A Hundred Billion Ghosts

by DM Sinclair

  “So your landlord rented the place out again,” Lowell tried.

  Ryan shook his head. “I just renewed the lease.”

  He was sure he saw a shadow move, a slight darkening of a patch of the ceiling that slid away towards the living room. “Somebody’s in there,” he hissed. “What do we do?”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “You’re a detective! Don’t you have a gun or something?”

  Lowell snorted in reply.

  Ryan glimpsed the shadow shift across the ceiling again, crossing the kitchen and then crossing back.

  “Come on,” he whispered. He started across the lawn to the front door. But Lowell stayed where he was. Ryan stopped halfway to the door and motioned for Lowell to come with him, but Lowell just leaned against the car.

  “This has nothing to do with me,” he called across the lawn.

  Ryan made a cutting motion across his throat and ran back to Lowell. “Shhh! They’ll hear you!”

  “So? Isn’t that good? Maybe they’ll leave!”

  “That’s not a burglar up there! There’s nothing in my place to steal. If there’s somebody up there, it’s because they’re looking for me. And nobody ever, ever looks for me.”

  “Really? Ever?”

  “Ever.”

  “That’s sad, man.”

  “That is not the point! Whoever it is, they’re looking for me for a reason. It could be whoever sent me to the dump. And that means they might know where my body is!”

  “Or it might be you left a light on.”

  “I didn’t leave any lights on! Please, just bring the snow globe and come upstairs. I might need help.”

  “I’m not getting into a fight for you! I don’t even work for you!”

  Ryan balled his fists and clenched his teeth. He didn’t want to go upstairs unless the snow globe came with him. And he couldn’t carry it himself. He had no choice.

  “What’s your rate?”

  Ryan found it extraordinary how much Lowell’s face lit up, and how quickly. “Four hundred a day. Plus expenses.”

  “You’re hired. If you find my body, I’ll throw in an extra thousand. But you have to start right now. And your first lead, clue, whatever you call it…” He pointed up at the window. “…is right in there.”

  Ryan crept up the stairs towards the third floor landing. He moved slowly, afraid of causing the stairs to creak. And he realized only after he had gone up halfway that with no mass, he couldn’t make them creak if he tried. Any noises he made would be drowned out anyway by the squeak of the ventilation fan, and the irregular thumping from below that suggested a water heater approaching total implosion. So he hurried up the last flight as fast as he could float, unconcerned about creeping.

  Lowell had placed the snow globe inside and then volunteered to stay at the front door watching the street, which he claimed was a good strategy. Ryan didn’t know how to deal with a situation like this, and Lowell didn’t seem to either. For a detective, he seemed unclear on exactly how to detect anything. Ryan felt the snow globe tugging backwards as he arrived at the door. He wished Lowell had come up with him. But the pull wasn’t overpowering; he could resist it. A much bigger problem was that he was breathing fast, his fists balled, his mouth dry, and his teeth tightly clenched. Or at least, that’s how his incorporeal form slavishly simulated an actual fear response.

  He pressed both his hands against the surface of the door, letting the surface tension keep them from passing through. He was pleased that it worked; it made him feel almost material. He pressed his face into the door with increasing pressure until it broke through. He ignored the door’s wooden despair and kept pushing, and then his face was inside the apartment.

  Whoever had been casting shadows was not in sight. There was only Benny, trying to finger-write in the dust on a hanging mirror. He had finished a lowercase d and the bottom part of an i, but was struggling with the dot. It appeared he was trying to write “die”, because Benny only ever wrote threatening messages even though he didn’t mean them.

  “Benny!” Ryan whispered.

  Benny didn’t hear him. He kept trying again and again to dot his i, without success.

  Ryan whispered again, as loud as he dared. “Benny!”

  Benny spun around, startled. He grinned as soon as he saw Ryan’s face poking through the door. “Hey, you’re dead!” he cheered. “That’s great! Hey, man, Gabriel’s really mad at you.”

