Thinking in Pictures

Most of the world has stopped believing altogether by now, and stop practicing, and stopped following dogmatic rules, so I don’t think anybody’s gone to heaven in quite a while. Thanks possibly to my study of theology, I was just barely good enough to get into their purgatory. Nobody on Earth really knew what purgatory was, though.

They explained the rules to me, though. I am sent to earth, in a ghostly form. I have no physical body. I move through things, nobody can sense me, except for a cold sensation when my spectral form intersects their body. I also have no sight or any other feeling that would come from human sense organs, but instead a form of “spectral awareness”, allowing me to sense where things are around me. It’s like an extension of that sense that tells you where your body parts are relative to each other, which I also still have, despite my “body” not being physical. I still feel my “arm” move around, and whatnot.

After a few months of being in this state, I’ve learned how to use this sense to interpret speech, by sensing people’s mouth and vocal cords. I still cannot tell what color something is without someone saying it.

I was not, however, returned to Earth in the place where I died, though. I was, instead, incarnated at little house out in the north Louisianan countryside that I grew up in. I couldn’t even float back to my adult home in Cambridge, because I can only go to places I knew during my childhood.

Now, a new family lived in this house, recently moved in from Cajun Country. I’ve been watching this family since, vicariously living a second life through them. That’s all I can do for now. I couldn’t resist growing an attachment to them,  despite knowing I’d probably have an eternity to live without them as a ghost.

Another ghost with a longer range passed through at one point and enlightened me to how they’d seen other ghost escape this purgatory. A ghost is able to choose one person, enter their body by lining up their “head” with the living person’s, and can then communicate with that person in their thoughts, and experience all of their senses, but not control their body. I gain some movement range, but less agency over it, as I go where they go.  I would then receive a new judgement based on how much good or bad I’d done indirectly through that communication, upon that body’s death, possibly including a return to being a ghost. If I was exorcized, I would go back to just being a ghost. Once I chose a person, I couldn’t leave their body until they died or got exorcised. I was still deciding which person my 70-year commitment would be to, when it became Halloween.

The family was prepared to go trick-or-treating for their first time in my neighborhood. 8-year-old Amerika Gros was trying to get her bee antennas to stay straight, even though she’d broken them a week ago. Amerika’s 12-year-old sister, Jessie, and her friend Rita were dressed as Princess Jasmine and a female form of Aladdin, respectively. Amerika and Jessie shared a 15-year-old brother, Sean, who’d gotten into a somewhat intolerant form of Christianity. He refused to wear a Halloween costume, but instead would go out with his friends, and go door-to-door trying to convert people. For now, he was ridiculing his family for taking part in demonic, pagan traditions, apparently unaware of the original meaning of All Hallows’ Eve.

The neighborhood they were trick or treating in was the same one my family did. After they’d cleared the few houses nearby, they drove to the middle-class suburban neighborhood near town I knew all too well. The widowed mother, Mary Gros, unloaded the kids. She told Jessie and Rita that they can handle themselves, but to stick together and stay where there are other Trick or Treaters. She would take Amerika around herself. I knew this wouldn’t work out well and decided to follow Jessie.

You’re probably expecting that there was a purported haunted house she stumbled upon and got dared to go into, as every Halloween movie portrays. This neighborhood had none, but it was right adjacent to a much poorer neighborhood that was dangerous, but supposedly they gave out the “good candy”. You know, the kind it’s illegal to hand out to kids. To this day, I don’t believe any actually did. That stuff is expensive, and kids have no disposable income to feed an addiction. The neighborhood still had crime. People got shot and mugged. Gang violence erupted at a moment’s notice.

The old rumors had never died out, and a few dumb kids were taking dares to go there. Anyone who’d grown up in this town would know how dangerous it was. Jessie was new. Rita had moved there with them and her own parents. They looked at each other, then at the broken-down cars in front lawns, the gang signs spray-painted on them as well as the cheap houses, and finally the few kids who were going into this neighborhood to see if they could get any of the “good candy”, and they figured that since other trick-or-treaters were there, they could go.

