A Hundred Billion Ghosts

by DM Sinclair

  “What happened to my body?”

  Margie shrugged, turning her hands to the ceiling. “I have no idea. Whatever it was, it had to be illegal. Or at least seriously unethical. He did this to you just so you couldn’t figure it out and make trouble for him, so it has to be something bad. I knew it. That bastard.” She swatted the snow globe, shoving it near the edge of the counter, and Ryan almost tore himself apart preparing to save it. “Right under my nose,” Margie added, sneering.

  Ryan couldn’t move. He was locked into imagining what it might feel like not existing. Not good, he imagined. “What… what can I do?” he stammered. “There must be something I can do. To stop it. There’s always something you can do. Tell me the thing I can do so I can do it!”

  Margie pushed her glasses up her nose again. “The only thing that can stop it is getting back into your body. That would stabilize your form, undo the damage.”

  Lowell stepped forward. It startled Ryan; he had forgotten Lowell was there. “Can I ask a dumb question?”

  “The only stupid question is the one you don’t…” Margie started. She looked Lowell up and down and changed her mind. “Sorry, yes, go ahead.”

  “Why does it have to be his body?”

  Ryan couldn’t fathom even halfway what Lowell meant. And neither, apparently, could Margie because she said: “Meaning what?”

  “There’s lots of empty bodies lying around at your Clinic, right? So you put him into somebody else’s. Temporarily, until we find his. Buy some time.”

  Ryan perked up, sensing hope. He looked up at Margie, hoping to see her nodding or excited, anything that might mean he wasn’t going to disperse into the ether.

  But she had her eyes closed, and was shaking her head. “That can’t be done. It’s been tried. It doesn’t work.”

  Lowell looked disappointed. “Really? I thought I was onto something there.”

  Margie shook her head again. “It doesn’t work. The body will reject the invader ghost. Never mind that it’s an enormous breach of ethics.”

  Lowell shrugged. “It was just a thought.”

  “It was a bad one,” she said frostily.

  Lowell narrowed his eyes, evidently annoyed. He turned back to Ryan. “Why is she here again?”

  “I vouched for her!” Benny called from the mirror.

  Ryan had completely forgotten the issue of why Margie was in his apartment at all. And he decided to continue forgetting about it for now, given more pressing matters. “So we have to find my body.”

  “It’s not at the Clinic,” Margie said. “I checked every storage unit after you left. I even checked the dumpsters.”

  “I’m gonna go check out the Clinic myself, first thing in the morning,” Lowell said. “Maybe have a talk with this Roger guy.”

  “And ask him what?” Margie asked, folding her arms skeptically.

  “Questions,” Lowell said, nodding and narrowing his eyes. Ryan doubted there was any kind of brilliant plan behind the look, but Lowell seemed to want them to think there was. He slid towards the door. “Meet me at my office at 10. I may just have some answers.”

  “Where’s your office?” Margie asked.

  “I can’t remember the address. Harvard Square, I think. I always go in the side door. Just Google it or whatever. 10 AM!” He gave them a confident nod that inspired Ryan with no confidence whatsoever, and then slipped out the door.

  Ryan waved his disappearing hand in the air, creating a smoke ring of particles. “Look at this!”

  Margie straightened her back and stared at the ceiling. “I might be able give you more time. Without the original body, I can’t stop your dispersal. But I might be able to slow it down.”

  “That sounds good. How?”

  She pointed at the snow globe. “Unhaunt you from that. The permanent damage has been done, but the dispersal will slow down if we remove the artificially induced haunting. It’s like removing the bullet from a gunshot wound.”

  Ryan sprang up, nodding. He liked this plan. It seemed manageable, and familiar, and it meant not sitting here doing nothing. “So we go to the Clinic! Do the whole thing with the Box! Unhaunt me!”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “Why?”

  She pushed her glasses up her nose. “Because I don’t work there anymore.”

