The Pen Is Mightier

Some people are born with talent. Some can soar across a piano and create music to make men weep. Others sing, produce complex mathematical theorems, or make vast sums of money through business. My talent, as it turns out, is for communication, but not through penmanship or oratory. Simply put, I ease the passage of those who have not left this world into the next.

It's not an exorcism. I do not destroy, banish or remove. I commune with those souls who have decided not to leave this particular plane of existence and try to work out why. There is always a reason: a reason which can range from the need to see justice done, to wondering whether the family estate was split in the manner asked for in the will.

I hope by reading this someone may come to understand the circumstances in which I now find myself. I hope they may be able to help me in the same way as I have tried throughout my life to help others. I hope in some small way for forgiveness for what I have done.

It seems I have been granted some time to set pen to paper, so please allow me to scribe away my remaining seconds whilst I try to ignore the screams outside.

~~

Yesterday – or so it was when all this started – I found myself in a rather grand looking manor house atop a hill in a small town in rural Devon: a gentle spot surrounded by a loop of one of the larger rivers, a property in a commanding position, sitting quietly in stone majesty from its position above the town. Dappled shade in the garden, gently sloping lawns, and a high wall separating the grandness from the rest of the town rabble had made it an irresistible buy for its new owner, an ex‑army Colonel. He had bought the house for a knockdown price from a past-it rock star who had decided to move back to London to see if he could re-start his aging rock star career and get laid. As the Colonel discovered, it went for a knockdown price not because the fading drummer could no longer pay for his drug habit, but for the simple fact that it was haunted.

Well, sort of.

There were none of the classic signs. No secluded patches of cold in an otherwise warm house, no flickering lights or feelings of being brushed in passing as if by a light draught of wind. Merely, things got moved. Or more specifically; pens and pencils, paper, anything left in the area of the Colonel's old leather-topped desk in the corner of the upstairs room.

Being a rather grand old house, it was constructed over three stories, with a wonderful eyrie-type loft space in a corner turret that looked out over the river on one side, and the town on the other. A space for thinking, a room for dreamers and artists; somewhere to sit, watch, and get lost in the patterns on the water, or the clouds in the sky, or merely wander through the corridors in one's head. This night, however, it was to be my working space.

The Colonel left me alone in the house, with assurances he would be back the following day to check whether I had been able to teach the ghost to make paper aeroplanes, or indeed whether I had managed to get him, or her, to go away. Once he had gone, I made myself a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and went upstairs to await the onset of darkness.

Unusually on this warm summer's evening, I enjoyed the change towards night. It was a truly beautiful spot, and compensated for the normal sense of unease that always precluded an attempt at communication with a restless shade.

As the moon rose through the few wispy clouds, and the bats in the roof took to the air to search for something winged and tasty, I watched silently as a piece of paper lifted as if caught in a breeze, and settled in the centre of the desk.

The seconds ticked by, and although tuned by nature and long association with the paranormal, it felt like an age before anything else happened. The hairs on my arm gently stood to attention, and then the moonlit room was graced with the presence of another as a pale translucent hand took form above the paper. I sat in silence for several minutes in expectation of more, but that was it.

Just a hand; there was a suggestion of a ruffled cuff and expensive cut of ghostly patterned cloth, but nothing else.

The hand gestured, and a pen juddered across the desk as if summoned. I was impressed despite myself. This spirit had a will and intent sufficient to animate objects. Not in some random destructive manner, which is relatively common, but in a structured way that implied purpose and motive. The pen lifted slightly, then fell. It lifted again, hovered briefly, and fell back to the leather. The frustration was palpable in the room and the ghostly hand balled into a fist, soundlessly striking the desk again and again. How many times had this happened? How long had this been going on?

And this was where I earned my crust: time to intervene.

Mostly spirits will ignore the living unless they have been wronged by them, or they make an effort to communicate with them. So far ignored, I made my presence known by thought. The projected message 'I'm here'. Simple enough in form, immediate in effect.

The atmosphere in the room altered immediately and a palpable wave of anger bombarded my senses. The hand froze, then rose into the air, flexing in readiness. You could imagine the body still there, tensed, ready for fight or flight, the hand ready to find a weapon or clench into a fist. The moonlight that had previously lit the room with bright silver light dimmed, and a dark edge blackened my vision.

Before any action could be instigated by the now angry spirit, the next thought I projected was just as simple 'I'm here to help'.

There was a slight change in stance, and as I continued projecting words to the presence in front of me, it relaxed and we engaged in conversation. The shade was hesitant at first, then questioning, and eventually asked for help. A simple request it seemed.

As has happened many times in my slightly unusual career, this was a case of unfinished business, a task incomplete. Once we had conversed, it turned out that the long dead man was a writer. The only thing important to him was to finish a long-forgotten piece of work.

Perhaps I could finish it for him?

No.

