For Brian McDermid, With all my love, now and always
And for Kate Davis Gyles and Michael Edward Gyles, My two favourite things that go bump in the night
But first on earth, as Vampyre sent, Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent; Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race;
– Byron, The Giaour
In the general belief, however, there was but one land of shades for all alike. The spirits, in form and feature, as they had been in life, wended their way through dark forests to the villages of the dead, subsisting on bark and rotten wood. On arriving, they sat all day in the crouching position of the sick, and, when night came, hunted the shades of animals, with the shades of bows and arrows, among the shades of trees and rocks; for all things, animate and inanimate, were alike immortal, and all passed together to the gloomy country of the dead.
– Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
– William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun