THE GHOSTWRITER

" I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict. "

[theghcstwriter]

@emprcsario​ asked for "i believe i should like to stay" followed by "what? you don’t love me for my subtlety"

“no, i’m afraid you’re quite right, kane.” victor laughs, but it’s not a mocking sound--it’s something he doesn’t quite recognize, something pulled from the deep pit of his stomach rather than the walls of his throat, something like the sound of a gold coin being flicked from someone’s thumb and index finger into the sunlight and then hitting the ground between them. 

heads, and kane wins--victor admits that they  are beasts of a similar nature, starved and hungry things with mouths full of canine teeth, and they will destroy each other as such, with such vigor that will make god and the devil tremble in tandem. tails, and victor will close the door as he should, keep his focus on his own survival. keep the game going, without ever having admitted to this particular weakness. without having won or lost. 

“loving you for your subtlety would be utterly antithetical. it would be like appreciating the snake for its potential as jewelry, draped across the bones of the wrist. against the very nature of the thing.” he takes a step forward from where he’s leaning against the door frame, but he does not reach out to touch. that would be admittance, that would be unfolding his cards on the surface of the table instead of keeping them tucked close to his chest. this is calling the bluff, this is forcing kane to put his money where his mouth is. he meets the man’s gaze, shrugs his shoulders. 

“i want you to stay,” he hums, catches his own bottom lip between his teeth. “but i’m torn--because something tells me that you are used to getting your way, and i’m not in the habit of giving rich men what they want, simply because they asked me for it.” he raises an eyebrow in challenge, folds his arms across his chest. 

call it in the air, the choice is yours. whatever is dark within me, is yours to illuminate or swallow. 

[theghcstwriter]

@philistined​ asked for "it pains me you should think every compliment a mockery." ( sarcastically ) 

laszlo throws a hand over his heart as though he’s marlowe giving notes to shakespeare about romeo and fucking juliet, and if they had been anywhere else, at any other time, victor’s blood would have run hot for a long moment, his fingers curling slowly around the neck of the bottle they’ve been sharing between them, and then immediately cold--because becoming lost to a memory is like that, isn’t it? one moment you’re living and drawing breath, one moment you’re rolling your eyes so hard they threaten to become permanently fixed on the inner wall of your skull, and the next you find yourself underwater, ghost forced to walk through one of the rooms of your life without warning.

edward had smiled--not like laszlo smiles now, all knife’s edges and sharp points at the corners--no, he had smiled like apollo drawing back the bow, before he laid eyes on hyacinthus for the first time, his mouth had mirrored the very shape of the instrument, with its perfect dip in the middle. he had curled his fingers around victor’s shoulder, rested a hand on his cheek, uttered the very same words--only they had been meant in kindness, they had been meant to encourage victor to keep picking up the fucking pen, so he could continue unwittingly crafting the man’s next masterpiece. how stupid he had been, to think that they could be spoken in any other way than laszlo says them now--everything is a mockery, until it proves itself to be otherwise, or until you become bigger than something so very trivial. 

but they aren’t anywhere else, at any other time--they’re in the middle of nowhere, and there’s something comforting, or as close as he can get to such a thing, about having the other man’s angular features sat across from him, twisted in up in an expression that is somewhere between being completely smug and utterly annoyed--so he blinks his eyes and clears his throat, pastes the facsimile of a smirk onto his face like a greek tragedian wearing a mask, before he takes the bottle from where it sits between them on the table and throws a portion of it to the back of his throat. “be careful lad, or i’ll starting thinking of all your mockery as compliments as well, and then i’ll--how did you put it? never fit through the fuckin’ door with my big head?” he juts out his chin, raises an eyebrow. “i’m to believe that you’ve done any better, since we made landfall? you’ve been scribbling lines of dialogue between the shooting and the bleeding and the fuckin’ endless games of shipboard politics?” 

[quotesandstardust]

“Does Shelley go on telling strange stories of the deaths of kings? Tell him, there are strange stories of the deaths of poets.”

