Stopgap

by Liam Card

  Two hours later, after exactly 412 millilitres of gin, he made his way to the bedroom and knocked on the closed door. He knocked three times. Then six times. The knocking increased in both volume and intensity. He tried to turn the handle and found that the door had been locked.

  “Carmen, what have I said about locked doors in my house?” he said. “Unlock it! Unlock it immediately!”

  “No,” said Carmen. “I don’t feel like it.”

  The husband became enraged. He paced outside the door like a lion behind bars awaiting a meal. When the hunger became too great, the value of the door became meaningless. Kick after kick after kick at the door as he swore up and down.

  “You’re going to need a crowbar, you idiot,” said Carmen. “There’s one in the shed beside the tire pump.”

  “When I come back with the crowbar, Carmen,” he said, attempting to catch his breath. “It’s headed your direction.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that!” she said. “Yes, certainly with the crowbar!”

  He made his way to the shed and located the crowbar. It was exactly where Carmen had said it would be. In fact, she had placed a Christmas bow on it and a card with the lipstick imprint of a kiss. He ripped off the card and bow and wondered if Carmen would make it out of this beating alive. He was no longer so concerned about a trip to the hospital. There’s no way around that now, he thought.

  Minutes later, he slammed the end of the crowbar in the doorjamb and began to pry. The wood frame moaned before cracking and splintering.

  “It’s working! Keep going!” she screamed, now clapping with encouragement.

  When the crowbar had applied enough torque, the door popped open.

  Red with fury and dripping with sweat, he entered the room and found Carmen sitting on the bed drinking a glass of red wine, along with her three brothers, all having done some previous drinking of their own — equally as fortified with courage and conviction.

  These brothers were armed with the following: a bat, some rubber tubing, and a hacksaw. The tallest brother closed the door behind the bewildered husband and suggested that he drop the crowbar. Carmen walked over and picked it up off the floor. She walked back to the bed and suggested that her siblings get to work.

  They did.

  Some time passed.

  The three brothers left the barrel-chested spousal abuser with eyes swollen, ribs broken, and hands missing. The rubber tubing provided tourniquet bracelets.

  “There go your punching days,” said the smallest brother, wiping blood off the hacksaw with a facecloth.

  “Your drinking days too,” said the middle brother.

  “Maybe with a straw or something, but you’ll need to find someone to pour,” said the tallest brother. “Call me, I’ll come over. Anytime.”

  All the brothers laughed.

  Rob laughed harder. He found great entertainment in all of this.

  “This is just downright amazing,” said Rob. “Don’t you think, pal? Wow, what an ending.”

  I gave off some sort of uncomfortable vibration, and he teased me about it throughout the cleanup of the blood and the conversation about how to dispose of the hands.

  Yes, what to do with the hands, indeed.

  The smallest brother, the one with the crucifix and barbed wire tattoo on his forearm, suggested making gloves out of them, and Rob laughed so hard, the lights flickered. The brothers packed up Carmen’s core belongings and placed the cordless telephone beside the panicked husband. The middle brother suggested he dial for help. This prompted more laughter, and one final kick to the abuser’s ribs was dealt. A proper kick. Something a professional goalkeeper would have been proud of.

  Carmen asked for a moment alone with her husband. The brothers left the room, but not before a few parting words of their own. She knelt down beside his face. Their eyes met.

  “Please,” he said. “I need help. I need you to call an ambulance, or I’ll die.”

  “Why should you be saved?”

  “I love you, Carmen,” he said. “You can’t leave me like this.”

  “You’re right. I can’t. It wouldn’t be right.”

  Carmen grabbed the infamous crowbar and with one swing buried the hooked end in his neck. His eyes rolled around, and he gurgled for a bit.

  With a cloth, she wiped her prints from the crowbar, now a permanent fixture in his body. She calmly walked to the door and softly closed it behind her, as if not to wake a sleeping baby.

  The husband lay alone with seconds to live. In his mind, he cried for God to help him. He praised the Lord and begged for mercy. He begged for Jesus to take him to Heaven.

  Then his squirming and gurgling came to an end.

  He was surely standing at the back of the Post-Death Line, and many thousands of the recently deceased were about to upload and experience the life of a drunken spousal abuser from Tunja, Colombia. All would share his death in the same horrific fashion.

  “Show’s over, kid,” said Rob. “That turned out better than expected, I gotta say.” And then I downloaded from him what he had expected to take place, which was equally as disturbing.

  “Any questions for me at this time?”

  “I can’t really think of any, no.”

  “I’ll tell you this, kid. We all chose wrong. Us ghosts, we all really botched it opting to come back to this hellhole. Here we are, armed with all the knowledge and perspective the Post-Death Line gives us, but we remain invisible and unable to do shit, save for flickering lights or raising the hair on the backs of necks. Just all bullshit, bush-league stuff. A bunch of onlookers is all we are. An army of peeping Toms.”

  “Sounds terrible,” I said.

  “Torture if you let it be. Don’t get sucked into the really bad channels. Ghosts can get consumed. They become pain junkies and only hover around the worst of humanity.”

