Review: Star Wars - The Mandalorian And Grogu (spoilers)

Star Wars:
The Mandalorian And Grogu
Cert: 12A / 132 mins / Dir. Jon Favreau / Trailer

There's a very telling line right at the very top of 2015's The Force Awakens. After seven years away from cinema screens*¹, Star Wars returned with the great Max Von Sydow's reassurance that "This will begin to make things right". It was not just in reference to the galactic map-fragment he was holding, but a (slightly ham-fisted) message to the audience that the Disney Corporation viewed the Prequel Trilogy-era as marketing anathema, and that everyone was now firmly back in safe hands. We were home! Han, Luke and Leia were back! Albeit never in the same room. Episode VII can be considered a commercial and critical success, although it's not inaccurate to say that the reception and performance of the numbered-chapters which followed and their two standalone cinematic interludes was more, well, variable. After a somewhat muddled Rise Of Skywalker closed-out a trilogy that left next to no cultural footprint, the new Lucasfilm's on-the-fly approach to filmmaking bled over into television output for Disney+, and proved just as tonally erratic. Of course the poster-boy for the small screen-era of the Galaxy Far, Far Away has been The Mandalorian, and despite that the show has its own problems, he is the hero who's been chosen for the 2026 return of Star Wars to the big screen.

So it feels notable that the first words spoken on-screen after another seven years away from the cinema come from Hemky Madera's Imperial Warlord Commander Barro, proclaiming to his subordinates and the viewership alike "I think we can all agree that things were better under the Empire". Again, it's no coincidence that this line is subtextually loaded. Even accounting for 2015-19 being ostensibly under the auspices of JJ Abrams while this phase is in the hands of Dave Filoni, the jibe is still effectively Disney-era Lucasfilm dunking on its own movies. The First-Order stuff you're nudging us to disregard was still made by you, lads. The opening line of dialogue also sets up the expectation, not unfairly, that what's about to follow is going to be pretty special...

SEASON

Timelines are deliberately sketchy under LFL's new management, but The Mandalorian And Grogu takes place after the show's third season, so probably around eleven years after the events of Return Of The Jedi. Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his little green Force-wielding sidekick (himself) are still in the bounty hunting game, but have found a more stable paycheck in taking jobs from the fledgling New Republic (the authoritative face of which is presented here by Sigourney Weaver's Colonel Ward). This rolling contract involves the capture (or, if push comes to shove, elimination) of various mid-ranking Imperial Remnant warlords, before they can amass enough power to bring back the Empire. The movie opens James Bond / Indiana Jones style with Mando in the middle of snagging the aforementioned Barro, prior to being assigned the job of tracking the mysterious General Coin on a trail which will take him deep into Hutt space...

So it's been long established that Disney wanted to move away from the 'Episode' numbering system of cinematic installments (and with fair reason given their hopping around the timeline in each 'non-Skywalker-saga' project), but as well as the omissions of regular features we'd expect here (no lightsabers, no Artoo and Threepio*² , no Wilhelm Scream), this is also the first branded Star Wars movie to open without the 'A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away...' title card, the first to feature cast and production names in the opening credits, and the first to end without sweeping into John Williams' closing score. It's perhaps also worth noting that the aqua-green 'swoosh' branding used across the film's marketing material is nowhere to be seen in the film itself, opting instead for a flat, two-colour title card of the established Mandalorian-logo/font. Progress is one thing, but it's unclear whether moving forward by becoming more 'ordinary' will prove to be a winning strategy for the franchise.

And that question of identity extends well past the title sequence.

The final screenplay here is very clearly several episodic storylines taped together, and the flow of the movie suffers as a result. 2008's The Clone Wars cinematic outing was also plagued by this of course, but at least in the days of network TV those episodes were all the same length. True to Mandalorian TV-form, each of these strands is 'as long as it needs to be', which means the overall pacing is at best baffling and at worst incoherent.

EVIL

As much as tMAG doesn't rely too heavily on the TV show's own established continuity (the price of entry is surprisingly low, you can watch this having only seen the first season), it was never going to be truly Standalone™, coming as it does after 15½ hours of its televisual predecessor's run-time. The fact that the film doesn't even try to expand on those previous events or leave the timeline any real consequence*³ other than finally giving Mando another ship he can use to do his actual job in*⁴ is - admittedly - a weightier burden. Outside of the eponymous pairing very few faces from the small-screen return here, whereas new faces pop up intermittently throughout the run-time thanks to the sequential format. Worse, Star Wars' tradition for clearly and verbally naming its major players in the first act is a coin-toss affair. Zeb Orellios from the Rebels animated series had a background cameo in the TV show but shows up here as a fairly major supporting character, yet his name is only muttered twice in the script where it's lost in the wall of noise. Likewise, iconic Clone Wars bounty hunter Embo features heavily in the movie's mid-section (I can't say 'second act', that's not how this is made) and is effectively nameless on-screen (again, it's said once among longer dialogue, and I only know that because I went out of my way to attend a subtitled screening).