— John Keats,The Complete Letters of John Keats (via lesromantiques)

[edwardboyne]

after landfall / siren’s sorrow / open

at some point—edward can’t tell when exactly, time seems to be running outside his conscious understanding here—he’s given in. though initially, the purser has refused every single offer of a drink (unlike so many of his friends), there’s one in front of him now, the cup half-empty. it was inevitable, really. with the pressure of everything that’s happened, there’s only one thing that can soothe one’s mind enough to go on like the world isn’t burning. 

it doesn’t quite work—not yet, hopefully. edward stares at the piece of paper in front of him; blank, save for the few attempts crossed out with vigour. there’s pencil smudges on his fingers already, a proof of how much he’s struggling to find the right words. he hasn’t written a letter in so long and it feels especially foolish to be doing it now. edward thought it would make him feel better or perhaps it would help him stay grounded. he feels even more shattered when he realizes that there isn’t anything to say—he’s rather forget so many things. 

the paper barely makes a sound when edward balls it up in his hand. he holds it in his fist for a few seconds before he changes his mind—he unfolds it, straightens it across the table, stares at the page that wasn’t ruined by his hesitation. then he starts writing about the search party and by the time he has them back on the boat, about to find out about estrada’s plan, he realizes he’s got company. he folds the paper in half, covers it with his hand and looks to the other, catches a glimpse of the outside through the window. “i feel like the sun should’ve set hours ago yet it still refuses to give way to the moon. i’ve lost my watch and whenever i ask someone for the time, i get conflicting answers. it makes me nervous.”

[theghcstwriter]

it is fitting, victor decides, even as color rushes to his cheeks when the purser looks up from his writings, that the man should be so concerned with the moon--he cuts a figure equally as striking, against the salt faded buildings that line the streets, against the clouded windows of this room, the near rotted wooden table underneath his palms and elegant fingers. pale skin stretches across the handsome formal bones of his face like the surface of that particular celestial orb, his dark hair falls with elegant disarray in the same way that the night sky seems to ripple when the eyes go unfocused just for a moment--he would, and had, when his eyes had first come to rest between the man’s shoulder blades, call him byronic looking, an edmund dantes or a hamlet cast out of the heavens, but such a description suddenly feels too simple. edward boyne does not look like a man resigned to suffering, he decides. he looks like a man who thinks himself born to suffering. made from the very stuff, where the marrow of his bones should be. 

the muscle in his fingers twitches, and he feels the familiar ache somewhere in his wrist--but he does not reach for the pen tucked away in his pocket, does not give voice to the plea for just a scrap of the purser’s paper that sits warm on his tongue. instead he pulls out a silver pocket watch, and slides it across the table as he clears his throat, drags a hand through his hair. “stopped working--god knows when though. bloody good metaphor, seeing as it was a gift from my father for being unable to make it to my oxford graduation.” he smiles, a small pulling up of the corners of his lips, and shrugs his shoulders. 

“anyway, as a famous man once said--there are more things on heaven and earth, horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. that is to say that i don’t think that anything could really surprise me anymore--not even if the sun never went down here.” he lets his gaze move from edward’s face to the window where he can see light glinting off of the ocean, as though the entire thing were made of stained glass, something beautiful and terrifying in the way that holy things are meant to be. in scotland, it had been near black instead of blue, as though god had struck his fist against the earth and left a bruise--the same color that now sweeps gently, almost tenderly, beneath the purser’s eyes. “i think that i would miss the darkness, and the moon, if i never laid my eyes on them again. they favor the solitary more than the light does.” 

he pulls one of his knees to his chest, rests his chin on top as he turns his gaze back to the battered piece of paper. “you know, i’ve found the words come with better frequency when the materials are not so brutally abused.” he says gently, with another casual shrug of one shoulder. “but perhaps such a state is fitting for the missive.”

[highwaymans-rest]

highwayman’s rest open to all 

the north wind murmurs with rumours, gossiping with the sea breeze and bringing home whispers that slip through the cracks of the city and into the ears of its people. they leave the windows open for exactly this reason: the north wind will come with news, the west with secrets, and the stray tabby needs a way to come in once its done with it wanderings. 

prepared, they are, since the first mutterings of a foreign ship started to mumble some days ago. the rooms have been ready for quite some time now, and as the wind speaks louder and louder outside the hotel, they know it is only a matter of moments. 

the door opens and they are nothing if not expectant. the wind stills and the stray tabby lifts its head from its curled rest on the countertop, the receptionist behind it already smiling in a way that is both warm and distant. 

“haven’t you come a ways to reach me? come in, come in - it’s cold and there is nothing but space here.” they beckon. the cup of tea in their hands is freshly brewed, waiting for you. 

“tell me, what is your home to you? i promise we will do our best to replicate it.” large gold hoops dangle from ears as they tilt their head coquettishly, eyes surveying the stranger with lips split into rosebud smiles. “or perhaps you tire of home? tell me what kind of place you wish to be in and we can see what strings we can pull for you, how about that?”