  Ryan seized up again. His anxiety watermelon had to be bigger than his torso now. “You… don’t…”

  “Roger fired me. Right after I searched for your body. All my keys, alarm codes, everything, is all gone. I can’t get you to the Box.”

  The revelation hung expectantly in the air among them.

  Lowell was the one who finally wafted it away. He opened the door a crack and stuck his head back in.

  “I don’t wanna sound, like, insensitive,” he said, “but given the whole ‘dispersal’ thing, do you think you could pay me in advance?”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Ryan crouched behind a monolithic dumpster at the back of the Clinic parking lot and reflected that, though he didn’t remember it, he had probably been inside this dumpster just the night before, thrown out with the snow globe. Being out with the Clinic trash seemed to be his thing.

  The parking lot behind the Post-Mortal Services Clinic was much larger than it needed to be. Ryan found it hard to imagine that, even when the place was a funeral home, it could ever have hosted a ceremony large enough to warrant so many parking spaces. The rows were divided by dull concrete planters containing shrubs and perennials so neglected that they deserved funeral services of their own. This late at night the lot was vacant and unlit. It was a dark, Gothic forest of skeletal shrubs, drifting litter, and vaguely wandering spirits who seemed to be trying to remember where they parked.

  “Do you think he’ll do it?” Margie whispered. She peered around the corner of the dumpster at the back of the Clinic.

  Benny the Poltergeist had been inside for ten minutes and there had been no sign of him. Ryan was unsurprised.

  The plan was to get the door open. Ryan could easily get inside by passing through a wall, but if they wanted to make use of the Box, Margie had to get in too. Thanks to her insider knowledge, they knew that the alarm would be shut off because Ethan and Ewan the orderlies always cleaned at this hour. That part of the plan was good. They knew that the service door could be opened easily from the inside with the gentlest of pushes. That part of the plan was also rock solid. And they knew from the absence of cars in the lot that the place was empty except for the twin orderlies. If there was ever a time and opportunity to sneak in and use the Box to unhaunt Ryan from the snow globe, it was now. So the plan was for Benny to go in through the wall and push the door open from inside.

  The flaw in that plan, of course, was Benny.

  “I’ve seen Benny write on things, and sometimes break things,” Ryan said. “But not once has he been able to open a door. I don’t know why he’d start now.”

  “He said he could do it!” Margie said, sounding a lot more positive than Ryan felt.

  “He says that every single time. Never true.”

  Margie bubbled with nervous energy and enthusiasm that Ryan didn’t share. He was distracted by the fact that most of his fingers were down the middle knuckle already, and both thumbs were completely gone. His ability to point at things was seriously impaired, and hitchhiking was right out of the question. His only comfort at this moment was the snow globe. Margie had it nestled in a hip satchel, and he could almost make out the shape of it. He felt a steady ache of jealousy that she got to hold it and he didn’t, but at least it was here where he could be close to its snowy globeness.

  At the same time he hated himself for feeling that way, and couldn’t wait to be rid of the thing.

  “Look at me,” Margie said, holding her trembling hand out for him to see. “It’s the elevated adrenaline. I’ve never broken into anywhere before. I can actually feel my hypothalamus sending signals to my adrenal gland. It’s extraordinary.” She lea
ned back against the dumpster with her eyes closed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shh. Enjoying it.”

  Ryan decided to hold onto his impression, bolstered by mounting evidence, that Margie was a little odd. Not necessarily in a bad way. Just odd. And there wasn’t any way he could tell if his own hypothalamus was sending signals to any other part of him, because he didn’t have a hypothalamus or any other parts. Or rather, he didn’t know where they were.

  He returned his attention to the Clinic’s service door, which Benny continued to not open. Ryan imagined Benny inside sweeping his hand again and again through the door handle, probably muttering something about terror from beyond the grave. Ryan wished they had a plan B, but they barely had a plan A.

  “This is taking too long,” he said. “I’m going to be part of the universe before he gets that door open.”

  “You’re already part of the universe,” Margie said.