The screenplay does occasionally try to lean into genuine emotion between the two lead characters, but usually undercuts itself with whimsy, stoicism or the fact that one of them is wearing a helmet over his facial expression (and let's face it Pascal is no expressive mime-artist) and the other is a puppet; a nicely expressive puppet for the story's broader strokes, but without Yoda's wrinkles (and size), Grogu's range is, shall we say, limited.

Pascal puts in a reasonable enough turn as Djarin overall, of course. By this point he knows how to play the part, and in the majority of his scenes here he's interacting with effects-work, so the character's trademark stand-offishness works perfectly well. On first viewing though, I found Sigourney Weaver's Colonel Ward to be equally stilted, even more than the character's rank and position suggesting she might be. The next time round, however, I noticed that Weaver's delivery is actually channelling Carrie Fisher's Leia in the Sequel Trilogy films, and the thought occurred that had things panned out differently in our own timeline, it might have been General Organa we saw handing out the 'Gulf War' cards.

DENVER

In fairness, while the film doesn't do much to develop its own cast, it is considerably more interested in playing with the wider toybox.

Despite that opening line as above, there is a reasonable smattering of Sequel Trilogy referencing here (the Anzellans in particular, as well as droid archetypes from across the 2015-19 films), an Original Trilogy-heavy opening sequence (with bonus INT-4 Mini-Rig for those of a certain age) and Prequel Trilogy vibes coming from adapted antique battle droids and their STAP-riders. With Clone Wars supervising-director Dave Filoni now in the big chair at Lucasfilm it's perhaps no surprise that the animated series perhaps has the biggest external influence, with that bounty hunter and his amazing hat doing his best to steal any remaining scenes not nabbed by Jabba's boy Rotta The Hutt (who is, of course, His Own Man™), both characters originally created on his watch. It can't be escaped, however, that Mr Filoni seems to think his cameo appearances are comparable to those of Alfred Hitchcock, when they are instead absolutely of the same calibre as M. Knight Shyamalan's...

Visually, the movie lands in a similarly mixed place.

When the action is taking place outdoors (thankfully often) cinematographer David Klein's visuals are dense and richly detailed (even if they do have that slightly muted, artificial hum brought about by filming on a soundstage), but a lot of the interior scenes are ludicrously dark. And as you'd expect, this problem is only exacerbated through a pair of 3D glasses*⁵. 2018's Solo had the excuse of removing detail to try and preserve budget on a production which required 80% reshoots, but tMAG should be under no such restrictions. In more than a few of the melee-fight scenes it's difficult to tell what's actually happening (made worse in the life-sized Dejarik battle, where watching CGI berserker-creatures clobbering other CGI berserker-creatures is, I'm afraid, terminally uninteresting*⁶). And if the clarity can't be picked out on a cinema-sized screen in blackout-conditions, good luck watching this on Disney+ in your living room.

And while I'm here and complaining about things on a slightly unfair technical level, the Imperial Officers of the Original Trilogy had those Hugo-Boss-inspired*⁷, razor-sharp uniforms and received-pronunciation accents (that's Radio 4 Continuity Announcer to you), largely as a result of trained Shakespearean actors from RADA and the Royal Central School of Speech and Acting. While Commander Barro's informal fur-collar can be explained by his snowy surroundings and his diction at least retains force and authority, the Empire now seems whittled down to the point where we get General Coin, a bald bloke in a grey tweed sports-jacket who looks and speaks like a mid-tier gang boss from Bermondsey. I am still genuinely tickled at how some Americans (which in this case appears to be the entire production and editing staff at Lucasfilm) have an absolute tin-ear for the British accent and its myriad regional implications. No wonder we didn't see Coin during the Original Trilogy; Ozzel, Jerjerrod and Veers would have had him emptying the bins...

TERRITORY

Fortunately, where the film really wants to succeed, it generally does. Ludwig Göransson's score romps the whole thing along nicely (with the slightest dusting of John Williams), even if the soundtrack never feels like it does more than it needs to. The scope and effects work is over-and-above what you'd expect of a TV show (Season Two's krayt dragon notwithstanding), but the overall structure and lasting effect is not. This wasn't made to be 'more than' its small screen sibling, just as an extra story in another medium. Which feels weird given that we've had The Mandalorian for well over half a decade, and the traditional expanded-universe storytelling of comics, novels and video games surrounding it is nowhere to be seen.

In its top-down form, The Mandalorian And Grogu is essentially a series of precariously threaded fight-sequences. Luckily, these fight sequences are where the film positively shines, with Djarin despatching droids and Stormtroopers alike with the adrenaline-glee of an eight year old wired on Haribo and flipping over their Kenner action figures. This really is Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni playing with their toys (and I do not mean this as a criticism).

