A Novelette
Being dead was unlike anything Chance Phillips had expected. For one thing, his name changed to Reo. For another, he discovered Ghosts could move through time. But when he learns a friend, a live friend, is in danger will he and his Ghost friend Jeremy be able to save her in time?
Average Reading Time: 22 – 31 minutes (about 7,700 words)
Freshly Ghost
Chuck Heintzelman
Copyright © 2011 by Chuck Heintzelman
Death ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
For one thing, death’s harder. When alive you don’t have to think about what you’re doing every moment. Sure, life has struggles, and they seem so important at the time, but those struggles lose significance when you die. When dead you have to concentrate, focusing on the world around you, or you’ll drift along your life.
Death is weird that way.
My name’s Reo and I’m a baby ghost. No, I’m not an infant, crawling around with a poopy diaper, looking for my binky. I look the same as I did when alive, a seventeen year old, gangly boy. I hate to say that, but being dead gives you a better perspective and, yeah, I was a gawky, dorky looking dude. I’m a baby ghost because I’ve been dead for a short time. Three days dead to be precise.
Reo’s my ghost name. In life my name was Chance Pertwith Phillips. Yeah, Pertwith is horrible. It was Dad’s middle name, too. He said he was starting a family tradition. Guess the tradition died with me.
Don’t ask me why you get a new name when you die. Seems a bit pointless to me. I don’t have the foggiest who picks the names.
First thing I remember after dying was being in a white space. Like in the clouds. No walls, no ceiling, but there was a floor. I couldn’t distinguish anything around me. This short, heavy man with a grizzled, gray-stubbled face floated over to me. He had bare feet and wore dingy, denim overalls, with no shirt underneath and one strap undone. He reminded me of one of those black and white photos of poor kids back in the depression. You almost expected to see a wheat stalk between his teeth. Instead, he chewed on a cigar.
He stuck out his hand to me. “Heya, I’m Marty.” He clenched the cigar stub in his teeth as he spoke.
I stuck out my hand to shake and my hand passed right through his, our hands occupying the same space. It took a half a second for me to realized what happened and I jumped backward, falling, then scrambling back several feet. “Ugghh,” I said, involuntarily.
Marty bent over laughing, loud guffaws sounding like some asthmatic donkey. He stood there, hands on knees, wheezing.
I got to my feet, watching this character, ready to bolt if needed.
He slapped a knee with one hand before straightening back up. “Ho boy. Works every time. I tell you. It’s the little things that make death so fun.”
I stared at him, not amused. He had said “death” and I recognized the truth. I was dead.
“Ah lighten up kid.” He produced a clipboard, brown with a large silver snap stretched tight over an inch of paper. Don’t ask me where the clipboard came from—maybe from down the front of his overalls? He flipped through the clipped pages. “Let’s see. Here you are. Chance Phillips?” He raised an eyebrow to me.
I nodded, still ready to run.
“Okay. Chance was your life name. Your name is now … Reo.” He paused dramatically before saying my new name with great flourish. “I’m your counselor. Your transition liaison.” He made air quotes. “Here to help you adjust to death. Now, can I get you to sign here?”
He held his clipboard out and offered me a pen. A small silver chain snaked from pen to clipboard.
I reached for the pen. My hand went right through it.
Marty exploded with laughter again. He laughed so hard he spat out his cigar. It landed near my feet. “Oh God, kid. It never gets old. Only half you newbies fall for it twice in a row.”
What a jerk. Me just realizing I had died and this douche kept pranking me.
He cleared his throat. “Now, better stop fooling around and get to business. Can you hand me my stogie?”
I folded my arms over my chest. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me three times and I’d have to wear a tee-shirt saying “I’m with Stupid” and a giant arrow pointing up.
He nodded. “Good kid. So you do learn.” He reached down, grabbed the cigar, stuck it back between his teeth.
I had so many questions. What happened next? What do I do? Is there a God? Was this all there was, standing around in a cloudy room?
Marty must have noticed my confusion. He grabbed my shoulder. I mean really grabbed it; I felt his fingers squeezing. I didn’t flinch though. “How come …” my question trailed off.
“How come I can touch you now, but not when we shook hands?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You’re a baby, kid. You don’t know how to touch. I’m 82 years dead now. It’s easy for me.”
Death isn’t just weird, it’s surreal.
“Don’t worry kid. You’ll learn. I’ll catch up with you later. For now why don’t you go play.”
He smacked me in the chest with an open palm—which I also felt—and I snapped back to my tenth birthday party.
~
The instant Marty smacked me I heard a loud roar in my ears but before I could cover them—not that my ghost hands over my ghost ears would have helped—the noise stopped and I was someplace new.
I’d have recognize the mottled olive-green linoleum floor anywhere. I stood in mom’s kitchen, our old place, the mobile home she got after dad died. Ten year old me sat at the kitchen table, the old rickety thing I stood on two years later and busted. Friends surrounded me at the table, watching me get ready to blow out the candles. Exactly as I remembered it.
That’s when I realized I could remember everything from my life. I mean every instant, every thought, every action. I could even remember the dreams I had while asleep.
Overwhelming, to say the least.
I thought about my death, the car accident, my best friend Jeremy Smith driving. We had picked up a six-pack from the Overland Station, the only place in Warner’s Crest that didn’t ask for ID. Half their beer business came from high-school kids. It was just after lunch and Jeremy and I decided to skip school, go hide out on state land and throw back a few cold ones and listen to some tunes. Jeremy reached into the back seat of his old Volkswagen bug, “The Beast” he called it. The car looked like a patchwork quilt with different color doors, fender panels, and hood. He reached back to grab a beer and came up on the corner too fast, the front passenger-side wheel went over the edge, the car rode along on its undercarriage and Jeremy jerked the wheel. Miraculously, the car popped back up on the road, almost as if God had been looking down, thinking these kids are stupid but I’ll cut them a break, and reaching down to pick us up and set us back on the road.
I looked at Jeremy. What a close call.
Then a Dodge Ram pickup, came around the corner and hit us head-on. Afterwards, an ambulance ride, three operations, laying in a sterile hospital bed for two weeks in a coma. Finally, dying.
I didn’t know what happened to Jeremy.
“Reo?”
I turned. There stood dad, strong and healthy, no sign of the cancer.
“Dad.”
I think, had been alive and had a body, tears would have blurred my vision. I felt as though I cried, but had no tears. Maybe ghosts can’t cry. I opened my arms to hug him, but stopped. I didn’t know if I could handle it if my hug went right through him.
Dad didn’t hesitate. He wrapped his arms around me, and I felt his hug. Gentle, like he was afraid to break me.
He broke our embrace. “Sorry, I’m two years up stream. Everything’s harder when you’re so far away.”
I didn’t have a clue what he meant.
“You’re new aren’t you?”
I nodded. Around us, at the birthday party, kids in party hats sang happy birthday to ten year old me, mom and several other parents hovered, Mr. Hancock’s hand lingered on mom’s. Wow. I had never noticed before. Mr. Hancock, my friend Peter’s dad, a single parent like mom, seemed to be at our house quite often then. A couple months later he stopped coming over.
The room faded and a distant roar sounded in my ears. Dad’s hand shot out, grabbed my arm, and the room snapped back into focus.
“Careful Chance. Sorry, Reo, you still seem like Chance to me.”
“What happened?”
“Being ghosts we’re attached to our life,” he said. “If you don’t concentrate on what’s around you, then you’ll pop to random points in your life. If you get lost in thought you get lost in your life. Don’t worry, it gets easier the longer you’re dead. If you find you’ve slipped away, just think about where you were and you’ll snap back. You move around by closing your eyes and thinking of a point in your life.”
He examined my face, worry lines grooved his forehead, and continued. “Moving away from your live body is hard. Try going across the street. The further away you get, the harder it is to concentrate. It’s the same way if you move after your death. Or before your birth.”
“You mean we can move through time?”
“Yes,” he said. “Sort of. Time and place are different when you’re dead. You always exist in the now, in world time. See, we’re at your birthday party, but we’re not part of this time, we exist in the now. You can go back anywhere in the past, even before you’re born, but the farther you get from your life, the harder it is. Make sense?”
I shrugged one shoulder.
“It’ll all get clear. The future is different. If you’re strong enough you can go up to the now. Since you’re a ghost, now is always after you died. It’s been what, nine years since I died? I don’t know if I’m strong enough to go to the current now, but I’m strong enough to see you here at your tenth birthday party. Here I’m two years away from my life.”
“So, could I go ahead in time, find the winning lottery numbers and then come back?”
Dad laughed. “No. You can’t go past the current now. The true future has infinite possibilities. And what good would lottery money do for you now?”
Death is strange.
“Listen, Reo. I can’t stay much longer. If you see your mom before I do, send her my love and tell her I forgive her.”
“Mom’s dead?”
“No, she’s alive. In case you see her before I do.”
Dad’s form became faint. He faded away.
I stared at the spot he had been for a moment. What did he mean he forgave her?
Not knowing what to do. I decided to watch the party.
Ten year old me had already blew out the birthday candles, tiny, multi-color, wax pillars. Mom always made chocolate cake. It’s the best birthday cake she says. Ten year old me smiled, showing a missing front tooth.
The kids around the table came from the neighborhood, mostly. My birthday was July 8th, summer, so I didn’t get to invite kids from school. Except for Jeremy Smith, my best friend even all those years ago. He didn’t live in my neighborhood, but I still invited him. Jeremy had red hair and so many freckles he seemed to be more freckles than not. He hated being teased about his freckles. I never teased him, about the freckles anyway.
Mom had made me invite Ivy Romaine on account she was best friends with her mom. Ivy lived a few houses away. She was the only girl at the party. I’m sure she hated being there as much as I hated her being there. A few years later I developed a massive crush on her, but I couldn’t stand her then. Ten year old me was so stupid.
Four other boys besides Jeremy attended the party. Bobby Marshall, Peter Hancock, Doug Rivera, and Shelley Perkins. We all were close in grade school but middle school throws you together with more kids and stirs everything up, resulting in different friends. I used to mock Shelley and tell him he had a girl’s name. Or I’d sing “Shelley, smelly, fatso belly.” I kept mocking him even when we got to high school. I think he hated me.
