Part Three: A Scottish Ghoul

Jacque learns about the different forms of existence, and it becomes a surprise to him.

Gosh came to me again in his often mysterious way as I lulled myself between worlds. The images of the boy stirred in my head still, and his painting was bound to haunt my waking dreams. The depiction of the clawed actor, whose eyes were as blue as the mortal sky. I had told Gosh about him, and about how the boy described him in his own terrible way, and that if we were to meet him, it would portend terrors and maxima of misfortune. We were in danger, I told him. We were in grave and brooding torment, for surely that man watched because he knew who I was. A ghost. A spirit. A wayward traveler.

But who was I to scare a splinter of God? Who was I to offer an admonition of fear to a creature whose persona existed solely in the realms outside of heaven and hell? I mused to myself silently until he began cackling to himself, reading my thoughts, no doubt.

“And you think by avoiding this man, you may save yourself, young Jacque? And from what? After-all, with the skills I have taught you and the truth I have armed you with, you should have the upper hand every time. You’ve already breached the veil of death. Your mother saw to that. Now that you’re a ghost, you can pass seamlessly through worlds and greet any manner of beast you prefer, so long as you remember your teachings! Fear not, the man whose image burns the eyes that fall upon him, with hands of claws and eyes of tremulous oceans, so you say! You’ve come a long way, boy, since your first descent in my madness in Meh-ven. It has been beautiful, really, and it almost makes me tear up inside…” He put his bony and reptilian claws to the base of his eye, as if wiping away the happenings of a tear.

Cursed, I thought to myself. I am cursed. What part of this existence could be beautiful, unless this was but an endless dream walking alongside an unearthly partner. What pleasure was there in this curse?

“It is not death that frightens me any longer, sir, but albeit, the grave truth that death means absolutely nothing compared to the fate that awaits me after I have been judged.”

I am cursed to walk alongside this hooded creature, whose skin was like charcoal and course like scale, whose face was forever shadowed within the bloody drapes of a sorcerer, and whose voice was like sweet caramel drifting in a lazy river. Was this all there was to death? Even in my ethereal transcendence, I learned to reject the possibilities that this was the final destination, and so I often grew belligerent with him in my constant frustration.

“You ask many questions Jacque, and even after the years of training that I have given you, you continue to ask of me questions that you yourself have solved in previous lives. You ask me questions, but nay, how about I ask you questions, so that they may be your guide?”

Do ask.

I came to him in that small space, an open land with grass and ferns surrounding us. It was a breeze that kept us together, and I went with it, walking up to his towering form and peering into the pit of his headpiece. He could crush my ghostly essence should he please. He was powerful, and yet even as his power emanated from his demeanor, I continued to stand there and challenge him. A six-year-old boy by image challenging an infinitely aged creature of the celestial world; that was a sight to behold among demons and angels alike.

“Is a prince any more worthy of life than a beggar? Is a girl’s body any more prized than a boy’s? Do the souls given to God ever waver when poised with the possibilities of separation, or do they merely find a vice? Do these souls seek retribution with the devil when they cannot find God, or do they feel that they can find God by seeking the devil?”

I pondered. Recalling everything I had seen about God, that His palace ruled from the sky, even from this vantage point inside the realm of Meh-ven. That His grace was in the heart of every living organism as a living image of Himself. I scoured the plains before me as I searched for answers, searching among the grasses and the tall weeds that have grown liberally throughout the unkempt space.

“These are not questions I can answer, as I have only willingly followed you, my lord. You are all I claim to know.”

“Oh! But that’s just it"you’ve never known anything else aside from your meager mortal life, and I do believe it was so fleeting. You’ve never had a hand lended to you and you’ve never unencumbered yourself from the enigmas of your mind. Let me help you know, young Jacque, and listen closely. You see, power is in the hands of the insightful, and with this power, you can go anywhere you’d like. You could descend into hell, or even ascend through the gates of heaven! It is not unusual for the insightful souls to guide themselves into the planes of the otherworldly as if they were welcomed there by the angels themselves. Some souls have obtained this power, and they push themselves on the living wherever they choose. Some mortals find traces of their evil and call them malevolent spirits.”

Gosh pushed over the ferns with his booted feet which peeked from under the drapes of his cloak, and leveled them with each step he took. We came to a place of scattered stone walls that seemed to surround us like an old druidic circle. A slab of pearly rock, surrounded by the onset of flowers that seemed to cradle it on all sides, laid across the center of this druidic circle. It was smooth and reflective in the sunlight, almost blinding to look upon, but we came to it and sat lazily on its plain surface.

Gosh followed close behind me and he weaved between the stones, placing his hands on their faces gently as he bound around them. Oh, how so very nimble and meek his stature had seemed at that moment… A true and tangible horror that came bounding toward me.

He continued his words.

“Some souls obsess and try to return to the living! Some actually believe their power has given them an ability to return to the world of the living, as if their defiance of God would go unnoticed by the legions of angels. And some have been successful, don’t you have doubt, but when their vessels called upon God, and He answered swiftly, they were branded as demons, miscreants, misfits. It was a sin to act in the stead of God and perform miracles that would steal or coerce another’s mortal persona.

“And while God punishes these demons whose powers go unchecked through His kingdom, other souls undergo a period that is known as a ‘projection’, and their shadows dance off the walls in places where mortal eyes dare not pry. They elicit their powers and find strength in the forgotten and isolated histories of Man. Their voices are heard in caverns, and their hair is left on trees in dank woods. They project themselves and haunt only the darkest places where their existence remains undetected. They covert their energies and project themselves in the hordes of kings, in the tombs of brothers and sisters, across the scrying stones of priests and upon the walls of historians. Their presence is not known to mortal eyes! Nay, it is their existence that depends on brooding in isolation, for if they are detected by any manner of living, they shall cease to exist in the kingdom of God. They become silenced by God, for it is their pride to exist in the dark, just as it is the pride of Man to exist in the light.”