So does the film show any development of Mandalorian-lore and Din Djarin's evolving place in both honouring his past and forging his people's future, while caring for a youngling who's finding his way between two traditionally-opposing ancient cultures? Nope. Does the film expand upon the mechanisms of the New Republic in its work to rebuild trust and hope in the aftermath of the Galactic Empire? Nope. But is this at least a rounded, satisfying adventure movie designed to appeal to a mainstream cinema audience? Well what do you think? Of course it's not.

Okay, is The Mandalorian And Grogu a fairly undemanding and uncontroversial fandom tickbox exercise which bolts-on perfectly to a TV series which has been - to be fair - absolutely all over the place? Yes, yes it is. Star Wars is well past the era of 'event-cinema' whether we like that or not (to be fair, event-cinema might be well past the era of event-cinema), and in 2026 we have to take the fun where we can find it.

I had enormous fun with this movie.
This is the way.

Okay, it's "a" way...

(Y'see, I'm not even sure if The Mandalorian And Grogu should get any star-rating at all. I automatically assign 7 because it's Star Wars and that's my thing, but this is not a full-marks Star Wars movie. It's arguably not a movie at all. But it's still more way satisfying to watch and ponder-over than The Rise Of Skywalker, and that got full marks from me, so what can you do?)


*¹ Don't @ me. Yes 2005's Revenge Of The Sith was a decade before 2015's The Force Awakens, but The Clone Wars movie landed at cinemas in 2008, seven years before TFA. Yes, of course that counts. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² There is a moment in the opening titles at the New Republic base on Adelphi (which I swear to god looks like it's two doors down from Tony Stark's mansion) where an R2-unit is being loaded into an X-Wing fighter, and the way it's presented - with the droid right in the middle of the frame, visually uninterupted over a lingering shot - seems to suggest that perhaps this is a cameo from our favourite Astromech. But then, Artoo will be with Luke at this point in the timeline, and he's nowhere to be seen here. This would also be a level of subtlety completely not in keeping with the movie's other cameo appearances, so forget I said anything. But if Dave Filoni turns up on the commentary track saying that's R-D2, you read it here first. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Okay, two members of Moff Gideon's Shadow Council are removed from the frame here, but after a blink-and-you'll-miss-it introduction one episode before the end of Mandalorian Season Three they were hardly holding the plot together. Potentially more galactic fallout comes from the deaths of the Hutt-twins, but they weren't strictly characters from the Mandalorian series anyway, so it's debatable when their loss will be revisited. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ Yeah I'm going to say it again, they had to give Mando another Razor Crest because he can't be a bounty hunter in an N1 Starfighter with no storage facilities. Why do you think the first mission we see him completing with that ship involves him decapitating someone and bringing just their head back? Because the guy can't bring back any target which doesn't fit into a small duffel-bag. The N1 was a ridiculous idea and he should have never picked up the keys for it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁵ Because of course I also went to see this in 3D. More out of novelty than anything else, admittedly. Way back in the dim and distant past of 2019, I recall actually having to travel to another town to watch The Rise Of Skywalker in three dimensions, because my local multiplex was only screening it in two. Even back then it appeared the entire industry and audiences alike had given up on the fad, so I have no idea why stereoscopy is rearing its head again now. For what it's worth, the 3D conversion of Mandalorian is 'basically fine'. It doesn't need the 3D (live-action flicks rarely do), and for the most part it's a forgettable add-on which also makes the film's darker scenes even more problematic. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁶ No, seriously. Dejarik is presented in A New Hope (and again in The Force Awakens) as the Star Wars version of chess on a round board. The holographic monsters represent pieces which have their own limited and unique movements and powers, resulting in a strategic game that requires both intelligence and experience to play - hence it being so difficult to win against a droid. The "Dejarik match" in The Mandalorian And Grogu seems to involve releasing the real-world counterparts into a circular arena which is at least painted like a Dejarik board, whereby they all just randomly attack each other on account of being wild animals. THAT'S NOT WHAT CHESS IS, IS IT? IF YOU DID LIFE-SIZE GIANT CHESS WITH PEOPLE IN COSTUMES, THERE'D STILL BE RULES. THEY WOULDN'T ALL JUST START STABBING EACH OTHER AND SHOUTING "YES, THIS IS THE CHESS". ffs... ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁷ You know what I mean by that. ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Atari Gauntlet (1985) Action Figures

1985 was an iconic year in pop-culture history, bringing us many, many creations that are still celebrated today. As well as the albums, television shows and movies that went on to stand the test of time, the mid-eighties was also a formative era for video games, in terms of both coin-op arcade machines and home computing. And one game which landed triumphantly in the sticky-carpeted amusement palaces of 1985 was the legendary GAUNTLET...

