Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Haunted 惊心动魄

I had finished reading one of the chiller series by James Herbert: Haunted yesterday and I’d found that it was really one of the most bloodcurdling ghost-stories I had ever read. Anyway, I liked the citation used by the author to begin his frightening story, viz.

In memory of George Gooding – rascal…

Okay, until here I think I have done a ghastly mistake which made me feel very awkward, the citation is absolutely not from this page, it’s in another page. =,=”. Perhaps I was inattentive while scribbling this post. In fact, it should be:

To be haunted is to glimpse a truth that might best be hidden

The quotation seems unintelligible to most of the people, however, it has actually made an emphatic and a very brief summary about the whole story that the author would wish to bring out to his enthusiastic readers.

It was a story beginning with a protagonist given a name David Ash.
The prelude of the story related to me in regards to David, who was still a boy of not more than eight years old saw his dead sister, lying in her coffin grinned up at him and tried to reach him with her lifeless hands. And the dreadful feeling I was having at that moment was suddenly interrupted as though someone had used a zapper to change my favorite channel away.

The story was then articulated with another part which narrated to its readers about David, who was presently in his thirties, had a paramount property that he strongly disapprove of folks’ belief in paranormal things and their existence. Look at some of his words when he was in case and you would know what his thoughts were about, pertaining to supernatural things.

“There would be a psychic link only existing between your four and whatever’s taking place.”
“Your minds are like some kind of radio receiver, you as the occupants of this house, may be tuned in to somebody else’ transmission.”
“I am looking for some kind of phenomenon and I gather it takes the shape of a ghost.”
He was soon given an opportunity to go through a case (probably another route leading to a new life for him, this was what my viewpoint, anyway); in other words, he was hired by an old lady, Mrs. Webb, who was about sixty-something, to help her with her 'haunting' problem in her dwelling, Edbrook.

In the story, James Herbert put in four more characters inside to make the story more absorbing, viz. Christina, Robert, Simon and also their dog, Seeker, of which David was afraid.

The story was like a mealy-mouthed narrator as it never wanted to reveal any of the real and hidden parts of it, which James had actually attempted to bring out as what he had did at the beginning with the aforesaid quotation.

In the middle of the story, James was forced or rather deceived to encounter some shuddering and obviously abnormal incidences, which, as a matter of fact wanted to tell David that what he had been contemplating to disagree with the existence of ghosts were not correct.
James tried to make the story an interesting one by giving the protagonist an affliction of stubborn steak, but anyway those incidences had some sort of influence over David’s thoughts and in the meantime, putting him in a flutter. And David had to pretend he was unperturbed by the very horrible experiences he had when he was in Edbrook.

At the end, the story ended in an unexpected way. The author inhumanely gave a fact to David that what he had seen during his three nights in an investigation to a haunting was not real. He was the only victim of horrifying and maleficent game. Robert, Simon and Christina were not real figures though their seemingly unceasing appearance in the storyline – the only with David in Edbrook was only the children’s aunt or rather nanny – Mrs. Webb.

“You saw and talked with no living thing. We were alone in the house, Mr. Ash, just you and I. But not really alone, Robert, Simon and Christina were with us, but not as living people. Seeker too – its poor innocent soul is so confused.”

“He could not help but read the names as they were slowly unveiled:
Beloved children

Robert (1919-1949)
Simon (1923-1949)
Christina (1929-1949)


The most blood-chilling part was when he saw his sister, Juliet…

It was a nice story and in terms of its horrifying index, I would give 80 %.
I admitted it had really scared me off a little after I had finished. =D

1 comments:

virtual lady said...

how come no more of korean? chinese is back?=p