I'm writing this post for those that have read The Ghosts of Heaven and have wondered about the page of numbers at the close of the book. I'm getting emails asking me to explain it, so it seemed a good idea to write this post so that I have somewhere I can direct people to. If you haven't read the book, I wouldn't bother reading on.
This is the page in question:
Most of the people writing to me by email have guessed that it is a code of some sort. To be precise, (and I use all my words very precisely), in cryptographic terms it's not a code, it's a cipher. I have been asked to explain what it means, but I don't want to do that for a number of reasons, the most important of which is, as Stanley Kubrick said, 'You tell people what things mean, they don't mean anything anymore.'
I am interested to find out if anyone can solve it, and how long it takes for that to happen if so, without any help from me. This blog post will be the only thing I have to say on the matter. I am the only person who knows what it means and how to decipher it - not even my editor or closest family know, so the answer will go with me to my grave. If this is irritating, I'm very sorry. One or two people have been rather rude and angry seeming in their emails to me, which I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about. Someone asked me what right I had to put something in a book they couldn't understand. Hmm. There's a worrying thought for you.
Anyway, I will say here what I have said to anyone who has written to me so far.
1 - Yes, it is a cipher.
2 - And yes, it can be deciphered: everything needed to do so is contained in the book.
3 - As I said above, I use my words precisely.
If you don't understand it, or if you can't be bothered to try to work out what it means (and let's be honest, why should you be?) then that's fine. Not everything in life can be, or has to be, understood. Perhaps that's one of the things I was trying to suggest with the book.
Sometimes, when I’m speaking to someone about one of my
books; they’ll tell me they didn’t understand it. This happens a lot with the
end of White Crow, and then there’s the
whole thing with Midwinterblood. And when that
happens, I try and help them understand it, which is usually just a case of
asking them to re-read bits of it more slowly. I’m not a writer who tells you
something five times. I usually say it just once, and if I say it any more in a
first draft, my editor makes me take it out in a rewrite anyway. That’s one of
the reasons that my books are sometimes shorter than other people’s. And that’s
one of the reasons why I wish some people would read more slowly. Books are patient;
you can afford to take your time when you’re reading for pleasure. Anyway, I do
my best to explain, but to be honest, what I’m actually thinking on the inside,
when someone says they don’t understand something, is ‘good’.
If that sounds mean, I should try and explain. I don’t
believe you have to understand something in order to understand it. That sounds
like nonsense, so I had better explain some more. I don’t believe that you have
to consciously, clearly, easily understand something through and through in
order for you to connect with it, in order for you to take away something
valuable from it, in order for you to ‘get it’. In fact, I think that sometimes
the works of art that seem initially at least to confuse use and disorientate
us are the ones from which we gain the most in the long run.
I believe that the right words, the right music, the right
images can in some way connect with older and deeper parts of our minds than
the ones we use to pass A-Level Maths or learn to drive a car with.
Keir Dullea as astronaut Dave Bowman, from 2001: A Space Odyssey
And as evidence of this, I offer you 2001: A Space
Odyssey, by Stanley Kubrick. 2001 is many people’s candidate for the
greatest film of all time and in polls
by people who know, it’s usually in the top ten (it’s in my top two). A
little history: The film was written by Kubrick and legendary science-fiction
writer Arthur C. Clarke, based on a short story of Clarke’s called Sentinel of Eternity. Kubrick ran
through many possible titles before settling on ‘Odyssey’, hinting at the epic
nature of Man’s voyage through prehistory and into the future. Released in
1968, it’s an incredible film, ground-breaking in many, many ways, and far
ahead of its time in certain respects. To give an example; the film accurately
portrays life in zero-g, the view of the Earth from the moon and various other
aspects of space travel and all this was done over a year before we actually
set foot on the Moon. (Kubrick got this stuff so correct that certain sorts of
people have used it to create a laughably lovely conspiracy theory in which Nasa
got him to fake the moon landings so America could win the space race).
The main thing about 2001 however, is that it is weird. It
is a very mysterious film, there is very little dialogue (none at all for the
first 32 minutes) and when there is dialogue, it’s casual, almost throw away.
It’s been called a silent film in the sound era, despite the fact that music
plays a vast and vital role in the film. As if strange occurrences on
prehistoric Earth, and later, on the Moon have not been enough to unsettle us,
the final sequences (known as Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite) take us on a
trip in the most psychedelic sense of the word. A small snippet here.
Now the point of all this is that I first saw this film when
I was about seven years old My dad ran a film club at the arts centre he ran,
and from time to time, my brother and I would go along and watch all sorts of
movies that we were ‘way too young to see’. I think my dad knew differently. I
cannot pretend for one minute that I understood anything about the film after
the first hour or so. Even today, people argue and debate and write dissertations
about what the end of the film means. But my point is that it doesn’t matter.
