Winter has always been the proper time for telling ghostly tales. At this season Earth turns its face from the Sun, brooding on its own dark thoughts like a scolded child. If it slumbers, its dreams will not be easy.
In former days, when the winter hearth was both heat and light, the family would gather there to share stories. With the darkness lapping at their feet they told of ghosts and night hags, buccas and bogles, long-fingered lurkers in the reedy ditch. In speaking of such terrors they hoped perhaps to exile them to the realm of the unreal. That is a border the demons are always patrolling; its fences need constant repair.
Today, cocooned in light and glass, we smile at our superstitious ancestors. We have gone so far beyond them. Our windows do not whistle, the carpet is soft, our beds are warm and dry. The screens around which we gather, as they once gathered round the hearth, give us more than mere light. What need now of winter stories? We have physics to tell us what is possible. Psychology pins our nightmares like dead moths.
Yet… if we no longer fear the dark, why do we flood our rooms with manmade light? Why do we insist on music, chatter, anything rather than silence? Why this tinsel parade of distractions? What is it distracting us from?
THUNK!
As I ask myself these questions, the lights fail. The TV and computer screens go blank, and the fridge in the next room shudders to silence. Drawing back the curtain I see the night sky prickled with stars. The streetlamps too are dead.
“Just a power cut,” I say out loud, although I am alone. “The lights will be back in a minute.”
There is silence still, and nothing to fill it but the wail of a car alarm in the next street, and the sullen dreams of winter Earth.
Groping my way to the kitchen I fumble some candles and a matchbox. Dim shadows swoop across the room as I make fire. Just then there is a crash on the ceiling above my head, and at the same moment a pale and eyeless face presses itself against the window glass. The candle gutters in my shaking hand.
It takes only a moment for reason to step in. The crash is the clothes rack toppling over yet again, it assures me. The face is a blowsy summer rose, still hanging on the bush outside. It’s perfectly explicable, says Officer Reason. Move along now, nothing to see. Reason is quickly on the scene – but fear is quicker, and I’m still looking back over my shoulder as I’m hustled away.
Soon the electricity returns, and the television flickers into life. The wheels of the world start turning. Music beats and voices bleat. Advertisements shiver their feathers like peacocks.
Somehow, though, I cannot settle back into the distracted life. I leave the bright screen, lift the latch that keeps the dark out, and thrust my face into the snowy air. In the street I see the stealthy prints of cats and birds, and other creatures that I cannot name. The stars that prickled in the winter sky are still there, somewhere, beyond the orange streetlights. A few flakes of snow land on my cheek and nose. I hear the garden foxes screaming.
Shall we join them?