The Orphan Choir Part 16

Give us light in the night season, we beseech thee, O Lord, and grant that our rest may be without sin, and our waking to thy service; that we may come in peace and safety to the waking of the great day; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Let us bless the Lord.

Thanks be to G.o.d.

The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.

Amen.

All remain standing.

MY RELATIONs.h.i.+P WITH GHOSTS.

I have always loved ghost stories, for the same reason that I've always loved crime fiction: the suspense. In both genres, the reader or viewer knows that something untoward is afoot, but doesn't know exactly what or why, and the main thing driving her on through the narrative is the desire to find out and solve the mystery.

Though I haven't read nearly as many ghostly novels as I've read detective stories, my strong impression from the few that I have read is that the overwhelming majority of ghost stories are mysteries. There might be some supernatural fiction in which the ghost is upfront, announcing himself and declaring his agenda right from the start, but if there is then I certainly haven't stumbled across it. All the ghosts I encounter in films and in literature are as sneaky and elusive as murderers who wish to avoid exposure. Even those with grudges that border on obsession seem oddly reluctant to rant explicitly about their various beefs with the living; they all seem to feel it's more effective to make a door slam shut or a floorboard creak, hoping to get their message across in a long-drawn-out and incredibly indirect way instead. This makes no sense, when you think about it. If I were dead and angry, and had magic non-earthly powers, I would defy ghostly convention and stand next to those who'd wronged me, screaming, 'You poisonous git! I'll never forgive you! Just you wait and see how many of your relatives I'm going to kill and maim before the weekend!' All right, it's not subtle, but since I'd probably be s.h.i.+mmery and transparent at the time of yelling, I like to think I could achieve some pretty devastating effects by combining verbal straightforwardness with physical ethereality.

Perhaps this is why I so admired the recent and utterly brilliant Hammer film adaptation of Susan Hill's equally brilliant novel The Woman in Black. The ghost in that movie is a comparatively direct communicator. At one point, she writes on a wall in capital letters, 'YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM', and, in doing so, helpfully reveals what, precisely, she's cross about. (Admittedly, she is less forthcoming about why she chooses to vent her anger on the innocent; I'd be interested to see what she might write on a wall on the subject of legitimate targets and collateral damage, but that's another story.) Like all my favourite ghost and horror films Dead of Night, The Others, The Innocents, The Haunting, The s.h.i.+ning, The Sixth Sense The Woman in Black was completely terrifying from start to finish; I watched most of it from behind my woolly scarf. I was sitting next to an elderly couple in the cinema, and throughout the film they regularly asked me if I was okay. I wasn't, and nor did I want to be. There is no point in a fictional ghost if he or she doesn't frighten the life out of you.

Which is why, when I was invited to write a novella for the new Hammer imprint, my first thought was 'Ooh, yes, but it must be terrifying.' And mysterious too because all my favourite stories are driven by mysteries and the need to find out the truth and outwit the cunning author who is annoyingly trying to withhold it for as long as possible. So I resisted the temptation to redefine the genre by creating a loud-mouthed ghost who yells at people obsessively and informatively, and tried as hard as I could to frighten myself instead. Just as, in my crime writing, I have always resisted the (sometimes very strong) temptation to write a psychological thriller that begins with the heroine receiving a phone call from someone from her shady past to whom she hasn't spoken for twenty years, and immediately announcing to her happy middle-cla.s.s family in a cheery voice, 'Hey, it's So-and-So remember, the one I committed that murder with twenty years ago? Remember, I did tell you ...'

Sophie Hannah.

January 2013.

end.