Shallow ground

Today I saw Shallow ground, which tells the story of a small rural community on the edge of the forest; an unsolved murder, a disconsolate widow and a sheriff's office that is about to close... but that will have to reapply when a naked teenager, covered in blood, carrying a knife that was used in the murder of a young girl a year earlier, appears; an appearance that is only the first of a long series of supernatural manifestations. We don't understand what's going on any more than the protagonists do until the almost end of the film, which is not a big revelation or a reversal of the situation, but rather a slow enlightenment – spoiler alert: the dead come back for their executioner.

All of this made me want to write again – I too, before I die, want to write my own Salem or my own Pet Sematary. I had started a novel with David as co-writer, a few months ago, but in a more gory register, without any aesthetic, psychological, or even narrative research – we just wanted to see if we were able to do like these hobo writers who survive by publishing ten thrillers or horror novels, or porn, or all of them at once, every month of the year.

Maybe I should do what I did with my first novel, which was never published and never really written, except for a few scenes, a very detailed outline and tons of notes and comments... imitate Borgès and write a short story about that book, as if it existed and someone else had written it. Maybe I should write down ideas of characters, places, situations, in no order, and shake it all up. My own psyche will make sense of this mess after a while.

Note from June 7, 2019:

Thirteen years later, I still haven't done anything with it. I've never found – this must be a talent of its own – a monster or supernatural manifestation that I wouldn't be deeply ashamed to include in a story, taking things at least a little seriously. Maybe I'm an uptight nerd, deep down. Maybe I'm also horrified enough by real life, everyday life, and more and more, that no supernatural monster seems to me to be able to really compete with cancer, rape, wars, the absurdity of life. I regret it a bit, because writing a real horror novel without frills, that stains, that scares, that takes its monsters seriously (I'm thinking of Dean R. Koontz's Phantoms, for instance) must be a very relaxing exercise.