Ghost Light

Coming in 2014

I’ve been seeing ghosts for as long as I can remember.  Most ghosts are simply annoying; just clueless dead people who don’t realize that they’ve died.  The weakest of these manifest as flimsy apparitions, without the ability for speech or higher thought.  They’re like a recording of someone’s life projected not onto a screen, but onto the place where they died.  Most people can walk through one of these ghosts without so much as a goosebump.

Poltergeists are more powerful, but just as single-minded.  These pesky spirits are like angry toddlers.  They stomp around, shaking their proverbial chains, moaning and wailing about how something (the accident, their murder, or the murder they committed) was someone else’s fault and how everyone must pay for their misfortune.  Poltergeists are a nuisance; they’re noisy and can throw around objects for short periods of time, but it’s only the strong ones that are dangerous.

Thankfully, there aren’t many ghosts out there strong enough to do more than knock a pen off your desk or cause a cold spot.  From what I’ve discovered while training with the Hunters’ Guild, ghosts get their power from two things—how long they’ve been haunting and strength of purpose.  If someone as obsessed with killing as Jack the Ripper manifests beside you on a London street, I recommend you run.  If someone as old and unhinged as Vlad the Impaler appears beside you in Târgoviște Romania, you better hope you have a Hunter at your side, or a guardian angel.

The dead get a bad rap, and for good reason, but some ghosts can be helpful.  There was a woman with a kind face who used to appear when I was in foster care.  Linda wasn’t just a loop of psychic recording stuck on repeat; this ghost had free will and independent thought—and thankfully, she wasn’t a sociopath consumed with bloodshed.  Linda manifested in faded jeans and dark turtleneck and smelled like home, which was the other thing that was unusual about her.  Most ghosts are tied to one spot, the place where they lived or died.  But Linda’s familiar face followed me from one foster home to another.  And it was a good thing that she did.  Linda the ghost saved my life more than once.

Foster care was an excellent training ground for self defense, which is probably why the Hunters’ Guild uses it as a place for recruitment.  Being cast adrift in the child welfare system gave me plenty of opportunities to hone my survival instincts.  By the time the Hunters came along, I was a force to be reckoned with, or so I thought.

The Hunters’ Guild provides exceptional training and I soon learned that attempts at both offense and defense were child’s play when compared to our senior members.  I didn’t berate myself over that fact; I was only thirteen when the Hunters swooped in and welcomed me into their fold.  But learning my limitations did make me painfully aware of one thing.  If it hadn’t been for Linda the ghost, I probably wouldn’t have survived my childhood.

The worst case of honing of my survival skills had been at my last foster home, just before the Hunters’ Guild intervened.  I don’t remember the house mother.  She wasn’t around much.  She was just a small figure in a cheap, polyester fast food uniform with a stooped posture and downcast eyes.  But I remember her husband Frank.

Frank was a bully who wore white, ketchup and mustard stained, wife-beater t-shirts.  He had perpetual French fry breath and a nasty grin.  It took me a few weeks to realize that Frank’s grin was more of leer.  I’d caught his gaze in the bathroom mirror when I was changing and his eyes said it all; Frank was a perv.  Linda slammed the door in his face, but that didn’t stop Frank.  Frank would brush up against me in the kitchen and Linda would set the faucet spraying across the tiles…and slide a knife into my hand.  My time in that house ended when Frank ended up in the hospital.

I’d been creeping back to the bedroom I shared with three other kids, when I saw Frank waiting for me in the shadows.  I pulled the steak knife I kept hidden in the pocket of my robe, but I never got a chance to use it.  Now that I know a thing or two about fighting with a blade, I’m aware that Frank probably would have won that fight.  I tried to run toward the stairs, but Frank met me at the top landing.  Frank reached for me while his bulk effectively blocked my escape.  That was when Linda the ghost pushed him down the stairs.  I remember him tumbling in slow motion, his eyes going wide and the leering grin sliding from his face.

Linda the ghost had once again saved me, but it seemed that this visit was her last.  I don’t know if she used up her quota of psychic power, or if she just felt like her job here was finally done.  It wasn’t until years later that I realized she was my mother.