Kill the Dead

Kill the Dead by Tanith Lee



Ghostslayer


Parl Dro tore up the plank and his fingers thrust through the soft rot beneath and touched the single bone embedded there. It belonged to the ghost, when the ghost had been a man. Through the concrete essence of that bone, the ghost, unwilling to depart, had kept its hideous link with the condition of life. A hundred persons had since died because of it. It had exulted in their screams of terror and agony. It would have killed the rest of the world if it could.

Even as Dro raised the bone towards the jaws of his vice, the ghost was on him. Made corporeal by its long pseudo-existence, it had the energy to drag him down and fling him over.

The dead who lived, like the mirror image, right hand in reverse, tended to attack leftward or sinister. It occurred to Dro quite abruptly that the ghost had fastened its teeth and nails into the calf of his left leg, ripping and gnawing at him.

Introduction

This book, which is partly at least about deceptions (both of others and oneself) has, perhaps not illogically, itself incurred a kind of deceptive myth. For what it’s worth, then, I shall try to set the record straight.

In the summer of 1977, a radio play of mine, the first of four bought by the BBC, was recorded and broadcast. For me this really was Heaven-on-wheels. I loved every moment of seeing/hearing it come to life, through the voices of such wonderful actors as Jill Balcon, Stephen Thorne, Elizabeth Bell, and Sean Barrett, not to mention incredible music composed by Christos Pittas, and gleaming direction by Richard Wortley. And needless to add, I loved every one of the subsequent productions, too. However, on the heels of the first play I received an invitation to write a TV script, for the by-then cult SF series Blake’s Seven. My delight at this–I had watched the show from its first episode–was not unmixed with fright. Where I had felt at home with the medium of radio from the start, TV was quite another country. Though my radio plays were far from unflawed, I’d had no fear of being unable to evoke the actual mental furniture required for their presentation, even placing my music cues with confidence. But, of course, I’d been avidly listening to radio drama from the age of six upward, while my family–poor as underpaid church mice–never even had access to a TV until I was twelve. And, despite the fact in those days TV was rich in marvellous drama–Chekhov, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Pinter were regularly staged, not to mention amazing things from Jack Rosenthal and, later, Alan Ayckbourn–I still felt I knew very little about the modus operandi of a novice TV writer’s task.

Having met the production people, however, who were both helpful and inspiring, and some of the actors–ditto–I accepted the commission and duly wrote Sarcophagus. And I have to say, once I got over my initial timidity, the script flowed, and indeed very little was altered for production. My intention from the start was to attempt to focus, in turn, on each of the characters (a possibility of my doing more scripts was mooted quite early). I aimed, at least slightly, to unravel two of the main characters in that first story: Cally, the telepath widowed of her people, and the devilish, clearly also messed-up Avon. I wanted to open them both out on the screen, and more than aided by the powerful acting of the cast, I think I managed it somewhat. (My second episode, Sand, took on Servalan–a damaged psychopathic fiend held in an exquisite form–for my money Jacqueline Pearce was and is one of the most beautiful women in the world. Long before Servalan, I had seen her act in classical roles, as well as the extraordinary (again cult) horror films The Reptile and Plague of the Zombies. I believe she is one of our great actors, mysteriously recently underused. It goes without saying she also brought the second script to vivid life.)

Actors are probably the people that I am most fascinated by, and certainly rank high for me among those I respect. Having met the cast of Blake’s Seven, then seen them at work, and got to know some of them at least a little (Jacqueline remains, I am honoured to report, a friend), it was perhaps inevitable that at least one or two of them might get into future writing of mine.

I have to say, both before and since, I have often ‘employed’, as it were, actors in roles in my novels and short stories. To name but a few: Vivien Leigh (many, many times), Elizabeth Taylor, Gillian Anderson, Rutger Hauer, Oliver Cotton, and Dennis Franz. How lucky I am to see (for when I write I do see everything very clearly) these glamorous and brilliant people acting the roles I have visualized them into. Unpaid as well. But then I suppose they didn’t have to learn the lines, or travel to the frequently remote and/or perilous places they inhabit, while the book is in progress. My gratitude for the truly sublime, and sometimes electrifying motivation they have unknowingly given me, aside from my utter joy when watching them act out in the so-called Real world, is far beyond thanks. But I do thank them all, so much.