  “SHHHHH!” Ryan expected somebody to come running, but there was no response. “Who’s in here?” he whispered.

  Benny looked puzzled. “You know.”

  “How would I know?”

  “Um… duh. Did you forget?”

  “No, I didn’t forget! Who’s in here?!”

  “Your sister, idiot.”

  For a moment, Ryan wondered if the procedure had given him some kind of post-death amnesia where details of his life got scrambled in his memory. He imagined such a thing was possible. Things like that seemed likely to happen after thousands of volts of electricity was jolted through your brain. But he tested the theory by scanning his memory of every photo he used to have in his library. If he had a sister, it was probable she would be in at least one of those photos. But as far as he could recall, she wasn’t.

  “I don’t have a sister!” he whispered. “I don’t think,” he added, just in case.

  Benny looked perplexed. “Yes you do. She’s…”

  He motioned towards the bedroom. But he needn’t have, because she had just emerged. She didn’t notice them for a few steps, and even then she only saw Benny, and his finger painting on the mirror.

  “You should write in uppercase,” Margie said coolly. “Then you won’t need to dot anything.”

  Margie.

  Ryan was so astounded at seeing her that he involuntarily blurted “Hey!”

  Margie spun and spotted him protruding from the front door. She stumbled backwards into a lamp and grabbed it to keep from knocking it over. “Mr. Matney?!” she gasped.

  A memory rampaged through Ryan’s mind, of a moment shortly before his ghost was extracted from his body. He remembered Margie flipping through his file. “Is this your current address?” she had said. “Nice place?” Up to that point she hadn’t been prone to chit chat, so her idle curiosity had seemed odd. As though it wasn’t idle curiosity at all.

  Now she was in his home, comfortably dressed in sweatpants, a long T-shirt and fuzzy slippers like she was about to settle in and watch TV. Like she lived there.

  Ryan had a surge of realization.

  It wasn’t Roger who had bound him to the snow globe. It was Margie.

  She had condemned him to eternity in a dump with a broken snow globe so she could steal his apartment.

  Rage flooded through him. He could feel it tearing through his form like a hot wind, radiating through him in shock-wave ripples. He jabbed his finger at her and plunged through the door, preparing to unleash a barrage of accusations relentless enough to clear a beach of invading infantry.

  He hadn’t even yet pulled the trigger on his enraged volley when he noticed that she was fixated on his finger. The one he was pointing at her to focus his rage in her direction. The cannon that would launch all his indignation at her and, any second now, flatten her.

  Before he could fire his first shot, she stepped forward. “What happened to you?” she asked. There was urgency in her voice.

  For a moment he didn’t know what she meant. She should know what had happened to him, shouldn’t she? But she was staring at his finger, so he bent it towards his face and focused on it.

  The tip of his finger wasn’t there.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Ryan held his hand close to his face and forced his visual sense to zero in on his fingertip, ignoring everything else.

  The last quarter inch of his finger was gone, and what remained was wafting away like sand coming off the crest of a dune. A thin, nearly imperceptible stream of particles cascaded up and away from
the finger in defiance of gravity, carried on a spectral draft.

  Ryan’s breathing, or rather the simulation of it, accelerated. He felt his anxiety grapefruit expand into a watermelon. “Why is it doing that?” he managed to choke out.

  “Come over here,” Margie commanded. She pointed to the floor directly beneath the ceiling light.

  Ryan shuffled under the light while she dragged a chair next to him and sat. He was still furious with her, but at least she was an expert. Apparently.

  “Put your hand out like this, please,” she said. He recognized the clinical tone he had heard from her during his extraction procedure. It commanded obedience, so he put his right hand out flat, palm down. His disintegrating finger released particles like the steaming spout of a kettle.

  Somebody pounded on the door from outside. Lowell.

  “I’ll get it,” Benny said, abandoning his calligraphy.

  “You can’t open doors, Benny,” Ryan snapped.

