When I was reading this NCE passage “The Death of a ghost”, the scenes in Cold Mountain couldn’t help flashing back before my eyes. At Cold Mountain, a small town in North, a father had been stabbed to death at the front yard of his house. His body was hanged on a clothesline, blood trickling down to the ground. On the other side of the yard, a mother had been tied to the fence with a lasso around her neck, holding on to her last dear breath. The other end of the rope was wrapped around a flank, on which a national guard was playing beam balancing. He was even whistling chirpily while hopping along. Every time, his heavy boots plummeted on the plank, that poor woman’s head jerked once with the lasso tightened around her neck. There was no other sound in the movie except the chirpy whistling and woman’s agonizing moaning. The sky above was so blue; the sunshine was just bright. It was supposed to be a nice warm day in that little northern town. I was just chilly to my bones when I was watching this part of the movie.
This was a much brutal version of cat-and-mouse game that the National guards were playing. They were waiting for their preys, two boys of this couple, who they believed deserted the Federate Army and had been hidden by their parents somewhere on their farm. They sensed that there was no way for the old couple to handle the whole farm without any extra farm hands.
Deserters were traitors. Traitors would be eliminated without any mercy. They didn’t go to search the farm for their victims and they didn’t even bother to do it. They knew the boys would come out voluntarily. Who can bear watching his father murdered ruthlessly and his mother going through ordeal for them without making a move? They were right. The two hidden boys rushed out madly, charging at those heartless invaders. “Pong, Pong.” They were all shot to death in a second. The farm was drenched in blood, then quiet down.
That was the tragedy what really happened in wartime….
The story I am reading from NCE also tells the fate of a deserter from the war, but much light and funny, like a fairy tale compared with what happened in Cold Mountain…
Lesson 30 The death of a ghost
For years, villagers believed that Endley Farm was hunted. The farm was owned by two brothers, Joe and Bert Cox. They employed a few farmhands, but no one was willing to work there long. Every time a worker gave up his job, he told the same story. Farm labourers said that they always woke up to find that work had been done overnight. Hay had been cut and cowsheds had been cleaned. A farm worker, who stayed up all night claimed to have seen a figure cutting corn in the moonlight. In time, it became an accepted fact the Cox brothers employed a conscientious ghost that did most of their work for them.
No one suspected that there might be someone else on the farm who had never been seen. This was indeed the case. A short time ago, villagers were astonished to learn that the ghost of Endley had died. Everyone went to the funeral, for the 'ghost' was none other than Eric Cox, a third brother who was supposed to have died as a young man. After the funeral, Joe and Bob revealed a secret which they had kept for over fifty years.
Eric had been the eldest son of the family. He had been obliged to join the army during the Second World War. As he hated army life, he decided to desert his regiment. When he learnt that he would be sent abroad, he returned to the farm and his father hid him until the end of the war. Fearing the authorities, Eric remained in hiding after the war as well. His father told everybody that Eric had been killed in action. The only other people who knew the secret were Joe and Berb. They did not even tell their wives. When their father died, they thought it their duty to keep Eric in hiding. All these years, Eric had lived as a recluse. He used to sleep during the day and work at night, quite unaware of the fact that he had become the ghost of Endley. When he died, however, his brothers found it impossible to keep the secret any longer.
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