“And what is the difference between the Projected and the myriad of ghosts living amongst the mortals? Why is one cursed while the other is not?” I asked him out of spite.

He came close to me and shrieked to me in a deep bow that brought his distorted black face close to mine.

“Do not be naive, young Jacque!” he told me, “You know better than most, through my guidance of course, that souls are not espionage or cursed. Yes, while it is true that the Bible of man tells that ‘The LORD Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted’, is it not the pride of ghosts that forces them into darkness, but their knowledge of God! It is a pride to bear witness to such knowledge on part of forcing His hand. These souls are given freedom to live between His fabrics, like small children playing in the garden between the road and the home. It is not correct to say they are cursed; that is reserved for only the prideful sins of the living.”

I said nothing more. I spoke nothing more than a whimper in the dark space that he closed me, deep within my mind. It was a small space, and I could see the terrible images of the souls as they lingered in their own ways through the darkness, meandering halls no longer lively with the children that once trudged and played. Gosh showed me images within giant pools of stagnant water that reflected shadows, of all sizes and shapes, stretching along the caverns once lurching with families of several generations. Old temples locked and forced underground by time were summoned before my ghostly eyes, and I saw distinct shapes that resembled small humans sauntering along the dead hallways into wide rooms paved with gold. They seemed to speak to one another and dance along the stones that marked the entrance of valleys of coffins. It was a tomb within a temple, of which was removed from the modern world under a thousand years of history somewhere in the dunes of a desert. Some of these projecting souls played with the very air and manifested their energies together to move entire mounds of dust from old tomes, and some scraped away the old fragments of papyrus from the shelves where old books once stood for mortals to delve. They performed their own menial duties, I realized, and watched as each soul ritualistically scoured the realms of mortal possessions. They cleaned by shifting the wind and subtly changed minor items in the space with the manipulation of energy. What they hoped to do, what they hoped to change beyond the veil, I could not fathom to understand, but they did this for all of eternity…

“I do not expect you to understand, Jacque. In fact, I don’t expect anything from you. Any manner of existence is made to understand the plight of the Projected, as they greatly contrast with even the Distant, or the noble spirits that guide mortals in life. They are not angels, and certainly not demons, yet mortals know of the Projected just as they know of God. They know God through the Projected, as if they were conduits to Him,” Gosh continued, “but with each Projected known, they cease to exist. They are known and thus leave the Lord’s light to become martyrs for the living!”

I picked my small form up from the bony rock and walked a few steps away. I began to search inside myself for a reason to stay with Gosh, and found myself wondering why it was that I surrendered my inner peace to hear terrifying stories of the manifestations of God. Was it to see God? Did I seek my mother, whom poisoned me and forced me from this world? Did the Lord watch me, just as Gosh watched me, or had he averted his eyes from all the souls in this realm, just as the souls of the garden averted theirs from the mortal plane, yet lingered in its ashes?

“And you, Gosh, are the conditioner of souls?” I challenged as I walked into the distance, knowing that he was always close by.

“Of course…”

“And you know the way to God?”

He nodded. “Officially.”

“Then what purpose do disciples of Gosh serve when souls find their own paths to the notice of God? What purpose does it serve that I am exposed to all these horrors, like a persistent nightmare, and yet I grow no closer to Him?”

He met my eyes with the shrinking of his hood toward his chest as he looked gave me a sideways glare (or so I could see, for he had no eyes).

I wanted to challenge him, for I was no longer the same boy that had passed through the veil so many years ago. I had learned of hatred, of loathing, of loneliness and mishap. I had learned all there was of chaos and dreamt of horrors that would have mortals screaming themselves awake each night. I had witnessed callous rage and experienced the terrible hands of devils as they painted on canvases of flesh and depicted other devils in the disguise of mortals"it was all so violent, and despite all this, I was no closer to God than I had been as a boy. Was the way to Gosh the same road as that which one would take to God? Or was Gosh the subverter and the seducer whose inclinations for God were skewered and jaded?

“You doubt me,” he said then, “you feel that I am misleading you. You feel that I am leading you astray from Him, no?”

I indeed doubted him, but I dared not say so. I dared not think such words. He still held power over me and I knew of my weakness in his realm. Instead, I choked on my thoughts and dreamt while walking away into the far lands of endless hills. A solace, I thought. It was a solace from him, and I let my mind wander away from it all until I couldn’t detect his probing mind any longer. But even in my wandering and my elusive moment of retreat, I still managed a wry and slippery remark that was meant to assail him, and therefore I suppose I did still intent to challenge him, and I chose to dare. ”You showed me a true devil in Venice, and one worthy of praise, but why must the painting of the city be about me? Why use the boy to get to me?”

The boy whose brush strokes touched the canvas on the riverfront, whose delineations swore loyalty to the colors that surrounded him, whose face was young and unworn from the malice of age. A boy whose name I did not know, but whose heart cut my own out. A boy that could speak to ghosts as if they were living, and relate to me on matters that only those close to my heart could do.

I again let my mind slip then until Gosh’s voice came booming through the wind somewhere in the far distance.

“Yes. Indeed,” he had said, “I did. This is the truth. I showed you a devil that is worthy of honor and notice, if not only to be awed and feared. One worthy of dread,” he cackled, “and if not for the grand scenery of your childhood home, how could you have understood the splendor of evil?”