“You still here, kid? I thought you’d have blown this party by now.”
I turned. There stood Marty, chewing on his cigar.
“Listen kid. I only have a couple minutes. By now one of two things usually happens. Either you get all blubbery and go on about how you were too young to die, life’s unfair, and all that crap, or you’ve got a million questions.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “You feeling all sad? Need a shoulder to cry on?”
I didn’t know how I felt. I shook my head no.
“Good. That happens I have one piece of advice. Get over yourself! You’re dead. You’re a ghost. Nobody cares. Especially me. Capiche?”
I nodded my head.
“Good. Okay, let’s go through a couple questions real quick. First the big one. The grand poobah of questions. What’s the meaning of life? Now, I could give you some metaphysical bullshit like it’s to achieve enlightenment or to become one with all things. Phhttt!” Marty blew a raspberry. “Who knows the meaning of life? More important, who cares? I had this kid a couple years back who told me with great certainty he knew the meaning of life. Want to know what he said?”
“Sure,” I said.
“42. He said the meaning of life is 42.” Marty laughed. “I mean, where the hell did he come up with that? He was dead serious. Get it? Dead serious. Anyway, I guess 42 makes as much sense as any other answer. Okay, second thing, now that you’re dead you remember everything. Everything from your life and everything you do in death sticks with you. It’s always there. The dead never forget.”
I had already figured this out.
He looked at his clipboard. “I need to go. Got another car wreck coming in. I don’t know why the alive drive around in those things. Every single one’s a deathtrap. If I were still alive you’d have to stick a gun to my head for me to ride in a car. Even then I might take a bullet to the brain. They had those Model Ts around before I bought the farm. Never rode in one. What else? You should know sometimes ghosts leave. They disappear. Some believe you move on to another place, but I don’t know. I never seen someone move on. Without seeing it I don’t believe it. I’m from Missouri. There’s also the question ‘What’s my purpose?’ or ‘What am I supposed to do?’ Let’s save that one for next time.”
“What about—” I started, but he had already disappeared.
Ten year old me ripped through his presents, tearing off ribbons, shredding wrapping paper, tossing the trash to the floor. He opened Jeremy’s present. I already knew it was a green plastic water pistol. Just like I knew a little later he’d squirt Ivy in the eye with it and she’d cry and run home and mom would make me go apologize.
It’s weird knowing what’s going to happen before it happens. Like watching a movie you’ve seen a million times.
I closed my eyes. Wondering what I should do now. I heard a brief, loud roaring noise and opened my eyes back up.
I was in a hospital room.
~
My hospital room.
Nighttime. Shadows across the hospital bed, the machines monitoring me hummed softly. Two beds in the room. The other was empty, made up with sheet and cover tucked tight under the mattress corners. Mom sat slumped back in a chair with a large turquoise cushion and back. It had aluminum tubes for frame and arms. Her head lay back, mouth open, a sliver of light across her from the parking lot security light beaming through the window’s vertical blinds. She snored.
I looked at my prone body, a nest of wires on and around me, IVs in both arms, tubes taped to my mouth. I would die soon.
“Dude!”
I turned. Jeremy stood there, goofy grin on his freckled face, shifting his weight from foot to foot, in that bouncy way he had.
“You can see me?” I asked.
“Duh. I’m dead too. I knew you’d come here. We all do.” His face clouded for a moment. “Whoa, this is hard.” His face brightened, goofy grin back. “Dude, you’ve got to help me. I’m desperate. Only I can’t stay here. It’s too far away. Remember last time you crashed at my place? We got pizza and you thought Rover the Cat walked on it?”
“He did walk on it,” I said.
“Why would he? Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Meet me there.”
Jeremy disappeared.
I looked at my body in the hospital bed, knowing it would die soon, wanting to be here for the moment and see with my ghost eyes. I remembered it, every detail, but there’s something different about watching it, from spectating it instead of living it.
Jeremy sounded like he needed me. I could come back later.
Dad had said to close my eyes and think of a time.
I closed my eyes, thought of Jeremy ordering pizza and arguing with him about whether Rover the Cat had walked across the pizza. The familiar roar sounded in my head.
~
I opened my eyes to Jeremy’s room, walls painted black, old band posters on his walls. All the greatest guitar players, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughn. “Police on My Back” by The Clash played on his iHome. Jeremy was going through a retro-punk phase. An open box of pepperoni and cheese pizza, extra cheese, lay on his bed. I loved any type of pizza, the more you piled on the better, but he liked single toppings so his taste buds wouldn’t be confused. Since he bought the pizza—or his dad did—he got to choose.
We argued—the live us—about the cat. A cat so fat it made Garfield look like a poster child for feline starvation. A large gray blob who lay curled up on Jeremy’s pillow, munching away on a piece of pepperoni.
“Dude!” Ghost Jeremy said, from behind me.
I turned. “When did you die?”
“Two weeks ago in the crash. Well, later at the hospital, but I was a goner at the crash. They did CPR on me for a long time. Should have worn my seat-belt. Didn’t help you though.”
“Oh man, sorry Jeremy.”
