Nick felt as though he had been stood in the queue forever. He couldn’t remember why he was in the queue or how he had even joined it. He did have a strong urge to remain in it though, like there was something important at the end of it.
He was surrounded by people of all ages, shapes and colours. The queue had to be somewhere, but he didn’t know where. Above was white, plain and dull, there must be walls, because it felt like a room, but he couldn’t see any just the crowd that queued stretching off as far as he could make out.
He tried to talk to the man in front of him, but got no response. He did wonder why someone would be standing in a queue wearing a hospital gown.
The woman behind him didn’t acknowledge him either, she was too preoccupied with probing the hole in her belly with her fingers.
Almost everyone around Nick seemed to have something wrong with them. The man with a hole in his forehead, the woman with a face that was nothing but bruises, people with signs of violence on their person surrounded him.
The fact that the queue snaked on and around and had no obvious end wasn’t worrying. Nothing was worrying. everything was right, even the things that couldn’t be.
The boredom was one factor, but that very slowly turned into being bored with boredom. Which was a new experience, so he tried to enjoy it before that was boring too.
“Katie Dove.” A neutral voice said and the woman with the hole in her stomach vanished through the floor.
Nick wondered if she was done with her probing. Then he forgot there had been a woman with a hole in her stomach, the person behind him was a teenage boy in a skate helmet with an iron railing trough his chest and always had been.
“Nick Walker.” Said the neutral voice and Nick fell through the floor.
Out of the blank room, away from the queue, Nick’s emotions were returned to him.
The first one was absolute terror as he fell in absolute darkness.
The second emotion was confusion when his fall stopped with him sitting in an uncomfortable chair in front of a middle aged white woman, who was wearing a blue cardigan over a simple suit. On the cardigan was a name tag that read “My name is Carol.”
“Hello, Nick,” she said cheerfully, “you’re dead.”
That should have been more upsetting, but all things considered, it felt perfectly reasonable. The only question was how to respond.
“Thank you.” He said.
Carol lifted one eyebrow and gave him a small smile. She looked down at the folder in her hands, that had always been in her hands even if Nick didn’t remember it being there before.
“I see you were unsure about an afterlife.”
Nick scratched his head “Yeah, I mean, I thought maybe there was one, but its not like there was any real evidence.”
Carol chuckled gently “Don’t worry, Nick, plenty of people felt the same way. You saw them while you were waiting. You need to be very, very sure about the existence of one to go straight there.”
“So, if I’d been convinced there was a paradise once I died, I could have just gone straight there?”
“No, dear, it meant that you would have gone straight to judgement. Plenty of very certain people have found out that a conviction there is a paradise is no guarantee of admission. Each one has its own entry criteria. Without having a conviction in your heart, I couldn’t possibly say what one you’d would be applying for.”
That took Nick by surprise “There’s more than one?”
“Oh, most certainly. Firstly, you’ve got the generalised ones from major religions, I am given to understand that they even do away days to each other’s. Like a coach trip, just for a change of pace. Then you have famous but lesser ones, such as Valhalla, although we’ve seen a resurgence in clients heading that way recently. I blame those movies, if I’m honest. Then there are the smaller ones, more personal ones, some people get their own personal paradise, no other people there.”
Nick glanced downwards, he couldn’t help it “What about…” he trailed off, unable to finish the thought.
“Yes, there are plenty of the other place too, more than there are of paradises. People can be so creative when it comes to inflicting suffering on themselves.” Carol shook her head.
Nick felt like he should be sweating, should be nervous “So, is this my entry exam then? Is it just pass fail or is there a points system?”
Now Carol laughed, freely and full of good humour “Goodness, no. Do I look like the arbitrator of your eternal fate? Does this look like where souls are judged?”
Granted, this nice lady did not seem to be an arbitrator of fate, she seemed much more like an everyday functionary. She reminded him of the people who worked in the Council offices.
Looking around properly for the first time, Nick realised he was sat in a cubicle surrounded by three grey walls. Through the open side, he could see another grey wall across a corridor. He leaned out of the cubicle and saw the other wall extended for an eternity.
“Please come back into the cubicle.” Carol said, “It would be impolite for you to see or hear who are in the ones either side of us.”
Nick apologised and moved back to where he had landed. Now Carol had said about there being other people, he could hear the low, indistinct murmur of voices, a multitude of them, each just too quiet to make out any discernible words.
“I’m sorry, but if this isn’t Up There, Down There or the entry exam, where am I, please?”
Carol gasped “Oh my. I haven’t done this properly at all. Allow me to start again.”
She cleared her throat, straightened up in her chair and tapped the folder on the desk to straighten it up. Then she gave him the smile he recognised from so many meetings, the polite, but indifferent professional one most public facing office staff developed.
“Hello, Nick. You’re dead. My name is Carol and I’m your advisor from the Department for Post-Life Affairs. Please make yourself comfortable.”