I stopped in my tracks. The splendor of evil? As if Venice had the dealings of the devil convalescing in this spot, Gosh spoke of things to which I failed to understand. What splendor of evil, I asked him, what nestled itself away in that old city?

“Tell me. What did you see that day?” Gosh said.

I recalled everything of which I was at witness. I told him about the fisherman that patiently waited on the river’s edge with his corded lance tugging at the water’s surface. I recalled the children that played on the grassy lips of the ground as they frolicked and romped through the canal’s watery tide. There were faeries that people boarded by the crowds, and gondolas that merrily skimmed the water’s face just as the highways were filled with carriages of royal men. Young men and women scouted the alleyways of every building-side and scoured for the remnants of forgotten coinage. There were textile workers and bakers alike whose noises contrasted with the other, yet added to the distinct aromas that were Venetian.

And then, “there was a boy and his canvas,” I continued in one long string of thought, “whose own painting of the city was much more real and austere, and it was frightening. He painted it as it was"as it truly was. He drew so finely the people whose minds sank in discomfort that this time, too, would pass. He painted the isolation of the apples as they fell and rolled far from the bough in lonesome and forgotten ways. The sky was blue with an adorning orb of fire that sank into the distant curtains of the sky, and while it was not as bright as the true god in the sky, his shadows pervading the corners of this world had spoken more loudly. There were children, and mothers, with fathers and their romping pets as they weaved between legs. Teachers and students, with angry and gay faces. I saw courting women and gorgeous men, flanked by their legions of admirers and flings. There were people whose faces were painted with powders and ash, while some wore none at all. It was a city with a cathedral, and that cathedral was inhabited by actors, and those actors were inhabited by ghosts, for they only assumed the roles of others, just as it should have been. I know not what Italy is, but the avenues of that city were leaping with life, and I only saw Venice, sir.”

Gosh continued to stir in silence at this. Indeed, he remained pleased with my words and sought no more explanation as to what I saw. He saw through it, surely, and he saw in me that there was only Venice, and it was the true Venice. The Venice that was mirrored in the correct light, for the eyes only deceived. The painting that the lone boy depicted, whose hands were passionate and lithe, conjured the true delineation of the city as it was seen through the third eye. Yet, it seemed different than my memories served, and I could not understand whether my new ghostly eyes gave me a new angle, or whether I had simply grown aware of the world and its many imperfections. This Venice was more ancient and more unforgiving. It was unbalanced in color, and just as the boy had said to me on the riverfront, the sun was terribly too bright.

“Only Venice, but a Venice that was horrific and terrible in spite of its beauty, for its very beauty was to be loathed and embellished. You saw the painting of the city just as Venice should have been seen: the playground of the devil. Without the pretty images clouding your mind’s eye, you saw in his painting the true world as it mirrored our petty perception of it, do you see, young Jacque? The painting was as ghosts see the world. The painting was as those who have passed through the veil would see the bustling cities of the mortals, and it is known that they are appalled by what they see. It’s perfectly horrendous.”

I listened to him to the best of my ability, just as I had always listened to him as he conditioned me in this new life. Indeed, I thought, I did see something"but that something was coiled in the vast, empty arcade of mystery, and I was barred from it, for Gosh was a mystery to me.

Prior to Gosh taking me into the dark world of Meh-ven, I had never seen the world’s stars in a true light, nor have I ever seen the stars at night as they were in his realm. Shortly after the world grew silent and my mind ceased to swim with thoughts that frightened me, Gosh took me around the ferns, and we walked as angel would with devil, and as if he were the devil and I the waif, we were caught in an unholy bond. He sat down on a rock that protruded from the ground like a finger in the earth and I was bid to sit next to him. I watched as he produced his fingers suddenly in the space before him and stroked the air rhythmically. Circles turned into light that bound together in an unbroken tether. Whirling, whistling through the air, radiating a piercing warmth that both soothed me and frightened me equally, circling like the fire dancers would with their batons alit, or the lanterns of fool merchants as they shoo away rabid wolves. It was mesmerizing, my master’s feats glorified.

There was an image from which the colors derived, an epicenter of coagulation where they came together and blended into new things. In this epicenter, in this madness that I saw in his creation, the colors began swirling from within that space in the circle, and I could see through it into the familiar lands beyond. The tall grasses of Meh-ven hung just enough in the distance that the hills cast their shadows over the distant palms. But even as I watched, lost in my own mind, into that spiraling portal that Gosh channeled, the image grew distorted and disfigured until the grassland and the palms melted into one, and the entirety of the image became fleeting and dissipated into an acclimate world of ashy, cobblestoned roads. Buildings hung on both sides of the open road with shutters closed and burning lamps that twinkled as women’s eyes did in their fury. I stared intently and truly, but my imagination raced through the possibilities of what lied behind that curtain he created.

Miracles seldom unsettled me then. They were as any element in the lands of the undead, such that powers divine and miracles impossible were the mainstay of afterlife. This was typical of Gosh, and I had seen him perform dozens of miracles that would bring anyone to the light. But even as I write to you now, and even as I set on record the circumstances that followed me into the grave, I cannot describe to you the finesse for which Gosh conjured his wheel of heavenly fire which did not burn nor dirty the air. It was as mist does in the early morning, gradually dissipating away into nothingness and becoming one with the breathable air.