He let out a chirp of laughter. “Yeah, name’s Percival now. Shit man. What a messed up name. Sounds like a nerdy dweeb from Jane Austin. Call me Jeremy, it’s way cooler.”
“Cool.”
“You like the name Reo?”
I thought about it for a second. “Yeah I do. It sounds, I don’t know, exotic or something.”
“It’s way better than Percival. Sheesh. Anyway, here’s the deal. You know that Ivy chick you like? Yeah. Course you do. I think Dennis Spleenk is going rape her.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I know. Crazy. But here’s the deal. I was hanging out in the girl’s locker room at school and—“
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Yeah, it was great. Different than I thought it’d be. Girls don’t run around naked as much as I hoped. They have private showers, which most of them don’t even use. If you’re quick you can still catch them topless while they’re changing.”
“What a perv.”
Jeremy sighed. “Can I help it that I find the female body so fascinating? It’s more like I appreciate fine art and naked girls are the finest art there is.”
“Whatever.”
“So anyway, I’m waiting and it’s getting tough cause live me isn’t in the boy’s locker room anymore, live me is moving away, skipping out and going to an early lunch. There’s just two girls left, Ivy and Kim Franks. They’re both hot and I’m thinking ‘hurry up and change’ but they’re not, they’re just talking and Ivy tells Kim that Dennis Spleenk has been taking pictures of her. He’s been real sneaky doing it.”
“What a creeper,” I said.
Our live selves went to Jeremy’s dresser, scrolled through his playlist, and discussed which music to play next. Behind them, on the bed, Rover the Cat, strolled over to the pizza and put one paw on a piece of crust and snagged a piece of pepperoni before going back to his perch on the pillow.
“You’re right,” Jeremy said. “He gives off a creeper vibe. What a freak.”
I nodded.
“Anyway, I got to thinking. What’s he doing with those pictures of her? I mean it’s weird, isn’t it? So here’s the deal. Dennis Spleenk rides the same bus I do, or did. I get this idea to follow him home and see what he’s all about. So I jump forward to the afternoon and me riding the bus home.”
The sound of the Romones, “Blitzkrieg Bop” filled the room.
“I thought you drove The Beast?”
“No gas funds, Dude. Plus, mom started hiding her purse. Anyway, I rode the bus that day and I knew Dennis Spleenk gets off a couple stops after me, so I just stayed on the bus after live me got off. I wasn’t sure if it’d work because, you know, it gets harder when you’re further away from your body.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I found out if you’re really focused on something, then it’s not as hard. I was curious what Dennis Spleenk was up to. I thought he might have a shrine to Ivy in his closet or something. When he got off the bus I followed him. He went home, into his kitchen, makes a pbj and I’m thinking shit, it’s getting hard to stick around and there’s this horrible noise in my head.”
He totally had my attention.
“Only the noise is just in my head, you know? He doesn’t hear it. I’m ready to give up when he grabs his backpack and sandwich and goes to his room. I followed him thinking maybe he’d have pictures of Charles Manson up on his walls or some shit like that, but nope. His room is clean like a hotel room. His walls are bare except this print of a sailboat above his bed. It’s straight out of Leave it to Beaver.”
“Weird,” I said.
“Yeah. So I’m starting to feel nauseous watching this loser. I figured it was time to go when he takes his camera from his backpack and hooks it up to his computer. Now I’m hooked. I have to see what he does with the pictures. I’m looking over his shoulder at what he’s doing on the computer. Really focused, you know? And it’s like the noise in my head doesn’t even matter. I’m waiting to see what he does next. He gets up, while the photos are downloading, and locks his bedroom door. He comes back and puts the pictures in a folder named “Ivy” and starts a slide show of her.”
“So he’s obsessed?”
“Yeah, except here’s the deal. Some of the pictures are just of her face photoshopped on naked women. He sticks his hand down his pants and I split. No way I’m sticking around while he wanks.”
I thought about what Jeremy had said, too embarrassed to mention I had thought of Ivy while spanking the monkey, several times.
“Isn’t that messed up?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Not cool. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to try to rape her.”
“I know, but it got my curiosity going. So I kept watching him. Stalking the stalker so to speak. I see him buy some shit off Mitch Henry.”
Mitch Henry was a major drug supplier at Warner’s Crest High. Adults didn’t suspect him because he’s clean-cut and gets good grades and hangs around the good kids and knows how to brown-nose the teachers better than anybody.
“So I get close to them,” Jeremy said. “I hear Dennis Spleenk ask how many to use. Mitch tells him roofies are tricky and asks if his target would be taking alcohol with them.”
“Now that’s scary,” I said. “How do you know he’s going to use the roofies on Ivy?”
“He has a big heart drawn on his calendar—what a fag. It’s this Friday and the heart has the initials I. R. in it.”
“Ivy Romaine,” I said. “This Friday, as in tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
We got quiet, thinking. The music cut off. Live Jeremy and live me were leaving, the empty pizza box now balanced in Jeremy’s too small garbage can. Live us were going to my place to check out some music on my computer. Jeremy’s mom and dad wouldn’t let him have a computer in his room. They had a desk in the corner of their family room with the computer facing out so everyone could see your business. At my place there’d be more privacy.
I heard a sound, like a thousand people whispering, far out in the distance. The noise was barely perceptible, but growing louder.
“Do you hear it?” Jeremy asked.
“Yeah. Reminds me of a bunch of crickets or spiders or something, crawling over each other.”
“That noise happens when you get away from your body,” Jeremy said. “The farther away you get the louder it grows until it’s so loud you can’t think about anything except the noise.”
“Freaky.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go back to when the pizza got here so we can plan out what to do.” He closed his eyes and disappeared.
I closed my eyes, thought of the pizza arriving, felt a quick whoosh in my head, opened my eyes and was in the same room but earlier. Jeremy was already there. Live us opened the pizza box. Rover the Cat watched them open it.
“How come,” I said, “we don’t see our ghost selves back here. We were here earlier.”
“Doesn’t work like that, kid.” I turned, Marty stood right behind me.
Marty nodded at Jeremy. “Percival.”
“Yo dude,” Jeremy said. “Call me Jeremy.”
“Percival,” Marty said, emphasizing the word. “Why don’t you run along. I need to have a chat with our friend here.”
“Who died and left you king?” Jeremy asked.
Marty’s teeth clenched tight on his cigar. “You did.” He smacked Jeremy in the chest with an open palm, like he had with me earlier, and Jeremy disappeared.
Marty shook his head. “That guy is trouble, Reo. You ought to steer clear of him.”
“Naw,” I said. “Jeremy’s a good guy. Just rebels against authority.”
Marty snorted. “You could say that. I talked to Welton, that’s Percival’s transition liaison. He says Percival’s got a bad attitude. Can’t get him to do anything.”
I didn’t know what to say. Jeremy played by his own rules.
“Okay kid, I got to make this quick. What’s your purpose? That’s your big question now. Am I right?”
“Well—“
“Good. So here it is. You don’t have a purpose. You’re dead. Good one, huh?” He laughed.
Seemed to me Marty wasn’t much help. “I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“I have a friend. Who’s alive and—“
“Oh no kid. You aren’t friends with the living. That’s a no-no.”
“Something bad is going to happen to her. This other guy, also alive, is going to hurt her.”
“Doesn’t matter. You don’t interfere with the living. It’s against the rules. Right now, you should consider this a big vacation and go back and relive the high points of your life.”
“But—“
“No buts, kid. Nothing good ever comes when you get involved with the living. Trust me on this.”
“How can you interfere with the living? I mean they can’t hear me, they don’t see me. I can’t touch them. I can’t even touch myself.”
“You can’t interfere. No sense trying,” Marty said.
I didn’t believe him. If ghosts couldn’t interfere with the living then why did there need to be a rule against it?
Marty studied my face, brow wrinkled. He started to say something, but then didn’t. Finally, he spoke. “I gotta run, kid. Don’t mess with the living.” He disappeared.
Music from the Romones, “Blitzkrieg Bop,” filled the room again.
I looked at live me and live Jeremy scrolling through music on the iPod and something occurred to me. I remembered having a small chill in this room when I was alive. Small enough it didn’t register consciously. I reached out and touched my live shoulder, my fingers sank in, disappearing. I jerked my hand back. Live me’s shoulder twitched.
When alive, did ghost me from the future cause the twitch and chill just then? Or had I touched my live body’s shoulder at that precise moment because I knew the chill was going to happen? I didn’t know what to think.
Jeremy appeared. “Is Osh Gosh gone?”
“Marty?”
“Yeah, what’s up with his overalls? Sheesh.”
“He just left.”
“The dude is a major tool. Not as bad as the guy they saddled me with though. My guy was like Elton John on training wheels.”
Sometimes Jeremy said bizarre things nobody but him understood.
“Any ideas on Ivy?” I asked.
“Yeah. Here’s the deal. It’s going to be tough. You’ll have to do most the work. It was hard enough for me sticking around at the hospital, waiting for you. There’s no way I’ll be able to do what needs to be done.”
“What needs to be done?”
Jeremy grinned, head bobbing up and down. “You’re going to possess Dennis Spleenk.”
~
Jeremy and I went back to the time we were eight years old and our dads took us camping near lake Roosevelt. He said it’d be best for my training to be away from as many people as possible. Our live selves had just pitched the tents, two sorry looking, green canvas pup-tents Jeremy’s dad picked up from army surplus. Our dads discussed the best way to build a fire, the most efficient wood and kindling placement.
“Man,” I said. “I haven’t thought about this place in years.”
“Yeah.” Jeremy rocked back and forth from foot to foot.
We took in the majestic scene for a moment. Our campground was up from the lake, surrounded by woods on two sides and open fields on the others. We had a breathtaking view. The sun was at the horizon and the sky’s pink and orange colors reflected off the lake.
“So what do I do?” I asked.
“Just start walking.” He pointed at a small mountain in the distance. “Why don’t you head up there. Just ignore the noise in your head and keep focused on what you’re doing.”
“Right,” I said. “There’s no way I can climb that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s got to be five miles. And steep.”
“So?”
“So, it sounds like too much work.”
“Dude,” Jeremy said. “You’re dead. You don’t get tired. You won’t even breathe hard cause you don’t breathe.”
