Straub, Peter - Magic Terror by Straub Peter

Author:Straub, Peter [Straub, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780375505768
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1997-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

HUNGER, AN

INTRODUCTION

I have a sturdy first sentence all prepared, and as soon as I settle down and get used to the reversal of our usual roles I’ll give you the pleasure. Okay. Here goes. Considering that everyone dies sooner or later, people know surprisingly little about ghosts. Is my point clear? Every person on earth, whether saint or turd, is going to wind up as a ghost, but not one of them, I mean, of you people, knows the first thing about them. Almost everything written, spoken, or imagined about the subject is, I’m sorry, absolute junk. It’s disgusting. I’m speaking from the heart here, I’m laying it on the line—disgusting. All it would take to get this business right is some common, everyday, sensible thinking, but sensible thinking is easier to ask for than to get, believe you me.

I see that I have already jumped my own gun, because the second sentence I intended to deliver was: In fact, when it comes to the subject of ghosts, human beings are completely clueless. And the third sentence, after which I am going to scrap my prepared text and speak from the heart, is: A lot of us are kind of steamed about that.

For! The most common notion about ghosts, the granddaddy, is the one that parades as grown-up reason, shakes its head, grins, fixes you with a steely glint that asks if you’re kidding, and says: Ghosts don’t exist.

Wrong.

Sorry, wrong.

Sorry, I know, you’d feel better if you could persuade yourself that accounts of encounters with beings previously but not presently alive are fictional. Doesn’t matter how many people say they have seen a woman in black moving back and forth behind the window from which in 1892 the chambermaid Ethel Carroway defenestrated a newborn infant fathered by a seagoing rogue named Captain Starbuck, thousands of fools might swear to having seen Ethel’s shade drag itself past that window, it don’t, sorry, it doesn’t matter, they’re all deluded. They saw a breeze twitch the curtain and imagined the rest. They want you to think they’re interesting. You’re too clever for that one. You know what happens to people after they chuck it, and one thing that’s sure is, they don’t turn into ghosts. At the moment of death, people either (1) depart this and all other possible spheres, leaving their bodies to fade out in a messier, more time-consuming fashion; or (2) leave behind the poor old skinbag as their immortal part soars heavenward, rejoicing, or plummets wailing to eternal torment; or (3) shuffle out of one skinbag, take a few turns around the celestial block, and reincarnate in a different, fresher skinbag, thereupon starting all over again. Isn’t that more or less the menu? Extinction, moral payback, or rebirth. During my own life, for example, I favored (1), a good clean departure.

Now we come to one of my personal bugaboos or, I could say, anathemas, in memory of someone I have to bring in sooner or later anyhow, my former employer, Mr.

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