[theghcstwriter]

what is home to you? 

he turns sharply to look at them, as the words fall so casually from their pursed lips. what is home to you, they ask him. they do not ask him if home is something he misses, out here in the wilds, where every boot print in the sand feels like something significant, some kiss pressed to a stretch of smooth skin that has never before known tender affection--they do not even ask him where his home is. those are questions he could have answered with ease--the words are practiced, tattooed onto the surface of his tongue after a decade or so of being out of the stately bell house back in prince street, back on the smokey and rainy streets of edinburgh. 

instead they ask him the one thing he has never been prepared to speak of. the one thing he lacks the vocabulary to describe. there is no beautiful way to describe a void, a lack of something--it simply is, just as everything that happened before victor slung a bag across his shoulder weighted down with books stolen from this father’s library and left for oxford just...is. 

“home is--” he swallows, shrugs his shoulders. “four walls that keep you from freezing on the street, i suppose.” he smiles, as warmly as he’s able, and tucks his hands into the pockets of his coat. “i always suspected the university library was more of a home to me than the place where i came into adulthood--so perhaps it would be better to say that home is transient. something malleable.” 

he casts a glance around the room, before meeting their eyes with a raised eyebrow. “i am curious about this whole process of string pulling you’ve described, considering how isolated this place seems to be--but in truth i was hoping to find a quiet place to write, if you’re agreeable to such an arrangement.”

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

It’s not a metaphor, this ache.

Catherine Abbey Hodges, from “Solstice on the Middle Fork,” Tar River Review (vol. 59, no. 2, Spring 2020)

[theghcstwriter]

emprcsario​:

it irks him, that he doesn’t have bell’s full attention. though it’s quite the display, to watch him so entranced with his work—that kane can always appreciate; drive, focus. he hovers around, far enough to not be a nuisance (as if kane ever cared about not being one), but close enough to watch. the paper. the ink. the hands. and though it irks him—perhaps it’s better off, for victor to not even spare him a look, with the face kane makes when the metaphors start. call kane uncultured, an idiot—he couldn’t care less about fucking byron or homer; victor’s metaphors could just as well be falling on deaf ears. he still listens, at least pretends to—pretends like there’s a point to it, that it makes predicting the future any easier. goddamn writers, refusing to tell things as they are. 

but he plays along, tries to speak his language. “what’s your pick, then?” kane asks; his crossed arms unfold, arms fall to his sides; two fingers tap the edge of the table. he makes it look as if he feels out of place, as if he doesn’t know what to do with himself, where and how to place his body. there isn’t a valid reason for this kind of approach, nothing but wanting to play around, see if he can make people see him as something else. he’s done it his entire life, but never like this. never to lessen his presence, his urge; kane always tries to overpower the room, even if he had to crawl into it. 

“i for one always felt like the captain was just waiting for this to happen.” he chooses to call dowling the captain, even though the man doesn’t carry the title anymore—it isn’t because he means it, he’s more interested in whether bell would do the same. and the curiosity is nothing more than a part of a game. there isn’t the need for kane to judge sympathies but it fills the time. it’s fun. 

“do you trust estrada? i never did, i think.” that much is true, for once, kane doesn’t lie. “if there’s a tragic hero in this story, it surely must be him.”

---

“i hardly know the man.” victor says absently, but for the first time since kane arrived, began speaking and shifting his body as if the skin stretched across his bones didn’t quite fit him correctly, the movement of his hand across the page hesitates. the statement is only a half truth, isn’t it? he may not know the tortured and sisyphean captain of this particular vessel on a deep and profound level, but he knows the kind of man it takes to obtain the title--he’s pressed himself into the walls of their parlor rooms until he became invisible, he’s sat at the opposite ends of their tables, after everyone has cleared the room, and written their rough, salt-stained language until his hands were blistered, until it became unclear precisely what was blood and what was ink. he’s made heroes out of deckhands that had nothing more than half remembered syllables for names, battles where none existed--and never once had any single one of them ever thought to look him in the eye, to shake his hand for the work. never once had any of them stopped and said, can anyone see that ghost, that haunting of a man, that lingers near the doorway, the way that pen and paper move without body? 