“Oh.” I looked at the mountain. “How does this help me?”
“Cause it’s just the same when you move away from your live body. Doesn’t matter if you’re moving in time or in distance, it’s the same.”
“How do you know all this?”
“There was this old ghost, must have been a hundred years old. I saw him at the hospital where I died. He was waiting for his wife. We talked and he explained all kinds of things. I practiced some of what he told me and was like, yeah this is cool. I tried to find him later but never could.”
“Marty told me sometimes ghosts just disappear.”
“Marty’s a douche. We travel through both time and place. Chances of finding someone both at a specific when and specific where is pretty slim.”
He had a point. “What if we get separated?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Been thinking about that. Let’s set up a time and place to meet. How about my place, with the pizza, where we met earlier?”
“Cool.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll hang out here, you better go. Remember to keep focusing on what you’re doing, what’s around you.”
I left on the road, heading toward the distant mountain.
~
Less than fifty yards down the road the noise started. The same sound as I had heard earlier at Jeremy’s place, whispers, like a thousand voices in the distance. It didn’t seem too bad. I kept plodding along.
I decided to run, first jogging, then sprinting, then running faster than I had ever ran while alive. It was fun, but the whispering grew louder. It sounded like a noisy restaurant. And I had the sensation that someone was watching me.
I ran faster. The feeling that someone or something watched me increased. I looked around, expecting to see a pack of—I don’t know, monsters?—following me. Nothing there.
I kept running and the noise grew into a dull roar, like a waterfall. In addition to the feeling of being watched, I felt danger. As if my very existence hung in the balance. The roar grew harsher and louder. I closed my eyes.
Silence.
I was in the hospital room again, my body dying in the hospital bed, mom sleeping in the chair.
Shit. I closed my eyes, imagined the camping trip when I was eight, opened them and was there.
“How far’d you make it?” Jeremy asked.
“Probably a couple miles.”
“That’s awesome. Was it scary?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s scary the first few times. I got totally paranoid, but it gets easier. Okay, now moving through time. We’ll just move to tomorrow here. It’ll be easy because our live bodies will be near. The old ghost told me when you move through time you get anchor points that help you return, but you have to imagine time changing to get there the first time. Days turning to night or the seasons changing. Close your eyes and imagine the sun going around the earth—“
I laughed. “The sun doesn’t move around us.”
“Whatever. Imagine it however you want. Point is you want the sun to be the same place in the sky tomorrow. See you there.” His eyes closed and he disappeared.
I couldn’t imagine the sun moving around the earth. How stupid. I closed my eyes, imagined the earth spinning a full rotation, heard a whoosh, opened my eyes and was at the campground.
“You did it!” Jeremy said. “Took me a while to get it down.”
“Well, maybe if you learned about Copernicus it’d be easier.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“The next jump will be harder,” Jeremy said. “Let’s move to tomorrow again. If we get separated meet back at my place with the pizza.” He looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Ready?”
I nodded.
He disappeared. I closed my eyes, imagined the earth spinning again, the roar started but this time it became so loud I yelled out, surprised. It sounded like I was in a tunnel with a freight train, horn blaring. I opened my eyes and looked around the campground. Our tents and cars were gone. Then I snapped into the hospital room again.
There I lay, still in a coma, mom still asleep.
What the hell had happened? I closed my eyes, imagined the pizza at Jeremy’s place when Rover the Cat walked on it, and was there.
Jeremy was laughing when I arrived. Live us were at the dresser, going through the playlist. I ignored them.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“We left the next day, remember? You were like fifty miles from your body.”
“Yeah, I saw. No tents.”
“You made it there?”
“For a second.”
“Whoa, dude. Impressive.”
“How am I going to go ahead of my death? I mean I’ll be a long ways from my body won’t I?”
He shook his head. “It’s different when you move past death. A few days past death is probably like half a mile away from your body. Fifty miles is, I don’t know, it’s got to be over 100 years past death.”
“When you first met me in the hospital, you were two weeks past death?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“What’s that like.”
“I don’t know. Maybe like a mile away from your body.”
“A mile isn’t too tough. I went a lot further than that.”
His shoulders sagged. “I know. I get easily distracted.”
~
Jeremy figured Dennis Spleenk would slip Ivy a roofie at the school dance. We decided to meet in my hospital room the next day at 6pm—funny when you’re a ghost you always knew what time now was. Don’t ask me how, you just know.
Since the dance started at 7pm we figured we’d move forward in time then walk to the high school. Since we were doing it tomorrow I had time to watch what I’d been putting off. My death.
I went to the hospital. Stood at the foot of my bed, waiting.
Marty appeared. He hooked a thumb around the one strap of his overalls and stood beside me, watching my body. “How you doing, kid?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Good. Any plans on interfering with the living?”
“How could I?”
“Good. Whacha been up to?”
“Hanging out with my friend Jeremy.”
“I toldja, stay away from Percival. He doesn’t follow the rules.”
One of the machines hooked up to my body started beeping loudly. Mom woke, look around. A nurse rushed in, looked at the machine and called on the intercom for help.”
Mom hovered over my body, holding my hand. The nurse put an arm around mom. “Mrs. Phillips, I need to you step out.”
