THE TRUE ECONOMICS OF HAUNTING

THE TRUE ECONOMICS OF HAUNTING
by John Kiste

The sights and sounds around him were mostly fuzzy and distorted, and the infrequent moments of clarity and acoustical integrity meant something. They were important. He knew that during those brief interludes something was expected of him. He did his best, but he had no similar experience to which he could compare his task—assignment, if you will. He knew what he was. Something that had been left behind; an entity required to terrorize. He was a ghost. To date, he was simply not very good at it.

He received rare flashes of his death from somewhere. An ethereal sort of thing, similar and yet wholly distinct from himself, let him remember. Apparently, this was a prerequisite for the work expected of him. This formless but animate spirit would encompass him and remind him of his violent, bloody murder. A vicious stabbing at the hands of a demented and greedy nephew to whom he had left far too much money. That had been a very long time ago. He was also allowed the knowledge that this nephew was now long dead, and being treated quite badly by the denizens of the afterlife. It seems his wretched soul had been relegated to the entities who make their ‘living’ repeatedly tearing evil souls into sloppy shreds and then painfully reassembling them for the next shift.

He himself had come under the providence of a weird conglomerate of otherworldly beasties who had never been human but who somehow made a profit by forcing dead souls that had not passed over to haunt houses, and properties, and objects, and people. The entity responsible for his case (and the ghost was certain it was always the same overseer entity with whom he held these mental tete-a-tetes) would not say why his own soul had not moved on. It hinted at a combination of some minor wicked things he had done while alive of which he now had no recollection, and the horrid trauma of his brutal dismemberment by that nasty nephew. The thing made it very clear that he could move on to paradise eventually, once the cartel under whose power he had fallen had wrung enough profit from him.

The thing was also never clear what form (if any) this profit took, nor did it ever elaborate on who or what was paying the ethereal group. All it ever explained fully in its telepathic manner was what he was required to do. That was made crystal clear. His soul, or whatever part of him was still fluttering about his old mansion, was kept in a preternatural haze until humans entered the premises. Then suddenly he was given the faculties needed to make sense of these surroundings. At the same time, he was granted the powers to appear and disappear, float through walls, distort his features monstrously, and toss light objects about the rooms. His forced slavery demanded he scare the shit out of any humans present. Somehow, such actions got his tormentors the riches they desired, and brought himself closer to the quota they had assigned him.

One thing he remembered from before. No human, even ones who believed in ghosts, thought they operated this way. He did not deny neither he nor any living being understood the insanity of this actual afterlife, but insane or not, he had been charged with utterly horrifying one hundred humans before he could leave this plane. No rules were put forth as to age, creed, or sex—if they were alive and entered the house, they were fair game. But his haunt had to cause them to flee screaming or it did not count as a satisfactory encounter. If someone thought their senses had deceived them and returned, they were of course fair game once more. Few returned. As clumsily as he manifested himself, the very appearance of a form where nothing had existed a moment before usually did the trick. For a long time, he would not appear to children or old people who might have a heart condition, but an ugly truth slowly dawned on him as the long years went by.

It had not taken that many hauntings to give his old home an unwholesome reputation, and fewer and fewer humans came inside. He could go nowhere else, and if the house was eventually knocked down because no one would rent it, he would be trying to spook people from a vacant lot—probably a fenced-in one. He believed the doctrine of his employer entity. The cooperative would release him after one hundred haunts, but by his own estimation, he had terrified no more than forty folks in the last century. The house was crumbling, and no one had set foot in it in a decade. He seriously doubted he would ever leave his indentured servitude.

Then, one chilly October evening, the floating manager brought him telepathic news. Members of the demon grange had determined a way to help him, and had used their combined faculties of suggestion to convince a large group of college students to lease the mansion for a blow-out Halloween party. The attendance promised to be at least five dozen. It was a masterstroke for the profit-starved overseers, and probably his own last chance to fill the quota.

“What exactly do you get from this?” the ghost asked the entity for the five hundred and tenth time, as he flapped through the massive rooms, arranging cobwebs and tearing small strips from the wallpaper in preparation for the Samhain bash—as the overseers had requested.

“We get our remuneration,” replied the entity, as dispassionate as ever.

“But what does that mean? You cannot touch coins or scrip or gold bars. And who or what pays you? And how? And why? To whose advantage is my haunting of my own house?”

The ghost sensed a type of controlled frustration from the entity, who only said, as always, “That is our affair. Yours is to make quota.”

This time the ghost kept on. “Is it a codicil of your contract to keep me unable to function—in a disabling haze—until humans enter my realm?”

