Pretty in the Scary, Chapter 32 to 33

Marlowe and Charlie entering into the orsine, the world of the dead, is the one of the most alluring and beautiful chapters I have read in this book. The whole novel is very atmospheric in different ways, so being inside this otherworldly spirit landscape with the boys gave a chilling and surreal effect, as if in a dream. I love how the orsine is both dreamlike and dark, bringing a whimsy essence to its feeling of wrongness and fear. There is a sweetness to this world of misty spirits materializing and dissipating in the lonely and empty streets and rooms of their absent land. Everything there is cold and wet, made of souls and memory of the dead. There are no living people there, but there are traces of when the spirits were human and alive, personal belongings leftover and scattered on the roads. Nature grows here still, which is oddly remarkable, an oozy and mossy nature. And the fog that moves in packs of cloudy and luminescent mist that fills the whole of the dead city are the dead themselves. Marlowe says “they’re pretty” and I feel the same about the misty spirits. I love that they are not written as ghosts but made of fog and cloud that shudders in and out to shape their figure like a film display of their memories. The boys walk through the misty spirits and they follow closely to them. When Marlowe and Charlie find a hiding place to sleep in, the fog burrows inside with them. The spirits are drawn to them and their warmth and even though it is scary to think about the dead sitting in a room with Marlowe and Charlie while they sleep, it is also a cool detail of the way the spirits are. I am loving the orsine realm and Marlowe and Charlie make the perfect brotherly pair to be inside of it together.