“What’s happening?” Mom asked.
Others rushed in. One pushed a cart. The nurse herded mom from the room.
They tried shocking me. It didn’t help. I died.
“This the first time you watched it?” Marty asked.
I nodded.
“It’s tough the first time.” He sighed. “Let me know if you need anything. I have to run.”
“How do I contact you?” I asked.
He was already gone.
~
The next day Jeremy and I met in the hospital room. The dance started at 7pm, an hour away, but we were three days earlier, a bit after 9pm. We decided to move forward past my death in a series of hops.
We went forward two days on our first jump. I closed my eyes, imagined the earth spinning around twice, heard a slight howl in my ears, and opened my eyes. Jeremy had made it too. We were in the same hospital room, only an old woman slept in the hospital bed I had been in.
The constant sound I heard from being past death wasn’t bad. It sounded like paper rustling.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now,” Jeremy said, “let’s move forward half a day. Imagine the sun going halfway around the earth.”
I didn’t point out his error. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Let’s do it,” he said.
I closed my eyes, imagined the earth spinning halfway around, opened them up. Jeremy appeared an instant after I did.
Daylight filtered through the hospital window.
“Cool,” I said. I pointed to the large wall clock. It read 9:12.
“Now, imagine the clock hands moving around until it gets to now.”
I closed my eyes, imagined the hour hand spinning around 10, 11, 12, all the way up to 6:09. I stopped in the now and heard, in the background, constant whispering.
“Dude!” Jeremy said. “We’re here.”
I grinned. This wasn’t so hard.
“Let’s go,” Jeremy said. “Follow me.” He ran to the closed window, didn’t slow down, and disappeared through it.
I rushed to the window and looked down. Jeremy stood on the street below, waving at me. The hospital room was on the fourth or fifth floor. This seemed crazy but I couldn’t kill myself. Could I? I ran to the window like he had and through it, except I tripped, tumbled through the window, falling neither headfirst nor feet first, but flipping end over end all the way down. I tensed for the impact, but it’s not like I had a physical body with muscles I could tense. Sometimes, being a ghost is confusing. I hit the ground and just stopped. No impact. Just stopped.
Jeremy snickered. “You need to work on your landing.”
I stood up, glaring at him.
We headed down Fourth street. The school was half a mile away. There were a few cars on the road and almost no foot traffic. I heard the whispering noise, a bit louder now, but not bad.
“Keep focused, man,” Jeremy said. “Like on the buildings, little things, like the green awning over Geovani’s Produce. It helps you stay present. If you lose hold you can always come back to any point you focused on.”
I looked around and did as Jeremy suggested. Across the street a pawn shop’s neon sign glowed red, the letter “a” from “Fast C_sh” missing.
We turned right on Madison. The neighborhood changed from storefronts and businesses to residential. We went another couple blocks, passing small, brick apartments and a few duplexes, and then past a park and then Warner’s Crest High. The time was 6:23.
“Now, explain again how I control Dennis Spleenk,” I said.
Jeremy wasn’t around.
Crap. Now what? Should I wait for him or keep going toward the school? I wasn’t comfortable jumping into Dennis Spleenk. Jeremy had said to run and jump into his body. Creepy.
I hesitated, trying to figure out my next move. The rustling noise gained volume and my surroundings dimmed. I focused on the street lamp near me, felt a whoosh in my head, and snapped back in the now. Close call. Stopping to think about things made it easier to lose grip of the now.
I decided to keep going. Jeremy would catch up.
~
Kids and parent chaperones were already at the high school. I went through the front doors, glad I didn’t come here any longer. Sure, I would have graduated in a few months, but it felt good to not have high school looming over my head.
Two long tables sat side-by-side, decorated with red, white and pink ribbons and hearts. The Valentine’s day dance. Two girls sat at the table with a closed cash box, both texting.
How did Dennis Spleenk plan on slipping Ivy a roofie? No way she’d be at this dance with him.
I went to the gym and looked around. The lights were bright. They’d dim them when the dance started. The decorating committee had went wild. Red, white and pink balloons, most of them heart shaped, were tied everywhere. White and red ribbons hung from the ceiling, from the walls, from basketball hoops ratcheted up, out of the way.
Several tables holding punch and Dixie cups lined one wall. Dennis Spleenk stood behind them.
He had volunteered to help with the refreshments so he could drug Ivy.
I looked around, wondering what to do. Should I try jumping into Dennis Spleenk and see what happened? I wished Jeremy would show up. Someone turned down the lights and music began playing softly. The background noise in my head was louder.
I moved behind the table, next to Dennis Spleenk and scanned the room, looking for Ivy. I didn’t see her.
I looked at Dennis Spleenk. Now or never. I jumped into him.
It felt as though I had broken through a glass window and the glass shards sliced me as I went. I could see out of two sets of eyes, images juxtaposed. Slowly, the images coalesced into one and I saw only from his eyes. The distant sounds of whispers had grown to shrieks. It sounded like a hurricane.
I lifted my arm, Dennis Spleenk’s arm, and looked at my hand. How disconcerting. Then I was gone.
Back to the hospital room on the night of my death. It was so … quiet.
