Hair Rising, Heir Raising, Erasing

Josiah by his imaginary piano/organ/organic instrument, playing beautifully and powerfully, is a pure vision. The youngest son of Abraham Wilton-Cough symbolises all the children who had to endure the will of their parents as their own. If they do not do so, they end up beaten up badly.

Yet Josiah has the power to make his father face the music beyond his grave: A tune played that returned to your ears, like the strike of a ruler on your hands, it is sharp and hurt enough to make you ponder: were you right to impose your own will on your child?

The nightmare part of the story highlights what became of Josiah. He is a ghost hence a restless soul. He loves and is loved, followed by a herd of other ghosts, he is commending in his own right. Buried at cross roads, with a simple slate marking his grave, hanged for murder, Josiah Wilton-Cough stands as a formidable and terrifying character with a dramatic past. He has reasons to be angry with almost the world, and in particular his father.

The bullied child becoming a pauper with his mother had to learn to use his fists for their protection on the streets of Wilton Town. Fallen on hard times, it is the friendship of prostitutes that make them get by to survive. Over the years, well acquainted with street laws, Josiah offers his protection to the prostitutes of the town. It is while saving one of them that he kills her assailant. This precipitated his arrest and murder conviction. After his hanging, the desolate Angela lives once more on the streets, where she dies miserably on the steps of a church during a cold winter.

The tragic story of the pathetic life of his youngest son who had kept looking after his mother until his death affects Abraham Wilton-Cough greatly. As a father, he realises that his own guilt goes much deeper than just his incapacity of understanding and appreciating the sensitivity and talent of his child. He had deprived Josiah of his proper love and care. He had even stripped his son from the affection and attention of his mother by throwing him far from the family home in a boarding school. His intentions were clear: toughen up the little boy.

From the fear that Angela would spoil Josiah into pursuing his dreams of becoming an artist, a pianist, Abraham cut them from his fortune in his cool headed, cold hearted last will. He leaves everything to his eldest who he had raise to be like him. His partiality is a blow hard to digest in the mist of his family for it is the one that breaks it apart.

Meeting the ghostly Josiah in the wood clearing he haunts, Abraham Wilton-Cough faces the results and consequences his strong convictions and actions had upon others. If he wanted his youngest to be tough, he is. He had to be, forced by circumstances beyond his power.

Josiah’s character bestows strength grown from a miserable life in the streets protecting his mother and receiving the charity of a morsel of bread given by the escort girls living on the pavement. From being on the receiving end of charity to becoming one who the hopeless can turn to for protection and a home, giving them respect, paying back their helping hands with all his might, Josiah developed into Jo.

Either way, Jo or Josiah has the charisma that draws crowds to him. Let it be his talent to play the piano so dramatically well, let it be his great capacity to love women and understand their plight like no others can, he is a surrounded character just like his mother. Beyond his grave, he is still loved, remembered and respected as the resident ghost of the woods. Despite his hanging, all defend his memory, and all respect his voice.

From a wee child who impressed the ladies at the tea parties of his mother, who compared him to what they knew, the church organist, to become a dreaded ghost that haunts the wood by Wilton Town with his impressive music, Josiah still plays his own tune whatever is thrown at him.

From the nightmare back to his own dying reality, Abraham changes his tune regarding his youngest. From a destroyer of his dreams, he corrects the situation to become his ‘beyond the grave supporter’, giving the acceptance of his uniqueness, Josiah needs and lacks.

Josiah Wilton-Cough in quotes:

Slamming closed his fists upon his clavier, the ghost gave an incendiary glance at his father as he said sternly, -I have no father. Mine passed away, dead and buried, he is best forgotten. He was a miserable man who made a point of ignoring my mum and I’s mere existences. It past the point of no return. It was sealed with his grave. What is left are only memories of a dreadful individual who should rot in his tomb undisturbed for the peace and sake of everyone else.’

Devastated, lonely, Abraham Wilton-Cough walked towards his grave lost in his sad thoughts when he saw his son’s ghost Josiah followed by his ghostly girls upon the same wild path heading towards his mother’s pauper’s ditch. Moving sideways to let the ghosts past, the skeleton stood there silently hoping not to be recognised, nor noticed for he remembered what Mrs Bates had said about the dead being dismantled. His wishes were not granted as he saw the imposing figure of Jo stopping right by him and asking, -Do I know you from somewhere, skeleton? Lift your skull a little so I can see you properly under the moonlight.
Frightened Abraham obeyed taking a good glance at his son as he replied, keeping his hat close to his chest,
-You do know me, Josiah. I am your father, the one that is very sorry for everything he did or almost.
Smiling cruelly to him, Jo crossed his strong muscled shadowy arms upon his chest, repeating like if he was tasting the very word within his lips,
-Almost… What could you possibly not be sorry for my dear father?’

In Abraham’s words:

-Let me tell you that the very first time I held you in my arms and saw the same blue eyes as Angela staring at me, I was far from sorry for my actions then, I was very proud of the result of one to say the least.’