You don’t need to understand in order to understand. The images, the music, the
words; they all connect directly to a deeper part of the brain, and our
experience is all the richer for it. I saw 2001 at the age of seven and my mind
was blown wide open, never, I suspect, to close again.
What has all this to do with The Ghosts of Heaven? Well,
here’s one thing; realising that I was writing a story in four parts, which
span human existence from prehistory to the far future, it would be
disingenuous of me not to acknowledge my love of Kubrick’s amazing film; hence
the name of the protagonist in the space section, Keir Bowman (fans will know
why), hence the strapline on the cover, and hence many other things. And as to
understanding the book, well, I’m not sure I understand it myself, and I wrote
the thing. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t got something to say.
Very few writers can truly be called unique; American horror stylist H.P. Lovecraft is surely one who can. Lovecraft, never a success in his own lifetime, and barely more than a cult figure since, is nevertheless one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. The same can be said of the writer whose work in turn most influenced Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s work was perhaps a little wider read than Lovecraft’s ever was during their respective lifetimes, but Poe’s nevertheless was derided and belittled while he was still around to hear such things. Only in France, for some reason, was Poe truly celebrated, and outside of that it’s been the sad fate of these men to only achieve their true worth after their deaths.
Lovecraft's grave marker in Providence, Rhode Island. Like many other fans, I left a quarter as a token of respect.
If you don’t know Lovecraft’s work, a few titles will begin to give you the idea: The Shadow out of Time, The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House. But these are no conventional horror tales; Lovecraft not only created a style all of his own, he also created an entire occult mythology for the world in which some of his tales are set. His pantheon of hideous ancient gods; the Old Ones, Cthulhu being the most notable, are painted as being horrible dark influences on humanity from times before our imagining and places beyond our understanding.
Lovecraft created his own corner of New England; Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, the Miskatonic river as the diabolic centre of unnameable terrors and lurking creatures, drawing upon (modern) America’s oldest places as his inspiration for twisted versions of reality. Here, we find decrepit houses touching eaves across foetid alleyways, we find unknown and unknowable things sliming their ways from murky harbours, and time and time again, we find madness. Madness was one of Lovevcraft’s recurring themes. His own father was confined to a mental hospital when Lovecraft was just three years old, possibly suffering with General Paralysis of the Insane (as it was known then) – the tertiary stages of a syphilitic infection. It’s hard not to see this as a direct influence on the writer, a writer whose own life was riddled by ill health and strange behavioural issues.
In coming to write the section of The Ghosts of Heaven known as The Easiest Room in Hell, I decided I wanted to pay homage to a writer whose work I have always enjoyed. This part of the book is set in an insane asylum on Long Island, New York in the 1920s, and features a poet who has gone mad. His name (and Lovecraft fans will know why) is Charles Dexter. Dexter spends his days writing a novel in his head, much to the confusion of his doctors. He strikes up a friendship with a newly arrived Dr James, who hasn’t heard of the poet before. When he learns about his writing, he gets hold of a copy of Dexter’s poetry collection, On Drowning, and reads one of the mad poet’s poems. And here then, was a chance for me to let rip and write some Lovecraftiana of my own; the poem called...
Poquatuck
Sea-found, wind-worn and wild; the land will lose. Here are places so old as to defy memory; The point, the creek, the inlet. The old tide mills, dilapidated, were but a blink in the eye of time.
And there are older things here, things which the oyster boats dredge from the deep.
There on the headland; the asylum, and the asylum boneyard, where the land-borne dead are corrupted, harmless bodies are sucked of life; in the cemetery.
Graves grow from the soil; the black fingernails of the monstrosity beneath. It lies far down, under the ground, under the sea, pushing an arm up, up to the air a hand with a thousand fingers; and every fingernail a grave.
Deep in the sea, at the other end of the arm sits its heart-brain, this being from beyond the stars, from the beginning of time: its mashy form quivers inside the shell which protects and resonates its thought-waves across the world in ancient reverberation.
Spiral-set shell mind, It blows a soundless horn to us all, a warning: I am coming.
As a writer, there’s a process that somewhere occurs in your head; a collision between the fantasy space of your imagination and the outside world, in the form of the things that have directly or indirectly inspired your book.
Marcus Sedgwick, author in his shed (but is he?)
Much of the time, this collision occurs while I’m actually in my writing shed, putting words on virtual paper. The space in my shed I see as an exterior manifestation of my imagination – at any given time the walls are heavy with clippings, doodles, photos and words all connected to whatever book I’m working on. And yet, I’m aware that while writing, I might be physically in my shed, but some part of my mind is travelling again, to those places that inspired the story.
