Spirit (32 page)

‘There's no question that your sister's manifestations are very similar to other sightings,' he said. One of the most common characteristics is this ability to leave the scene of the sighting by changing shape, by becoming something else. The visitors don't simply vanish into thin air, they change into a scarf or a sheet of paper and disappear that way. It's also interesting that she appears to be slightly unfocused. We never
imagine fictional characters exactly, down to every last mole on their chins; and this is how your Peggy-stroke-Gerda seems to look. She also seems to appear less vividly in California than she does locally. This is because she imagines that the Snow Queen story is centred on the house where she was brought up; and this is where her imagination is at its strongest.'

‘What makes her appear?' asked Laura. ‘What do you think she wants?'

Miles shrugged. ‘I don't think she actually wants anything, in the sense that people want money or love or forgiveness. It sounds as if she's being very protective towards you both – in fact, over-protective. Wasn't that a characteristic of Gerda in
The Snow Queen?
'

‘Oh, absolutely. The whole story is about her travelling to Finland and Lapland to rescue her brother.'

‘Quite. And in that case, you're going to have to get accustomed to the idea of being guarded for the rest of your lives.'

‘I can understand if she attacked the Reverend Bracewaite,' said Elizabeth. ‘But why would she kill Dan Philips? He was there to help me, not to hurt me.'

‘I can't say. It might depend on what was going on in his mind.' She looked puzzled. ‘Let me put it this way: imaginary characters are apparently able to “see” other imaginary characters, even if they're created by people who are still living. Dan may have imagined himself to be doing something with you of which your sister didn't approve, and so she killed him.'

‘Doing what, for instance?' Laura demanded.

‘Use your imagination,' said Miles, rather archly.

Elizabeth sat back. ‘I never thought of that. But that means

. . . well, any man who finds me attractive could be at risk.'

‘That's right. You could be very dangerous to know.'

‘But I've never had any trouble before now.'

‘You've been out with men before?'

‘Of course.'

‘Maybe their intentions were all honourable; or at least benign. Maybe Dan imagined doing something violent. It's impossible to say.'

‘What exactly
is
this Peggy-girl?' asked Laura. ‘You say she's not a ghost. Does she exist on her own, or do Lizzie and I have to be there to see her? What I mean is, when Lizzie and I die, will
she
die, too? Is she real, or are we imagining her?'

Miles said, ‘I don't know for sure. But so far, all the evidence seems to suggest that these spirits have their own independent existence. They survived the death of their own material brains; I'm sure that they can survive the death of the people who knew them when they were alive. As to what that actually
are
. . . my theory is that they are creations of the collective unconscious, that great shared pool of human thought which all of us are tapped into. If you go back in human history, to the time when men first became capable of articulating the things they thought about, you can find dozens of examples of fictional and mythological creations which took on flesh.

‘For instance, there was a thing that Viking sailors used to call Shony. It was a manlike creature that used to appear in the North Sea, with shaggy hair and spines. It was supposed to devour seamen who fell overboard; or else it would mimic the screams of a drowning man, and when somebody dived into the water to rescue him it would tear them to pieces. Viking shipbuilders used to redden the keels of their ships by tying a victim to the logs on which they rolled their boats into the water – kind of a sacrifice, so that Shony wouldn't attack them. There was no real evidence that Shony existed, but then something very interesting happened. Sir Walter Scott the Scottish novelist wrote about Shony, calling him by his local name of Shellycoat. Here . . .'