The ring expanded then as Gosh swept outward with his arms, extending them straight above and below. It was a magnificent window, a portal to another world, and that world appeared bleak and somber. Gosh stepped away from it and let me come close to examine the impossible view of the neighboring city. People of gruesome natures stepped out of doorways and peeked from windows high. Tall and magnificent beasts carried hunched ghouls with soiled hats along the sorry roads, like ants funneling toward an anthill. Torches burnt low in this realm and far against broken walls and cracked elements as they seemed to melt with the stains of the unkempt world. I heard the ground shake as a stream of disheveled screams streamed from that portal before me. A flash of lightning illuminated the heavens. The magnificent smell of rain mixed with the forever pungent stench of human refuse upon the streets below, accompanied by that stringent ray of light that passed between the gray clouds like water seeping between fingers. It was the rooftops of the townhouses, the patter of the red shingles of those urban soundscapes that twisted and danced with everything else in this vast plane. The wind picked up, speeded its travel between byways and alleyways narrow and carried the rain diagonally against the yellowed panes of a lofty second-storied window. It was heinous, and the great scene that unfolded beyond that sealed window only portended the grave truth that life actually thrived in such a bleak world.

A girl with a red ribbon in her hair danced alongside the road for a precariously perched man upon the fence, and she played just as I once played in life, and I immediately knew of her innocence. Like a flower among a field of weeds, she was a shining light in this bleak darkness, but even her goodness was overtaken by the crowds of people that were as black clouds stalking a warm day, and then she was gone from my sight. She was washed away in the groups of people.

My eyes darted to each side of the city in equal horror and fascination. I continued to watch in fascination and horror equally, and from within the rains barreling down upon the city, I saw a face hovering above the homes, above the theaters and the hotels, watching the hurried people and stagnant lunatics slowly wallow in the downpour. The immaculate face of a girl with hair of coal and eyes of living and gleaming sapphire. The ghostly reflection of her face upon the window panes peered out into the endless expanse to envision the world’s entangling chaos. An expression of the utmost refinement, but otherwise sitting absorbed in a small chair of Victorian design. Her feet dangled above the floor several inches and her laced dress shielded her legs as it bloomed out around her, swallowing and enfolding within its tailored horror. Her hands sat idle across her lap in a slight clasp by the fingers and she looked forever on with that hypnotic gaze, utterly unaware and unconcerned that she looked so much like the doll that she played. Her eye lashes were childish and girlish, albeit thick, as if dipped in liquid silver and groomed delicately. Her hair was long and vibrantly kept with twirls and curls that only appeared the very cloak against her shoulders. It was trimmed perfectly and deliberately above her eyes in a straight line"eyes that flashed that peculiar sapphire like embers reflecting in the droplets of rain on the window. Her face pale and smooth in childlike appearance"but occasionally and quite frighteningly swirling with a peachy warmth so similar to the onset of immaculate marble in a Roman statue. Her face perfectly chiseled into the shape of a heart. So distant. So unreal. So vivid in the mind, and the lust for her, to be with her despite her frightening demeanor. Like a porcelain doll, carved especially for this era and gifted as the loving playmate of some lucky mortal. She hardly moved save for the subtle heave of her chest as she breathed silently, or the desultory blink of her electric eyes.

And Gosh showed me the image of her against the backdrop of this miserable world. I did not question him. I knew never to question him, at least when he showed me horrors such as these, but I watched her through the fiery portal that he created. I shifted in my seat to get a better glimpse of her. I was encapsulated.

The smell of rain and perfume clouded the air around her, but she paid no mind to their pungent odors. Like a doll, she sat unperturbed and in ultimate passivity. She gripped all light from within that room, and even the debauchery of the world failed to free her from that deep arrest. She seemed the ancient artifact in a contemporary painting. A figure of discord, or awry and spiteful malice, the bane of order. She appeared the demon among saints working tirelessly to seduce and encourage that final leap into Hades; like a Lilith.

A demon child.

And I looked on, watching her seated in that ornate chair, experiencing even in my immortal existence that cool air waft through the room and ebb at the window. A mist now enveloped the panes until they appeared to distort and torment the world beyond, yet even through this ever darkening world she never roused from that unadulterated stupor.

And I remember my thoughts then, all through those few uneventful moments. A sense of conviction. Her presence irked me. Her mystery irked me. This girl, who does not play, whose smile I’ve never seen nor laugh I’ve ever heard. She was unlike any child I ever had laid eyes upon, and her undivided face bred in me a deep sorrow for reasons I could never understand. She was nothing more than a porcelain doll. A plaything to which I could not have. I could sense nothing from her but a sterile silence, no living energy, no humane feature beyond the hair that enshrouded her stout form. And so at any moment I felt she would utter her monotonous phrases and dictate a command to me through the veil of death as if she contained the power to do so!

I watched her through the portal into this dimension for what seemed a long while before my eyes once again reconciled with Gosh’s faceless void. He stood from his place, leaving the endless tether to forever circle in the space before us, and I knew then what he intended for me to do when words were left unspoken. I prepared myself. I was to enter this terrible world, just as I did with Venice, and enter as ghosts do into the world of the living. No, I shook my head, you will not put me there!

He walked a few steps away with his towering body, using those hidden legs to seemingly float across the weeds that stuck to our boots.

“Finding a soul worthy enough to be one with Gosh is difficult work,” he said, “you must understand the pressure I’m under.”

“But why with her? Why must you choose her for me to haunt? Shall I do the haunting, or shall she be the one to haunt me in death?” I roared at him suddenly. I knew my own temper. I knew it well, but never had I done to Gosh as I had done then.

Gosh skulked against my side somewhere in the distance and I heard the beauty of his laugh resonate through Meh-ven for all the wandering souls to hear.

