I am afraid of the dead. The dead live inside me and I am afraid of them. The dead have an awful power over the living even though they themselves are dead. Did you ever hear of the awful power of the dead? The dead have a momentum that is immense, a momentum that you cannot imagine, and they are locked on to their doom. They are locked onto their doom and they want to bring us with them. They want company you see, they act from a deep dark well of malice that we cannot even begin to imagine. They act out of their unspeakable despair.
The dead call out to me. Who can hear them? Who can hear the cries of the dead? They call out to me in voices that are silent, silent as the tomb is silent, silent as the abyss is silent. The dead cry out for company but not with their own voices, for they have none. They cry out with the voice of the Great Malignancy that has overtaken them, and pulled them to their doom. Unable to save themselves, they make sure to bring us with them and this is the awful momentum of the dead.
The dead have already reached their destination – They have been hypnotized by their doom. Even when they were alive they had already reached their destination. They could not resist its pull. Even when they were alive they were dead and this is the dark force of predestination, the dark force of predetermination. No despair on earth can be greater than the awareness of this dark force of predetermination, which is the path that must be walked, the path that leads to the abyss. No despair on earth can equal this awareness and it expresses itself through unspeakable malignancy. This awareness expresses itself through unimaginable malignancy. That malignancy is reaching out to me.
I am afraid of the dead because the dead overtake the living. The dead always overtake the living. The dead always overtake the living and so the living are already dead. The dead cannot live and so they resent the living, they cannot tolerate the living to live. That is the one power they have left them – the power to reach out and overtake the living. This is their only recourse, the only way they have of expressing the terrible despair that has destroyed them. They channel the Great Malignancy. They helplessly channel the Great Malignancy as if it were their own will, but it is not. It is the will of the ancient malignancy that has overtaken them, the unspeakable malignancy that wants nothing else but to overtake all who live, all who have the temerity to live.
The temerity to dare to live is the ultimate crime. We have not the right, they tell us. What gives you the right to live, the silent voices of the dead cry out accusingly. How dare you assume the right. The dead overshadow the living – the dead have always overshadowed the living. We try to outrun the shadow that grows, the shadow that gains on us day by day, but that shadow will eventually fall over us. The calls of the dead have stopped us in our tracks, they pull us back to where we belong. This is our loyalty to our fathers and our father’s fathers. How dare we live when they could not.
Life itself is the crime. Life itself is that which cannot be forgiven. There is no resentment on earth that can compare with the resentment that the dead bear towards the living – or towards those who would live, were that permitted, were that allowed. Life itself is the crime, an unbearable insult in the eyes of the dead. They cannot abide it; this is the one thing they cannot bear to see – that their children should live when they cannot. Life is a terrible, terrible reminder of where they went wrong. There can be no greater torment than to be reminded of what they have failed to do, of where they went wrong…
No hatred on earth can compare with the hatred that the dead have for the living! They watch on with their baleful eyes, they watch over us with unspeakable malice. They call out to us, they call us back from life. They remind us of our loyalty, the loyalty to our fathers and our father’s fathers. How dare they live when they may not! The dead live within us and direct our lives. They live within us even though they themselves are dead – they seek the solace of drawing us with them. This is the only solace that is left to them, the solace that is no solace, that solace that will prove to be the great despair of all.
The solace that the dead involuntarily seek is the solace that is the inversion of all that was good within them, or all that would have been good within them. They seek solace for the despair that they have given themselves over to, and yet this solace turns out to be the greatest despair of all – it turns out to be a horror beyond all reckoning. The dead call out to us and we cannot resist them. They call out to us from beyond the grave, just as their forefathers called out to them.
