The horrible thing about a dead body is that it’s dead. All the things, the accidents, the smell, the stiffening, the decay, are all symbols of one unendurable fact: a man is dead. I know that we play at horrors. Games, dreams, pleasant in a sort of macabre way; reality is so very real.
Vampires, I think, are real. I’m serious. Something like vampires, I’m sure, at some level, there’s some reality to it. When I was locked up in that crypt with the dead man—I never knew I feared death before this—one of the things I feared was that, dead he wasn’t dead. Undeath. Why is that fear eternal if it’s just fantasy?
I thought long and hard about it during my alienation. There are things that are alive and shouldn’t be, things that are dead but not still, and things that are born in the decayed realm that never were alive or had anything to do with life.
And then there’s me, locked away, buried alive, my body rescued, my mind destroyed, healing, slow, rest. This sanitarium is a dark place, but not so dark as where I’ve been. They tell me what I’ve told them can’t be true, they’re probably right in a way, but nevertheless, I danced with the dead, though I remembered enough of mythology not to eat their food.
Tale Told 