He stood up and sorted through a tilting stack of notebooks
until he found the one he was looking for. ‘This is what Scott wrote. “When Shellycoat appeared on the shore, he seemed to be decked with marine productions and, in particular, with shells whose clattering announced his approach.” '

‘About two years after this was published, a young man was found on the beach near St Andrews, in Fife, with no legs and half of his torso missing. It looked as if he had been attacked by a shark – although there are no sharks in the North Sea. A month or so later, a young woman was found mutilated, and then two dogs. A young anthropologist from Cupar decided to keep watch on the beach. He camped out there day and night for three weeks until one morning he saw a woman coming in his direction, walking her dog. There was a dense
hoar
, or sea-mist, so it was difficult for him to see very much. But when the woman was only about two hundred feet away from him, he heard a clattering sound, and behind her “some huge, hunched Thing came out of the ocean shallows, covered with dripping brown weed and mussel-shells.”

‘The young man shouted a warning, the woman turned around, saw what it was and ran. The thing was quick, though. It caught her dog and literally tore it in half, devouring one half and throwing the rest on the beach. Then it disappeared back into the mist.'

‘My God,' said Elizabeth. ‘Did anybody find out what it was?'

From the back of the notebook Miles produced a photocopy of a blurry charcoal sketch. ‘This is what the anthropologist drew, less than an hour later.' The sketch showed a woman in a black coat running to the left foreground. Her eyes were deep black smudges of terror. This was a woman who was running for her life. Her hat had flown off and was lying on the beach. Fifty feet behind her was a massive shape, black and bulky, hung with seaweed and encrusted with shells.

‘It could have been a hoax,' said Laura.

‘Yes, you're right, it could be a hoax,' Miles agreed. ‘The anthropologist swore on oath that what he had seen was real, and so did the woman, but they could have invented the thing together; or somebody could have dressed up like Shellycoat just to scare people, although it's hard to imagine how he managed to tear a dog in half. However, two interesting facts came to light. One was that a local lad named Angus Renfield had drowned the previous spring at the same spot, and that his favourite story was Sir Walter Scott's description of Shellycoat. Apparently he used to try to frighten his pals by covering himself in weed and chasing after them along the beach. The other fact was that a fishing-boat returned to St Andrews shortly afterwards with a damaged trawl-net. The crew discovered that a huge hole had been torn or bitten out of it. In one part of the net, they found twenty or thirty mussel-shells, in an overlapping pattern, all interwined with coarse, greasy hair. These shells, if you held them up and shook them, made a distinctive clattering sound.'

‘That's a pretty scary story,' said Laura.

Miles lit another cigarette. ‘It's impossible to authenticate, although you can still see the shells in the library at St Andrews University. I have a photograph of it somewhere. But this isn't the only instance of a fictional or mythological being coming to life. People have reported seeing Dickensian characters, Joycean characters, Raymond Chandler private eyes. A nurse at a drug clinic in London says she was totally convinced that a man who came for treatment was Sherlock Holmes.'

Oh, come on,' said Elizabeth. ‘She must have been helping herself to the medicinal brandy.' She wanted to laugh but the serious look on his face completely silenced her.

‘No, the nurse wasn't drunk and she wasn't imagining things, but somebody was. Somebody was imagining that they were Sherlock Holmes. Somebody dead. Their spirit hadn't survived in the form in which they actually lived. When you
think about it, why should it? Your imagination is completely free from the constraints of your body. Somebody had imagined that so strongly that they took on a perceivable form.

‘There is vast psychological power in the collective unconscious. Jung knew that, and used it to help people with schizophrenia and other serious mental disorders. It's like one person being knocked down in an accident and dozens of other people rushing to help . . . medics, nurses, doctors, surgeons, anesthetists, blood donors . . . not to mention the community that built the hospital and paid for the emergency services in the first place. The only difference is that the help you receive from the collective unconscious is psychological rather than physical.'

‘If this is true, how come the whole world isn't populated by fictional characters?' asked Laura. ‘Why aren't we shoulder-to-shoulder with the Hardy Boys, or Huckleberry Finn, or Anne of Green Gables? Just think of it! I could be Scarlett O'Hara when I die!'

