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Post by weirdmonger on Oct 4, 2022 10:59:48 GMT
AHOY, SAILOR BOY! by A.E. Coppard
“true as the dust in the road”
“As still as death it was. And then the shock came; the sudden feeling that there, round about him, just behind, some malignant thing was watching, was about to pounce and rend him, and he shrank at once like a touched nerve, waiting for some certainty of horror—or relief.”
This ghost story is a great one, just discovered. Beware spoilers, this review being intended for people who will never be able to read it..
A sailor in a town needing lodging for one night, is matched with digs run by a mulatto woman. But that intriguing start is not the story at all! The story ranges from most intriguing pub talk he has about dead people. That most people you have known have not died. And when strangers die, you cannot empathise, they are simply dead people you never know, dust to dust. Till he plans to sit quietly at night before going to his digs and he senses the “smell of an actress” and suddenly a white hankie appears on the seat he sits on. And the lady he earlier glimpsed is sitting next to him. And she enunciates the best description of becoming a ghost that I have ever read. And the need for her own best clothes in life instead of the dull stuff she was dressed in as a ghost.
“‘Then I died, suddenly,’ she went on. ‘Imagine my disgust when I realized, as I soon did, that I was buried in a stupid ugly gown of cheap cotton, much too big for me! Ugh! […] Then my thoughts began to swirl around and come back to me, my worldly thoughts; and though I knew I was dead, a waif of infinity, my thoughts were only of what I had prized in life itself—my wonderful clothes. And while I thought of them, they too began to drift around me, the comforting ghosts of them all—gowns, petticoats, stockings, shoes.’”
And it has a very telling elbow moment, too! —
“‘I’ve never seen anything like him in my wanderings!’ He held the packet towards her, indicating the picture of a fathead seaman with whiskers and the word HERO on his hat. ‘Have one?’ he asked her, but she declined. So he leaned his elbows on his knees and puffed smoke at the ground between his boots.”
He thinks she is mad or the fine actress whom he originally smelt. And to his delight she takes off her clothes to prove she is a ghost…
Yes, a great ghost story. The dust puffed between my books.
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