by A Lorenzen
When I didn’t take the glass, he rolled his eyes and took a sip from it. ‘There, you see? No poison!’ With those words he pressed the glass into my hand and returned to his seat in the living room.
Hesitantly, I approached him. ‘Who are you?’
Blake stared at me, scanning me up and down. Eventually, he put down his gin and tonic and approached me. He got uncomfortably close to me.
‘I think you’ve had enough,’ Blake stated. I didn’t understand what he meant until he lifted my right arm and carefully removed the needle. He laid the needle, the tube, and the bag on the table behind me. ‘You’ve healed,’ he said pointing at my shoulder.
I looked down and sure enough the wounds on my shoulder and arm were gone. There was not even a scar. When I looked at my leg, I found two small patches of whiter skin where the teeth of the monster had punctured my skin. It was the same on my forearm. My fingers carefully trailed along the white marks making sure they were not an illusion.
How could this be?
‘I’m a ghost, and so are you,’ he began matter-of-factly, ‘I appeared in your dreams to prepare you for your death. Fate or God or whoever you want had already decided you would die. When you died the council appeared and challenged you to pay the necessary price. By accepting that price you have become a ghost and will serve a sentence here, after which you will go back to your human life. Instead of dying in that accident, you will survive and continue living your life. It’s like getting a second chance. Right now, you’re just in between life and death. A ghost.’
Inadvertently, I found myself reaching for my chest. My heart was still beating. I was alive as far as I was concerned. ‘How long will I stay here?’
‘The council announced your sentence to you when you agreed.’
I tried to remember. So much had happened since then. ‘I think… it was sixty-seven years… but-hold on, so I’m… I’m a “ghost” for the next sixty-seven years?!’ I raised my hands and made quotation marks in the air.
‘Correct. And once you’ve served your years here, you can return to the exact moment you died and survive from that accident.’
‘Will I have sixty-seven years when I’m human again?’
‘No. Your sentence here just means you will get another shot at living. You will recover from your accident and live on until you die. But, no one knows how long that is for. I hope for you it will be many decades.’
I looked out through the window into the pitch-black night. Was I safer in here with a stranger, or alone in the dark out there? Without any possible way of finding my way home and monsters lurking around ready to bite me again, staying here seemed the better option.
What had I gotten myself into? I raised the glass to my lips and took a long gulp of the gin and tonic.
‘So, what happens now? What do I do here?’ I tried to play along.
‘Your job is to kill demons, mostly molochs. I will teach you how. I’m your trainer and I’m responsible for your well-being here. You are my recruit.’
I raised my eyebrows. Molochs? Demons? Could this get any more surreal?
Blake had wandered back to his chair and sipped on his drink. ‘If you get wounded you need blood from your master to heal- oh speaking of which, I better let him know you’re here.’ He fumbled his phone out of his pocket.
‘What’s… what’s a master?’
‘He’s a sort of spiritual guide. But you’ll meet him later. First, I need to train you.’ Blake typed on his phone for a minute or two, before he eventually looked at me again. ‘Right. You need blood from your master to heal. Don’t ask me why; I don’t know. That’s just how it works. But he is not a blood bank, so you have to be careful. You should also know you can only die in the line of duty or by decision of the council. You cannot kill yourself or bypass your sentence here in any other way. The whole point is to eventually get back to your human life and if you get killed you don’t get that second chance, so… don’t get killed.’ He emphasized the last part. Blake finished his glass.
‘Why do we have to kill molochs? What are they?’ I asked.
‘Molochs are distant relatives of vampires but they evolved separately. They kill and drain humans of their blood. We kill them so they can’t harm humans,’ he said looking into his empty glass.
‘How many ghosts are there? And how many molochs?’
‘There are a lot more molochs than us, so we’re always outnumbered. I don’t know how many ghosts there are, I know of around sixty. The city is divided in districts and the ghosts are assigned a district by the council. Not sure how big the city is, but you will be able to socialize with other ghosts when you’re a bit more advanced in your training.’
I reflected on everything I had heard so far and a sinking feeling came over me. ‘If I’m here all this time, won’t my friends and relatives all have died by the time I get back?’ I asked.
Blake shook his head. ‘Time is distorted around your death. Essentially, you are in a time loop. When you go back, you’ll get back to the exact moment where you would have died, no time will have passed. You will only have the memories of your time here.’
My head spun trying to grasp my new reality. I stared out the window into the blackness.
Blake cleared his throat, ‘I think I’ve thrown enough information at you for the time being. Don’t worry, you will be able to ask many more questions. But before you get some rest, there are a few rules. These are absolute musts. One; you have to obey me. I am responsible for your survival and cannot do that if you do stupid things. If I tell you not to do something, you don’t. If I tell you to run, you run. It’s very dangerous here and you’re extremely vulnerable as a new ghost. Two; you need to trust me. Everything I do and teach you is to ensure your survival. If you die, I’ll have to train a new ghost and start again so it’s in my interest you get to the end of your sentence as much as it is in yours. Third and final point, and this one will be the hardest; I know you will be thinking about your family, your friends, and your human life, but you need to put that behind you and concentrate on your life here. If you commit, you will cope more easily. You’ll see them again, in a few years’ time.’
