From the Notebooks: Short Story
Wild Darrell and the Haunted House: A Dialogue
"They say the nobleman William Darrell took the baby from the midwife and threw it into the fireplace. He held the newborn down with his boot until it was burned to death."
"Why would he do such a thing? Was it his baby?"
"Yeah, apparently. They say he knocked up his sister or his wife's maid so he didn't want to take responsibility for the child. They called him 'Wild Darrell' for the debauched life he led. Guess that's the type of thing you can be capable of, if you live your life in sin."
"But to kill a newly-born baby by burning it in a fire. The man must've been a sicko."
"I suspect he was, but insanity is brought on in all sorts of ways. It could be a chemical imbalance, or maybe some sort of psycho-physical condition you're born with. But there also seems to be the type of madness that's brought on by the fault of the crazy person. Nietzsche, they say, willed himself to madness. I've heard of people who have gone mad just by being so selfish that they come unglued when things don't go their way."
"What do you think about 'Wild Darrell'"?
"Based on the little bit I know, I think he's a prophet."
"What? Are you joking?"
"No, the parallels to today are obvious and rather shocking. Here you have a man who lives a life of such self-regarding excess that he would rather burn a baby under his own boot than take responsibility for it. Furthermore, notwithstanding a strong case against him, the law exonerated him."
"He wasn't convicted?"
"No, the judge acquitted him. Wild Darrell apparently bribed him. It was quite a scandal for late sixteenth-century England."
"That's an amazing story."
"It gets better and there are more parallels to today. You know what they say about that burned baby? They say it has haunted the Littlecote House in Wiltshire, England for the past 400 years. They say the ghost of a silent woman holding a baby walks in the room where the murder took place and that terrifying screams are heard in the middle of the night from the same room."
"Where are the parallels to today?"
"Hauntings take place in all sorts of ways. The haunting at Littlecote House is just a severely visible form of haunting. Other forms of haunting aren't as obvious, but that doesn't mean they don't occur. Maybe the haunting manifests itself in a bad conscience; maybe it manifests itself in a sort of psychosis down the road; maybe the person is doomed to lead a sad life. I don't know; but I'm convinced it's something. Murdering the most innocent is a crime of the highest degree. If it were to go un-haunted, there would be no metaphysical justice."
