She buried her face in her hands. “I thought you were...” But she couldn’t finish her words.
“Having an affair?”
He smiled warmly, and instead of defending himself or laughing off her insecurity, Mr. CS Shine went over to his wife and gave her a big, smothering hug, and I heard the intimate words he whispered softly into her ear, “Ah, my sweetheart. Don’t you know by now you’re my precious girl?”
“I’m so sorry—”
But he shushed her and held her, and his words hit me hard. I fought my own tears and mostly won.
Just then the young mechanic appeared in front of me. “Someone’s paying for my door and for this.” He pointed to the gash in his forehead.
I told him I would. I told him I would do anything he needed. I gave him my card and he nodded, and I could see the questioning look in his eyes, even though he didn’t voice his thoughts:
How the hell had we broken his door?
But I only smiled weakly at him, told him to send me any bills. Mr. and Mrs. Shine were pressed tightly in each other’s arms and the mechanic bled into a dew rag pressed tightly to his head.
Okay, I conceded. Some men weren’t assholes.
Some men were angels.
I slipped away from the embracing couple. Into the night. Where I belonged.
The End
~~~~~~~~~~
Nightmare
Nightmares.
We all have them. We all wake up in a cold sweat, bolting upright in bed, praying like hell that we were only dreaming. The relief that it had all been just a bad dream is nearly overwhelming. For the lucky few, they might only experience such nightmares, once, twice a month.
For other like me...and Susan, well, our nightmares would never end. Ever.
Until now.
Until we did something about it.
* * *
I watched her turn the page, then scratch her crotch.
Very unattractive. Her name was Susan, and in her defense she thought she was alone in her apartment. I drifted over and peered down at my book—yes, my book. Fifty years ago, I had printed and bound only four copies of it. Now here she was, attentively reading it.
She was nearing the end, I could see. I followed her eyes as she read, wondering how much she was absorbing. When she finally finished with the last page, she sat back and looked through me, thinking hard.
For her sake, I could only pray that my words had, indeed, sunk in.
She rubbed her face and looked generally shaken. She should look shaken. Here be demons. Real, honest-to-God demons.
Finally, she stood and stretched in front of me. I admired her beauty with an empty, ghostly heart. I next followed her into her bedroom, repressing the memories of what this would have meant back when I had been alive: the bedroom of a beautiful woman and her in it. Ah. She dropped the book on her bed and disappeared into the bathroom.
Ghosts can’t do much physically except spy on the natural world, and I did so now, enthusiastically. As I watched her peel away her clothes, I suddenly realized that it had been over fifty years since I last made love.
Fifty long, shitty years.
I am quite dead, having died tragically and instantly in front of a large school bus. Once dead, two beings had come for me, both tall and shining, and they had promptly scared the shit out of me. I backed away in fear, and they let me be, leaving quietly. I sensed they would be back. And they had been. Three times, once for each time thus far that I had located my book and attempted to connect with its reader. But always I refused their advances.
After all, my work here wasn’t done. There was Susan, the fourth and final reader of my book.
Susan made me want to live again. She was soft. She was vulnerable. She was young. Beautiful. Her bangs were in need of a trim and just as she swept them out of her eyes with a graceful hand, I recognized the poetry of her in delicate motion, like the unveiling of a sonnet, line by line. If I could have sighed, I would have. As she showered, the most amazing and cursed thing happened: I felt a surge of guilt for leering at her like a peeping Tom. Who knew that ghosts could feel shame and guilt?
Sighing, I left the bathroom and headed back to her bedroom, where I waited, feeling like a perverted old man. And I was old, too. At least, I had been when I died. Now, I was ancient.
Like I said, there are only four copies of my book, Scare That Nightmare Right Back, in the world, the very book Susan had just been reading. Not exactly a bestseller but the book served a very important purpose. After all, I only needed one person to find it.
And she had.
Fifty years after I wrote it. Susan was my last chance.
Back when I completed it, I managed to talk only three libraries into stocking the book. The fourth went to the Library of Congress, keeper of all books.
This was before the digital age, before the advent of all those damned reading devices that I see folks using all the time. I say damned because had those devices been around in my time, many more good people would have found my book...and thus, many more would have found peace, too.
Peace and sanity.
Now, I haunt all four places where my books reside—and only those four places, although I must say, the Library of Congress is the most interesting of the places I haunt, with its millions of documents and a layer of government that wields a mighty power, perhaps as the Library of Alexandria once did. Ghosts are funny. We generally attach ourselves to the place of our deaths, unless such places are in the open, as had been my situation. So, instead of being attached to a place, I found myself attached to objects. Four objects, in fact. My four books. Interestingly, I always know when someone touches any one of my books. It’s a nice trick that I don’t pretend to understand.
My work here isn’t finished, I thought. It’s as simple as that.
And what was my work? Easy. Banishing Nightmare forever.
Anyway, earlier today I had watched as Susan removed the book from the shelf, flipped it open. I could see immediately that she was one of Nightmare’s victims. The dark bags under her eyes. The drooping of her shoulders. Her grayish aura which reeked of exhaustion.
Yes, Nightmare, the psychic vampire of the dream world, was eating this one alive. Unlike physical vampires that suck blood, Nightmare stole away pleasant dreams and replaced them with the horror and the terror of whatever each human feared the most. I pitied her greatly, seeing the fatigue and anxiety that had worn her down during sleep.
But then I saw something else as she continued reading through my book. Hope. Not much, granted, but a glimmering. Enough to make her stand a little straighter. Enough to make her take a long, deep, shuddering breath.
Enough to make her check out the book.