I nodded. As he was the only person I knew that wasn’t trying to kill me, I would have to obey his rules. At least until I could figure out a way back, if that was at all possible…
‘It has been a long night. Your bedroom is there,’ he pointed at the door furthest to the left under the second staircase.
I shuffled to the room and peered inside. It was small with just a bed and a cupboard with a window at the back looking into the neighbours’ garden. The walls were white and it looked all together gloomy. If I had to stay here for sixty-seven years I would have to decorate.
I went back to the living room to search for the bathroom. My gaze fell on Blake and I froze. He had stripped down to a pair of baggy shorts and was doing push-ups at the far-end of the living room. Having never been inside a gym in all my life, this was the first time I saw a man doing push-ups that wasn’t on TV. I stayed rooted in place and gawked at him.
When he was done with his push-ups, Blake reached for metal bars above his head that stretched across the ceiling from one wall to the other, around ten feet above the ground. First, he did a series of pull-ups; then moved along one metal bar hand over hand.
He was incredibly strong and agile. His blond hair soon stuck to his forehead and droplets of sweat pearled down the middle of his chest and back. He didn’t stop as he dropped to the ground for another set of push-ups; he barely seemed to be breathing hard.
I realized I had been staring for quite a while and darted off into the bathroom before he caught me. I splashed cold water in my face. Gazing in the mirror I inspected my neck and shoulder again. Apart from the two small spots of white skin where I had been bitten, my body was free of scars. There was just the one ugly scar from the car accident that stretched from my left hip all the way across my stomach to the rib cage on my right side. How coul
d someone butcher me this way? It was too terrible to look at, so I let my top fall over it again.
The accident replayed in my head; I could still feel the pain, hear the honking echoing in my head. I had died! Actually died! Now I wished I had just stayed in bed that day…
I turned away from the mirror, heading back to my bedroom. I jumped backwards. Blake stood in the door frame, eyeing me with crossed arms, still only clad in a pair of shorts.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked dripping with sweat.
‘Fine,’ I answered tonelessly. I did not know where to look. His bare torso screamed for attention. I may not be alive, but I was clearly not that dead. But this was not the time nor the place.
‘You know, this is not as terrible as it seems,’ he started, coming into the bathroom. I had no place to escape.
‘How long have you been here?’ I asked, trying to make my voice sound casual.
‘I have been here for years and I still have thirty to go, so I’ll be here a while,’ he chuckled. His abs tensing up with his laughter.
I didn’t know what to say. I stayed quiet, trying not to look at his glistening body.
‘Ok, it’s late.’ With that, he walked abruptly out of the bathroom.
I rushed into my bedroom and sighed, but Blake followed me. He was holding a gun in his hand.
‘Here.’ He held the gun out towards me. Hesitantly, I took it and held it up with as few fingers as possible.
It was heavy and black, a typical handgun as far as I could tell. Blake laughed at my attempt to not touch the weapon. He took my hands and showed me how to hold the gun properly, his warm strong hands wrapping around mine.
‘Here is the safety. You need to take it off before shooting.’ He showed me the small latch on the side that locked the trigger. I stretched my arms away, trying to keep the gun as far away from me as possible.
Blake laughed again. He took my shoulders and guided me to face away from him. He stood close behind me. I could feel the warmth coming off his bare chest and his breath tickled the back of my neck.
‘Hold it like that,’ he whispered into my ear. His hands tentatively glided along my arms, directing my movements.
‘And now,’ his voice murmured, ‘you aim.’ He lifted my arms, bringing the weapon’s sight to eye level. His face was right next to mine. I could feel the heat and sweat from his body.
‘Good!’ he said as he moved away from me and walked out of my room. I let out a breath. How long had I been holding it?
‘Always keep the gun in reach and don’t hesitate to use it,’ he shouted from the bathroom as he shut the door. Shortly after, I heard the water running.
I closed my eyes in relief. Finally! Alone. I looked in the cupboard and found a few T-shirts close enough to my size. I closed the door to my bedroom, undressed, and lay down in the bed. I wished, not for the last time, that I would find myself waking up from this bad dream. I missed my family and friends. I missed Bruce and the warm sun on my skin. Here, everything was cold and dark. I prayed I would wake up in my bed and this would all turn out to be a bad dream…
RULES OF THE GAME
I opened my eyes and looked around. It was blurry for a few moments until my eyes adapted. My prayers had not been heard; nothing looked like my room in France.
When I walked out of my bedroom, Blake was sitting in the chair he had lectured me from last night. The bright morning sun shone through the nearby window as he observed me. Outside it looked just like Earth. The sun, the sky, the houses along the suburban street. Nothing out of the ordinary.
‘I’ll teach you about the molochs first. Then I’ll take you into town to get some essentials and maybe something to brighten up that room. When we get back, we will start your training.’ Blake stood up in one energetic move and strolled past me towards the back of the living room where he had exercised the night before. He pulled something along with him back to where I was standing. It was a large chalkboard. When he had positioned it, he gestured me to sit down.