“When souls come to me,” he explained to me in a matter-of-factly sort of tone, “when they find themselves drifting between the worlds of life and death, they know not what fear is. They do not possess the realms of thought necessary to grasp the entirety of His creations. But when souls, ones that are adept in the annals of the living and dead alike, are chosen from the horde, they undergo the training that you now undergo. They yearn for control for which they never possessed in life. You are no different, my dear Jacque. And that is why you must face trials that no ordinary soul may withstand.”

But why this girl, whose countenance was no more human than the dead’s?

“… And you believe in all mediums that humans are the sole creation of His upon earth? Surely, you must believe that there exists a world which is hidden beyond the grip of common eyes?”

I twisted around as he explained to me the mystery of this girl. I sat and listened as he explained to me that not all life sprang from God in the form of man, and not all life was extinguished as time paid its visit. Some things prevailed, he said. Some things lasted for an eternity.

I began drifting away. I remember trying to sleep even as I waked in Meh-ven. I remember trying to fall into the grass of the ground and fade between the sheets of weeds as they blanketed around me, ignoring the cacophony of the dreary city beyond. Fearful that Gosh might indeed hear my mind’s word. And so my mind swam with ideas and images which I knew were not my own. They frolicked with memories of days far behind, as if the lockbox of my head had come unhinged and unclad to a reeling open. The days of my own past flashed before my eyes in rapid succession, but my face could not describe my disbelief, nor could the frailty of my young mind decipher the silhouettes dancing in my mind.

Gosh’s words played in my head.

I saw two twins pulled from their mother, a faint howl of disheveled screams piercing my ears. The walls were thin like paper and the dancing of the lights perverted the shadows of the women huddled around the pained creature. They were all women, similar in grace and light, and it was evident that the creature hunched upon the floor was dying. Their hands… They were dyed with a swath of red. The dye was running everywhere, and it seemed to crawl up the walls and through the windows. Soon the paper of the walls peeled back and the ceiling dripped with the cast of the sanguine liquid. The horror, it was horror! Oh, I tried to pull away from it. I tried to peel my eyes away, even clawing them from their roots so that the dream would pass, but I knew my release only in the form of consternation. I remember surrendering to the horror, watching briefly as the theatre of tragedy played. The women began to cough, to choke, and their bodies were drenched in the amorphous sea of red as it filled the room and painted over my eyes. And then I glimpsed upon her, the doll’s heart-shaped face staring back at me from behind the curled paper walls, and she gave me a sinister, dominating smile.

I blinked and once more found myself staring into the amorphous blue sky that was familiar of Meh-ven. Tears fell from my face and I wept as angels surely had wept for me when I came into Gosh’s service. “Who is she?” I demanded of him in my regular, boyish tone.

An odd silence.

“Maladre. Poor… poor Maladre. She is one with a twilight as old as all the ages of the world. A child with a story dreary and terrible, and as somber as the misty currents from which she hailed.”

* * * * * *

I remember the first time I saw a ghoul, and Gosh had taken me from Meh-ven and left me in a cold and desolate landscape in the midst of an eerie twilight. I remember it well, because there were few words exchanged between us before the open air had gripped me in its embrace, and I only knew the sweet rapture of the mortal world as its many glories beaded down upon me. Gosh had left without so much as a sideways glance.

Before leaving me, Gosh had told me of great rains that had cleansed this land. It was somewhere in an open grassland in the backwaters of Scotland. It had rained for months without even a hint of relenting,] until all sins and disease were washed away. Entire abodes were washed away until, given enough time, cliffs upon which villages rested had utterly melted away. The cataclysmic storm portended change, renewal, sacrifice, and dissolution. Graceful rays from heaven seldom glimpsed upon this dreary landscape anymore, so he told me. May it be the change of climate in these parts, or some intervention from God, I was left to imagine for myself the grave truth that surrounded this region.

Every town fosters a sense of peculiarity within its proximity, of this I knew. Some have trees that forever fruit from the boughs, rivers that forever flow, homes that never crumble, or wells that never dry. A town without such a peculiarity was peculiar in itself, and it was perhaps the backwater towns of Scotland that boasted no such peculiarity. I saw walls that had long ago fallen as stones in the fields. There were homes that had become no more than a conglomerate of rotted, wooden structures and crumbling ceilings. The wells were forever dry and would not hold water, and the rivers were buried over long ago by the wash of wildfire and ashy mud. Nothing peculiar. Nothing to rally around. And it was the angels for whom wept over these towns with no peculiarity.

The sun was missing from the sky, but the land was mysteriously bright as the haze of morning shook away the shadows from its dreary cliffs. The wind was subtle but crisp and the grasses danced synchronically in its caress. I remember the sky as it was then; forever blue but painted over with a thin layer of clouds as sugar is on sweets. The sounds of the wind howling through the vale but meters from where I stood (or hovered"for a ghost, this does not matter) mixed with the singing of the sparrows as they sat along the ridges of the cliffs. Dead woods sat in the far distance, far from mortal eyes, and I could see them as clearly as if I stood just beside them. Their long tendrils were curled and profaned, and some even drooped beastly and ugly. They were black and crumbling. I could see these woods and see their history, and knew that a great fire had swept over this land.

In amongst those trees, I could make out the form of a broken stone abode with the terrible signs of age. Its walls were crumbling, just as the trees were crumbling, and it was as if the stones were bleeding. Snares of all manners littered the floors. Some were drenched in the filth of animal blood and others were broken and dismantled. The roof was caving, visibly, and it seemed more akin to a tower of a once dominant kingdom, but now stood as a reminder that even the creations of man were at the mercy of His design. Unbeknownst to me, the derelict sung to me and lured me to it surely, and it wouldn’t be until later that I would find that this place had a mind and an agenda all its own.