“however, if he’s anything like the others i’ve met and written for--” victor blinks, clears his throat. his fingers clench around the pen again, ready to resume their cutting, their gutting of the manuscript, but he finds that he cannot focus on the words. kane’s fingers tap too closely, and each shift of his body as he takes a step closer to where victor sits feels too practiced, moves in a game victor has never agreed to play. still, he does not look up--he does not meet the man’s eyes. “then he’s probably just enough of a bastard and an egotist that he’s not going to take betrayal laying down.” 

he flips the page and begins reading again, begins slashing through excess language with a swift throughline--but kane continues. i for one always felt like the captain was just waiting for this to happen, he says casually, as though the man had embarked on this voyage with a sense of finality, for reasons impossible to articulate--as if sisyphus had cheated death the second time and reconciled himself to the ache in his shoulders for the rest of eternity. its a truly terrible narrative--one where the hero makes his grand, calculated, and courageous move because he’s just noticed that the gold buttons and tassels on his uniform jacket are starting to lack lustre, and the villain is a weak-willed man who could no longer keep his feet in the face of death and fucking horrific incident after fucking horrific incident. 

“all of those admiralty bastards are the same,” he says, as he exhales slowly and finally sets the pen down carefully, as he looks up from the page and meets those all-too cunning eyes, that glint with amusement at having won--something, victor isn’t precisely sure what the man means to claim as his prize. “so lets not go using the h-word and marcus estrada in the same sentence. they don’t care how many people die, as long as they get what they set out for, and as long as they walk away a medal that some poor fuck’s wife will take off of them at the end of the night. there was no grand romantic righting of wrongs in it.” 

he drags a hand through his hair, and shrugs his shoulders. “i don’t trust him, or dowling for that matter. trust is a fallacy--we think we trust people because we want to believe the darkness we’ve been allowed to see is as bad as it gets, but it never is. there’s always something darker, and it always comes out, leaving you wondering why you bothered at all. they’ll do what they want, regardless of my trust.” 

[theghcstwriter]

hcsperus​:

-

they’d dabbled in poetry back in london, when there was still light left to give and take. in between the parliamentary debates and heresy, they had made time for beauty, for rapture, believed it to be healing, counteractive to whatever maltreatment the soul could endure from unending strife and struggle. ah, they’d read it all then, making no distinction for the author nor the genre, only consuming as much as they could to bolster themselves for the fight, the grit.

there’s little of either now, or the last handful of years. only research, only ancient scrolls and tomes of dead and forgotten languages, only deciphering everything else but the soul. but it’ll be worth it, they know this - for to understand the lost worlds whose remnants still dot every landscape with ruins is to understand everything else.

brows crease vaguely. they consider lying, saying they’ve never learned how to read, just to see what this wordsmith would offer up if given nothing in exchange for his wisened understanding of the world that surrounds them, for his nuggets of gold and silver taken from exposed book spines and flaking ink. would he feel foolish? lost? bored? it’d be a game, but not a particularly droll one, and it would only be entertaining for half a moment.

“i’m rather fond of that poem.” they say airily. “for all that surrounded him was ruin, reclaimed by the earth and forces unknowable even to a king. no greater monument to man’s hubris than that of his crumbling edifices. no greater despair than knowing our legacies are helpless to ungovernable powers.” a cursory, curious glance out the corner of their eye. “it would be poetic if this land was built atop a great ruin, but no king could provoke the same despair we’ve known here. though many have tried.”

a whip of a wind catches their hair, flings it into the breeze. they let it. “and why is that?”

---

no greater despair than knowing our legacies are helpless to ungovernable powers.

victor inhales and exhales slowly, lets silence stretch between them for a long moment. forget that dark, infected gash of land that stretches out beside them, forget the horror and the terror that seems to grow inside everyone onboard this wooden coffin like snarled and choking ivy--that word, singular as it is, gilded by flaking gold leaf as it is, is the most ungovernable force of all. is it so absurd, is it a mad idea the likes of mary shelley’s own frankenstein, that he should want proof of his own existence in such a way? that even now, after the darkness had literally swallowed the sun like a lover swallows the breath of his beloved in a kiss, after a young man was ripped from this earth like a sapling dragged up by the dirty and stringy root, that he should think that there’s still something to be achieved? he commands language, the sea upon which lesser men have drowned, have broken their vessels against the rock, with nothing more than a flex of his wrist--he was a thing dead, buried and choking on the dirt that lawrence had shoveled so carefully on top of him, and now he lives, now he draws breath. there is no helplessness in this thing that he is trying to build--he has taken the pieces of the crumbling edifice and his fingers have bled to put it back together again. legacy is only ungovernable because it has been allowed to be. 