Nick managed a half smile in return and vaguely shifted in his chair, which felt like all public office chairs, that is, just too hard to ever be truly comfortable.
Carol looked at him, smile still on her face, waiting for him to do something.
Nick blanked, then fell back into the practise rhythm of a meeting like this “Nice to meet you. Thank you for seeing me.”
Carol nodded and laid the folder down on the desk and opened it “I see you were undecided about an afterlife?”
“Didn’t we just do this bit?” Nick asked.
“Sorry, force of habit.”
Nick looked at Carol, Carol looked at NIck. It was that awkward silence where both expected the other to speak first. It stretched on for an uncomfortable amount of time.
Finally, Nick broke “What is the Department for Post Life Affairs, and what is it you are going to advise me on?”
Carol blinked, readjusted her glasses and then laughed “I’m not on top of my game today, am I?”
“I really couldn’t say.” Nick replied, a lifetime of drilled in politeness speaking before he could think.
“Very kind of you to say so.” She clapped her hands together, making him jump “Right then, you are now in the preliminary interview for your Post-Life assignment. Due to a lack of conviction on your part, vis a vis, an eternal life, you were assigned to the Queue, sometimes known as Limbo. During your time there, you were monitored to see if a deeper conviction might awaken. Unfortunately, in your case, this was not to be. Instead, your most strongly held opinion whilst in the Queue was that boredom was boring.” Carol looked up at him and smiled “That’s a new one to me.”
“I guess I’m not as deep a thinker as I considered myself.” Nick said, shrugging.
“Don’t sell yourself short, Nick, its still quite an unusual opinion for the Queue.” Carol closed the folder. “Now, as the Queue did not provide you with a solution, we move on to the next step. You can go back to the Queue, remembering nothing of this, or you can try pro-active Post-Life evaluation.”
“Does it say if I’ve been back to the Queue before in there?” Nick pointed at the folder.
“It does say if you have, yes.”
“And have I?”
Carol gave him a sympathetic look “I’m afraid that information is for internal use only.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means only those employed by the DPLA and overseeing your case can know it.”
“So you know.”
“I do.”
“But you can’t tell me.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Even though we are talking about what I might have done.”
Carol nodded.
Nick sighed, this was all too familiar. “Tell me about this pro-active option then.”
Smiling, Carol adjusted her glasses and straightened up in her chair “The pro-active Post-Life evaluation is our flagship program for those souls who have yet to come to a firm conclusion on the specific nature of their soul and its ultimate disposition regarding eternity. There are a number of options on what form your evaluation can take. We attach no judgement to any choices on your part, I am here to advise you as to what might be your most optimal path.”
Nick nodded, understanding absolutely none of that.
“Would you like to undertake the pro-active Post-Life evaluation? I am afraid once the process begins, returning to the Queue by choice will no longer be an option.”
Thinking about the Queue, the eternal, unmitigated nothing that it entailed, Nick wasn’t sorry to let that option fade away.
“Let’s forget about the Queue forever. I’ll go with option b.”
Carol clapped her hands with glee “Marvellous, simply marvellous. You’re my first advisee to go through with it.”
Before Nick could respond to that, the pair of them dropped through the floor.
They dropped into an almost identical cubicle, the only thing missing was his chair.
Carol sat down in her chair behind the desk and picked up a clipboard and a pen.
“Hello, Nick. Welcome to your introduction to pro-active Post-Life evaluation. Now, first we must discover what kind of Post-Life being you are.”
She placed the pen on the desk, next to a contract “Please sign this.”
Nick reached down for the pen and his fingers passed through it. He tried again and again, but could find no purchase on it. “What’s this?” He demanded.
“No material contact. You appear to be a what we call a floater.”
“Floater? I can’t touch anything? I don’t like that.” Nick told her, feeling the demand that this be changed in his voice.
“You don’t want to be a floater? You want to be a toucher?” Carol asked.
“Yes, I think I very much would like that.” Nick told her, although he didn’t like the idea of being called a toucher. Not that floater was a huge improvement.
“No problem,” she said brightly. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a different contract and laid it on the desk “just sign this contract.”
“Thank you.” Nick reached for the pen and his fingers passed through it.
Carol smiled, sadly.
“Very funny.” Nick said.
“I’m sorry, Nick, but the distinction is in your soul. Either touchy or floaty. Don’t be too upset, this is merely the first option.”
Nick now started to actually process what was happening. He’d been caught up in the mundanity so much that it wasn’t until this moment of frustration that his mind actually took notice of what was happening.
“Wait, what is pro-active Post-Life evaluation in plain language?” He was sure he knew the answer, but he wanted her to actually say it.
“Well, you will be a non-corporeal entity. A protoplasmic being.”
“I’ll be a ghost.”
“Well, if you want to put it in the most vulgar of terms, yes.” Carol sniffed.
“Let me see if I can reason my way through this.” Nick crossed his arms and closed his eyes “So, I will become a ghost, the specific type of which we are currently determining. That means I will return to Earth, the world of the living. There, I will do ghostly things to the best of my ability until I have a concrete understanding of the eternal plain of existence. Presumably you or someone like you will be overseeing my progress?”
“It will be me, I am your advisor.”
“Right, so I hang around down there, or up there, whatever direction the world is from here; until I have my fixed idea. At which point I will be given an appointment time for my judgement.” He opened his yes and looked at his advisor, she was smiling very proudly at him. Nick felt a warm flush of pride in himself.
“Spot on, Nick, spot on.”
“One question, do the actions I take as a ghost count towards my judgement or am I judged only on what I did while alive?”
“Your actions as a ghost can count towards your judgement, depending on your choice of afterlife. However, it will only make up 5% of your grade if it is counted at all.”
“Sounds fair. What’s next?”
Carol rubbed her hands “Now we start getting into the nitty gritty. Let’s find out what kind of protoplasmic entity you are going to be.” She picked up the pen and tapped it against her clipboard.
“Thinking about your death, do you blame a specific person or persons, or a specific place, for your demise?”
Nick hadn’t even thought about how he had died. Wasn’t sure he even knew.
He started to tell Carol about his lapse in memory when he relived it all at high speed, in reverse.
The train hitting.
Rolling down the embankment.
Kicked in the face.
Thrown to the floor.
Punches to the head.
A kick to the balls.
Voices from behind.
Walking beside the tracks to get home.
Leaving the warmth of the pub.
Insisting he hadn’t looked at anyone.
Drinking his beer by himself.
Stopping into the nearest pub to wet the bay’s head
Getting the call on the way home from work to say he’d become an Uncle.
Nick felt something hot in his belly, rolling up into his arms “Yes, I do blame specific people.”
The heat was burning his fingers and he jerked then, trying to cool them by waving them.
The clipboard was blown out of Carol’s hands and the contracts flew around the cubicle.
Carol retrieved her clipboard and pen “I do believe that you are an angry spirit, Nick.”
Nick heard her, but didn’t reply for the moment, he’d never even got to see a picture, they hadn’t even finalised a name yet.
“Angry? I’m furious.” The heat filled him and Nick pushed it out of him, expelling the pain.
The desk caught on fire.
Carol tsked and pulled a fire extinguisher from somewhere. Once the flames were out she looked at Nick, disappointed. “Please control yourself, Mr Walker. I will tolerate no more outbursts in the office. If you continue to be disruptive, I’m afraid I will have to call Security to remove you until such time as you have calmed down and I have an opening in my diary.” She made sure he was looking in her eyes “And my diary is full for the foreseeable eternity.”
The heat was building again, but Nick forced himself to suck it back in, back down. “I apologise.”
He was, however, extremely curious as to what kind of security this place had that was able to cope with wayward ghosts.
On second thoughts, he could go the rest of his Post-Life without ever finding out, quite happily.
“Well then, it appears you have a ability to influence objects after all. Rare, and it does open other options for you.”
Nick stayed silent, there was no point trying to get ahead of this conversation, too many things were beyond his experience.
Carol was holding a different folder, but had always been holding it.
Nick was starting to get irritated by the constant rearranging of reality. How are you supposed to follow the flow of a new experience and the discussion around it if it ceased to be new and became habit while you were doing it?
“Well, Nick, according to our lists that power of yours is suitable for a very interesting opportunity.” Carol paused, just waiting for him to ask what it was.
Nick stayed quiet, gesturing with his eyes for her to go on.
Carol smiled wider.
Nick tilted his head.
Carol leaned back slightly, tapping the folder with a finger.
Nick raised an eyebrow.
Carol glanced at what she was pointing to and let out a little “Hmm.”
Nick knew this had got ridiculous, but felt compelled to not give up.
Carol sighed.
Nick felt bad for her, she was trying to help him and he was being an arse.
They both spoke at the same time. Their voices blending together and neither hearing what the other had to say.
They both stopped speaking.
They both opened their mouths.
Snapped them shut together so the other could speak.
Nick wanted to laugh, they had gotten themselves caught into a cycle of politeness, both wanting to give the other their chance to speak.
The half starts, the awkward coughs, the small, embarrassed gestures of “No, you, please.” went on and on. There was no escaping from it.
Not by being conventional at least.
Nick attempted a backflip.
He failed.
“My goodness, are you ok, Nick?” Carol sounded worried.
“Absolutely fine. I’m dead, remember. But I had to do something to break the loop.”
“And that was your first choice?”
“Less a choice, more an impulse. It’s worked though.” Nick stood up.
Carol grinned, a full smile of actual emotion “Yes, it did, didn’t it?”