It brought me to it like my hand was led away.

The trek toward the structure did not take long, as it was not difficult for a ghost to swell through the waves of the wetlands and score the grasslands with its ethereal speed, as it never existed in the world of the living anyway. I was there in but moments and I stared into the doorless portal into the vast emptiness beyond. The door hinges hung rusted and warped, creaking in the wind. I heard only an eerie whistle resonate from the cavern within, only a thin outline of light pervading the very entrance. I stepped inside. What was I meant to see?

I could only begin to wonder what Gosh might have desired of me, for his tasks were ever so riddled. Alas, I stepped into that cavern and stared into a long hall with barred alcoves on each side. A candle burnt at the end of this hall. Mysterious.

Cleansing rains crashed to the earth, like thousands of arrows from heaven. Even inside the dungeon it had rained, bringing with it the needles of the trees and the mud from the rooftops. It collected on the ground and formed miniature oceans for the small denizens of the dungeon to swim. Rats, insects, and other unearthly crawlers, poisonous and the like, scattered across the ground, unaware that I too lingered in this cesspool within the world of the dead. It was the high time of morning, just after dawn surely, and the candle flickered its tongue across the face of the walls. Shadows painted themselves from the iron bars lining the small space, some from winged creatures attracted by the smoke of the light. Like dragons upon the walls, they danced and fluttered.

I came closer to the hall. I seemed to glide suddenly. I was a phantom, and I came through that old tower like a phantom would. It was in the far cell just before the wick of the candle that I stopped and realized what I had been led to discover"a young girl, laying unconscious upon the floor. She was young, quite thin, and sleeping. Her crude garments were frayed at the ends or were otherwise dampened from many nights spent in a flooded dungeon. She sat hobbled over like a dog, embracing her legs close to her bosom and burying her face into her knees whilst her mind wandered in dream. Her petite feet sat unmoving, partially frozen and numb to the simplest disturbance in the air. Like a flower wilted from the rain. Like a victim of the night, left to die in a desolate and unreachable place.

Yes, she was beautiful, and it was like her beauty conspired against her; shutting her away from admiring eyes. She was the kind of beautiful with radiant skin that shined through the soot that adorned her body. She was defiance for the senses that, despite all factors contempt and insane, suffered beyond the flesh in a preeternal soul. Where amid the suffering the mind, the body still persevered in the form of this radiant beauty. The coal hair scored the length of her back, albeit unkempt and soiled, it still gleamed in the candlelight as if alit by the day itself. She had long legs and painted toenails, a deep red, serving as a reminder of her youth.

A beautiful human girl.

The distinction between human and beast became increasingly shrouded as my eternal age persisted, but to be human seemed to be a virtue then, just as I had once been. I felt the yearning to be alive again. I felt the desire to be in my mother’s arms, or to be whipped by my father for callous deeds. This girl surely experienced just as I had once experienced"a beguiling sense of mortality that consummated life’s tangibility.

I came to the far edge of the iron bars and silently watched her, and just as I sensed no other souls around, I sensed nothing living beyond her small form. I sensed nothing other than the mere whistle of the wind as it played its hand in the cold that embraced the dungeon. The bars felt cold to me, even as I existed between worlds as the pestilent spirit of a young boy, and I felt the cold iron against my dead skin. I could pass through the bars. Oh! I could have sat next to her, to this I was confident, and been beside her without her so much as knowing me. I could have come to her unnoticed, for so few of the living could see the dead"for this is one lesson I knew much about.

Yet even in my certainty I found questions, and those questions begged the answer of whether she could sense me at all. I willed myself through those bars, to sit next to her just as I had imagined. She felt warm with the currents of blood still pumping through her veins, like a torch she burnt brightly! I looked down at my translucent hands, staring at her form through the intangibility of my own as she sat next to me. It was attractive, this warmth. A feeling that I had been without for so long, this warmth. I had forgotten it.

I came closer to her, sliding next to her in a prowl much like she was, and came just inches from her shoulders. Much of the warmth came from her neck, I noticed, and she was emanating such force that I could not pull away from her. Could I resist touching her and giving her an unpleasant shock? No, I could not, and I came closer to that warm neck where the sweet rhapsody of blood boiled and churned within. She felt like silk, warm and smooth against my ghostly skin. Yes, this was life, and I had been missing life when I saw it in her.

She suddenly pulled away from me. She suddenly gasped, her skin raising small bumps along their fine texture. It was the touch of a ghost. It came hollow and unavoidable, but she seemed otherwise unaware that I was there. Her body knew while her mind failed to catch on. What fallacies man had created for himself, so I thought.

But then, there it was. She picked up her head slightly from the folds of her arms to give two sly eyes pointed in my direction, and that’s when I noticed the two bloodied marks on her neck like two holes, swollen and hidden under her hair. What was the meaning of this?

“You best leave here, formless one, before it’s too late.” She uttered. I looked around the cell, unsure of whom she spoke to, but the strangest thing was: there was no one else present! I sat next to her beyond the veil, and she sat with her face buried in her arms over her knees. She spoke but spoke to no one, unless that someone was me!

Yes, I thought, she looked at me, then, and it was I who felt the cold grip along my ghostly form!

I wanted to try this. I wanted to keep toying with her, for this was the first mortal that I had seen that was conscious of my existence. This was the first contact with the living that I’ve had beyond the efforts of Gosh, or the painter boy whose eyes saw both the light and darkness of the world, both living and dead simultaneously.