They still had doubt, though. One of those natural instincts meant to protect us. However, they also knew that Sean was coming up the block. She was not ready for another painful lecture from him, and was ignorant to what they were choosing by running from him, into the other neighborhood. It was a mistake to grow attached to this family.

I went in ahead of them and used the spectral sense to search for danger. Sure enough, a person was loading a gun, talking to himself about what he was going to do. A shootout was about to happen. I went back to Jessie and tried to give her chills, thinking that would slow her down. It didn’t slow her, nor Rita. I REALLY shouldn’t have gotten so attached to this family, but because I had, I had no other choice.  I had to warn them to stay out of this neighborhood. I put my head into hers, and a whole new wave of sensation washed through me. My spectral sense faded. I could hear the sounds of the night, children laughing and screaming, dogs barking, electronic decorations playing recorded voice lines such as “Boo! Happy Halloween!”. I could feel Rita’s hand in Jessie’s, the itchiness of her growing chest, her shoes against her feet, mosquitos on her arm, the bucket handle in her hand. After months of not having any senses, of nothing being vivid, everything suddenly was. I could see the lights decorating people’s houses, so many beautiful costumes, Rita’s youthful face, and the darkness of night.

Mentally, it took me a minute to adjust, even form my thoughts into coherent words. I heard Jessie’s thoughts echoing in our shared head. Once my thoughts started to collect, she heard them as well. She thought back to me, “What was that?”

I was up. I had to try and channel my thoughts. She didn’t seem to notice while my thoughts were pictures, so I tried to keep it in that way, imagining text, until I came up with what I wanted the sounds to say.

Meanwhile, our mouth said out loud, “did you hear something?”

Rita looked over, confused and said, “What?”

“Like someone talking, right next to us? “

“No.”

Finally, I came up with what I wanted to say,

“I’m in your head. That area is dangerous, the kids going there are stupid.”

“Who is this other voice in my head? It’s not mine,” her thoughts echoed. Her breathing subtly hastened. I could read her emotions. She was confused.

“Don’t worry, I’m here to help. Something bad is about to happen.”

Finally, she spoke to her friend, “Rita, something’s telling me we should turn around.”

Her mind was on repeat, saying, “What’s happening? What’s happening?” She wasn’t used to a ghost inhabiting her head.

I had no time to reason with her, explain what was happening. I just kept pressing her, “Leave. Get out of this neighborhood. Find your mom or brother. The candy here sucks.”

She held onto Rita’s wrist, until finally demanding they both go back to the friendly, suburban neighborhood. Just as they turn around and start to run back, a shrieking is heard followed by a gunshot. Panic breaks out. A couple of kids get badly injured in the ensuing chaos, but Jessie and Rita are not one of them.

I keep silent, taking in the new sensations of this body, until we are safely on the car ride home. Then, I say, “Don’t panic, but I’m a ghost. I’ve entered your mind so that I can guide you. I saved your life.”

Our eyes looked over at her brother, and her thoughts wondered whether she should ask him for an exorcism.

“How did you know that was going to happen? Do ghosts see the future?”

“No, I lived here. I know that neighborhood.”

“So you are a ghost of a dead person. I don’t know this place. I just moved here.”

“I know, I’ve been watching your family for 3 months. I believe you moved in shortly before that, right? I love you and your siblings now, and I want to help guide you, so you don’t end up like me, or worse.”

“End up like you? Worse?”

               “Yes, I was an expert on theology in my life, and I can guide you to heaven.”

“Like a conscience?”

I thought in pictures for a while before replying, “Yes, I’m your consciousness now.”

“Cool.”

It wasn’t cool. She might’ve been thinking in pictures as well, knowing I can’t read those thoughts. She was looking over at Rita, knowing I’d saved her as well. She was freaking out. She still needed time to process. I had all the time in the universe.