He could tell for once the entity felt surprised. It answered immediately. “What we do with your essence between hauntings is a kindness. A service we have offered at our own cost. You have little concept of passing time while in that haze. Do you really believe your psyche could have remained intact floating alone about this mansion for decade upon decade, with nothing to do? What remains of your character and personality would long ago have been reduced to gibbering ectoplasm. In truth, many specters exist exactly that way. I insisted you not be treated so.”

The ghost was thunderstruck. After a time, he said only, “Thank you.”

The Halloween of the party became the longest period of time in over a century during which the ghost retained his complete faculties. Before the first college victims arrived, he took the opportunity to survey his long-forgotten homestead. In its prime, it had been the finest mansion in four counties. The great dark stones had grown much darker in the ensuing decades, and termite damage had softened some of the monstrous oaken beams and balustrades, but it was more the unwholesome reputation than the neglect that had kept the abode uninhabited for so long.

The ghost made the rooms look drearier than normal, using his strange ability to dim incoming light by dulling the windowpanes. He bizarrely spun and stretched cobwebs across hallways, frayed carpets and tapestries, and cracked plaster walls and paneling. Innately he understood such alterations would have little psychological effect on modern teenagers, but he was at a loss as to other tactics.

The student party hosts arrived just before dusk. Everything about the place thrilled and awed them. The ghost would not reveal himself until all were present. He dared not risk having the party called off after only half a dozen scares. Slowly the crowds stumbled in. Most seemed immature and unconcerned about the venue. Many appeared already drunk. The costumes ranged from old-time period dress—some of it from the ghost’s era—to superheroes and cowboys and Vikings. A large number of the female outfits had required very little material. Two beefy lads in sumo clothing shivered from the night chill as they hauled a beer keg to the center of the Great Hall. Nearly all the guests gathered in this vast space. In the ghost’s day it had been the grand ballroom. A pirate pulled the tarpaulin from the ancient piano and began to play. His technique was good, but the instrument was horribly out of tune. No electricity had flowed into the house since before these party-goers were born, but the ghost heard a whirring begin outside and understood the guests had brought a generator. A faux werewolf was shortly playing loud music from a raised platform along one wall. The party was in full swing within an hour.

The ghost carefully counted the celebrants. He waved an incorporeal arm and distorted the song eerily. Dancing and laughing and conversation stopped. Everyone turned to look at the werewolf, who shrugged. The ghost caused the lights to drop to flickers. He stood—or floated—on the huge balcony fronting the Great Hall, and with a burst of wild green luminosity, appeared to the crowd, wailing and screaming and strangling himself with bloody red intestines.

The party turned to madness. The students also wailed and screamed. Not wails and screams of terror, for they then applauded joyously. Many of them thought he was a special effect of their hairy deejay. But, in truth, more than half of them believed him to be what he was, a real specter. No one left from either group. They all cheered. A few ran up the stairs to greet him, and even when they fell through him in attempting an embrace, none of them were frightened. One of the female hosts tried to delicately kiss his rotting cheek. Between their jaded sensibilities, their alcohol levels, and their innate desire to see an apparition, they could not have had a more satisfying Halloween gala. The ghost thought about dropping a chandelier atop a few, but gave it up as a lost cause.

“The rules used to be inviolate. But times change,” remarked the entity when the last student had staggered from the premises long after midnight. “You did what you could. I consider your herculean efforts sufficient penance for any minor deeds of wickedness you committed while alive, particularly since you no longer even remember them. Nothing that should damn your essence, mind you. You tried to follow our rules. A lot of folks simply no longer believe in haunted houses. Most of those that do believe enjoy them. It is true, your one hundred hauntings quota is now a mere pipe-dream—for us.” As the entity chatted psychically, a corner of the great hall grew very bright. A portal of light widened there. “I convinced my partners, if not my own overseers, that you are of no further use to us. Enjoy eternity, kind spirit.” 

The ghost was stunned by the words, but he was transfixed by the rays of gold reaching toward him.

“You can move toward that,” whispered the entity. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you for a century and a half.”

The light grew brighter, more soothing. Still the ghost hesitated. “What’s in there?” he asked.  He sensed the entity make a motion akin to a shrug. “None of us know. Nor do we know if we ourselves ever get to learn.” The overseer paused. Finally it added, “We have been assured it is nothing like the fate of your unfortunate nephew. So that’s promising.”

The ghost moved tentatively into the light. Before he disappeared from the plane, the entity felt him smiling. Then that overseer was alone with nothing to oversee. It sighed, and sadly headed back to the collective for discipline and reassignment.

Fiction © Copyright John Kiste
Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay