At The End Of The Passage

[poliphilo]

"At The End of the Passage" regularly turns up in anthologies of great ghost stories. Like many of the best in the genre- "The Turn of the Screw" for example- it leaves us with questions. Were there really spooks involved or was everything in the mind? And if the spooks are real why exactly is Hummil being haunted?  I have never been able to decide whether Kipling's decision to leave all the doors open and idly flapping is a strength or a weakness. 

Rating it purely for scariness- and how else should you judge a ghost story?- I give it no more than 4 or 5 out of 10.  "Things in a dead man's eye?" No, I don't believe in that either. The most unsettling moment comes when- having always observed Hummil from the outside- we are suddenly jolted into his shoes and see what he sees- as he sees it.

The true horror is existential. Four men gather to play cards once a week, in choking heat, in a bungalow with a torn ceiling cloth, not because they  particularly like one another, but because they'd otherwise go mad from boredom and stress.  If I don't rate this as one of Kipling's masterpieces it's because I feel it might have been even better- by which I mean more frightening- without the ghosts.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't think Kipling tells us enough. Why is the thing blind? Why weeping? Why can't it wipe its face? Is it an Indian spook or a European one? Does it belong to the place or to Hummil? I like a ghost story to be mysterious, but I also like to be given some idea of what is going on.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I think it may be an Indian spook. Note that Hummil's attendant describes the circumstances leading to Hummil's death ("he went down to a dark place and could not get away quickly enough") in terms that suggest familiarity with that dark place.

I wonder, having just read "The Mark of the Beast", whether the eyeless weeping face might have belonged to a spirit based on a leper. (Oh, and what's-his-name was Fleete.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't think we have enough information to draw any conclusions. It's equally plausible that the horror is something out of Hummil's past.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

No, I think the servant's comments support the "Indian spook" theory. I'll grant you the leper is more speculative.