This was the top-down, four-player, hack-and-slash dungeon crawler that set the bar (not to mention the template) for an entire genre of video game. A stunningly simple concept (collect treasure, kill monsters = accumulate points, ad infinitum) was given longevity by nature of its collaborative play, and 118 randomised maps (after the first seven 'trainer' levels). If other friends were playing then the game wouldn't end when a player died, and even before that happened then the grim reaper could be staved off by simply inserting more lovely, shiny coins. Not only was the game easy to grasp and addictive to play, but the cabinet itself also took up to four times the money of a single-user title - an instant hit with arcade owners, too.

Yet weirdly, not a lot of ancillary product was created to market it. This is because, for the main part, in 1985 the video game product was the spin-off merch. While Star Wars had written the manual on merchandising, it was an approach applied to movies and - to a lesser extent - TV shows. Video games were adapted from movies, not the other way around. Because of this, gamers tended not to be offered the magazines, posters and t-shirts which are found in high streets today, and the high development-costs of toys made those especially scarce.

Gauntlet was a slight exception to this...


A Canadian manufacturer convinced Atari that having some toys to try and sell was better than having none at all, and four 3¾" figures were produced representing the game's heroes: Thor the Warrior, Thyra the Valkyrie, Merlin the Wizard and Questor the Elf. The design and manufacturing was basic - five points of articulation and largely flat colour schemes - but entirely standard for the style of the time. Two thing hampered sales, however. Firstly that limited development funding meant these four intrepid adventurers were produced alone had no one to battle against, but more importantly that an almost non-existent distribution network left the figures sitting in a warehouse in rural Alberta. The figures that were shipped didn't sell particularly strongly, since the ethos among gamers at this time was that plastic toys were for children and they were more sophisticated.

But viewed through a retro-lens, the Gauntlet figures were pretty exceptional. It's taken this humble collector the best part of four decades to amass them all, so here they are.

Gauntlet enjoyed even greater success when U.S. Gold adapted it for the home computer market in 1986, where the same mechanics (albeit with only two players) could be enjoyed without having to offload coins into a slot and without a dissatisfied queue forming all the while. The following year saw an expansion-pack released exclusively for these same users, and The Deeper Dungeons brought 512 new levels to small screens around the world. Never ones to give up completely, Atari chanced their arm and released four more figures - this time bringing some long-awaited foes to toyboxes:

Already wise to the fact that smaller figures were harder to sell for the same price, this range of Ghost, Sorcerer, Demon and Grunt each came with a different Lobber to help in 'army-building' against the heroes (it was also a wise pack-in since the Lobbers have always been the least popular of the game's sprites, and probably wouldn't sell on their own - even in multi-packs). Sales were slightly better this time around as figure-sculpts and paint-apps improved, but the four enemy figure packs were shipped as-is (ie without the four central characters being either retrieved from storage or re-released) and with the same poor distribution. Again, without opposing characters to actually create play-scenes against (unless the customer had been lucky enough to snap up figures a year earlier), the Deeper Dungeons line did not make a significant retail-impact.

Gauntlet II was a full-on standalone sequel which came to arcades in 1986 and home platforms late the next year. The marketing lesson by now learned, Atari put out one - borderline ceremonial - action figure to mark the occasion...

At the end of the decade and with no more games on the immediate horizon, Atari were moving into home console development and the toy manufacturer went into liquidation. No one knows what happened to the remaining stock.

As it would turn out, various Gauntlet reboots and retoolings have later surfaced over the years - you certainly can't keep a good concept down - but as for the action figures? Apparently that's still a no-goer. Some would say that the 40th anniversary year of the game would be an ideal time to finally get these toys back out in the wild; this collector would certainly agree.

In the meanwhile let's raise a glass, a chalice or a sparkling blue bottle of magic potion, and toast the health of one of the most quietly brilliant arcade games of all time:
All hail Gauntlet!

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Short Weird Tales: Shore

"Bethink the cost, for those who're lost,
To lay beneath the waves.
For theirs is no rest,
In loam so bless'd,
With tides they roam, In search of home,
And cry for warmer graves.



They cry for warmer graves."

Rev. A.Weiss.
The Liberduteus,
1871.

Because of its storied - often bloodied - past, Britain is reputed to be one of the most haunted nations in the world. It seaside towns, with their histories of invasion, smuggling and accidental drownings, even more so. But not all ghosts go bump in the night, and this last was a thought not far from the front of Jean's mind as she sat gazing out of the third floor bedroom window of a once-plush hotel, almost central in the sprawling promenade of a formerly opulent town on England's northern coastline.

Not yet as down-at-heel as the rest of its postcode, the wear was beginning to show nonetheless. It had been a good century for tourism, but things change, times move on, and some aspects of the past turn out to be irretrievable. And this was something that Jean would not let herself dwell upon as the flat sands of the beach below met the slate-grey September sea, expanding calmly back until it became a white, near featureless sky.

It hadn't always been this way, of course. Despite living in the same mining village, Jean had met her husband Peter on a shared coach trip to Ebbscar, and their courtship and marriage had been celebrated annually with excursions to this same town. After their only son Colin had died in a pit collapse before he'd even left his teens, the collective jollity of the group outing had seemed somehow inappropriate. But the couple had continued their holidays here alone, booking what became their favourite room in The Royal Grand, and damn the expense; you only live once.