“So, I’ll stop being a prat. What’s this opportunity?“
“Well, you’re fuelled by anger, which means you are eligible to become a Named Spirit. This is actually very exciting.”
“What’s a Named Spirit?” The basics were obvious, but he was going to need more details.
Carol settled into her seat “Well, let me describe some more of the divisions first, it might help to understand. So, nearly all individuals in the pro-active Post-Life evaluation are restricted to a specific area of operations.”
“Can we do away with the jargon, please? Just speak to me plainly.” Nick begged.
“Of course. So, ghosts haunt specific things. Some might be tied to an object, and everywhere that object goes, they go with it. We most often see this with murder victims, they tend to get attached to the murder weapon.”
“Make’s sense, I suppose.”
“Yes. Then there are those that haunt a place. Their home, the site of their death, where they are buried. That type of thing.”
“I get the feeling that that is the most common result.”
Carol nodded “Yes, its the easiest thing to do. Plus, it gives you some continuity. There’s not the unknown of where your object might go next. Those who haunt objects tend to be angrier, more likely to cause trouble.”
Nick nodded, agreeing but unsure why. It just sounded right.
“Then there are those who haunt a person. That is almost as rare as what we can offer you. It is also the most dangerous, because if you don’t solve your own crisis of decision before that person dies, then you can be stuck in the Queue until the end of time. We know of a few people that has happened to.” Carol looked sad at the thought.
Nick was alarmed by her last little tidbit “Wait, how do you know that people have been stuck in the Queue for eternity. Time is still going on. Isn’t it? How long have I been here?”
“Ah,” Carol looked embarrassed “I didn’t explain that to you, did I? I’m so sorry, it appears you are my first ever client. I hadn’t realised.”
“How do you not realise that?”
“Well, its because I’ve dealt with so many others.” She explained.
Nick felt a headache brewing. That was impressive, apart from the heat from his anger, it was the first physical sensation he had experienced since leaving or joining the Queue.
“Maybe explain that before my eyeballs explode in confusion.” Nick suggested.
“Yes, yes. Well, this place is beyond and without time. So things don’t necessarily happen in what you would call order, they more happen when they are needed. Does that help?”
“Not really.”
“I will be so good at this. I think this conversation is why i studied about it so hard for my future clients.”
“The ones you’ve already seen.”
“Now you’re getting it.” She beamed.
He wasn’t, but he didn’t think he could take much more of this. Time was screwy here. He’d just go with that.
“Sorry, Carol, I’ve derailed the conversation again. You were explaining what a Named Spirit is.”
“But I already have.” Nick stared at her, feeling that brain burn from screwy time coming back. Then she laughed “I’m sorry, Nick. Just a joke.”
He really wanted to set her desk on fire again for that, but the unknown Security kept his impulse at bay.
“Named Spirits are the ones of legend. The ones that you hear about. They operate on specific parameters.”
“Jargon.”
“Sorry. Have you heard of Unwed Mary? Jenny O’Plenty? Miku Miku? Bloody Mary? The Candyman?”
“Isn’t the Candyman from a film?”
“Based on a book. But he operates under the same rules a Named Spirit does. Quite simply, a Named Spirit responds to fixed events. They are summoned or appear when certain things happen. They can go practically anywhere in the world where those conditions are met. They may even have different names depending on the country. Of course, most choose to remain in the country of their birth or death as they understand the language.”
“So, they are vengeful? Acting out of anger at something?” Nick thought he was getting the hang of the rules.
“Not necessarily.” Carol shot that down “They can act altruistically if they choose. Or maybe they make Faustian bargains. It is entirely down to the Named Spirit. Should you choose that path, we will draw up a code of conduct and you will sign a contract agreeing to adhere to the terms.”
“And if I were to break that contract and code of conduct?” Nick asked, fairly certain of the answer.
“Then we send in Security to retrieve you. Based on what clause you break, your punishment could be permanent reassignment to the Queue. Straight to a randomly chosen anti-paradise or a stern talking to from your advisor. Which would be me.”
This was definitely interesting. Nick had been anything but rare in life. Single, mid 30’s, working in an office. Drinks with the boys. Occasional dates. Lots of swearing at teenagers and kids in online games. Being rare would be nice.
“So, does a Named Spirit have to react to every instance of the parameters? If so, I’d imagine Bloody Mary would be constantly on the move.”
Carol chuckled “No, they are free to pick and choose. I’m told Mary is very nice to talk to when she’s not working.”
This was too tempting.
That stopped him short.
Tempting. Temptation.
Was this some sort of test?
His expression must have betrayed his thoughts because Carol said “This choice is not a test as to your fate regarding paradise or not. Being a Named Spirit does not count against you.”
Nick grinned “Do I get to pick my own name?”
© Robert Spalding 2020
Ghost Stories by Robert Spalding 