N. God Savage was born in Northern Ireland and still hasn't managed to escape. He has written fiction for over ten
years, but only recently entertained the idea that other people might want to read it. His writing has appeared in
print and online at places like The Catalonian Review and Word Riot. He currently lives in Belfast with his wife and
spends his days writing up his PhD dissertation in philosophy. http://www.ngodsavage.com
years, but only recently entertained the idea that other people might want to read it. His writing has appeared in
print and online at places like The Catalonian Review and Word Riot. He currently lives in Belfast with his wife and
spends his days writing up his PhD dissertation in philosophy. http://www.ngodsavage.com
N. God Savage
The Ghost of The Holy Lands
After being treated like a ghost for most of my life, I have finally embraced my destiny and become one. I swear it — if you
passed me in the street you'd look right through me. If I was asking you a question you'd cut me off halfway through, not
to answer my query but to say something completely unrelated to someone else, maybe even ask them the very question I
was attempting to ask you. If there was an award for Least Memorable Human Being Ever, I'd be a shoo-in, except that
they'd probably forget to arrange the prize-giving ceremony, or, if they remembered, my invitation would get abandoned in
Outgoing Mail and someone more memorable would have to collect the damn thing on my behalf. This is the story of how I
became such a ghost. It is a tale of an inevitable vanishing.
I have always dreamed of being a mediocre landlord. I mean a person who owns and leases property, not one who owns
and operates a public house. My father, incidentally, was a landlord in this latter sense – he ran The Scrunty Fiddler Bar on
Dock Street in Belfast for seventeen years. He spent most of his time there, slept there some nights even. He was a
terrible father, and I swear I only ever had accidental eye contact with him my whole life. He didn't speak to you, or even at
you. He more spoke around the edges of you, as if you were nothing but an incidental obstacle off which his sound waves
were condemned to reverberate. But I mustn't complain, because when he died I inherited the bar, the sale of which
enabled me to pursue my goal of becoming a landlord in the other sense, a person who owns and leases property.
I have actually ended up more of an amateur television producer. That might seem odd, but what I really mean is that I
have become a person who fantasises that they are in charge of a mediocre soap opera. I mean a person who observes
the movements of a variety of other persons who are not aware of their being so observed. I mean a landlord who spies,
via hidden cameras, on the students who rent their lodgings from him. I mean a pervert, a peeping tom, a ghost in the
attic with his pants down.
This is not how I intended things to turn out. I really did envisage myself as a regular landlord. I thought it would be a
swell way to make money — no hassle, lots of free time, the security of owning property and all that crap. I guess what I
ended up with was a little too much free time. Maybe if I'd been a landlord in the other sense things would have turned out
less sinister.
But the fact is that I bought a house, put some students in it, and six months later I found myself creeping in while they
were away over Christmas to install hidden cameras in every room. Cameras in screw heads, cameras in dead flies, cameras
in the centre of the dial of the thermostat, in the shower head, in the ceilings, nestling in the plaster with nothing but a
pinprick of a lens protruding. Wires concealed in the brickwork, snaking under the floorboards, up the cavity walls, wicked
little tubes which I would connect directly to my greedy eye sockets if I had the technology. Recently I have added some
wireless equipment, emitting perfect waves that are invisible, whispering the doings of my beautiful actors into the attic
control room like an intoxicating perfume which I inhale through my eyes and ears.
My house is rarely empty. My season schedule is always full. It's set in The Holy Lands area of South Belfast, so called for
the street names: Palestine Road, Jerusalem Drive, St. Joseph of Arimathea Avenue, and so on. My house is a Victorian
terrace in Fall of Sodom and Gomorrah Mews, right by the university, and the rent's a little lower than the rest of the
street, so I have very little downtime. We run constantly, no ad breaks, no trailers. Just all action, all the time. I call the
show Sicht o Quean, which I think is Ulster-Scots for "looking at girls". I'm pushing the whole minority-dialect thing so that
I might one day be eligible for a grant from the Arts Council. I hear they'll fund any old crap if it's in a dead language. My
dream would be to have an entirely Ulster Scots-speaking cast:
Meave: I tak an ill-will at that hure.
Bobbi: Hoot ay, she's a scunnersome bick.
And so on, but I don't know where I'd find the actors and writers. I guess I'll stick with the current format for now.
Every evening at dusk I slip discreetly into the lane that runs past the back of the house. I have my hood up, and I never
go by in daylight. I let myself into the outhouse that abuts the rear of the terrace — no one has keys but me — then I
clamber up through a trapdoor so that I am in the low attic to the rear of the house. From there, I simply slide along in
perfect silence, sometimes taking over an hour to reach the main attic. There is more room here, but still not enough to
stand up straight. I always have an aching back by the time I leave, usually at four or five in the morning, sometimes six if
the day has been an eventful one. I pass the hours watching pre-recorded material from the day, and catching the live feed
of the night's action. My current tenants are very generous in this respect — they party at least three nights a week.