What at first seemed like a late Summer indulgence soon revealed itself to be an essential release-valve; an escape from the stifling smog and yes, insularity, of the village. Why they couldn't move away - move here - Peter and Jean hadn't decided. But as long as they had their week by the sea then they wouldn't really need to, surely?

And now Peter was gone. His first fall had been seen as an accident, part of getting older. But the second, then the diagnosis, then the massive seizure and then the funeral had happened in a blur. Less than two months, all told. But they'd booked their room at the Royal Grand on the morning they'd checked-out last year - an ongoing game they liked to play with the knowing staff - and Jean had decided there was no better way to honour his - their - memory, than to make what was now a pilgrimage. Jean's neighbours had worried in poorly disguised whispers that the trip might be morbid, but she was determined not to let the photographs in her mind lose their colour like the ones that still adorned the sideboard.

Now she was here, and there was no colour after all. This wasn't right, surely? The amusement arcades which lined the seafront were always an explosion of light, they just couldn't be seen from this height and on the same side of the road. Jean thought she might take a stroll past them later. Not now, it looked like it might rain. Or was that fog coming in? And although there was no visible wind on the sea, it didn't look warm out there. A bracing walk would be better in the early evening when the sound of the arcades and young couples exhausted by a day's fun would serve as a distraction from thoughts upon which she didn't want to dwell. To see a bit of life.

Some of those couples ambled across the beach now. Mostly silhouettes, indistinct shapes at this distance. Families walking with excitable children, their charges impatient to get back to the blaring slot machines, and an older couple repeatedly throwing a ball for their retriever-sized dog, petting it, and then pretending not to notice its left-behind mess in the wet sand. Charming.

Almost directly opposite Jean's window stood a figure alone on the shoreline. With hands either by their side or flatly in pockets, it was hard to make out any more detail, and there wasn't enough of a breeze to ruffle either clothes nor hair. But the stillness suddenly struck Jean as odd, even against the sedentary foot-traffic surrounding it. In the time she'd been looking out on this scene, the tide had turned and the person's ankles were in the water now.

The tidal flow around this part of the coastline was notorious for swiftly cutting off holidaymakers, sea fishers and cockle-pickers from the land, and the signs up and down the promenade warning about this were almost as numerous as the local newspaper reports about those who didn't heed them. The local topography meant that when the high tide came in at Ebbscar, it did so rapidly and without warning.

Everyone on this wide stretch of beach had noted the flow and altered their trajectories inland appropriately. Everyone except this lone figure who was now stood almost up to their knees in lapping seawater. Jean wondered if this was one of those life-sized sculptures they sometimes install in towns to get articles about culture written in the Sunday supplements. But she was sure she could see the figure's trousers swaying with the incoming wavelets.

Transfixed by this dearth of activity, Jean was overcome with a feeling of responsibility. Was no-one else on the beach concerned by this? There were still a few souls walking relatively close to the unmoving, unflinching sentinel. What was this one trying to prove? There must be somebody down there who could help, and Jean creaked out of the window-side faux leather tub armchair to the bed, and the telephone beside it on the nightstand. Reception would know what to do.

There was no dial tone. Keeping the receiver in her hand, Jean clicked the connection-lever, like someone in a bad TV show. But nothing. Perhaps they hadn't paid the bill, she thought, although it was more likely that these telephones that had been in place as long as she'd been coming here were finally giving up, one by one.

Jean hung up the phone - for some reason - and skittered back to the window. Only minutes later and the water was at the figure's waist now, and still they hadn't moved. The room was suddenly very hot and Jean needed to gulp the air to breathe properly. This gave her a better idea. If she could open the window, Jean could shout down and across the beach. Not to the one standing in the sea, but to someone - anyone - else who might be able to help. What if this was someone having a stroke or a fit, and who couldn't call out? Yes they were still upright, but what if?

She managed to pry open the thin, hinged strip of glazing above her head. Apparently, health and safety dictated that on this floor, the Royal Grand didn't want anyone leaning and falling out of their windows, so these were for 'ventilation only'. The building's high Victorian ceilings meant that Jean would need to drag the tub chair undeaneath the strip and stand on its worn cushion to get her face close enough to the opening to allow her voice to travel.

And so Jean hollered. She shouted to the few remaining figures on the beach and the promenade below who all roundly ignored her. Helps, hellos and you-theres all fell on deaf ears. Fine, she'd do this herself, then.

Quickly slipping on the flat, practical shoes that Peter had bought her on their last visit to Denham market, Jean made sure she had her room key and raced - as best she could - for the door. Already out of breath from the sudden exertion, she clattered down the long corridor to the lift, startling the young man she barged past with a grunt.

