Read Online The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman - Free Book Online
Authors: Neil Gaiman
Ads: Link
voice perhaps, so flat and bleak and hopeless, caught my attention. I bookmarked it.
If the girl who kept it knew that anyone was reading it, anybody cared, perhaps she would not have taken her own life. She even wrote about what she was going to do, the pills, the Nembutal and Seconal and the rest, that she had stolen a few at a time over the months from her stepfatherâs bathroom, the plastic bag, the loneliness, and wrote about it in a flat, pragmatic way, explaining that while she knew that suicide attempts were cries for help, this really wasnât, she just didnât want to live any longer.
She counted down to the big day, and I kept reading, uncertain what to do, if anything. There was not enough identifying information on the Web page even to tell me which continent she lived on. No e-mail address. No way to leave comments. The last message said simply, âTonight.â
I wondered whom I should tell, if anyone, and then I shrugged, and, best as I could, I swallowed the feeling that I had let the world down.
And then she started to post again. She says sheâs cold and sheâs lonely.
I think she knows Iâm still reading . . .
I REMEMBER THE first time I found myself in New York for Halloweâen. The parade went past, and went past and went past, all witches and ghouls and demons and wicked queens and glorious, and I was, for a moment, seven years old once more, and profoundly shocked. If you did this in England , I found myself thinking in the part of my head that makes stories, things would wake, all the things we burn our bonfires on Guy Fawkes to keep away. Perhaps they can do it here, because the things that watch are not English. Perhaps the dead do not walk here, on Halloweâen .
Then, a few years later, I moved to America and bought a house that looked as if it had been drawn by Charles Addams on a day he was feeling particularly morbid. For Halloweâen, I learned to carve pumpkins, then I stocked up on candies and waited for the first trick-or-treaters to arrive. Fourteen years later, Iâm still waiting. Perhaps my house looks just a little too unsettling; perhaps itâs simply too far out of town.
AND THEN THERE was the one who said, in her cell phoneâs voice mail message, sounding amused as she said it, that she was afraid she had been murdered, but to leave a message and she would get back to us.
It wasnât until we read the news, several days later, that we learned that she had indeed been murdered, apparently randomly and quite horribly.
But then she did get back to each of the people who had left her a message. By phone, at first, leaving cell phone messages that sounded like someone whispering in a gale, muffled wet sounds that never quite resolved into words.
Eventually, of course, she will return our calls in person.
AND STILL THEY ask, why tell ghost stories? Why read them or listen to them? Why take such pleasure in tales that have no purpose but, comfortably, to scare?
I donât know. Not really. It goes way back. We have ghost stories from ancient Egypt, after all, ghost stories in the Bible, classical ghost stories from Rome (along with werewolves, cases of demonic possession and, of course, over and over, witches). We have been telling each other tales of otherness, of life beyond the grave, for a long time; stories that prickle the flesh and make the shadows deeper and, most important, remind us that we live, and that there is something special, something unique and remarkable about the state of being alive.
Fear is a wonderful thing, in small doses. You ride the ghost train into the darkness, knowing that eventually the doors will open and you will step out into the daylight once again. Itâs always reassuring to know that youâre still here, still safe. That nothing strange has happened, not really. Itâs good to be a child again, for a little while, and to fearânot governments, not regulations, not
If the girl who kept it knew that anyone was reading it, anybody cared, perhaps she would not have taken her own life. She even wrote about what she was going to do, the pills, the Nembutal and Seconal and the rest, that she had stolen a few at a time over the months from her stepfatherâs bathroom, the plastic bag, the loneliness, and wrote about it in a flat, pragmatic way, explaining that while she knew that suicide attempts were cries for help, this really wasnât, she just didnât want to live any longer.
She counted down to the big day, and I kept reading, uncertain what to do, if anything. There was not enough identifying information on the Web page even to tell me which continent she lived on. No e-mail address. No way to leave comments. The last message said simply, âTonight.â
I wondered whom I should tell, if anyone, and then I shrugged, and, best as I could, I swallowed the feeling that I had let the world down.
And then she started to post again. She says sheâs cold and sheâs lonely.
I think she knows Iâm still reading . . .
I REMEMBER THE first time I found myself in New York for Halloweâen. The parade went past, and went past and went past, all witches and ghouls and demons and wicked queens and glorious, and I was, for a moment, seven years old once more, and profoundly shocked. If you did this in England , I found myself thinking in the part of my head that makes stories, things would wake, all the things we burn our bonfires on Guy Fawkes to keep away. Perhaps they can do it here, because the things that watch are not English. Perhaps the dead do not walk here, on Halloweâen .
Then, a few years later, I moved to America and bought a house that looked as if it had been drawn by Charles Addams on a day he was feeling particularly morbid. For Halloweâen, I learned to carve pumpkins, then I stocked up on candies and waited for the first trick-or-treaters to arrive. Fourteen years later, Iâm still waiting. Perhaps my house looks just a little too unsettling; perhaps itâs simply too far out of town.
AND THEN THERE was the one who said, in her cell phoneâs voice mail message, sounding amused as she said it, that she was afraid she had been murdered, but to leave a message and she would get back to us.
It wasnât until we read the news, several days later, that we learned that she had indeed been murdered, apparently randomly and quite horribly.
But then she did get back to each of the people who had left her a message. By phone, at first, leaving cell phone messages that sounded like someone whispering in a gale, muffled wet sounds that never quite resolved into words.
Eventually, of course, she will return our calls in person.
AND STILL THEY ask, why tell ghost stories? Why read them or listen to them? Why take such pleasure in tales that have no purpose but, comfortably, to scare?
I donât know. Not really. It goes way back. We have ghost stories from ancient Egypt, after all, ghost stories in the Bible, classical ghost stories from Rome (along with werewolves, cases of demonic possession and, of course, over and over, witches). We have been telling each other tales of otherness, of life beyond the grave, for a long time; stories that prickle the flesh and make the shadows deeper and, most important, remind us that we live, and that there is something special, something unique and remarkable about the state of being alive.
Fear is a wonderful thing, in small doses. You ride the ghost train into the darkness, knowing that eventually the doors will open and you will step out into the daylight once again. Itâs always reassuring to know that youâre still here, still safe. That nothing strange has happened, not really. Itâs good to be a child again, for a little while, and to fearânot governments, not regulations, not
Similar Books
