Chantel's Reviews > The Specialist's Hat

** spoiler alert ** Three members of a previous quartet have recently moved into a house near the woods. The Eight ChimneysThis week, a delightful little blue bird chose a tale morbid & decrepit as the antiquated ghost story that haunts its reputation. The fanatics of Horror luring the mind through common tropes of lore & folk stories will linger two seconds too long in the spaces between the words of this story. The protagonists are under the age of ten (10). They are naïve & reek of a boldness in their confidence that is crassly deranged.

Left alone in their new home, the twins roam about the property without the guardianship of their parents. The paternal figure is too preoccupied with being an adult to remember that he is also a parent. The maternal figure is dead; deceased by an intention that castrated a disappearing act within the icing sugar life of the gingerbread family’s world. Nothing is explicitly explained to the reader throughout this story. A veteran reader might hobble along the spine of this tale without reaching its tendons through no fault of their own.

This is not as enjoyable an experience as it might appear. Tropes of moor & morbidity do well to seethe earnest intent into the words they select in an attempt to nestle reality into a story’s structure. In an intentional bid to forego the anticipated conclusions of the reader, Link gives them permission to draw their own conclusions. The first judgment is posed in the opening lines—the title speaks to nostalgia. The entryway to the story promises an oddity that is incomprehensible but, it will be familiar.—named after the literal eight (8) chimneys that adorn the house—is haunted. Rather than boast of ghosts & ghouls, the walls have stools & steps that allow little feet to get lost within the structure. The villainous poltergeist of personified instruments of head-warming & fashion, carve the skulls of the fantastical with grooves, like teeth on an unsuspecting tongue. Who has murdered the ghosts that fall behind the age of puberty, consent, adolescence, & innocence?

Reviewing work that is incomplete is a difficult task. It’s rather tedious to attempt to piece together an interpretation with the appropriate reflections & emphasis, holding true to the knowledge that the author had the opportunity to do that themselves, but did not. Though this story looms like a bloated body in water, the essence of the tale itself is intriguing; one is inclined to float alongside what is already visible in the hopes of understanding what buried the lead.

The twins, Claire & Samantha, play at being Dead—capital D. Their game of comfort in finality arose following the death of their own mother. The story presents the absence of maternal figures. The metaphorical representation of motherhood is explored via a dirty glass; a young girl, the babysitter, is adopted as a mother yet she is also described as being nearly the same age as the twins. The visiting group of tourists is littered with mothers—women—who blur as the day passes. It appears that a certain type of person is unable to leave the house unscathed.

What might the reader deduce from this? Could one say that a maternal figure, a woman, a girl, is stuck in the stable home that will be her prison & palace once it is deemed necessary for her to scale the walls & slither the floors to clean crevices & crooks? Might we assume that the women in this story, the girls, & the lost mothers are all part of a scheme to punish the apple-bearing fruit lovers of old? As is my habit, I am inclined to read into the symbolism in this story & what better place to start than in a book that is poorly understood & seldom read—the Bible?

The woman in the woods who lures the fathers away; the horses running rampant in dreams of wishes & promises; the invisible snakes slithering through the greenery; the loss of innocence & trust; in all of this eight. The number is often associated with otherworldly goodness; the feminine energy. The eight chimneys might be viewed as tunnels out of the palace of man; the house of God; the invisible & adapting voice of the Specialist’s Hat.

In ways strangely reminiscent of the complexity of absurdity found in classic Horror—think “Phantasm” (1979)—this story teeters back & forth through two narratives. At once the inner monologue of the twins, the verses presented in brackets & pauses coin the story like a rusty penny. One is meant to feel muddled & confused. Unfortunately, for some of us, confusion does not segway into fear. Rather, the lack of a logical plot may lead certain readers to feel more perturbed by the lack of an explicit nature.

Why did the babysitter play with a hat that has human teeth? Where did the hat come from? Is the Specialist just a man who has perfected the art of forgetting his own responsibilities? Or is the Specialist the original tyrant who led men down the path of mortality? I suppose one would need to believe that one person is to blame for all the misfortunes of the world in order to have faith in this explanation. On the opposing side to the fantasy story of fruit being bad for humanity’s vampiric lifespan, one is face to face with the questions that plague the plot.

Who is the antagonist? Did the Specialist’s Hat adopt the voice of a parent or did the children cower from their father? Did the children suffocate in the attic or were they dead to the world & in turn, actually out of this world? What drew the fathers to roam the woods? Why were there so many snakes? Is the forest an Eden to male paternal figures? Is the house a Purgatory for female characters?

I am left wondering if this is a story that profits off of the inquiring mind. Suppose a reader were to find the toothed hat a bore—would the story still make sense? Suppose the father figures didn’t neglect their children—would the children have become friends at all? The narrative explores the agility of the mind; its own desire to wonder & awe at the simplicity of a single haunted house with quaint key haunting features, spooky only so much as they resemble the haunted place of our minds.

Had I been left with no questions, I’m not sure that I would have been so eager to dissect what this story was sharing. Many children play strange & peculiar games. Many parents need time to wander the world on their own. These two things do not a villain or victim make. Yet, one is inclined to conclude, with certainty, that something is amiss. What would the reader be left with if this was simply a story about an Ed Gein figurine, a bit lost, & severely traumatized? Or, what if this were simply a story about an old house & lonely children?

Ultimately, what I enjoyed in this story is its inconsequential inaction. The children are possessed; they were always dead; they were haunted & cruel; they are ghosts to their father & mysteries to the town; they are just two twin girls playing in the world of loss & grief. The identity of each of the characters is that of a shadow figure. The reader is given very little—grey eyes, a brooding temperament, solitude & coy memories. Who are these people, really?

The eight chimneys, is a reflective piece of strange wanderings & eager readers set to recall the desolate need within to find reason in the absurd tendencies we find each other inclined to practice. Morbid poetry & tender longings; this story is a crisp fingernail across a dusty baseboard. Readers are met with no one in particular; no one they know, nothing of note but, the permeating sense of dread follows them as they crane their necks to search the chimney for signs of disturbed dust moats & hidden keys.

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