Impatiently pressing the lift's call-button, Jean couldn't hear the tell-tale clunk of mechanical response, and decided to take the stairs instead. There was, after all, no time to waste. Six spiralling flights and two burning lungs later, she crashed into the hotel reception to find no-one at the desk, although a handful of guests were scattered around the large entrance lobby.

"In the sea!", Jean rasped. "Who's that in the sea??" as she gestured wildly through the revolving door at the beach beyond. This was met with blank stares or faint alarm from the onlookers, although not one of them animated themselves enough to either follow her pointing or ask for more detail.

Furious now, Jean crashed through the revolving door and onto the road outside. Crossing the carriageway and tramlines then grasping the railing which separated the path from the sands, Jean was stunned to see that the beach was deserted. No walkers and no figure in the sea. Unless they'd finally been pulled out to safety? But there'd be a kerfuffle here on the promenade, surely? Or perhaps the waves had completed their task and that person had drowned? But "no, let's not assume the worst" she mumbled to herself. But where was everybody?

The entire seafront was empty. No cars, trams nor a person to be seen. The arcades were closed, their lights switched off. The air was hot again, the absence of breeze conspiring with panic to make breathing more of a challenge. Slowly turning toward the hotel and then giving the shoreline one more theatrical glance, Jean let her angst subside and shuffled back indoors.

The reception area was entirely deserted now. Still no-one at the desk, but no guests milling around either. The cavernous silence deafened Jean as she cast her gaze over the lobby, each footfall of hers ringing like a giveaway on the polished floor as she padded to the staircase. Trundling step-by-step past the flock wallpaper, she had a moment of clarity as a voice in her head - not quite like her own - asked what she was doing. "Trying to bloody help", Jean muttered, unconvinced of the veracity of either the question or the answer.

On the first floor, Jean instinctively left the stairwell and headed out into the main corridor, structurally identical to the higher one she had come from only minutes earlier. At the end of the long, strip-lit internal passage, daylight poured in from a floor-to-ceiling window around the corner. Following the glow, and edging past the room-servicing trolley, the window looked out onto the prom as Jean knew it would. Before she reached the glass, she instinctively knew what she'd see.

While a bar of wet sand was still visible beyond the promenade wall, the tide must almost be in at its fullest now. And out there, appearing to bob gently with the waves although in fact it wasn't moving at all, was the figure's head. Except now it had turned and was facing the hotel. And while Jean could just make out its ghastly expression, she'd swear blind it was looking up and making eye-contact with this very window. Thin, dark hair was plastered down by the sea, framing an unnaturally white face against the waves. The brows punched together and upward in anguish as the face mouthed something. She couldn't make out what the words were, but there was the short, rhythmic sense of a message being repeated. A warning, perhaps.

Enough of this. Jean was only on the first floor. With renewed vigour, she stamped back down to reception and hammered the bell on the abandoned desk. There was no response or reply in the empty lobby, but Jean could swear she saw furtive movement behind the mirror-stripped 'Staff Only' door. Manners be damned she thought, and charged over to find it locked. Thumping on the door brought no answer, and although the movement was no longer to be seen between the reflective slits, Jean knew someone was breathing on the other side.

Vision now blurred by tears, she stalked - less forcefully - out onto the promenade once more. It was completely deserted and felt even more desaturated, as if colour had given up trying to fight the tide. Crestfallen yet oddly resigned, she cast her eyes over the lapping sea once more. Nothing. No figure, no head, not even a boat to be seen. Just a faint, calm line where it met the sky, which stared back in pensive silence.

Well that was that. Jean headed back inside. She doubted she'd go for that walk now. Creaking in through the revolving door, she made eye contact with the young man sitting at the reception desk. Of all the nerve. She said nothing - it was too late for that - and he responded in kind, although Jean's expression of tired and vicious resentment was met with one of embarrassed panic. Good.

Momentarily forgetting what had occurred, Jean tramped to the lift and pressed the call-button. Nothing happened. She remembered this smaller inconvenience and made her way to the stairwell. With no rush now she trudged up the six flights, stopping to regain her breath at the fourth. Finally reaching her floor, Jean stared down the corridor toward her room at the other end. It was only two doors away from the window by the service-bay, where the light of the late afternoon shone in just as it did two floors below.

Wincing slightly as she crept past her own room, Jean turned the corner, squeezed past the floor's housekeeping trolley and stood framed in the window overlooking the sea. Her heart started hammering. The water was not as featureless as it should have been by now. Jean saw the hand.

Even at this distance it was definitely a hand, there was no mistaking it. Waving. Waving at Jean, languidly. Tension erupted as she screamed and pounded on the window. No words, just a long, guttural shriek as her right hand beat out a slow irregular pattern in a grotesque mirroring of the figure's gesture below. Before strength failed her completely, she turned and raced back to her room, the blood roaring in her ears. It took Jean three attempts to unlock the door, but inside - silence.

