Wade

Chapter One

I've been dead for six years today and not a single person alive still cares.

I guess you could say it was my fault, I mean I never was an impressionable guy. But hey, I was nice! I held doors open for old people! I...didn't really ever do much. For a seventeen year old guy I was incredibly boring.

But still, I can't help feeling cheated as I sit atop my gravestone, waiting for someone to come by and stare at where my body lies while I stare at them. That's why graveyards are so creepy to mortals, it's because of all the ghosts there. I don't know why but we're oddly attracted to our burial sights.

Deciding that no one's coming I hop off my headstone and study the inscription:

In Memory of

Wade Larkin

And what a memory it must be, if you don't even visit your son's grave on the anniversary of his death. Thanks mom and dad, your love is greatly appreciated. Turning to leave, I drag my feet as I walk along the leaf covered ground but the leaves merely rustle gently from my touch. That's another thing about being dead, it's like you're barely there. Just a shade of what you once were. If you try hard enough you can open doors and move some stuff you would have been able to if you were alive, but what's the point when walking through walls is so much cooler-and way easier.

You don't become a ghost right away after you die, it takes a while. When I woke up it was in the middle of the road and after I stood up a truck drove straight through me. It was weird at first, being a ghost. Everything is slightly darker, the shadows are bigger and the light blinding. You always have to keep moving or find something really old to sit on because if you stand on living ground for too long you start to sink in. Some places are worse than others, places that are super new are the worst. Once I made the mistake of taking a stroll through a new mall complex, I had every intention of spying on some dressing rooms or something, but as soon as I stepped foot inside I began to sink.

Needless to say I took up residence in the oldest building in town, the old cathedral. Not only is it the only original building in the entire town of Harkness, but a ghost living inside makes it ironic too.

There are a lot of ghosts in Harkness, they walk the streets just like anyone else but they look different. Some you can just tell by the out of date clothing, but the surest way to tell? Gray. You were wearing a red shirt when you died? Gray. You look better in black? Gray. Race does not exist in Ghostland, we are all gray. The older you get the grayer you are. There's an old man that was a priest in the church when it first opened however many years ago, he's nearly black he's so gray.

Death is the great equalizer. We all end up here.

Well actually, we don't. Because I haven't seen a single person I knew in life here in Ghostland. There are a few people I recognize, but I avoid them because in life they were the scary criminals or the pedos.

Something else I've noticed: nobody talks to anyone around here, it's like they don't know the rest of us exist. Father Smith, the really old church man, still wanders about the church. He doesn't seem to realize that sermons are no longer held in its walls. He walks unknowingly through the velvet cords that block off the pews from the entrence so visitors don't damage the ancient wood. His church is a museum but he still gets up in front and gives his speaches about how we're all going to hell.

I avoid Father Smith too.