This season has been our best so far. Nuala, the dowdy brunette from Tyrone, has developed an eating disorder (she flits
between anorexia and bulimia), which she's been failing to conceal from the other housemates. They raise their eyebrows
when she excuses herself after pizza, then shake their heads disdainfully when the muffled retching starts up. To make
things worse, her marginally more glamorous sister Kate came to stay for a few weeks and ended up sleeping with Pádraig,
Nuala's on-off boyfriend, which led to plenty of arguments, with some really sparkling dialogue:
Pádraig: Maybe if you took a greater interest in me, this would never have happened!
Nuala: I am interested in you! Just not like that.
Pádraig: Well I'm getting sick of being interested in myself, Nuala.
Classic stuff.
In another story arc, Pádraig has decided to become a poet, but is too embarrassed to show anyone his work. He doesn't
suspect that Lee and Jenny (the house jokers) have been sneaking into his room and mocking his efforts, reading the
poems aloud with faux reverence, falling into fits of helpless giggling after too much vodka, their mischief invariably
culminating in fumbled sex on Pádraig's bed. I feel sorry for Pádraig, even though his poetry sucks — he's currently
working on "Sixteen Cantos About Belfast":
This is Divis Street and this the Lower Falls
this is Cregagh and this the Beersbridge Road
this is Ballygomartin and this the lane that runs up the back of Ulsterville Avenue.
Like I say, terrible stuff, but there's no need to take the piss out of the poor guy. I've even taken to creeping into his
room — there's a trapdoor in his ceiling — when everyone is asleep and tidying up the mess Lee and Jenny consistently
leave behind.
This last endeavour has led to a gripping development. My intrusions — breaking the fourth wall from the other side, so to
speak — have not gone unnoticed. For starters, Lee and Jenny have become suspicious as to why their careless meddling
remains undiscovered. Each morning they wake, stinking of beer and trickling regret from their pores, barely able to look at
each other, stomachs sick with nerves and dread, expecting Pádraig to storm in at any moment, bellowing about his
rearranged possessions, his missing cantos, the half-empty cans of lukewarm beer and cigarette ash perched on his
mantelpiece. But each morning they are spared, and after three weeks of this they have begun to ask questions. Secondly,
Nuala swears — although the others are putting it down to madness brought on by jealousy and malnutrition — that she
has heard something crawling along the roof at night. She is, of course, entirely correct; it's her bedroom that I have to
slither along the ceiling of to get in and out. Fortunately, none of the cast are particularly bright, or rational and the current
popular explanation of all this is that the house is haunted.
Me — I'm just thrilled to have been written in with a cameo part. They call me The Ghost of The Holy Lands, and I've even
been mentioned on the local resident group's Facebook page. I always knew I was an invisible spirit — the way my father
spoke past me, the way his eyes glanced off me, the way you'd look right through me if you passed me in the street. I
think I will embrace this role enthusiastically. Perhaps I'll creep down more often, rearrange the living room furniture, write,
"I'M WATCHING YOU" in chocolate spread on the kitchen wall.
It's shaping up to be a really fantastic season.
After being treated like a ghost for most of my life, I have finally embraced my destiny and become one. I swear it — if you
passed me in the street you'd look right through me. If I was asking you a question you'd cut me off halfway through, not
to answer my query but to say something completely unrelated to someone else, maybe even ask them the very question I
was attempting to ask you. If there was an award for Least Memorable Human Being Ever, I'd be a shoo-in, except that
they'd probably forget to arrange the prize-giving ceremony, or, if they remembered, my invitation would get abandoned in
Outgoing Mail and someone more memorable would have to collect the damn thing on my behalf. This is the story of how I
became such a ghost. It is a tale of an inevitable vanishing.
I have always dreamed of being a mediocre landlord. I mean a person who owns and leases property, not one who owns
and operates a public house. My father, incidentally, was a landlord in this latter sense – he ran The Scrunty Fiddler Bar on
Dock Street in Belfast for seventeen years. He spent most of his time there, slept there some nights even. He was a
terrible father, and I swear I only ever had accidental eye contact with him my whole life. He didn't speak to you, or even at
you. He more spoke around the edges of you, as if you were nothing but an incidental obstacle off which his sound waves
were condemned to reverberate. But I mustn't complain, because when he died I inherited the bar, the sale of which
enabled me to pursue my goal of becoming a landlord in the other sense, a person who owns and leases property.
I have actually ended up more of an amateur television producer. That might seem odd, but what I really mean is that I
have become a person who fantasises that they are in charge of a mediocre soap opera. I mean a person who observes
the movements of a variety of other persons who are not aware of their being so observed. I mean a landlord who spies,
via hidden cameras, on the students who rent their lodgings from him. I mean a pervert, a peeping tom, a ghost in the
attic with his pants down.
This is not how I intended things to turn out. I really did envisage myself as a regular landlord. I thought it would be a
swell way to make money — no hassle, lots of free time, the security of owning property and all that crap. I guess what I
ended up with was a little too much free time. Maybe if I'd been a landlord in the other sense things would have turned out
less sinister.