  “I’ll try to steer clear.”

  “Listen, after you get your feet wet with travel and latch on to a few channels, you’ll find a hobby. That’s what I suggest. Motorsports is mine. Has been for forty years now. I take in every motorsport race, practice, and time trial the world has to offer.”

  “I really like music,” I said.

  “Now you have the best seats in the house!”

  “I guess I do.”

  “Also, you’re still basically human. Don’t beat yourself up too bad when you fall victim to an emotion. There’s nothing you can do about it. Don’t try to reason your way out. It’s a pit.”

  “Show me how to do those small-time stunts, would you?” I asked.

  He sent me over the image of a movie poster for a recent Hollywood blockbuster titled Happy to Oblige. The poster featured a heavily muscled action hero as he fired a machine gun while screaming into the desert. Then Rob proceeded to show me some tricks. They were easier than I thought.

  “And how would I go about finding someone?”

  “Who?”

  “Diana.”

  “What’s her last name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “Correct. But I think she could be somewhere in Ontario.”

  He sent me the image of a haystack. Then a needle glowed and throbbed from inside it, as to identify itself.

  “Here’s how we find the needles,” he said, and so went the lesson on geo-location. Essentially, this is how I found her:

  I was able to filter and batch all of the thought patterns with respect to the name Diana within the geographic boundaries of Ontario, Canada. From there, I was able to filter out the toddlers, teens, young adults, and the elderly, which left me only 643 to visit personally.

  I visited 333 before I was brought to a bungalow in Burlington.

  And there she was: Diana-of-no-last-name, gently rocking a swaddled newborn in a turn-of-the-century pine roc
ker.

  She sang a song to the little baby boy.

  It went like this:

  Mamma’s own dear little baby.

  Mamma’s own dear little boy.

  Mamma’s own dear little baby.

  Mamma’s own dear little boy.

  The song was repeated over and over and over, regardless of the sleeping status of the child. A man entered the room after thirty minutes or so. He sat down on the floor, unknotted his tie, and unbuttoned the top two mother-of-pearl-looking buttons on his white dress shirt.

  I read all of his thought projections.

  This was her husband.

  A good man, from what I could tell, based on his thoughts, anyway. He just sat there and listened to the song over and over as well. The two of us, both present and equally silent, captured by the wonderment that was the finest woman either of us had ever known. Of course, I was thrilled to see how well Diana-of-no-last name’s life had turned out. It made me happy to see her in such a good place.

  A safe place. A place of love.

  Diana eventually wound down her song to find that both the baby and her husband were fast asleep. She couldn’t believe how well life had turned out for her. She wondered how someone who had sold pills and powder to get through school deserved such a happy ending. She wondered how the lives of those she sold pills and powder to had turned out.

  Not this good, she thought.

  She thought she should thank someone but wasn’t sure about God, so she thanked the Universe in general and thought that was a safe bet. She wondered if her parents, who had died when she was a young girl, were looking down on her. She asked for their forgiveness about the pills and powder part but wanted them to see her now.

  “Your little girl made it,” she whispered.

  I could sense no other vibrations in the room, so her parents weren’t present. But if no one else heard her, I certainly had. Perhaps I could do something godly. My energy was focused directly at the thick yellow flame of an antique coal oil lamp she had burning close by. I pushed energy toward that flame with everything I had, and it snapped and danced. It billowed black smoke out of the glass chimney.

  She smiled. “Thanks, Mom,” she said.

  And my time there was complete.

  Diana was safe. Diana was happy.

  And the second mystery had been answered.

  At that point, hovering around seemed an intrusion, so I decided that would be the last time I saw Diana.

  And I wish that had been the case.

  • • •

  After Diana, I travelled to the house I was raised in. My mother was dusting the hutch. More specifically, the picture of my high school graduation. She shed a few tears and blew her nose into the dust rag, which resulted in a fit of sneezing. She broke up laughing at herself between sneezes. I laughed as well. Eager to flex what powers I had, I made a log in the nearby fireplace crackle and pop, as if it were a firework, and then focused my form close to her. The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end, and she looked up and said, “Thank you, Luke. I knew you hadn’t missed that one,” and continued on with her dusting.

  • • •

  For many months, I wandered. I hovered in lecture halls and concert halls, sports stadiums, art galleries, changerooms, and honeymoon suites. When I was finished with all of that, I became addicted to courtroom drama and hovered over the guilty and innocent alike. It’s fascinating to watch legal proceedings when you can tap into the thought patterns of those charged with crimes.

  The only one in the room able to access the hard truth.

  I did my best to steer clear of the dark matter. Cries of pain clawed at me, inviting me to travel to them, but I resisted. Scenes of murder and torture. Scenes of injustice and human rights violations by the thousands — all there for the viewing, but not for me. I had lived enough of all that first-hand in the Post-Death Line. At this point in my afterlife, I had checked off both reasons for my return.

  There was nothing more for me, really.

