Wade

Chapter Three

Besides the graveyard, downtown has the highest ghost population. Ghosts blend with the crowd well enough, and those seemingly unaware of their lack of livingness don't seem to notice that the pedestrians still breathing walk right through them.

Downtown is the perfect place to people-watch.

It's actually the best place to study the odd behavior of the living. Its funny how much can change in six years. As I sit on an old park bench and watch the commotion that is life I wonder how they can stand it-how I ever stood the monotony of existence. There are so many beautiful things I never noticed when I was alive.

RULE TWO: Notice the little things.

I wish I would have taken Alexis' advice when she was alive. I wish I had noticed the way sunlight shines through the leaves on trees in the summer. I wish I had noticed the moonlight glinting off of a dusty windowpane. I should have taken the time to savor the smell and taste of apple pie while I could still smell and taste.

I miss the way apple cider made my mouth feel, I miss the messiness of eating a donut.

I miss being able to touch people. Now they walk right through me as I make my way down the sidewalk. If I try really hard I can become semi-solid and jostle an unknowing passerby. But that takes too much effort and I'm much too tired. I haven't slept in six years, after all.

Ghost time doesn't move like living time. The complete agony that is ghost time has no comparison in the world of the living, breathing humans. I'm not human anymore, though. I'm a single shade of gray, like the sky before a summer storm. My eyes are as cold and angry as a winter day. I don't remember how to smile.

"Wade!" I snap my head around, searching for a familiar face but see none. Finally, my eyes rest on a little boy, no older than four, being dragged along the street by an exhausted looking woman. The kid was screaming like a banshee and the woman looked like she was about to break.

"Wade I swear! Stop screaming right this instant!" she's screaming but the kid does nothing to relent. I stand watching, trying to remember if I had ever pulled something like that. Maybe that's why my mom hasn't visited my grave. With slumping shoulders I shove my hands back into my pockets and continue on down the street.

Ghosts have a special connection with their graves, probably something about our bodies being there. Whatever the reason I feel a painful tug where my heart used to be and somehow I just know someone is standing in front of my headstone.

As if possessed I turn and start sprinting toward the graveyard. In the six years since I'd been dead I never once had a need to run. Why run somewhere when you have all the time in the world to get there? But now I'm driven by the tug in my chest like I'm a hooked fish being reeled in. It's inhuman how fast I run, the buildings and people flash by and I have to remind myself that I'm not, in fact, human anymore. When I reach the graveyard the tug vanishes and I'm left standing ten feet away from my body's resting place.

Standing in front of my grave is what appeares to be a walking shadow. It seems to have the figure of a young girl wearing a pink dress dotted with delicate flowers. Blonde hair falls in soft ringlets around her face.

Not until she turns around do I realize that she is not alive.

Where a chubby little face should be, there is torn open flesh revealing a yellowing skull and lacerated muscles. Her dress is ripped and bloody and from where I stand the blood on the flowers gives them the eerie appearance of being on fire.

The little girl raises a finger at me, one that is just bone and shredded tissue. She openes her mouth and the visible muscles stretch.

"Wade. You have spent time enough on Earth; you shall not escape hell any longer." Her voice is not that of a child, unless that child was secretly a man who smoked a pack a day and bathed in the tears of small children.

"What?" Is the only word my mouth can choke out.

"You have been warned. They will come for you now." I blink and the girl is gone.