Yes, she could not see me, but she knew I was there. I placed a cold hand on her shoulder, just enough to arouse her senses. She shook it off without looking from her knees. I then tried to tickle her, just in the thighs, and she closed her legs to me. I caressed her chest, over her womanly figure and through her bosom, which was of gracious size, and she tightened her muscles to me. I toyed with her for many minutes as I ascertained the extent of my small influence over her. After-all, I had learned that my presence was not enough to influence the world of the living and I could not harm or subjugate an individual for my pleasure or intent. The cold breeze was all that I had become to them, and while there were some that were more susceptible to that zephyr than others, the extent of my powers only grew gradually and I could move a pebble no more than a few inches before I was drained.

But as I played the ghost to her, this mysterious girl, she reacted beautifully to my every intent. Some spirits projected their voices through worlds, I thought, of this I have seen. I suddenly desired to try, to test my own existence with her, and so I said, “Little lady, little lady, how fares you this day?”

“Go now! Go before he comes back, otherwise he will find you too!” she suddenly roared at me.

My jaw dropped. I was absolutely ecstatic! She had heard me! She had replied to me and knew that I was there, even as her eyes could not see me! What miracle was this that a flower within a derelict dungeon could hear and feel me, just as the living once did when I had life coursing through my veins? I must have jumped from my seat next to her and hopped up and down in joy!

Of course, when I settled down again, I felt the unsettling meaning that accompanied her words, and before I could truly comprehend what she had said to me through my excitement, I heard it then.

In the distance, a knock resounded through the halls and shook the other jailed doors violently against their hinges. I tossed my head to the side in a jerk that seemed as quick as a blink of an eye. Cold fear gripped me then for reason I could not understand. It was suddenly something dark that bounded toward me, I sensed its intent cogently and fiercely. The girl’s head bobbed back into consciousness, I saw it then as she opened her eyes to the world around. Those golden eyes that flashed in the candlelight were as beacons to the darkness that now closed in around us both. She appeared to stare at me, looking at me through the stark vision of a pacified girl, but I knew this only to be unreal for little other than that invisible veil between our worlds. She stared not at me, but through me, into that foul hallway from whence I came. A dark entity came for her, just as it bounded toward me, and I felt its presence deafening the air with each of its mighty steps.

Flee, I thought to myself, flee now!

I knew not what come down this hall now with an energy so unclean, but I knew that my survival hinged on hiding from its terrible gaze, and so I leapt through the cell and impaled myself on the rusty spears that protruded from the neighboring jail cell. I found a small cubby in the darkness where I was confident that I would evade exposure… at least, that is what I had hoped!

I waited for it, just as she waited for it. The monstrous footsteps echoed throughout the derelict chambers until they grew louder, and louder, and my ears filled with the thunderous pounding like drums in an advancing army.

But then the footsteps stopped as quickly as they began. The echoing ceased to shake the jail cells. She breathed, gasped, and sighed. I was poised for the inevitable, for a monstrous beast to edge the corner and stare at us both equally, just before taking our essences into its maw. If this thing devoured her corporeal form, would her soul then, too, be consumed?

It sleeked around the corner, this black and burnt thing. Oh God, it looked terrible! It was horrible. Believe me when I tell you, this was the first ghoul that I had ever seen, and it was absolutely horrid. I had glimpsed upon souls in Meh-ven for years and they all shared one guiding characteristic: souls without corporeal forms gravitated to forms that they most fancied in life. Some produced auras of smoke, and others manifested their beautiful selves with all their energies. Some dwindled and faded in strength as their own hope died away, and others assumed the forms of gargantuan beasts of rabid energy that seemingly reached no boundaries.

These were the souls that I had seen. These were the beasts that roamed the multiverse, or so I had believed.

It came through the halls, skulked even, and its form was shriveled and lame. The two sinewy legs that held the creature aloof dragged its feet against the sandy floor with each step. Its naked body wobbled disastrously as it struggled to move, and its arms swayed with each slight vibration. I could smell the rot emanating from its skin, which had turned a dark brown and black in many places, and its jaw hung unnaturally low. Blows and other abrasions struck me as my eyes revolved around its insufferable form.

The shrivel-skinned creature shrank back into the shadows in but a few strides from me, haunting me even as I struggled to stay silent. Could it see spirits, I wondered. Could it find me if I moved too far into the light, or brushed a wall and disturbed a pebble? What if I projected myself across the room with my ghostly powers out of excitement? Would he notice the burst of wind as I moved through the cell? The creature seemed to play with my senses as surely as any monster would, but never did it turn to me and scowl, nor did it bare its fangs in my direction, revealing the empty cavity where its tongue is supposed to have been. He continued on, past me, and into the cell with the terrified girl.

This was no soul. Nay, I thought, this was something far worse. And then I stared at the girl’s neck to see those two reddened marks that marred her fair skin. The wounds still gaped and oozed with coagulated blood. They were freshly made, but what, I could not fathom. However, I betrayed my own inclinations and would not admit the most fallible reason for their origins…

I saw it then as it loomed over her. It enjoyed the vanity, I noticed, to be feared by her. No, for you see, she never did surrender herself to it! She would double back and guard against it superbly. And that is why it came to her again, and again, I was sure that I knew this then. And visiting her every night throughout the course of her imprisonment has taught the creature the ways of being vain and calloused to any world outside hers…

It learned to desire her above all else, like the fruit on a tree.