But the fact is that I bought a house, put some students in it, and six months later I found myself creeping in while they
were away over Christmas to install hidden cameras in every room. Cameras in screw heads, cameras in dead flies, cameras
in the centre of the dial of the thermostat, in the shower head, in the ceilings, nestling in the plaster with nothing but a
pinprick of a lens protruding. Wires concealed in the brickwork, snaking under the floorboards, up the cavity walls, wicked
little tubes which I would connect directly to my greedy eye sockets if I had the technology. Recently I have added some
wireless equipment, emitting perfect waves that are invisible, whispering the doings of my beautiful actors into the attic
control room like an intoxicating perfume which I inhale through my eyes and ears.
My house is rarely empty. My season schedule is always full. It's set in The Holy Lands area of South Belfast, so called for
the street names: Palestine Road, Jerusalem Drive, St. Joseph of Arimathea Avenue, and so on. My house is a Victorian
terrace in Fall of Sodom and Gomorrah Mews, right by the university, and the rent's a little lower than the rest of the
street, so I have very little downtime. We run constantly, no ad breaks, no trailers. Just all action, all the time. I call the
show Sicht o Quean, which I think is Ulster-Scots for "looking at girls". I'm pushing the whole minority-dialect thing so that
I might one day be eligible for a grant from the Arts Council. I hear they'll fund any old crap if it's in a dead language. My
dream would be to have an entirely Ulster Scots-speaking cast:
Meave: I tak an ill-will at that hure.
Bobbi: Hoot ay, she's a scunnersome bick.
And so on, but I don't know where I'd find the actors and writers. I guess I'll stick with the current format for now.
Every evening at dusk I slip discreetly into the lane that runs past the back of the house. I have my hood up, and I never
go by in daylight. I let myself into the outhouse that abuts the rear of the terrace — no one has keys but me — then I
clamber up through a trapdoor so that I am in the low attic to the rear of the house. From there, I simply slide along in
perfect silence, sometimes taking over an hour to reach the main attic. There is more room here, but still not enough to
stand up straight. I always have an aching back by the time I leave, usually at four or five in the morning, sometimes six if
the day has been an eventful one. I pass the hours watching pre-recorded material from the day, and catching the live feed
of the night's action. My current tenants are very generous in this respect — they party at least three nights a week.
This season has been our best so far. Nuala, the dowdy brunette from Tyrone, has developed an eating disorder (she flits
between anorexia and bulimia), which she's been failing to conceal from the other housemates. They raise their eyebrows
when she excuses herself after pizza, then shake their heads disdainfully when the muffled retching starts up. To make
things worse, her marginally more glamorous sister Kate came to stay for a few weeks and ended up sleeping with Pádraig,
Nuala's on-off boyfriend, which led to plenty of arguments, with some really sparkling dialogue:
Pádraig: Maybe if you took a greater interest in me, this would never have happened!
Nuala: I am interested in you! Just not like that.
Pádraig: Well I'm getting sick of being interested in myself, Nuala.
Classic stuff.
In another story arc, Pádraig has decided to become a poet, but is too embarrassed to show anyone his work. He doesn't
suspect that Lee and Jenny (the house jokers) have been sneaking into his room and mocking his efforts, reading the
poems aloud with faux reverence, falling into fits of helpless giggling after too much vodka, their mischief invariably
culminating in fumbled sex on Pádraig's bed. I feel sorry for Pádraig, even though his poetry sucks — he's currently
working on "Sixteen Cantos About Belfast":
This is Divis Street and this the Lower Falls
this is Cregagh and this the Beersbridge Road
this is Ballygomartin and this the lane that runs up the back of Ulsterville Avenue.
Like I say, terrible stuff, but there's no need to take the piss out of the poor guy. I've even taken to creeping into his
room — there's a trapdoor in his ceiling — when everyone is asleep and tidying up the mess Lee and Jenny consistently
leave behind.
This last endeavour has led to a gripping development. My intrusions — breaking the fourth wall from the other side, so to
speak — have not gone unnoticed. For starters, Lee and Jenny have become suspicious as to why their careless meddling
remains undiscovered. Each morning they wake, stinking of beer and trickling regret from their pores, barely able to look at
each other, stomachs sick with nerves and dread, expecting Pádraig to storm in at any moment, bellowing about his
rearranged possessions, his missing cantos, the half-empty cans of lukewarm beer and cigarette ash perched on his
mantelpiece. But each morning they are spared, and after three weeks of this they have begun to ask questions. Secondly,
Nuala swears — although the others are putting it down to madness brought on by jealousy and malnutrition — that she
has heard something crawling along the roof at night. She is, of course, entirely correct; it's her bedroom that I have to
slither along the ceiling of to get in and out. Fortunately, none of the cast are particularly bright, or rational and the current
popular explanation of all this is that the house is haunted.
Me — I'm just thrilled to have been written in with a cameo part. They call me The Ghost of The Holy Lands, and I've even
been mentioned on the local resident group's Facebook page. I always knew I was an invisible spirit — the way my father
spoke past me, the way his eyes glanced off me, the way you'd look right through me if you passed me in the street. I
think I will embrace this role enthusiastically. Perhaps I'll creep down more often, rearrange the living room furniture, write,
"I'M WATCHING YOU" in chocolate spread on the kitchen wall.
It's shaping up to be a really fantastic season.