  “I can too!” He jogged to the door and swiped uselessly at the knob. “Whoever’s there,” he called through the door, “stay where you are! I’ll have this open in half an hour at most!”

  Ryan felt the emotional tug of the snow globe through the door. He liked it being closer. He wanted it next to him. “That’s a friend of mine,” he explained to Margie. “He can help.”

  She strode past Benny and threw open the door. Lowell was on the landing, gearing up to kick the door down. He looked disappointed at having lost the opportunity.

  “You,” she said with no greeting, jabbing a finger at Lowell, “baking soda. Now.”

  Lowell must have had the same response to her tone that Ryan did, because without a word of protest he came inside and began opening cupboards.

  Ryan waited, tense, as she pulled her chair in even closer to his side, peering at his outstretched hand with her eyes only inches from it. “What’s going on?” he ventured.

  “Shh,” was all she said. She leaned far to one side, then the other, her eyes locked on his fingers. There was an urgency to her movements that concerned Ryan. Even Benny seemed to sense the gravity of the situation, because he hovered back and shut up.

  Lowell stepped up with a box of baking soda and waited silently until she motioned to him.

  “Take a handful,” she said, “and drop it through him. Right here.” She waved over Ryan’s hand and pushed her chair back to give Lowell space.

  “What’s it for?” Ryan asked. His voice quavered, fear projecting ripples through it.

  “Ions,” she said, as if that explained everything. “Do it now please.”

  Lowell obeyed, pouring a little pile of the soda into his hand and holding it above Ryan’s. Margie nodded, and Lowell tilted his hand and let the powder trickle off.

  The baking soda plunged through Ryan’s hand in thinning particulate tendrils. Margie leaned in close and squinted at Ryan’s hand, watching the baking soda pass through it.

  She leapt out of her chair. “There it is,” she said, pointing at the end of his finger. “That’s what I was afraid of. It starts in the extremities.”

  “What does?” Ryan studied his finger. To his surprise, where particles of baking soda brushed against the faded stump of his fingertip, a thunderstorm of electrical pops and flashes raged in miniature.

  “Whoa,” Lowell said. “That’s cool.”

  “Hey,” Benny said, pointing excitedly, “his other hand’s doing it too!”

  Ryan lifted his left hand to his face. The ring finger vanished into a vague fog at the tip. A steam of particles coiled off of it and dissolved into the air like smoke from a candle just blown out.

  Margie pulled her glasses down her nose and studied both his hands over them. “It’s important that you tell me where you’ve been since I last saw you.”

  Ryan’s anger surged back, amplified by his fear. “Like you don’t know!”

  “How could I know?”

  “You sent me there!”

  “Sent you where?”

  “You dumped me in a dump so you could steal my apartment!”

  She blinked. Twice. “Those words made no sense to me. And two of them were the same word. A dump?”

  “The snow globe!” he added.

  “That’s not helpful.”

  Ryan spun to Lowell. “Show her!”

  Lowell fished in his raincoat pocket and produced the snow globe. The tiny plastic hotel shook loose and fell off, and he fumbled it from hand to hand before finally poking it back into place. He held the pathetic, cracked scene up towards her in his open palm.

  A sense of security and well-being flowed through Ryan as the globe passed near him. He had to fight the urge not to try to snuggle it. He could tell that Margie recognized the trinket but he didn’t get the guilty, cornered response he expected. Rather, she appeared perplexed.

  “That’s Roger’s,” she said, seeming to analyze its chemical composition with her eyes. “He has a timeshare in Myrtle Beach. Why do you have that?”

  Ryan studied her face, hunting for any trace of deception. Finding none, he turned to Lowell instead. “She doesn’t know.”

  Lowell nodded. “Also,” he added, “just so we’re on the same page, I don’t know who she is. So I don’t have a lot to contribute right now. But I’m still billing you.”

  Margie looked at Ryan sharply. “Wait… you said you were in a dump? With that?” She pointed at the snow globe.