As soon as the suggestion had left my mind the response came back; panicked, powerful, and painful, driving me to my knees with its power. Gasping, I sought for an answer and framed a tentative response, scared now by the power of the previous reply. Thankfully there was acquiescence, and a few minutes later I found myself sharing a physical space with a non-physical being.

Unpleasant. Tingly. Wrong. Interesting. Informative. But overall a reminder I was communing with someone long dead, alien, and cold to the mind. We shared a space so this other presence could use my strength to pick up the pen, rest on the paper, and carve out the ending to a long-forgotten work with an unknown plot.

He wrote with the long practiced hand of the scribe, and as he did he unwittingly gave himself away. Sharing a space as we did with him intent on his work, he let down his guard and we shared not only space, but memory.

As he wrote, the story of his life unfolded in cinematic form in my mind. What a gift this man had had! His writing could influence the material world around him but was limited in one area, he was unable to affect himself. While he could not change the way he appeared or his clothes, things he wrote of other people and places came true. A gift that grew in power with age, he influenced a massive area. He wrote of love, and people fell head over heels; he wrote of rain, and the clouds gathered over drought-stricken fields; he wrote of peace, and warring factions sat down and broke bread together.

As with any gift,, however, there is a double edge; a curse, a dark side. Fame it seemed was fleeting. For an unattractive and socially awkward young man who could change nothing of himself, he retreated into solitude, a solitude that brought introspection and depression. Alone and starved of love, experimentation with his gift brought ruin.

As is true with all humans, he was capable both of great acts of good, and terrible acts of darkness: in time it was the darkness that won, and the shadowy side of his soul prevailed.

It began with petty malices. An old man glancing at the mansion fell and broke a leg; a carthorse reared spilling a load of barrels to the cobbles, a house caught fire, birds fell dead from the sky, and fights grew common outside the public houses. Uncaring laughter echoed from the high tower at each of these events, and the townsfolk mourned their once-gifted sponsor.

As the years passed things got worse. Appalling crimes, myriad deaths and assaults degraded the people of the town to barbarous animals. Unable to fully control their actions, debauchery and murder flourished with every addition of ink to page.

But even evil must sleep. Callous disregard bred indifference and, while writing what he considered his greatest work, self-absorption lapsed into sleep. During the night, a king's man who had been sent to investigate the dark rumours broke into the tower and put a knife into the heart of the sleeping prophet, breaking his hold on the town. The turret and its contents were put to fire, with the stiffening form of the prophet and his works consumed by the flames. Time and shame sealed the lips of history, the turret was eventually rebuilt, and nothing physical remained of the evil which had consumed the town.

Nothing physical. So was he seeking redemption?

I managed to pull away from the contact a little, retreating from the darkness and soiled contact of his memories, and focussed on the writing in front of me. As I scanned the scrawling script, he reached the last paragraph of his greatest work and panic rose within me. I had been outwitted. He was strong and clever this spirit. Knowing I would find his past irresistible he had allowed me to lose myself in his memories while he wrote. As I was lost in his past, he revisited his greatest work. Hours passed and he held me tight in his cold embrace, fully in control. Finally, he came to the end and finished writing with a flourish of his pen.

The contact broke.

The hand lifted from the table and became a shimmering pearlescent figure who stepped away from the desk, faced me, bowed elaborately, and with a mocking smile on his lips faded into the bright clear moonlight.

It had ended simply with two words.

The End.

And it was.

Almost...

...Almost.

I have some little time left it seems. I have no idea how far what I can see extends, only that it is at least to the horizon. From what I saw of his past that appeared to be the limit, and I can only hope this is still true, and his powers have not grown with the passing centuries. Maybe I will take his place and whisper my secrets to another like me in the future. Maybe this written testimony to my own stupidity will survive what is going on outside.

Maybe...

He has gone; his work is complete. The screams from outside are my only company now. He was certainly classical in his attitude to the end of his world. His penmanship has meant I have seen four giant horses with their mythical riders thunder across the face of the moon, the scythe and sword glinting in the uncaring moonlight. Pestilence came first, his giant white horse spreading fear through the screaming throngs below; the second was War, his red charger leaving havoc and murder in its wake, his sword scattering blood in dark drops; the third Famine, the gluttonous figure folding over his skeletal horse in overlapping folds of flesh. And, finally, the shrouded figure of Death on his pale green steed partially eclipsed the moon, gathering the disembodied souls and tearing them from this reality to the next, the scythe harvesting those who had passed on.

I am exhausted and alone now, the screaming has ceased. One edge of the remaining world is lit with flame, the other with an encroaching dark which moves like a plague of insects, devouring and consuming the firmament. He had originally written it this way so he could see the end of everything he had come to hate before he himself was left as master of the wasteland which remained, but his own carelessness had stopped him. Trapped in the shadows he could not summon the necessary strength to finish his last greatest work until someone had given him the way out. Me.

If anyone does ever see this, I am sorry. My ego has caused this, my own faith in my abilities, the faith that anyone or anything could and should be helped. The buzzing is close now, breathing is becoming difficult.

I am sorry, I just wish...

The End