The house is empty as I write this; a cold February rain is falling outside. It's night. Sometimes when the wind blows the way it's blowing now, we lose the power. But for now it's on, and so let's talk very honestly about fear. Let's talk very rationally about moving to the rim of madness. . . and perhaps over the edge.
Still. . . let's talk about fear. We won't raise our voices and we won't scream; we'll talk rationally, you and I. We'll talk about the way the good fabric of things sometimes has a way of unravelling with shocking suddenness.
At night, when I go to bed, I still am at pains to be sure that my legs are under the blanket after the lights go out.
Fear makes us blind, and we touch each fear with all the avid curiosity of self-interest, trying to make a whole out of a hudred parts, like the blind men with their elephant.
We sense the shape. Children grasp it easily, forget it, and relearn as adults. The shape is there, and most of us come to realise what it is sooner or later: it is the shape of a body under a sheet. All our fears add up to one great fear, all our fears are part of that great fear - an arm, a leg, a finger, an ear. We're afraid of the body under the sheet. It's our body. And the great appeal of horror fiction through the ages is that it serves as a rehearsal for our own deaths.
(Taken from Author's one of the classic's preface, compiled for the theme promotion of theme- Ghost Protocol, Infy Toastmasters)
