Extract
Extract from The Ghost of Highgate
Nob finally discovers the identity of the impossible Victorian who has appeared in his life.
Nob has spent days trying to decide whether the strange Victorian appearing around Highgate is a lunatic, a trick or something considerably harder to explain. Eventually, his visitor decides to demonstrate the answer.
“Now look, and you’ll see right through me.”
I’m rather mesmerised, yet my eyes remain fixed upon his figure as it starts to slowly dissolve and sway. It appears akin to a hologram, and indeed, I can see everything that lies beyond his body or whatever it has transmuted into.
“Wow!” I exclaim almost in a whisper. I go back in time, but I don’t recall eating mushrooms recently, and my rock and roll days are long gone. However, it feels like a shiver comes over me and, blimey, what an experience, this is as trippy as I’ve ever had!
Okay, weird old boy, straight to the point, “Who are you?”
“Karl Marx, and I guess you know why I am here.”
“Play pinball?”
He’s staring at me as if I spoke Martian.
“All right! You ought to make it right.” I cut to the chase.
“Right.” He replies softly.
“So you’re a soul from the afterlife then?”
“A soul? Heavens no, that was merely Plato’s artifice to explain the equal knowledge needed beyond our fallible senses.”
“But if you’re not a body or soul, what are you? Some kind of spirit, a manifestation of the mind?”
“Oh no, not Descartes’s dichotomy of body and soul, body and mind! Old stuff. He merely said thought’s seat was the soul to save his skin. There is no such thing as a soul, my dear boy.”
“Alright mate, but if you aren’t a body, what exactly should I call you if not ghost or soul?”
“Please, I am no mere spectre or apparition. Simply regard me as an enduring idea, temporarily manifest.”
Extract from The Ghost of Highgate © 2023 Bob Mazzei. All rights reserved.