  “I mean a different part. You know what I mean.”

  “It hasn’t happened yet. Don’t think about it.”

  He needed to keep himself distracted, so he kept talking. “Hey, speaking of the universe, what were you doing in my apartment? You never said.”

  She looked at her feet. “I’ll move out tomorrow.”

  “Wait… move out? Does that mean you moved in?”

  She fell silent, staring across the dark lot.

  Ryan took that as confirmation. “You did try to steal my apartment!”

  “I didn’t think you’d come back! They almost never do!”

  Ryan’s jaw dropped. “You’ve done this before?” His impression of her being a little odd disassembled itself and coalesced into an entirely new impression. “Oh my God, you work at the Clinic so you can steal apartments from dead people!”

  She spun on him, trying to sound indignant but quickly looking at her shoes again. “No! That’s a side benefit. And they’re not dead.”

  Ryan’s astonishment was interrupted by a faint sound from across the lot.

  A cough.

  They both pressed themselves against the back of the dumpster. Margie risked a peek around the edge.

  “It’s Ethan,” she whispered.

  Ryan stole a look past Margie, hoping that his glow wouldn’t give him away. The immense bull-like silhouette of Ethan the orderly was a featureless, hulking shadow looming outside the service door. As Ryan watched, the glowing orange circle of the end of a cigarette faded up and then sank back into darkness.

  “Can you see Benny?” Ryan whispered. He couldn’t see anything past Ethan at all. The giant man’s enormous form was completely obscuring the light spilling out the open door.

  Margie’s fingers were tense against the corner of the dumpster. “Now that it’s open maybe Benny can hold it open?”

  Ryan doubted it, but the odds of that were marginally better than the odds of Benny getting the door open himself.

  They watched together, staying silent, as the cigarette went orange, black. Orange, black. Orange, black.

  Ethan’s silhouette shifted. The cigarette sparked on the asphalt and went dark for the last time beneath his foot. His silhouette shifted again and heaved back towards the door. He had to squeeze through it, only slivers of light escaping around him. And then he was through and disappeared into the building.

  Margie looked at Ryan sharply, stunned.

  Ethan had left the door open.

  It was propped open with half of a broken patio brick. The light from a naked bulb inside cut a bright trapezoid on the still-wet surface of the parking lot.

  “Do we go?” Ryan asked, breathless.

  “Of course we go!” Margie was already dashing across the parking lot, half bent-over so she could dive behind a planter if the need arose.

  Ryan sprinted after her. “What about Benny? Where’s Benny?”

  “Who cares? Just go!”

  As they neared the building she ducked even lower, and Ryan with her. They both expected Ethan to reappear at any moment and kick the brick out of the door. But Ethan did not appear.

  Instead, Benny did. He drifted into the doorway and looked with annoyance at the brick propping the door open. And then he started kicking at it. His foot passed through it again and again, but he kept trying.

  He was trying to close the door.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “What is he doing?!” Margie hissed.

  “Benny, no!” Ryan didn’t dare shout, but whispered as loud as he could, waving his arms.

  Benny didn’t look up. He crouched and cupped his hands near the brick, and started trying to push it out of the way so the door would be free to swing closed.

  The brick shifted. Not quite far enough to let the door close. But it shifted. The most Benny had ever been able to move anything, and it had to be now.

  “Benny, stop!” Ryan shout-whispered. Benny ignored him, or didn’t hear.

  Margie and Ryan crossed the last twenty feet to the door at a dead sprint.

  Benny gave one last shove and caught the corner of the brick. It shifted just a millimeter. But it was enough for the pressure from the hinge to take over. The door started to swing closed, toppling the brick as it traveled.

  Margie sprang ahead. She jammed her foot in the door and caught it an inch away from thudding closed. She wrenched her leg backwards and hauled the door fully open again.

  Benny looked out at them like they’d just spat in his beer. “What’d you do that for?” he demanded.

  “We need this door open!” Ryan snarled through angrily gritted teeth. “That was the whole plan!”