“perhaps we are the great ruin.” he says, finally turning his face to look at them properly. victor may disagree with the sentiment, but in the same breath, it seems entirely plausible as they stand here beside him with their pale hair dancing across their sharp features like flame, like one of the lord’s own avenging angels summoning up some kind of awful power, that permanence is an illusion. that nothing as breakable as stone, as human flesh and bone, is mean to survive. “the crown jewel of the british empire, dashed against the ice, it’s wooden hull splayed and bleached like broken ribs. there’s something perfectly cyclical about that--a perfect katabasis. god casts us out from heaven, and we return after passing through this underworld.” 

sacred geometry, he thinks. so as above, so below. perhaps heaven is the most terrifying landscape of all. 

he shrugs his shoulders, exhales again. they do not turn to look at him, and for some reason he wants them to--to prove that even though ozymandias might have fallen, even though there is a chance that they will end up a monument to the hubris that all human beings are subject to with their traitorous and hungry hearts, he still stands. “the reason is that our fear is the most individual thing about us--what king, sitting atop some distant throne, could ever know what terrifies us, in the deepest, most fetid wells of our souls? we don’t even know what we are afraid of until it finds us, and then we spend the rest of our lives putting up walls, keeping it out of our minds--how could another, fallible human being, account for that?” 

he glances at them again, raises an eyebrow. “you’ll pardon me if i speak out of turn, but you don’t strike me as the kind of person that fears much.”

[theghcstwriter]

philistined​:

———

Laszlo’s head jerks up from the section of the hull he’s caulking, cheeks smeared with the dirty work of it. His mustache twitches with impatience, eyes crinkling as he fixes him with a pointed look from beneath furrowed brows. “You’re certain it isn’t just me?” Jabs the brush in his direction. “—way you’re yammering on, edjit this, barker that— it’s my hide that’ll get the lashing.”

Then he cocks an eyebrow as he sizes him up for intention, a slow, quizzical arch. “Though, something tells me you’ve already cracked that,” ducks his head back down to dip his brush, “y’are a sharp one, Vicky.” A glint from the corner of his eye stays his hand at the end of the next tar-slathering stroke. That cigarette case, tarnished silver catching lamplight, hinging open in his direction. The caulker rocks back on his heels, then. Cranes his neck to peer down the corridor and confirm the lead was indeed looking the other way. Satisfied with the relative obscurity this claustrophobic deck provided, he deftly snatches one. Props it between his lips and leans in for the struck match. 

“Shite?” He grunts sourly. “That’s an improvement from the last. Next step up’s worthy of wiping shite, I’d imagine.” Loo roll, or the like. “Oh?” he scoffs ( and minds it carefully, because the snicker’s almost honest-to-god mirth ). “Would you be so kind?” 

Laszlo leans back on his heels again once the cigarette’s lit. Steals another glance down the hull to mark just when he might be sniffed out for slacking on the job. “You’d owe me as much, after this. Distraction does a seaman in, you know. Here— write up my charges, then, if you’re so clever with a pen,” he lifts a hand and counts each wealthy possibility off his filthy fingers. “Dereliction of duty. Insubordination—” he’s having fun with it, now, despite the curdled look he affords Victor. “Think fraternizing with a guest while on shift’ll see me permanently on six-water? Or just general duty owing?”

And of course the caulker doesn’t miss the shake he gives those papers. His manuscript in progress no less! “Now, mind the caulk with those—” a little more earnest in the tone, now.

---

y’are a sharp one, vicky. 

not for the first time he wonders what exactly it is he’s doing here--at a certain point after being buried alive, does the victim not become comfortable with his end? does he not lie back and exhale because there is finally some certainty, some finality to the chaotic game of chance that his life has been up until that point? why does he feel the need to struggle like this, to keep clawing at the lid of the coffin with this bloody fingertips and close his mouth to avoid swallowing the gravedirt? what is he doing cracking jokes with a tabloid sewer rat wearing the skin of a ship’s caulker like a wolf wears the skin of a sheep, without any of the wolf’s threat? why does he smile and roll his eyes as he might have if he’d ever had a younger brother when the idiot calls him vicky? 

as with most things that have happened thus far on this voyage, victor finds that any line of questioning he might pull on, might follow down the rabbit hole or into the heart of the labyrinth, is useless--it doesn’t change the fact that this, strange as it may be, is the truth as he knows it now, and that it is the job of the artist to adapt to that truth, to use it or shape it in his hands until it serves his needs. the universe, in its wisdom, has given him laszlo--and victor will use him to the best of his ability, until the world outside of these wooden walls pits them against one another like dogs fighting for the same discarded bone. 