  The truth was, I was ready for What’s Next, but my curiosity had managed to cage me on Earth until my Spirit Lease came due. A wave of depression came over my form, and perspective caused me to replay the worst bouts of depression I had experienced in the Post-Death Line.

  Fine, perhaps in comparison I wasn’t depressed … but I was nothing.

  I was flat.

  I was ready for something and open to anything.

  Within seconds of coming to that realization, I received the call every ghost knows is coming sooner or later.

  The Bookkeeper had deemed me ready. A Recently Delivered Spirit, an RDS, had been delivered back to Earth and was paired with me.

  She reached out to me within seconds of her arrival. Her name was Safia.

  This was the Safia that would go on to change the world, and history thereafter.

  6

  It’s the ghosting equivalent to meeting your unborn child, I suppose. That would be the closest comparison, given that you are paired with another spirit for the remainder of their time or yours. In the Line I had been a mother many thousands of times, so it felt familiar. When the call arrives, it is undeniable. Overtakes your form, entirely. Like an orgasm or electrocution.

  Not something to be ignored.

  The event is marked by a very distinct whispering. The whisper fills your form and mentions the name of the RDS, paired with coordinates placing the exact location of the new ghost. And off you go.

  • • •

  It was just after lunch, local time, when I arrived in the small town square in Pakistan. The majestic white-capped mountains surrounding the scene were not majestic enough to distract me from the horror that had transpired. It was all too obvious and grim.

  Inescapable.

  The only dirt in the square unmarked by the tragedy was located at the centre of the chaos.

  A perfect circle bearing unearthed, fresh soil.

  From that circle, colours shot out in every direction. From two hundred metres above the world, the scene looked like a human eye, except the flecks of colour surrounding the pupil were made of blood and bone, hair and clothing.

  Never had I felt so many vibrations in one place. The event was so fresh that people hadn’t yet rushed the scene. Bodies hadn’t been cradled and limply rocked by sobbing others. The unconscious hadn’t yet woken to discover deep wounds or missing pieces of themselves.

  Self-portraits hadn’t yet shape-shifted.

  The scene just stood still.

  The echo of the event still rang in the air, bouncing off the mountings like a grim game of pinball. Dust swirled around bodies, and the vibration of ghosts in attendance increased by the second. Thousands of them. Scream Followers. Ghosts following thought projections of fear from the living. These ghosts, these pain chasers, addicted to human suffering. Travelling from tragedy to tragedy, unable to detach from witnessing the world’s horrors. It was something Rob had warned me about many months before. Honestly, this was the first tragic scene I had visited since Carmen and her brothers dealt with her husband. This tragedy in Pakistan, I wouldn’t have been there at all if not called there by my RDS.

  She hung in the air, and I moved close to her.

  I reached out to connect, and the connection was accepted.

  “Safia Jaffi,” I said.

  She responded with a black square housing a red check mark.

  I asked to share stories, and we did. I downloaded her life to find that she was a twelve-year-old girl who loved her family, music, and cooking, the older boy down the road, and dancing when no one was looking. At the time of her death, Safia was doing nothing more than waiting her turn at the distribution site to bring some food and supplies home. Doing nothing more than her part. Following orders. Her important familial task for the day. That task, and her life, was interrupted by a teenage boy who w
as taught to interpret written words differently. Brainwashed to hate.

  That boy ran into the centre of a hungry crowd and put an end to thirty-six stories. Those stories stained the earth and soaked into the world to feed crawling things, as all stories do sooner or later, I suppose.

  Safia hung there, replaying her life from start to finish, vibrating at the moments of gross untruth. I wasn’t able to download the story of the suicide bomber but knew the tune all too well. I had lived the life of a suicide bomber in the Post-Death Line, but in that particular story I had botched the bombing and ended up exploding only myself and my dog well before the detonation site. Like I said, I knew the gist of bomber stories — all carrying similar themes of poverty, deception, brainwashing, and duty.

  Safia hung over the gruesome scene, vibrating to a degree I didn’t know was possible.

  She was angry. No, she was livid.

  Beyond livid.

  Enraged.

  For someone who had recently passed through the Post-Death Line, she shouldn’t have been experiencing that degree of rage, but Safia was unequivocally furious. I sent her calming scenes: the Amazon rainforest and thousands of sounds therein, then waves rolling in and out of a pink Bermuda beach.

  “Would you like to visit one of those locations, Safia? I can teach you to travel.”

  She sent me back the image of an asteroid slamming into Earth and shattering it into a billion chunks. The chunks of Earth hung in space and floated among the shape-shifting mercurial pools of blood.

  I sent her back the rainforest scene, except this time a python hanging from one of the trees formed the shape of a question mark and asked her why she was so angry.

  Here’s why: Safia had returned to Earth as a ghost in order to look over her little sister, Haadiya. But moments after she was delivered back, Haadiya died due to injuries suffered in the suicide blast, and Safia was left to hover over her sister’s lifeless body in the square. She wished to change her decision immediately, but the Bookkeeper informed her that all decisions were final, sending her the standard digital image of numbers counting down, revealing the remainder of her spiritual lease.