ghost story

 

"Do you believe in ghosts, Monsieur?"

Lautrec had that owlish quintessentially French expression on his face as he asked the question which made him look like nothing so much as a French owl.

"What is the word for owl in French?" I wondered aloud, ignoring his question.

"Hibou," he said, without turning a feather.

Rain rattled the window pane.

"This house is haunted," he exclaimed feverishly, leaning towards me suddenly with an intense light in his eyes. "It is haunted by the ghost of Remy Schnauwert Tiddly Bun."

I want the reader to read without knowing why he's reading, to be lulled strangely on by each sentence, almost unaware that he's being drawn in, until his imagination is engaged, and suddenly everything is elevated by his own response to what I'm writing, as the performance of an actor only touches alchemy when the audience is so lulled to consent that their collective imagination uplifts everything he does towards the Pantheon of great art, and at that moment he plays them as his instrument.

Genius lies in gaining the consent of an audience to imagine.

Some writer of contemporary renown suggested that every ghost story should begin with the hero putting on his shirt and use the evocation of that most ordinary of realities to gradually draw the reader into the realms of the fantastical.

There was a time when I thought to begin my every story with the words: "Do you believe in ghosts Monsieur?"

But this quickly seemed an intolerable affectation.

And besides, to stick to it, I would actually have had to write some stories.