“my, my, my, if you put half of the thought into these characters as you did into making me into some sort of evil mastermind in your imagination, we might make an author of you yet.” he drawls, shrugs his shoulders as if such a thing would never be possible, even in the mind of the most wildly creative bastard to ever pick up a pen. “unfortunately, as i do so enjoy seeing you get your knickers in a twist, you overestimate just how much time i spend thinking about you, laddie boy. when i’m not trying to hack my way through this,” he carefully sets the papers out of reach of the caulk when the other man blanches, with a roll of his eyes. “you’re nowhere near my thoughts.” 

he reaches out and puts a hand on the man’s shoulder, grinning wolfishly. “i wouldn’t worry too much about it. by the time we’re either decomposing at the bottom of the sea or back on british soil, you might actually graduate to readable. i won’t go as far as entertaining--but readable. assuming all the duty owed doesn’t get to you first.” he takes a drag of his cigarette and hums mock-thoughtfully, as though they’re the people they both wish they were--lounging in plush chairs in some opulent london salon, making jokes about the work of whatever hack was revelling in their five minutes of popularity that particular week, as though they had not both been that very hack in the eyes of others. as if they did not sit aboard a vessel between scylla and charybdis, with only a bucket of calk sitting between them. 

“and that’s not even half as bad as--oh what was it you said, that my pages were--” he raises an eyebrow and meets the man’s gaze. “so derivative of my betters it was laughable?”

[reveriemind]

Oliver Jackson-Cohen | The Haunting of Bly Manor

[hotniatheron]

“i am nothing // if not determined to recreate myself as a god.”

— Laura Villareal, from “baby teeth,” published in Palette Poetry (via lifeinpoetry)

[theghcstwriter]

ofpowdered​:

there was something truly romantic contained within the field of literature — a view of the world that only the writers seemed to understand, despite their desperate drive to describe it to others. he lived within it; he wore it with every breath. he looked out, and somehow, the weight of the in shined from him. 

winnie did not know if she hated or envied him. his gift was becoming clearer, his purpose more so. and what of her? always the question. what of her?

“of course mary is the superior of the two — she’s the one still alive.” how frowned upon they both had been within the hastings household; how much she had enjoyed bringing together those deemed scandalous in the arts all the same. ( her husband had never quite understood that what she was doing was entertaining the future. ) what secrets did they possess that so emboldened them to greatness? a more direct question: did she see it within the young man, that hunger, that terrible drive that left poets dead but remembered? “but i must admit i have grown to hardly care for either shelley here. don’t you find them lacking in the imagination of true horror? could they ever have conceived of what we see today?”

a laugh like they were in on a secret together, and then a shy covering of her mouth with her fingertips, as if afraid that secret might make itself known. “answer me this, my charming man: how would you describe it? impress me.” 

---

is that how victory is measured, then? who is left standing on the field after the battle has concluded? who gets to place his foot atop his dead enemy’s chest and use his blood for ink? mary shelley lives, but was it not she who had taught that the line between those that still draw breath and those who are buried is gossamer thin? is not victor standing here now the very proof of the thing--that the dead should be burned to their ashes, or their wrath should be feared by their self appointed conquerors? he wants to ask the woman who stands before him, her pearlescent teeth sharpened into fine points by the wars of the english roses, how one is meant to survive such a game, to be remembered when his withered hands can no longer pick up pen--

but then again, perhaps she stands here with him now, gazing at him with eyes that he is surprised ever managed to convince anyone that they were anything other than calculating and penetrative, because she would have no answer to give to such a question. perhaps he is not the only one onboard in the business of trying to stage a resurrection. may the rest of the world tremble at such a thought--for what could be more terrifying, more miraculous, than the return of the queen, victor stood beside her with his pen as sword? 

which is why he gives his best boyish grin and shrug of his shoulders, rubs a hand across the back of his neck. a diamond in the rough--something made from nothing at all, isn’t that what every well-bred woman wants? proof of her powers to alter the world around her? “i do not fault them for their shortcomings of imagination.” he chuckles, shrugs his shoulders again. “horror, terror, those are the most difficult emotions to put to page because all human beings experience them differently. not to mention the fact that our minds are not meant to fathom fear in a pure and honest way--we have too many defense mechanisms.” 

he meets her gaze, and raises an eyebrow before he moves his eyes just beyond her shoulder, to where the rocky coastline of the island stretches out before them like an infected gash, cutting across the constant motion of the sea. “you deserve better than to be simply impressed, ms. hastings, you should always be amazed by words, by story.” he says, and plays at worrying his bottom lip between his teeth in thought for a long moment, as if the words aren’t already fluttering around his mind like anxious moths around a streetlight. “you ask how i would describe it? i would say that we are like dante, but our horrors are worsened because we lack our vergil to make sense of the things we have seen. i would also tell you that it is a terrifying thing indeed, to make it to the lowest level of hell, the icy abyss where satan fell from heaven itself, and find that the devil will not show his face to you. to find that the devil has been everyone you’ve known, shared a meal with, a glass of wine and a kiss with, all along.”