Although she didn't want to, Jean could not help going straight to the window. But even if she'd just intended to draw the curtains and blot out the events of this damned afternoon, that would still have been a necessity.

"What are you doing, Jean?". It was Peter's voice. In the room. Their room. "What are you doing?". No. She didn't dare look round. Peter couldn't be here, but the voice was louder and sharper than a memory. It didn't ask again.

It was then that she finally buckled to her knees and sobbed, the face in the sea once again exposed by the tide and still silently mouthing as it stared into this room... and the raised arm continued to wave.

Jean's own was the only sound she could hear as she racked, wretched and pounded on the window, the wall and finally the floor. And then silence again. A much deeper silence now, unlike any she'd ever known, despite a huge clutching motion like her whole body was being drawn into a fist-sized ball in the middle of her chest. Jean could no longer hear the roar of blood in her ears. Or feel it anywhere else. And it dawned on her that the background rhythm she'd known all her life - that of her heart pumping blood around her body - had disappeared. The silence was solemn and finalising, not allowing the luxury of panic. And as the final tears rolled from Jean's eyes, she could just make out the small, travel-framed photograph on the nightstand, of Peter and her, smiling on Ebbscar beach.

~

The next day, pale afternoon clouds slowly gathered as the sun seemed to give up on lending the Victorian architecture its warmth, Jean pondered the greying scene as she looked out of the third floor window of her hotel room. She might go out for a walk later. To see a bit of life.

~ ~ ~

Every year, there is a week in September when the Royal Grand Hotel in Ebbscar does not let out rooms on its third floor. Complaints from residents have seen to that. This does not prevent the disturbances, the disruption, the building-wide feeling of unnameable dread. But it minimises them.

Because of its storied, - often bloodied - past, Britain is reputed to be one of the most haunted nations in the world. Its seaside towns, with their memories of life, love and loss even more so.

But not all ghosts need the night to go bump.

---

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• Short stories © WorldOfBlackout.co.uk, all entries are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Y'know, mostly.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Short Weird Tales: Guestbook

It has been three days since I read aloud from the book I found in the locked closet, and Bersheba will not stop visiting me. For this I can only blame myself, since I summoned her and must therefore take at least some responsibility for my actions.

For clarity, what I call 'the locked closet' was in fact freely openable when I stumbled upon it while exploring my newly rented holiday apartment. Having unpacked for a week's stay of recuperation following the incident, I required somewhere to stow my empty valise, that I may feel more at home during my time here. The gap between the bed and the floorboards was, alas, too slim for this task, and so I sought storage elsewhere.

The back corner of the bathroom at the rear of the apartment featured a full-length closet which appeared ideal for my needs. A padlock hung closed around half of a clasp under the handle, the corresponding half folded back against the frame, leaving the chamber accessible to prying eyes such as my own. Ordinarily one would assume this space was for the arrangement of cleaning products to be employed between clients' stays, and indeed those were present. But there was also, on the head-height shelf, a weighty hide-bound book of indeterminate age, clammy to the touch and filled with intricate illustrations and indecipherable glyphs on thick, mottled pages that smelled of a disused cellar. Because naturally, I looked through it. To say the heavy, oddly formed and textured cover had 'a face' would not be fully true, and yet I swear this tome looked at me. Furthermore, while I could not consciously translate the streams of symbols therein, I quickly found myself reading aloud without thinking - and in a language I had never before heard, let alone spoken.

I put all of this down to my tiredness and overwrought circumstance, and endeavoured to settle in as best I could. Not an hour later, I first heard the voice.

~ ~ ~

There is a painting above the bed in the front room. A shorescape of the local town. Rough-hewn whitewashed buildings and the sea-wall of the harbour, uninhabited there in its frozen moment of time. The painting is rudimentary in its execution (at least not bearing the fierce movement and detail of its accompanying seascapes), but it nonetheless captures the humble beauty that has drawn mankind to the sea since time immemorial. Including myself now, I suppose. But catching reverse-sight of this painting in the large mirror on the opposing wall, I could see a face. A face in the small darkened upper window of one of the fishing cottages. Lit as if to be some way back from the glass, but there all the same. A face loosely rendered with a great artist's innate ability to have their living subjects transcend all time and medium. A still face, looking - undoubtedly - at me.

You have doubtless guessed, dear reader, that when I turned to examine the visage in the actual wall-hung oils behind me, this was nowhere to be seen. Turning again to the looking glass, the miniature figure was indeed still there, stock still as would be expected. Staring - glaring - out of the surrounding frames and directly to me. And so, without movement, it spoke.

I cannot directly translate what the face - what she - said. Once more, it was in no language I had ever heard, yet one I understood implicitly. The voice was a low, hollow rasp, but female in its intonation. It promised no distinct personal threat, and yet an ominous tone of foreboding suggested this moment had been long awaited by my interlocutor... that this address was the recommencement of previously unfinished business. I do not recall verbally replying - certainly there was nothing I might realistically ask in this absurd situation, and yet there was a connective interactivity between us. The figure responded - somehow - to my feelings, if not my questions. When the... the 'exchange' ended, it was dark outside. I slept on the couch.