  “Yeah, but some huge guy opened it! That’s not scary! Close it again and let me open it right. I think I can even get it to squeak!”

  Ryan expected that they would slink down the stairs the way he had always gone, but Margie insisted that they use the casket lift. This was a small, cramped elevator expressly installed for the purpose of moving caskets, either occupied or not, from the basement up to the viewing areas on the main level. She reasoned that it would keep them further from where Ethan and Ewan were cleaning. But the lift descended haltingly, producing a cacophonous blend of squeaking and grinding that Ryan thought had to carry through the whole building. How this could be more discreet than the stairs, he couldn’t understand.

  While they rode the lift down he kept his arms folded so he couldn’t see his hands dissolving. “Benny, what were you thinking?” he asked irritably.

  Benny threw indignation back at him. “What?”

  “If you had closed the door—”

  “I’m telling you, I could have opened it a lot scarier.”

  “We’re not here to scare people.”

  “Maybe you’re not!”

  “So you’re not here to help me?”

  Benny snickered in response. It annoyed Ryan more than any actual answer could have.

  “Ryan, stop,” Margie said. She had taken on that cool, clinical tone that Ryan had gotten to know from her.

  “I’ve let him live in my place for three years!”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I thought we were friends… sort of! I looked up scary Latin words for him to write in the steam on the bathroom mirror!”

  Benny chuckled. “Gladium mortis! That was my favorite and I don’t even know what it means.”

  Ryan held up his steaming, stumpy hand. “You don’t care about this at all?”

  Benny gasped at the flow coming off Ryan’s knuckles. “Look at that! It looks like a finger tornado!”

  Ryan was about to grab Benny’s neck and squeeze, even knowing that it wouldn’t have any effect at all. He just wanted to do the action. But Benny denied him the chance.

  “Look, I’m gonna go,” Benny said. “This is taking way longer than I thought.”

  “You’re leaving? You’re just…?”

  Margie cut in. “Let him go, Ryan.”

  Benny had already forced himself through the wall of the elevator and disappeared. Ryan
couldn’t help being offended. All the times I’ve stuck up for that ghost…

  The elevator thudded into the bottom of its descent and the door screeched open onto the dim basement tunnel. Margie led the way along the length of the tunnel at a brisk pace, her footfalls echoing back at them off the pipes and ductwork. She walked with a kind of premeditated precision, like she was measuring the trajectory of her feet in three dimensional vectors before she moved them. But it didn’t slow her down. If anything, it sped her up because she was placing her feet in precisely calculated spots. Ryan wished he could walk so efficiently.

  He was still annoyed at Benny’s betrayal, and Margie seemed to sense it. “Did you know Benny before he died?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Of course not. He died in the 80’s, before I was born.”

  “Then he doesn’t care about you.”

  “So three years of living in my house—”

  “Means nothing at all to him. He might as well have just met you today,” she explained in a scolding tone, like he was a classroom full of disobedient toddlers. “You know this. It was all in the pamphlet. It’s the same reason haunting this snow globe is tearing you apart. Ghosts are snapshots of their living selves at the moment of death. They can’t form new emotional attachments, or break the ones they had when they were alive. Those things are handled by the body: brain chemistry, hormones, electrical impulses.”

  “Chemicals?”

  “Correct.”

  “So emotional attachments are not real? They’re just chemicals and electricity?”

  She cocked an eyebrow disapprovingly. “So to you, if they’re produced by chemicals and electricity, they’re not real. But if they come from this—” She waved one hand through his torso. He felt it pass through him with no resistance. “—they’re real? That makes sense to you?”

  It had made perfect sense a moment ago. But now he found himself without a response.

  They passed quickly through the morgue-like storage facility. Margie repeated that she had checked the whole thing and his body wasn’t anywhere in it. But there was always a chance it had been moved back in since she looked. So Ryan poked his head through the wall of drawers a few times as he passed, just to look. He saw nothing that reminded him of himself.