And so I watched as it came from the hall into her cell, just beyond her eye’s reach, to sit down in the corner adjacent to her within the engulfing shadow. The jail doors screamed as they slammed shut and the stones of the tower rocked as the iron bars cried out. Perhaps it enjoyed her fear just as much as it relished in her quiet consternation. Nevertheless, it sat down on a bench veiled by shadow, just enough to keep her mind reeling. What monster wouldn’t like the vanity that accompanied such an existence? It wanted her to feel intrigued by its presence, and its hunger for the vanity only called to her and demanded her attention, that it may be so kempt and polished while she sat so lonely and terrified.

“I have come again”, it said in a voice much like an old woman’s. Their flashing eyes found each other’s in the fading light, “just as I promised.”

Her hands came out into the candlelight as she guided her focus onto the strange thing. She held still, just as it knew she would, pleadingly. She was a young girl, maybe eighteen winters at the time. Her youth absorbed everything around her. All light seemingly gravitated toward her countenance, and she drank it up totally and utterly. She eased and the weight that hung over her visibly subsided, and I relaxed into my own place outside of their realm as I found solace in her comfort. This creature must have seemed like a demon to her looming in the shadows with sanguine eyes like those of a cat.

I simply watched this, quite intrigued, but all the more horrified of her… but of course, not as terrified as I was of the thing that lied in wait within the shadows. I was patient. It was in my nature to be patient. I sat there in that cell with her, perplexed, waiting for her hands to cease moving about and weigh in at her sides like an anchored ship. She then looked at me with those burning eyes and smiled gently to me, as if she saw me, but alas I knew she did not. That smile that she gave only burnt a hole through my incorporeal body, like the blaze of a fire, and my preeternal heart was sent racing, and I could suddenly feel it turn black as her stare froze it in time. Ironic, I thought, that I walked among man just as she did, but I had no heartbeat. I had no warmth to my corpse nor feeling in my limbs. I was a cold husk of a boy. Perhaps that is why I hated her? Perhaps that is why my rage boiled inside of me when she stirred there in that cell, fearing the grave ghoul just as I did! She still had the youthful vigor of a woman in her prime, and despite this, she chose to spend it in the cold embrace of a dungeon, at the mercy of this abominable creature.

Eyes were upon it, two sets of them, but its eyes scoured the room and seemed to smirk to itself within that shapeless husk.

“You’ve been a good girl, haven’t you, little plum?” It said in a raspy voice. It sounded like leaves rustling in the wind, scratching against the hard surface of stone. It seemed only suitable to me that such a voice came from such a creature.

The girl shook her head at it. “How much longer?”

“Great… great and noble old man of time! Ah, yes, but time is not a question. No, time is irrelevant here, my little plum. I’ve been through time, and it has only wrinkled my body and stole my life, yet I still walk! It shall take as long as the days are short. When rivers run dry, you may leave. When you are convinced that there is no god, that is when you may leave!”

Her face contorted slightly, a grin ridging her cheeks.

“No, I mean, how much longer until your God chariots you away with your fate, oh dead one?” she mocked him, her voice slightly wavering with the onset of vicious laughter.

“God has forsaken me, just as he forsook you to me, my little plum.”

The ghoul suddenly began to advance upon her, eyes full of flame and a perturbed aura of death. It came down over her and she slid back against the wall, possibly out of fear, possibly out of courage. I could not tell which, but I felt it come in on her just like it were coming in on me, and so I also took a step toward them both. It was a small step, and the slight whimper of my padded foot against that ground sent a plop echoing through the dungeon. It stopped the fiend from advancing on the girl, a minor excitement on my part, but instead of advancing, it reeled toward my direction and upheaved the very core of my nerves with a debilitating scream. It struck me as if I were struck by a gong! Never in all my life, or even in all my time as Gosh’s servant in death had I ever heard such a shriek!

It rushed toward me, quicker for me to see, and I heard its footsteps as they were just moments before, thundering down the hallway. A pressure had me at the neck, squeezing my neck tightly so that I couldn’t speak. A dead thing choking a ghost! I could not believe it was true, and I finally knew death again, and it was even more frightening than the first! I did not want to die again, not here, not when I was so close to the gates of heaven! The image of Gosh came to my mind and I pleaded to him for help even as my voice ceased to carry in the wind.

“I smell a new soul, rich with life even in its death! Oh, have you come for the girl? Have you come to steal my sweet plum from me?! Do you wish to be alive again?” it roared at me, squeezing harder and lifting my small body into the air. Its hourglass eyes, yellowed and glassy like a sickly cub, stared into mine and I could make out the many scars and lines that may have once made this husk beautiful in life. I tried to will myself away from the putrid thing. I tried to focus my ghostly powers on its hand and pass my physical weight through its corporeal body, just as I did with walls, but I could not focus. I was too corporeal to gain release from the pain! Oh God, I was going to die, surely!

And then a rush of air hit me, landing me flat on the ground, and there wasn’t so much as a thud for I fell as light as a feather. I looked around from over my shoulder to see this girl standing upright over the ghoul. In her right hand she held a fallen brick, and in her other she held a torch. The corpse-like demon lied prone on the floor, a thick stream of blood seeping from the sinew of its broken skull.

I saw her in the budding light that seeped from the jail window. Two marks, those of fangs, glittered in the sunlight. She touched them faintly with her fingertips.

“… And forever shall you hunt for me, for I shall haunt… the world… as a thousand images of the self… so that nothing may extinguish my flame.” Its voice still called out from its broken jaw, and I heard its last breath carry in the stagnant air of the cell.

I left her there, in that cell. I fled as fast as I could. I chose to know nothing else.