ice Cream Truck's Song" (now "The Ninth, Not Final, Plague"). He said frankly that he frankly didn't get it at all, even after reading it twice. Interesting. Here he was a native speaker and he'd fared worse than my students. They at least knew it was a ghost story. Hmm. We talked about the title, which I admitted was misleading. He said it made you think something nice was going to happen. Well, something nice did happen, from a certain perspective. He said it reminded him of Poe's madmen stories. Lots of detail. I can't remember what triggered it, but he suddenly shouted, "Oh! I know who the ghosts are!" I must have said something about its being a ghost story. I think that's right. The minute he knew it was a spooker, everything clicked. Hmm.

The conversation reminded me that I'd planned to write a brief treatise on how to read certain of my stories which begin "in medias res" and don't supply obvious hints about what's going to come in handy down the road. I'm referring here to things like the James Bond movies, where Bond invariably pays a visit to Q, who invariably hands him a set of disguised weapons and other gear, which Bond invariably calls upon in a tight spot, or the Harry Potter stories, in which one or two magical gadgets introduced casually early in the tale end up being crucial to the plot (think of the time-turner in The Prisoner of Azkaban, the portkey in The Goblet of Fire, the pensieve in The Order of the Phoenix and the vanishing cabinet in The Half-Blood Prince).

While I don't mind, and even enjoy, this obvious style of presentation in other people's work, but I like to do it more subtly myself. I like to show you the world and let you notice what you will, the way it works in the real world. Of course, there are myriad differences between any story and the real world. Any report or representation of reality is going to be restricted in content, our attention is going to be funneled to a few pertinent items, but I so like those moments in M. Knight Shyamalan's movies when a whole mess of seemingly insignificant details or oddities suddenly string together into one tight and intense realization (as when Malcolm Crowe can't open the basement door in The Sixth Sense, David Dunn sees Elijah Price's diagrams in Unbreakable, and Graham Hess confronts the alien in Signs).

And so to "The Ninth, Not Final, Plague". I'm not entirely pleased with that title, which may be the subject of a future entry called "Evolution of a Title". It's a good title, but it's a bit heavy for the story, just as "The Ice Cream Truck's Song" was too light. Anyway, let's talk briefly about how the story works.

It starts with what for some readers would be, and is, an obvious clue: "I myself would not believe it, if not for the bell." This is a pretty plain tip off that something weird is about to be described. If that isn't enough, we have the next sentence: "Every night it rings–and rings and rings until I open the door and find–nothing." What else could we be talking about but ghosts, especially after the next paragraph, which tells us that "there was no one there. The elevator had opened and was closing and stood empty on my floor. There was no one in the stairwell for two floors and not a soul on the roof"?

Next thing you know the narrator is hearing voices. Not much later he is making them out. It could only be ghosts, ba.

The question for most of my students is "Who are the ghosts?" They really puzzle over that one. Yet the clues are so numerous it's almost embarrassing. You could be forgiven for thinking the narrator was freaked out until you read paragraph five: "It seemed like a game. It was a game. I had played it before." If that doesn't help, he tells you "I would have let it ring a decade if I could", not what you'd expect from someone experiencing fear, unless you take it to mean he'd rather hear the bell ring than face the ghosts in the corridor. Ooh! That gave me the cold pricklies! But then he goes on "grasping at shadows", actually trying to touch the ghost that rings the bell, so he's obviously not afraid of the ghosts, and then he claims to know where the ghost's hand, arm, shoulders and head should be–even what the look on its face must be! If that doesn't do it for you, he digresses about shoes and dust and about an apartment that hasn't been looked after for a while. Then there's the perfume, a sly little twist to show he has a grip on reality. He's sure he must be imagining the perfume. It wouldn't be so apparent if its wearer were returning.

Then we have paragraph eleven, which spells out in huge flaming letters the relationship between the ghosts. Taken with paragraph ten's "family grave" simile for the vacant parking spot that neighbours wish to buy or rent but which the narrator refuses to sell or rent in case "they" return and paragraph eight's dust and shoes description, paragraph eleven amounts to a statement of the relationship between the narrator and the ghosts. The second to last paragraph talks about fear, but not of the ghosts: of their eventually not coming anymore, a fate the narrator would rather avoid. Why? Well, you figure it out.