A room of one’s own
The Ghosts of Heaven is a book of four quarters, each set in a different time, and a different place, and with a different mood. What connects them is the image of the spiral. This is a book that has taken me a long time to write; what follows are some photographs of the places that gave birth to various elements in the book.
A cave on a hillside.
This hillside cave happens to be in Snowdonia, but it doesn’t really matter – I liked the primal feel of the place. I took this photo with a long exposure, which accounts for the streaks, which I like; it gives it a sense of the mysterious. Whispers in the Dark is the section of the book set in the prehistory, and features a girl on the cusp of making the connection between a mark on a cave wall and the spoken word; when she does, she will effectively have invented writing.
(Modern) spiral rock carvings, near Lausanne, Switzerland.
The spiral is one of the six groups of forms known to archaeolgists as entoptic shapes, perhaps derived from natural illusory shapes ‘seen’ by the eye in the absence of light. They can be found in the artistic creations of our most distant ancestors, tens of thousands of years ago.
‘Fairy tree’, Lumb Bank, Heptonstall.
The section of the book called The Witch in the Water takes place in a Yorkshire dale in the early 18th century. The witch-hunts were more or less over by this time but this story focuses about a very late episode in that dark history. A couple of years ago I was teaching a creative writing course at the wonderful Arvon Foundation, and feeling like a fraud because my own writing wasn’t going well at the time. On a walk in the valley one afternoon I came across this tree. I don’t know if it’s really called a fairy tree, but it ought to be. Folklore is full of the concept of things passing through gateways and boundaries, and if the local people didn’t see this tree with its ‘hole’ as a magical entity, I would be very surprised.
The valley at Lumb Bank, home to one of the Arvon Foundation’s beautiful centres.
The part of the book called The Easiest Room in Hell is set on Long Island in the 1920s. This part of the book evolved from an interest I’d developed in the derelict insane asylums (as they used to be called) of North America.
This is one of those that have been saved, or part of it anyway. What was once the Danvers State Hospital (Massachusetts, US) is now a swanky apartment block. One wonders about the dreams to be had in such a place.
With a nice touch of serendipity, I discovered that many of these old hospitals had spiral staircases in them, central to the theme of the book. Here’s one of them; the Octagon on Roosevelt Island, New York, which contains a beautiful staircase. I wasn’t allowed to take photos inside but there are some amazing ones on the net, both as the building is now, and in its derelict state before renovation.
Here’s one of these old hospitals; the Octagon on Roosevelt Island, New York, which contains a beautiful staircase. I wasn’t allowed to take photos inside but there are some amazing ones on the net, both as the building is now, and in its derelict state before renovation.
This part of the book is also heavily influenced by that most maligned of American writers; the creator of dark fictions and occult beings, H.P. Lovecraft. I made a trip to Providence, Rhode Island, to see both his family home, and his grave marker; which bears the kind of inscription we can but aspire to.
H P Lovecraft’s childhood home, Providence, Rhode Island, US.
Lovecraft’s grave marker reads simply with his name, dates and the legend “I AM PROVIDENCE”. Like many other fans, I left a quarter behind as a token.
The hospital at Danvers, like this one above in Salem, Oregon, on the other side of the States, are two examples of Kirkbride hospitals. The brainchild of Dr Thomas Kirkbride, he envisaged a whole new approach to the care of the mentally ill, a key part of which was the architecture of the hospitals themselves; light, airy and with room to remain human.
The hospital in Salem, famous as both the setting and later filming location of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is another hospital that has been saved – it’s now a social heritage museum.
Inside a derelict psychiatric hospital, Long Island, New York.
I decided to make up a Kirkbride of my own, setting one out on the distant shores of Long Island – part of Kirkbride’s plan was to move away from dark and grim places in the city to sites in the countryside where the open air and healthy aspect would have a beneficial effect on the patients.
The shores of Long Island.
I can’t show you pictures of the inspiration for the remaining quarter of the book, called The Song of Destiny, since it takes place aboard a ship venturing into deep space. The ship is the first voyage travelling to colonise a new planet.
Instead, to finish here’s a spiral staircase, this one from the Pantheon in Paris. Spiral staircases are some of the most beautiful architectural creations, be they simple, or ornate, and for me, they are the ultimate metaphor.
What is the oldest story in the world? How can we possibly know what the first story was? What would it have looked like? Would we recognise it as a story, and would anything in it mean anything to us today?
These are questions that in all probability cannot be answered definitively, but I'm going to try to make a case here for what the original story was, and then (eventually) talk a little about my new book, The Ghosts of Heaven.