[theghcstwriter]

sirensignal​:

.

“is that said in jest or sobriety now, victor. if it’s shelly one would rather prefer to think of his elegy for keats.” in the tranquil air nour’s drawl moulders, suspended between dust motes. the sunlight is such a liar. the afternoon sweetens with gold, surfeit of goodness. between their fingers the cool metal railing drools with molten yolk. how could terror ever gorge itself beneath this calm. “stanza fifty three, love. if there’s a copy at hand on the ship, perhaps you’ll be of a mind to peruse it.”

nour chooses to lounge on the taffrail, chooses to bathe in the pleasant light. they hardly have eyes for victor, dripping bleakness in a puddle of his own poetic distress. “does this environment put you in a mind for despair? i find it all quite droll, this… habit of funerals, all the tepid inaction. nothing about it whets the appetite.” in a different time, nour would have their palm resting on a notebook, would be fixed on the crease of victor’s brow, his working mouth and industrious palms, poised for a pen to weep ink onto a blank and waiting page. the apathy has sapped them of even that. their questions are rhetorical, their interest grown lethargic.

“in the absence of wind, perhaps we might dip under the water to find those trunkless legs of stone, hm? water as sand in this metaphor. perhaps that’s the way to go, all the answers lying on the chalky seabed. all the bones of the dead marking up some ancient tablet beneath our promethean’s narrow hull, some… flat tombstone where every letter can be taken, dissected and dated down to the marrow.” they’re uttering nonsense. eyes shut and soaking warmth. “perhaps that’s the lock and the secret.”

---

“no more let life divide what death can join together.” he says, as he watches them perch atop the railing and tilt their head upwards towards the suddenly generous sunlight--as if they were cleopatra perched atop the throne at alexandria, absently waving a hand at each new grovelling roman as they subjugated themselves against the tiled floor. as if they were companions aboard some pleasure cruise and not damned to some eternal cycle of katabasis and reemergence--he could almost convince himself of such a thing, were it not for the way the island seems to sprawl out behind them, shelley’s life and death brought together by geological accident. “and you accuse me of sobriety, nour.” he smirks and shrugs his shoulders. “i’ve always preferred forty one. he lives, he wakes--’tis death is dead, not he; mourn not for adonais.” 

i find it all quite droll, they sigh and cast their gaze away from where he stands--its a familiar gesture, but like shelley’s keats, shelley’s adonais, tis death that is dead, not he. he does not mourn for victor bell in the way he might have, before setting foot here, before laying his eyes upon the very ends of the world itself--instead he grins wolfishly, takes the few steps to lean against the railing next to them. “i should have known you would say such a thing--events as of late have been too fantastical for even you to pass them off as journalism. a mutiny--that’s just unbelievable enough to be news. but a hellish gate opening up and swallowing a young man in the prime of his life? there isn’t a soul in the world who would believe such a thing wasn’t pure fiction.” 

he spares a glance to the sea, as they speak of water as sand, of the bones of the dead and tombstones. it remains wine-dark despite the sunlight, as if night had simply decided to remain on the surface of the earth instead of fading with the dawn--he would be unsurprised, if someone were to put on the diving gear again and find adonais below, a warning that even a colossus could not survive this place with his entire being in tact. it begs the question, which he does not give voice to, which forces the muscles of his hand into stillness rather than the constant twitching of action--what is to be said for them? shall he forever be a resurrection unseen, witnessed only by those who only remember separation, the pain of becoming, as separation from mother? 

does this environment put you in a mind for despair? they had asked the question so casually, tossed it aside because they could--he does not have such luxury, such time to waste batting at laziness with cat’s paw. because this place does fill him with dread--and dread, as any author knows, comes with a ticking clock. 

“i always knew the line between truth and fiction was nothing more than red string, easily stepped over, easily snapped or cut with fate’s own scissors--but i never expected the price for the violation, the traversing between the two, to be--horror, terror, fear.”

