Ghost of a Chance: Redemption

Chapter Four

Jenny Myers opened her eyes and smiled.  She did not awake; she had not been sleeping.  Since her death in the quarry four months earlier, she had had no need of sleep, of food, of any other sort of need of the physical body.  No hunger.  No thirst.  She remembered that Timothy Peach, whom she had met as a ghost, had said that spirits did tired, finally, at the end, and faded.  So far, she had not experienced that.  It was amazing, but she had never felt so alive as she had since her death.

She rose on one elbow, watching still with amazement as her form lagged a tick of time behind her movement.  She had risen; her mind knew it, and her senses told her the same, but her body followed more slowly.  Her shadowy outline paused as the white mist of her shoulder melded together; and for an instant she resembled a child’s chalk sketch on a blackboard; the outlines firm, but the shading going outside the lines.  

Jenny turned her eyes upward, toward the canopy of trees filling the sky above her head like leafy arches, wondering what day it was, and quickly wondering why she cared.  Time had no meaning any longer; she and Timothy Peach were together, together until the end of time.  She pushed worries from her mind, and studied the form beside her.

Timothy Peach lay on his side with his eyes closed, one arm beneath his head, facing her.  In the first days after Jenny’s death, they had talked for long periods of time, each of them anxious to find out all they could about the other.  Lately, though, Timothy had become more quiet, and seemed to close his eyes more.  Jenny studied his eyelids, and his eyelashes.  Timothy had died almost ninety years before, in an explosive train accident.  

To be forgotten was to fade, he had told her.  And now she worried about him.  His fiancee was dead.  No one alive remembered him when he lived, and only her friends, Darrin Kingfisher, Troy Hammersmith, and Teddi Reese knew him directly.  And Dominic Parker.

Jenny frowned, wondering where Dominic had disappeared to, into what dark corner he had crept.  On the night she died, Dominic had tried to force her to leave the country with him, and had been shot for his efforts.  He wasn’t dead; she knew that.  She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. 

A gentle breeze touched her cheek, and she leaned toward, imagining and remembering the feeling of wind on her skin.  She found that if she concentrated, she could still experience some of the sensations she had in the flesh, but her efforts lacked passion.  There had come a gradual loss of interest in the things of the physical world; she had Timothy and he had her, and that was enough for her.  She dropped her gaze, and saw him looking at her.

“Good morning, Jenny Myers.”

Jenny smiled.  “Good morning, Timothy Peach.”

“Have you rested well?”  Timothy sat up.

“Rested?  I suppose; although I don’t really feel tired.  Is that the way things are?  Is sleep just such a habit that I look for it, even though I don’t need it?”

“Something like that.”  He smiled at her.