I was on a tour with a small group of people, guided by this woman who resembled tremendously with Vanessa Ives (Penny Dreadful fictional character). It was an old house with lights so weak that their yellow wasn't just warm, it was decaying. The rooms where reasonably big but mostly high with wooden ceilings, floors, doors, furniture and windowsills. This wood was a brown so dark that could easily be mistaken for black. Everything about this house was creepy. The cracking noise of the old wood under our feet, the heavy air, the bitter smell of time. At some point only the guide, myself and someone else were in a basement like room. I come to understand this used to be the house of a priest who died over 400 years ago and in this room we were now exploring was his tomb. Right at the centre. Nothing remarkable about it, no inscription, nothing but a big block of old wood. The guide then instructs me to haunt him. Clearly confused I ask her - What do you mean haunt him? He is dead! Aren't the dead the ones supposed to haunt us? She turns to me with the most blank expression in her eyes and says - That is where everybody is wrong. The dead are dead, there is nothing else they can do. Us, the living, are the ones with the power to do something. We haunt them in their graves. Not really knowing what to do or say, I push myself up to lay on top of his tomb. So I start telling him all about the emancipation of women, the “weaker sex” as he must have certainly thought back in his time. That we study, we vote, we dress like we want, we date whoever we want, we are free to enjoy as much sex we want with how many people we want, we are professionals, we earn our own money and pay our own bills and belongings. We drink and smoke and dance.