[intopermanence]

“Is that what it was? That terror, was it…love?”

— Clarice Lispector, trans. by Ronald W. Sousa, from “The Passion According to G.H.”

[theghcstwriter]

WHEN -- AFTER THE MUTINY WHERE -- THE TOP DECK WITH -- OPEN 

how transformative is light. 

had it not been days ago, that this place had seemed something brought into being by the lips of dante himself? had they all not gazed out of windows, stood upon the top deck in the darkness, and expected to hear the moaning of cain carried across the empty space by the eternal wind? had not estrada, in all of his endless wisdom, looked cassius and brutus in the eyes as they dangled above the mouths of the devil and pretended he did not see them there, before he enacted their final crime? had he not looked upon the spidering cracks of ice and imagined himself as that very angel, cast out of heaven, fallen to this place to be trapped? 

he looks upon it now, cast in sunlight, and such things feel like moments from a dream, poorly remembered upon waking. it’s almost beautiful, in such a way that exists in complete opposition to the terror that the darkness had inspired--the ice has now given way to homer’s wine dark, black blood sea, strong and promising movement in every rolling wave, the sun casts light upon every rock spire on the island, making it appear more like a fortress, a castle a maiden might emerge from, beckoning weary travelers inside with the promise of rest. even the cold somehow feels more gentle in its bite, like a puppy that has not yet grown teeth, or chooses not to use them while engaged in play with a littermate. it laps gently at the exposed skin of his cheeks with rough tongue. 

he inhales it deeply, feels the corners of his mouth pull upwards--before he hears the approaching footsteps behind him. he does not speak, in the hopes that the person will think him engaged in serious contemplation, or overwhelmed by the events of the past forty eight hours--but they are undeterred. so he exhales and turns his gaze towards the rocky shore, shrugs one shoulder with a clipped gesture. 

“i keep thinking about ozymandias.” he says quietly. “that the wind will blow away the sand and there they’ll be--his trunkless legs of stone.” he shakes his head, does not meet their gaze. “at least then it would all make sense--he warned us that if we looked upon his works we mighty would despair.” a breeze forces him to tuck his hands into the pockets of his coat, and he finally glances over, to meet the gaze of his new companion. “it’s a poem--shelley. percy, not mary--though i think mary is the superior author.” 

[tatumriley]

Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Peter Quint in The Haunting of Bly Manor - “The Altar of the Dead”

[theghcstwriter]

WHERE -- BELOW DECK WHEN -- AFTER THE MUTINY  WITH -- @philistined​

“you know what i really fookin’ hate, laszlo?” victor drawls as he lowers himself onto the floor next to where the man is working, sheathe of papers tucked to his chest, pen firmly in place behind his ear. “is that i could find wherever you are onboard this wooden coffin, any time i wanted to--all i would have to do is follow the sound of your master caulker there. he should speak even louder next time, i’m fairly certain there are people on the coast of north america who didn’t hear him barkin’ orders like an edjit.” 

he grins lazily and pulls a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his trousers, emblazoned with looping V and B, tangled together ornately like snakes. it doesn’t shine like proper silver should, he doesn’t care for it with a cleaning cloth or watch the way it catches the candlelight with pride--it had been a gift once, a final haymaker tossed across his cheekbone to remind him that he should stay splayed across the ground, with only the pavement his only parchment, the blood dripping slowly from his mouth his only ink.

congratulations on graduation, the note had said. you’ll do great things in the future, and i for one cannot wait to see them. the letters E and L had been slashed across the page at the bottom. 

the case deserves to rust like the memory of the man--which is why he’s not precious about offering the contents to the man beside him, with his rat-like features and his prose as rigid and opaque as his caulk. he lets his own hang loose from his lips, while he strikes a match. “finished your pages, shite as usual. you should let me give you a copy of the memoir i wrote for one of the admiralty--saw it laying around here somewhere. you’d be better off just copying my descriptions word for word. might even just let ‘ya, cause i feel so bad about this.” he shakes the sheathe of papers with a laugh, ignores the warm tendril of familiarity that wraps itself around his spine, settles at the back of his ribcage like a banked fire. 

the pages were honest--better than whatever dickens had put out in the time they’d been gone he had no doubt, but he’d fling himself over the side before he admitted as much. laszlo would probably think he was lying, at this point-- or he’d break victor’s nose and ask what good that was supposed to do him, to be more constructive instead of complimentary.