My slumber was, as one might imagine, fevered that night. My visitor was once again present, and this time in the dreamed apartment itself. She did not introduce herself but I knew her now to be Bersheba, a healer or sage of some sort as anciently familiar with this town as its sand-blasted harbour and the rolling hills which surround it. She had been waiting for me, for more years than she could describe. Again I felt no actual malice to myself personally, but instead the unspoken knowledge that Bersheba's goal - whatever that may be - would somehow use my very essence as one would use coal to keep warm on the coldest of nights.

~ ~ ~

My dreams, it seemed, had broken the seal. The next day, Bersheba was - at various intermittent points - very much outside of the painting and in the apartment with me; a shape I could not define, a sight I cannot describe, murmuring indefinable words of dark intent that held no distinction. I paced the floor, somehow afraid to leave as morning turned to afternoon turned to dusk. Finally tending to myself with reluctance, food had no flavour and my books no meaning - and so I determined to avail to a local hostelry in the vain hope that company would at least drown out my companion, if not drive her away.

Some hope. The Sloop Tavern held little comfort, surrounded as I was by local groups of varying sizes who seemed not to notice me. The crowd did not so much go out of their way to make me feel uncomfortable, more that their collective weekend jollity benignly annulled my sombre presence without embracing it. That is, my presence and that of Bersheba, who hovered around the corner of my sight at the door, judging me and the saloon bar with wordless utterances. I left after two shots of the local liquor and slept on the couch.

~ ~ ~

The next morning I woke alone, by which I mean my spectral companion seemed not to be present. I admit that my first port of call was to look at the painting in the bedroom and then the reflection of that same in the mirror. Nothing. I felt no heaviness in the air, no voice in my ear, no eyes on my back. Could it be that I had imagined my torment of the last thirty six hours? That this had been a surreally concocted dream of some sort?

Nonetheless, after a light breakfast I made myself proper and endeavoured to research local lore at the town's library and museum, if anything to hopefully disprove my fancies rather than expound them further. Curators at both institutions were initially reticent at my enquiries, although their interest was piqued somewhat when it became apparent that I was not merely some tasteless tourist with a penchant for the ghoulish. That said, their actual help was minimal, with Bersheba's name appearing but three times in more threadbare volumes of localised mythology than I could count. Her life was alluded to rather than documented, and two of the notes could easily have referred to anyone with her - admittedly unusual - moniker. I retired to my apartment little the wiser, with a sense of dread, and with a darkly brooding visitor once more. Bersheba was in the corner of my vision again, watching me intently and murmuring her inaudible commentary.

By this point I was close to my wits' end with the numb acceptance of some ill-defined, pencilled-in fate appearing to be the only palatable option and path of least resistance. It was in this state that I found myself in the nearby St. Barnoon's chapel, overlooking the rugged shoreline where countless ships had run aground over the centuries, and I myself feeling like one more of their number. My presence in the stone building soon attracted the attention of its attendant, Father Inglis, and our ensuing conversation was in equal parts of no help whatsoever and also the closest to comfort I have been able to find.

While he has no knowledge of Bersheba herself, the clergyman tells me tales of this sort are not unheard in the town. He is unable to be any more specific, to tell me who or what might be trying to return and from where, or to tell me what later happens to those who reported these events as they occurred. But he is fascinated by my experience, to 'have a live one' so to speak, and is endeavouring to make further researches when he is not with me. He appears quite taken with my case, for which I am grateful.

Himself an apparently outspoken local folklorist - if not quite an historian - Father Inglis has been very supportive in his time with me since, although his friendliness soon took on the air of a hospital chaplain visiting a terminally ill patient. After repeated explanations of my time here, he says there are no easy banishments for that which has been openly invited into the world, and I am inclined - reluctantly - to believe him. I do not share the priest's ecclesiastical devotions, and he assures me in the politest possible way that it would make little difference if I did. How odd, that solace can be found in the encircling arms of oblivion.

~ ~ ~

And so I wait. I wait for the return of Bersheba, knowing full fell that I shall not be fully here to see whatever form that may take. I grow weaker by the hour. The bells of St. Barnoon's chime for evensong, breaking the silence of a day where the gulls seem to have completely abandoned their usually plaintive cries. Below, a small, lone trawler putters out of the harbour at the start of its nightly excursion; nets cast, harvesting life indiscriminately so that others may happily gain sustenance. The fate of each individual fish caught this night is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, to not even understand its part in the grander scheme, but ultimately just accept a thread unravelled to its end and the grim accident of happenstance. This is the way of things.

So tired, now. Bersheba has stopped talking.
She sits inches away from me, waiting.

Bersheba is smiling.

---

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• Short stories © WorldOfBlackout.co.uk, all entries are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Y'know, mostly.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.