This type of story I call a brain bomb. You go along, wondering or not, and somewhere very close to the end, it all clicks and your brain explodes with it. In the explosion, all the subtle hints come rushing together to be relived, everything takes on new meaning (or just meaning, if you didn't start to get it earlier), and there's this intense, exquisite paroxysm of understanding and awe, awe not for my finesse with the pen or keyboard, but for the splendour and terror of the human soul, the beauty and horror of our state.

Does that help anybody?

The Ninth, Not Final, Plague

I myself would not believe it, if not for the bell. Every night it rings–and rings and rings until I open the door and find–nothing. The tight corridor between the elevator, my neighbour's door and the door to the stairwell crouches before me with an emptiness like famine, with a blackness like a plague of night.

At first I believed it was a joke, that the children downstairs had learned to play tricks on a lonely old foreigner. I said and did nothing the first night, grew incensed the second night and lay in wait the third night, but when I flung open the door, needing time only to throw the bolt and turn the handle, there was no one there. The elevator had opened and was closing and stood empty on my floor. There was no one in the stairwell for two floors and not a soul on the roof.

So I began to listen. We pick up on patterns quickly, we mortals. By the fifth night I knew the time to the second. At nine thirty-five and three seconds, the elevator slid into place, the doors opened and after a pause just long enough for my heart to beat twice like a drum in the clutches of a madman, the bell rang.

I tested that bell. If I opened the door immediately, it cut off immediately. If I waited for ten minutes, it rang and rang until I could stand it no more and opened the door, as I have said, on a black, dry well whose bottom seemed to rise more swiftly with each turn of the game.

It seemed like a game. It was a game. I had played it before.

I began to listen as one listening for thunder in the distant hills or the faint, approaching jangle of the ice cream truck's song. There is that moment when the sound is heard, but so vaguely and mistily that only the time of day, the flash of lightning or its utter approach assures you that it has begun. It was always like that, even when I made out voices and what they said, even when I huddled by the door in tears, listening to that bell as it rang and rang for half an hour.

I would have let it ring a decade if I could, but ever more clearly I could hear, behind the frantic ringing of the bell and the rapid pressures of a ghostly hand, a  panicked voice, high and shrill, calling and crying, impatient, distressed. In tears like Pharaoh at the ninth and final plague, I burst into that space, grasping at shadows where the hand should be, the arm, the shoulders, the small, bright head, the frenzied, pouting face suddenly alight with impish reproach and the glee of relief and victory.

But there was nothing there, only my shadow on the elevator door, the dusty blue mat which I had not washed for weeks, the equally dusty shoe rack with its burden of abandoned shoes, hers and mine. Not theirs. Theirs lay like forgotten toys in careless jumbles on the rack inside the door and on the floor before it in a sward of dust disturbed only by my passing to and from the door to leave for work, to return from work and to answer the ringing of the bell.

One time I caught the elevator door before it closed. I stood there in that hollow light and felt for a moment as if I'd caught a scent, a harsh, sweet, strangling waft of her perfume. Impossible, of course. The scent had always faded by the time she came home, though it filled the house like the cloud the temple when she was ready to leave.

One time I locked the door and rode the elevator to the basement garage. I felt the motor of the scooter. It was warm, but only from my returning from work. I still parked the scooter tight against the rail and the parking space, my heart's delight whenever we returned from church or an excursion to a park or the seaside, yawned like a family grave, a thick, black oil stain and a pile of  planks for flowers and a headstone. A few neighbours had heartlessly offered to buy or rent it, but I had refused. It was my earth and it waited for their return.

One time I stood in the basement by the elevator door. It was nine thirty-three. At nine thirty-four and six seconds, the button lighted and the door opened. I stepped inside. I heard them. Piping, bright voices and hers scolding them for some heedless infringement of the maternal code. A squabble. A shout. All heard as if through glass, thick, black, frosted glass that made shadows of sound.

The door opened. I stepped out. I stood in the corridor. The bell did not ring. Puzzled impatience engulfed me like a wind. I unlocked the door and went in.

Nobody followed.

I have ridden with them since, always with the same result. The squabbles vary and the imprecations are not always severe, but the bell does not ring and I am conscious of confused expectation, as if I, too, were of their company. Sometimes I have made them wait until an unbearable edge of anger pierces my skin and heart like the sure stroke of a well-known knife. It is rare that I provoke them.

Most nights I wait beside the door, no longer doubting, more and more afraid. Will it occur to them that it is in vain, that they cannot enter, that I cannot reach them in that cramped void?

So far the bell still rings. With luck it will ring forever.

© Mark Penny