  “You used it to keep me there!” Ryan felt like pressing on with the accusation despite his newfound doubts, only because he had been so certain just moments ago.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “So you could steal my apartment!”

  Margie blinked again. She flicked her eyes around the apartment. One of her eyebrows crept up to a skeptical angle. “You think I would do that. For this place. Have you seen this place?”

  “She’s got a point,” Lowell put in. “I’ve only been here a few minutes and I already want to burn it.”

  Ryan spun on him. “Well then what is she doing here?”

  “I don’t even know who she is!”

  Benny raised his hand like a kid in school with an answer. “She’s his sister!”

  Ryan’s exasperation peaked. “No she’s not!”

  “She is! I vouched for her!”

  “I don’t think you know what ‘vouch’ means!”

  “Shut up!” Margie commanded. “All of you!” They fell obediently silent. When she used that tone, it was impossible not to.

  She picked up the snow globe. Ryan wanted to smack it jealously out of her hand. But he stopped himself, both because he couldn’t smack anything, and because he wished he didn’t so badly want to.

  “You’re telling me,” she said, “that you’re haunting this? Since when?”

  “Since you… or somebody… attacked me at the Clinic last night.”

  “That’s why you disappeared.” It sounded genuinely like a revelation to her. “Let me see your hands again.”

  He held out his hands and she sat and studied the disappearing fingertips. Ryan averted his eyes, hoping that the act of not looking at them would somehow slow down their disintegration.

  Margie sat back in her chair. “Well, that explains it,” she said with a note of finality.

  Ryan traded looks with Lowell, confirming that he, too, had missed the part where anything got explained. “What explains what?!”

  “I knew it,” Margie said. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it,” she added angrily. She kicked her chair away and stormed into the kitchen and back, her eyes flailing around the room for something to glare at.

  Ryan didn’t know anything, and it seemed unfair that she apparently knew five things. “Knew what?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know! But, I mean, I knew it!”

  “Start with the ‘knowing it’ part and work backwards!”

  “There are two people who know how to use the Box. If it wasn’t me who did this to you, it was Roger. He arti
ficially induced a haunting, which bound you to this snow globe. Roger doesn’t usually perform that procedure. He leaves it to me. There’s a reason for that.”

  Ryan was in no mood for the dramatic pause she decided to insert. He filled it with a panicked cry of “Which is?!”

  “Because it’s difficult. Hauntings are created naturally by emotional bonds established in life. They take time, and a complex interaction of the ghost with its host body and brain. Creating them artificially is like brain surgery on a ghost. Roger is terrible at it. And there are two possible results when an artificially induced haunting fails. One, is that the haunting just doesn’t stick. It has no effect at all. But the other…” She pointed at Ryan’s fingers. “The other is that.”

  Ryan had risked another look at his vanishing finger and as a result completely lost the train of her lecture at the end. “What is that…? What?”

  She made a little explosion gesture with her hands. “Total axionic dispersal. Psssh!”

  Ryan’s watermelon squeezed tighter as he tried to process the word. “Dispersal?” He drew his hand even closer to his face. It was clear that the particles weren’t just coming off the surface like a layer. It was the entire substance of his finger coming apart. When the particles departed, they left nothing behind.

  She looked away. She didn’t want to tell him. But she did anyway, softly. “It means the bonds that hold your axions together are breaking down. Within twenty-four hours you’ll be unable to hold your shape. Within forty-eight all of your energy will have been distributed randomly.”

  “And what happens to me?”

  “I just answered that, didn’t I?”

  “No, but, I mean, I go somewhere, don’t I?”

  “What do you mean by ‘you’? If you mean the sub-atomic particles of which you are composed, then yes, you go somewhere. You go almost literally everywhere.”

  Ryan couldn’t even pretend to breathe anymore. He felt like he might pass out. He decided that his knees should give out, so they did. He collapsed into a quivering, crumpled squat. “Why?” he croaked. “Why would Roger do this to me?”

  “I think, because he didn’t want you to find out what happened to your body.”