Miles poured himself some more coffee. His expression was still serious. ‘I don't think all spirits take on the shape of fictional characters. I don't think that very many spirits survive the moment of extinction. In almost every case that I've come across, the deceased person died a traumatic death. They almost always drowned or suffocated, or suffered a long period of oxygen deprivation in some other way. I don't have any idea how it happens, but oxygen deprivation seems to be one of the necessary conditions for the imagination to be released. This is why so many people report out-of-body experiences when they're clinically dead for a short period of time. There have been far too many reports to be dismissed; especially since they're all so similar. The sensation of floating to the ceiling and looking down at your own body . . . the sensation of moving away towards a bright light. Seeing parents and friends who have predeceased you. This is the
human imagination leaving the human body, and after that has happened, it can take on any form it wants to, provided it has the will, and the strength, and the need to do it.'

‘I'm finding this very difficult to believe.' said Elizabeth.

‘I'm surprised,' Miles replied. ‘You're a writer yourself . . . you should be quite familiar with the power of the human imagination. Believe me, in the backs of our minds there
is
another world, with other people in it. They exist because we want them to exist. You have only to close your eyes and think of them, and there they are. You can actually see them. You can actually describe them. You can hear them talking and smell their perfume. To all intents and purposes they're
real
. They're really real.'

Elizabeth was thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, ‘Is there any way to get rid of them? I mean, if we can make them up, surely we can unmake them, too.'

‘You're talking about getting rid of Peggy?'

She nodded.

‘But Peggy's your sister,' said Miles. ‘She may not look exactly like your sister any longer, but that's who she is. You can sense it for yourself. What if Laura here were in a fire, and her face got all burned, and she had to have reconstructive surgery so that she wound up looking like somebody different? You wouldn't want to get rid of her, would you?'

‘This is different. Peggy's liable to kill people. Besides, she's dead already. Whatever this Peggy-girl is, whether it's Gerda or Peggy or somebody else altogether, the Peggy that I knew is lying in the cemetery and she's not going to come back.'

‘You're wrong,' Miles replied. ‘What's lying in the cemetery is Peggy's material body, that's all. Her essential being, what she actually was, is still with us, and will remain with us.'

‘You're saying I
can't
get rid of her?'

‘How can you get rid of Gerda from
The Snow Queen?
Burn
every copy and brainwash everybody who's ever read it? Once a character has been devised, he or she can never be
un
devised.'

‘But she could ruin my life! If every man I ever meet is liable to be frozen to death, how can I have any kind of relationship with anybody?'

‘I guess you could try living as far away from Sherman as possible.'

‘Oh, I see! I have to go live in China because my dead five-year-old sister doesn't like me going around with men who have sex on their mind!'

Miles lit a third cigarette. For a moment, his face disappeared behind the smoke. Then he blew it away, and nodded, and said, ‘Yes . . . it may actually come to that.'

‘And what about me?' asked Laura.

‘I guess the same thing applies,' said Miles. ‘After all, there's every reason to think that your Peggy killed the Reverend Bracewaite, isn't there, even though you didn't actually see her do it.'

Elizabeth said, ‘There's really no way?'

‘Not that I'm aware of. Spirit-forming isn't exactly a known science, after all. You have to believe that a fictional character can actually exist before you can work out how to be rid of her, and that's not a leap of faith that many people are prepared to take.'

‘I'm not sure I'm prepared to take it myself.'

‘You've seen Peggy for yourself.'

‘I know. But maybe it isn't Peggy at all, maybe I'm deluding myself. And that black shape that froze poor Dan to death, what could that be?'

‘The Snow Queen,' said Miles, matter-of-factly. ‘When a spirit becomes a character, she can conjure up all of the other characters that make her what she is.'

‘That's what I thought,' said Elizabeth. ‘But the Snow Queen wasn't black, like that. The way that Hans Andersen
described her, she was white. She wore a cap and coat entirely of snow, and she was tall and slender, and she was dazzlingly white.'

Miles said, ‘For sure, that's what he wrote in the story, but he was writing for children, wasn't he?'