Haunting Day 1

Nicholas has been dead so much longer than he was alive.

The house was all eggshell whites and seashell ivories, though it all looked grey in the darkness. Nicholas made his way from room to room taking it all in and occasionally stopping to jot down some notes in a small pad. The place was huge and appeared to have been decorated along the theme of cliché tasteless rich tosser. He could feel a headache coming on already and it was early in the morning of day one. Why he was even able to still feel the pain of a headache was something he’d very much like to ask upper management if he ever got the chance. It seemed a wholly unnecessary aspect of this working afterlife of his.

He hadn’t even met who he was going to be working on yet and he could already feel it in his bones, or wherever he used to have bones, that this was going to be a tough one. Strewn across a big mahogany table in a palatial dining room was an array of the trashiest daily papers London had to offer, each one opened to a page featuring photos of Tim Davids and his latest woman of interest. Narcissism was always a difficult character defect to address but if that was the crux of the problems it was doable.

Nicholas blinked and was standing at the foot of Tim’s bed. Some people look at peace when they’re sleeping, so quiet and vulnerable it’s hard to imagine them ever doing any of the horrid thing’s humans are capable of. Tim was not one of those sleepers. Such was the state of his bed and the unbecoming position he assumed upon it, that it was easier to believe he had fallen from a great height and landed in this way than that he had willingly gone to rest in such a tableau of chaos.

Well, there was no point in delaying any longer, thought Nicholas. He held his arms out as if he was about to begin conducting an orchestra, then brought them down in one swift motion. The bedside clock, the bulbs in every light in the room, Tim’s phone still in his discarded jeans, the sockets in the walls, all of them as one exploded. The door of the bedroom flew off its hinges like it had been hit by a battering ram, while every drawer and closet opened with such ferocity that wood splintered. The bedroom window blasted outward with such force that shards of glass rained down on the patio below.

Wind swirled violently into the room while Nicholas and everything that wasn’t nailed down to the floor started to rise into the air. In a booming voice that seemed to emanate from every angle at once he drew himself up to his most imposing posture and looking down on Tim, announced himself.

“I AM THE GHOST OF WAYWARD LIVES, TIM DAVIDS, HEED ME OR FACE MY FATE.”

Technically Nicholas was a ghost of wayward lives rather than the ghost, but the distinction caused more confusion than it was worth.

He was not by nature a dramatic ghost, but experience had taught him that it was best to come on heavy in the beginning to make a strong impression. He’d tried a more tempered approach in the past, less terrifying apparition in the middle of the night and more sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the day, but he’d found that then he had to spend an inordinate amount of time convincing the hauntee of his legitimacy.

Normally being woken up by a shocking display of the supernatural was such a disorientating experience that it left the mind open to all manner of suggestions. A key part of this process was the rapid transition from fully asleep to fully awake though, Nicholas had seen individuals spring into the air like a cat dropped into a bath. This didn’t seem to be the case with Tim. He was emerging from sleep more groggy than scared and seemed to be genuinely confused about what was occurring. It made for an awkward situation as Nicholas still hovered at the end of the bed waiting for him to get his bearings.

“TIM……………….DID YOU HEAR ME?.........I AM THE GHOST OF WAYWORD………TIM! OVER HERE. What the hell, I’m at the end of your bed how are you this unaware of your surroundings?”

Tim eventually orientated himself toward the end of the bed to where Nicholas was suspended.

He yawned loudly, “sorry man, your voice was like coming from everywhere.”

This was getting problematic; Nicholas was aware he’d lost all momentum. He needed to get this back on track.

“NEVERMIND THAT!”

Tim started looking around again.

Nicholas sighed, and spoke normally, “ok forget about where the voice is coming from Tim.” He clicked his fingers a few times to get Tim’s attention back.

“Did you hear what I said to you? About being a ghost, about needing to heed me?”

He gestured to his feet in an attempt to draw attention to how they were several feet off the ground. Tim shrugged in a non-committal manner. This was the problem with this modern generation, they were so skeptical and jaded. It used to be that Nicholas wouldn’t even need to say he was a ghost, that was understood as a given. His biggest concern on first introductions in those days was to not kill the hauntee through a massive heart attack, it had happened more than once.

“If you’re a ghost, tell me something only a ghost would know.”

Nicholas was not used to this level of cross examination, that was the whole point of the introduction theatrics.

“Like what?”

He slowly lowered himself and most of the objects in the room back down to the floor; it was just embarrassing hovering in the air when Tim didn’t even have the decency to be awe struck.

“What am I thinking about right now?”

“I’m a ghost not a psychic.”

“Ok fine. When I was a kid I had an imaginary friend, what was his name?”

Nicholas rubbed his face in frustration. The time these jobs took could vary greatly. The quickest he’d ever been successfully finished was three weeks. The longest was eleven years, three months, two weeks, and four days. Of course, he wasn’t always successful, sometimes the hauntee died before meaningfully changing their ways, sometimes he deemed them incapable of the change needed and tapped out himself. In those cases it wasn’t knee jerk decision, he normally made that call around year four or five. It was too early to have much of a sense for what would happen with Tim but he felt confident in predicting it was not going to beat the three week record.

“Why would I know the name of your childhood imaginary friend?”

Tim looked insulted, “well aren’t you like the ghosts in that muppety puppety movie? Like you’ll show me the past and the future, little sick kid and all that?”

Nicholas understood the reference, his thoughts on Mr. Dickens’ Christmas creation were mixed. On the one hand it was helpful as since its publication people tended to be much more familiar with the general concept he was striving for, that being the improvement of one’s fundamental character so as to not have to spend an extended period of one’s afterlife toiling in order to make up for the wrongs committed while alive. On the other hand, it set the bar rather too high for both what magical feats he was capable of, there would be no time travel, and how long this process was likely to take.

Tim appeared to have lost interest in the answers to his own questions and was rummaging through the singed pocket of his jeans for the charred remains of his phone. When he found it, he uttered an expletive and tossed the still smoldering tatters in the direction of Nicholas. It passed harmlessly through him and struck the wall.

The sight of this most ghostly of acts appeared to be the first thing that impressed Tim and any anger about his trashed phone was quickly forgotten.

“So, are you ready to begin?” asked Nicholas with the smallest hint of a smile.

“First thing in the morning,” said Tim, through a yawn as he climbed back into bed.