It might seem like an impossible task to go so far back in time - it's even hard to find the original version of stories that we know, or think we know, well. This is something I found out when writing My Swordhand is Singing. I was trying to find the oldest vampire story, the very first one. In terms of printed, published books, it's relatively easy to drift back before Stoker, Le Fanu, and even Polidori and Byron to Ossenfelder's poem The Vampire of 1748, but once we realise that since all these tales were inspired by existing folk stories, it becomes much harder to pin down their origins. I followed vampire stories back to their origins in Eastern Europe, but the truth is that vampire-like stories have been told in most cultures, all around the world, since time immemorial (what a great phrase - "unremembered time").
Looking at really old stories, like Bible stories, we might think we know roughly when and who wrote them - for example, Noah and the flood, until we learn that that story was based on an even older flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh, of Mesopotamian legend. This story is based on sources that are over four thousand years old according to some.
The tablet in the British Museum recounting the story of Gilgamesh and the flood.
And once we start to discover that many cultures around the world have some version of a flood story, we might begin to wonder whether that's just coincidence or whether there was a indeed a great flood event, or events, that inspired people to tell these kinds of tales. We might also start to realise that we have probably been telling the same stories over and over again, throughout our history, recast in different ways, depending on the times in which we're living.
There's nothing wrong with that, and nothing so amazing about that, in itself, but I do love the implication of this idea; that stories we know well today have unbelievably ancient origins. Let's look, for example, at stories from Greek mythology, such as Theseus and the Minotaur, or Orpheus in the underworld. We know that the Greeks began to write their stories as long as 2,700 years ago, but once again, that many elements were based on even older stories from earlier cultures. What the stories of Theseus and Orpheus have in common is the notion of a journey into a dark space, in order to confront death. As they say, the Greeks had a word for it, and that word is katabasis. But once again, we find that the Sumerians had beaten them to it; Gilgamesh himself made a voyage to the underworld on his quest for immortality.
What's striking here is that these are not just old stories that we get told in primary school and then, unless we become an archaeologist, anthropologist or Assyriologist, forget all about. The proof of that is to be found in the number of modern retellings of a story like Orpheus in the underworld; from the 13th century Breton 'lay' Sir Orfeo, to what is regarded to be the very first opera, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, through to modern times; Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld (which gave us the tune now known commonly known as the can-can), to Jean Cocteau's film trilogy, even to Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge which (with a nod back to Offenbach) the director saw as a being a parallel to the ancient Greek story - the hero has to enter the 'underworld' (in this case, Montmartre during the Belle Epoque) in order to rescue his doomed love.
Why do such stories last? Why are they so powerful? For me, it's all to do with Darwin. Just as species thrive or fail under the pressures of natural selection, so must stories; the good ones survive, the weak ones are told no more. What makes a good story is of course an question for another day, but one essential element must be that they tell us about ourselves in some way. They tell us what it is to be human, to experience human emotion, and so on. It's a fair assumption then that the old stories that stood the test of time are ones which directly related to our experience of being human, to our earliest and most primal emotions and fears.
So what is the oldest story? What does it look like? I'm guessing that it looked something like this:
As we sat around a fire-pit, there must have been some powerful primal experiences that we were driven to encounter, and one of them will have been to venture into a cave. We know that many early hominids lived in and around caves. Our earliest examples of art are the extraordinary paintings of places such as Chauvet, Altamira, or Blombos, where engraved ochre dated to as old as 100,000 years before the present day has been found.
Chauvet, France
Altamira, Spain
Blombos, South Africa
We needed the cave, as a place of safety and of shelter, and yet, venturing in for the first time must have been always been a tense moment of fear; what would be found inside? A cave lion? A bear? Or perhaps, nothing, and a new safe place to camp would have been welcomed.
Think of Theseus venturing into the dark labyrinth to fight the beast inside. Think of the connotations of the cave as being the entrance to the underworld, and Orpheus venturing to confront Death itself. Think of a stone age homo sapiens entering the dark cave, to return triumphant, or to meet a terrible death. That story must have been told and retold, round the fire-pit, since the very earliest days of Mankind.
If you're still with me, here's a video that captures the flavour of The Ghosts of Heaven, one quarter of which is set in the world I have just been describing; a stone age community. Since it's now known that a lot of the cave art was made by juveniles' children and teenagers, the section of the book called Whispers in the Dark takes a young woman as the hero, a young woman who is on the verge of doing something vital to the development of our species. She's about to make the connection between the spoken word and a mark, be it a mark on a cave wall with a piece of charcoal, or in the sand by the fireside. When she does that, she will have made the first steps on the road to the development of writing, and without writing, there can be no civilisation. Writing enables us to do several things; it allows us to pass meaning on to people either distant in space, or in time. It enables us to remember. It enables us to instruct, to educate and to copy: and copying is essential to civilisation too, because without copying we could not build on what our ancestors had achieved before us, something that is the utmost foundation of civilisation.