Shit. I had lost focus somehow, but I had been focusing on my hand, or Dennis Spleenk’s hand.
Jeremy wasn’t here either.
I closed my eyes, focused on the image of the ticket table at the school, and was there. I looked at the clock on the wall of the school. 6:49 yet I knew now was 7:15. I closed my eyes and pictured the clock’s hands moving forward to 7:15. I opened them and was in the now again.
In the gym, many more couples had arrived. A classical Journey song played. I spotted Ivy drinking punch off to the side with her date, Eric Bunting, a stupid jock. Don’t ask me what she saw in him.
Dennis Spleenk stood a few feet away, grinning like he had just won the lottery.
I was too late. She’d already taken the drug.
Without thinking I jumped into Dennis Spleenk again. I ignored the feeling of being sliced and the screech of a thousand yelling voices. I took a slow, unsure step with his body, moving like Frankenstein’s monster. I stepped again, moving toward Ivy and Eric Bunting. I poked Eric in the chest with a finger.
His eyes went wide. He must have been shocked to have this nerd anywhere close to him, let alone touch him.
I found my voice, Dennis Spleenk’s voice. “I drugged your girlfriend and later I’m going to rape her.”
I didn’t see Eric’s fist coming, but I felt it, a sledge hammer against my jaw. Dennis Spleenk’s legs crumpled and he/I fell backward.
I scrambled out of his unconscious body.
The music stopped. The lights came on.
Eric Bunting had his arms around Ivy, helping her leave. She staggered as if drunk.
Jeremy appeared. “Dude! You did it. You saved her.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I think I did.”
~ The End ~
How this Story was Created
Feb 7 – Spent a few minutes going through random band names and hit on “Hollow Specters” Maybe it’ll be a simple first person account of becoming a ghost. Wrote the opening sentence “Being dead ain’t all its cracked up to be.” And thought I’d let the whole thing ferment in my subconscious until tomorrow. Time today: 10 minutes
Feb 8 – 40 minutes and I’m to 746 words. Just having fun with it. I have this whole, weird death concept where ghosts travel along the timeline of their life. It’s interesting and bizarre.
Feb 9 – Spent 60 minutes and I’m up to 1513 words. That’s 767 words for the day. I had a bit too much “explanation” before, just me the narrator, well Ghost Boy Reo the narrator, telling how things worked. I broke some of this apart, brought in Reo’s dead dad for a few moments for a quick reunion and to explain a couple things. I’ll try to sprinkle the explanation through more of the story, but I have to get to the story problem quickly now. I think the world is interesting enough, but if I don’t introduce the main goal of the story quickly then this one’s going to go down the crapper.
Feb 10 – Spent 45 minutes. Up to 2199 words, that’s 686 words. It may be a bit long before introducing the main conflict, but being dead is a conflict isn’t it? I’ll have the main content now within 500 words, so that will be tomorrow, but I don’t know the resolution of this story yet.
Feb 11 – Spent 50 minutes, didn’t move the story ahead any because I had a bit of an epiphany on writing vivid detail, so I went back to the start of the story and started adding as much detail as I could. Stopped at 2,855 words (656 new ones), only making to the point in the story where Reo meets his dad. Maybe, if I finish all my other work for the day, I’ll come back and continue adding details.
Feb 12 – Spent 50 minutes, stopped at 3,459 words (604 new ones). Finished fleshing out “vivid detail” and got to the meeting with Jeremy. I’m thinking I still have about 2,000 words on this so it’ll probably be mid-week before finishing it. Oh well, some stories will be slower, some faster. This’ll put me behind but I’ll try to make the next one a short, short and it should balance out.
Feb 13 – Spent 50 minutes, stopped at 4,277 words (818 new ones). I think I’m having a bit of talking head syndrome going on, but the story’s still interesting to me. I worked hard today on just letting it flow, giving the story reigns over to my subconscious and normally, where I write in ten minute chunks, today I went the whole time in one writing chunk. It felt good. Fun. Also, I changed the title from “Hollow Specters” to “Freshly Ghost” It will be a “Ghost Boy Reo story”
Spent 15 minutes on the cover. Yeah it came together quickly. I found a royalty free photo. Used http://www.degraeve.com to get a color palette. Then used photoshop to add text. I love it when a cover comes together this quickly. It’s like it was meant to be 
Spend another half hour and got the word count to 4590, so that’s 1,131 new words. It’s actually a bit more because I deleted about 400 words of exposition that was floating along the bottom of the story, waiting until I wanted to use it.
Feb 14 – 35 minutes got to 5213 or 623 new words. I want to clear my todo list for today and get back to this story. Having fun. Another 25 minutes total now 5537, so the total today was 957.
Feb 15 – 30 minutes, word count now 6,315 or 778 new words. I had a nice flow going but have to stop and get to work. I’m really going to try moving forward with this story later today. Spent another 80 minutes and wrote “The End”. Final word count is 8,612. That’s a total of 3,075 words today in 110 minutes. This story’s going to need some heavy editing though. But that’s okay. It’s all part of the process.
Almost six hours editing. It went from 8,612 words to 7,726 words. Wow.
Total time writing and editing, 14 hours.