‘Molochs are animal-like creatures with primitive brains. Their red eyes allow them to see at night. When they bite, they inject their prey with poison which makes you feel like you’re burning. It slows you down and can give you fever.’ Blake had started drawing with his left hand some rough sketches of the features of molochs.
‘They prefer to be in groups and feed together, but they still fight among each other all the time, constantly re-establishing dominance between one another. They can move between Earth and Idolon. Once they have killed in the human world, they linger here in Idolon, so we have to make sure to kill them while they’re here before they return to the human world.’ Blake stopped.
I took it all in without responding.
‘I’ll train you to face them. You should know that since they live in groups, you need to be prepared to kill several of them in one go. You need to watch your back.’
‘So, I just… I shoot them… with my-my gun?’ I stuttered.
Blake nodded in acknowledgement. ‘We’ll go to the gun range later. Aim for the heart or the head. I’m not much for theory and prefer a practical approach so let’s go. We have a lot to cover today.’
Without waiting for me he hopped down the stairs to the entrance, and I hesitantly followed him.
His old blue truck was waiting for him in the driveway. I got in the passenger seat and sat quietly. As we drove through the city, I scanned the horizon and the cityscape longing to see anything familiar. Even with the sun high in the sky I felt cold and pulled the sweater tighter around myself.
‘You won’t recognize the city, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Blake stated. He had only his left hand on the steering wheel.
I tried to imagine Blake’s first day here, but it was unconceivable to me that this confident, posed, watchful individual could have been a scared, frantic, insecure person like I was right now.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘I guess it’s to keep us from trying to search for the people in our human life,’ Blake sighed deeply.
‘Where are we then? What city is this?’
‘This universe consists of an endless city. It’s just buildings, houses, shopping centres and streets. There are no landmarks either because anything too real that could reconnect you to your human life has been… let’s say erased. It’s like opening your eyes underwater; you can see things, but it’s all blurry and you can’t really make out what’s in front of you.’
We came to a stop in front of a department store with a blue banner around it. The name was unfamiliar to me, but Blake explained it was the same as the fact that you couldn’t see any landmarks.
When we walked into the shop, it seemed we were the only customers.
‘You can take and use anything you want in this world. One of the benefits of being a ghost is everything is at your disposal.’ He gestured towards the mountains of goods staked in the aisles.
Grabbing things here and there, I soon had my hands full and walked out with as much as my arms would carry. At least this bit of Idolon wasn’t so bad; I would just have to make shopping my new hobby. My mother would be so proud.
I convinced Blake to follow me around with a trolley which I filled with bed linens, candles, posters, several lamps, books and motivational picture frames.
Next, he took me to a clothing store, where I took everything from jeans and tops to winter jackets.
While I had never been interested that much in shopping as a human, it was a welcome distraction now.
The sun was low in the sky by the time we got back to the house. I realized I hadn’t eaten at all since arriving on Idolon. ‘Is it normal I’m not hungry?’
‘You don’t need to eat’ Blake explained. ‘You can eat if you want but it doesn’t taste of anything. Alcohol is the only thing that still affects you. All you really need is blood from your master whenever you’re wounded. And that is injected, you don’t even drink that.’
‘Do I still have all my senses?’ I
feared I wouldn’t like the answer.
Blake shifted uncomfortably. ‘Most of them yes. You still have smell, sight and sound. But you can only partly feel. You can feel a table with your hands, but you can’t feel the sun on your skin.’
‘Why?’ I felt like a five-year old asking question upon question.
‘I assume it’s again, so ghosts don’t spend their time lying in the sun waiting for their sentences to run out. Their duty is to kill demons. Anything else is a distraction.’
All sense of satisfaction from shopping flew right out the window.
‘What about the humans? Where are they? I saw them when I got here.’ I felt a deep chill as I relived the feeling of someone walking through me.
‘The humans are most of the times not visible. It’s just sometimes there’s a… a sort of glitch in the walls between this world and the human world and we see them, but normally we don’t so you won’t have to feel the emptiness when they pass through you.’
I was literally a ghost. The fact that I wouldn’t be seeing many living humans was only a mild comfort.
Blake was eager to teach me how to use a gun, so he took me to a gun range after my shopping spree. My stomach was nervous at the thought of actually pulling the trigger on a gun. My stepfather had once taken me to a gun range to try out clay pigeon shooting, and I had not liked it. I didn’t see the point in learning to handle a gun when we were not at war.
We drove towards the south as far as I could tell from the position of the sun. He stopped the car in front of a building that reminded me of a dodgy night club. The whole façade was painted in black paint.
I followed Blake towards the glass door. Suddenly, it opened and a tall man with black hair exited. He was on the phone and determinedly walked to a red Ferrari parked on the opposite side of Blake’s truck. He waved with his keys in his left hand at Blake, who waved back. I slowed in my steps and stared at the mysterious man as he passed us. He winked at me and unlocked his Ferrari with his key. He had seen me!
‘That’s Dominic. He’s another ghost from our district. Come on,’ Blake called me. The Ferrari raced off and I shuffled to Blake, who has holding the door open.