This poor soul.
The ghost advanced towards the recently deceased girl, taking in her frazzled appearance. "You'll get used to it." She morphed her tone, ensuring it sounded feminine, and not like a whisper in the wind. In her specter-form, it was sometimes hard to decipher her gender.
"What... what do you mean, I'll get used to it?" The girl's voice was fractured, and her body was obviously shattered.
"I mean," said the ghost, doing her best to sound normal, "that as specters, we have to learn how to communicate all over again. Speaking to the alive folk in their world... is complicated."
"Specters." The girl—as the ghost understood it, her name was Arielle—bit her lip. "I am a ghost, then?" Her eyes sparkled, as if filling with tears.
The ghost hated tears. She hated newcomers who lamented over themselves and all the regrets they had. She hated when they begged to be alive again. And yet, it was her goal to guide them.
Would Arielle be one such being? A whiny, kicking-and-screaming girl who'd refuse the truth? Would she learn the ropes quickly, or would she be annoying?
"Yes, dear, you're a spirit. You know you're dead, right?" The ghost hovered a tad closer, observing the blood stains on Arielle's shirt from all her wounds. She noted the tangles in her maroon hair, the scars on her knuckles, the dirt on her knees, caked onto her jeans. She'd been through a lot, the poor thing, and no one had been around to welcome her, to explain to her what happened after death.
"I... I figured," said Arielle, peeping at the chalk outline on the floor, then returning her gaze to the ghost. "But you... who are you? You're... blurry. I can't tell... what you are."
"Oh, crap." The ghost chuckled. "I'm sorry, I've been here so long I sometimes forget to show myself properly."
Inhaling a deep breath, the ghost concentrated hard on the image she wanted to adopt. After a few moments, she broke her foggy, specter-like shell—her blob, as some would call it. Her hair grew out, tickling down her lower spine, soft and sleek as always. Her mouth formed, round and wide, and her body took shape, slender and pale. Sneakers wrapped around her feet and clothes cloaked her skin.
Her human-like form wasn't as shocking as her spirit one. She usually took on the appearance of a girl in her mid-twenties, with skater shoes and ripped jeans and an obscure nineties band t-shirt. It freaked newcomers out a little less. "There we go."
In the background, she spotted the male human—she'd overheard his name was Benny—suppressing a shiver and squinting at the area where she floated.
"Huh, there's more energy now," he said, raising his arm as his hand prodded about the air, as if working to touch the ghost or Arielle.
Arielle paid him no heed, her head tilting sideways. "Wow... so you are a ghost, not just some blob."
Ah, there's that word! They all use it at first.
"Yeah." The ghost shrugged. "I promise, you get used to it. Death isn't so bad."
Arielle's jaw dropped. "Death isn't so bad? Are you... are you serious right now?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" The ghost giggled, but Arielle's reaction worsened.
She doesn't have much of a sense of humor, does she?
"Sorry, my communication skills are... rusty." The ghost fixed her face to erase her grin. She couldn't scare Arielle off or amplify her anger. That would only enable the humans to find them, see them, hear them. "There aren't many people that wander in here... and less so who die in the confines of this house. I'm usually... alone."
"Wait, there's more than one ghost?" said the FBI agent—her name was Kylie, from what the ghost recalled. She gripped Benny's arm, and he kept trying to pretend like her touch didn't affect him. Classic unrequited and oblivious love situation.
The ghost ignored them and motioned at Arielle to follow her away from their semblance of an investigation. "We shouldn't get in their way," she said, more so to herself than to Arielle. "If we linger in their space for too long, they'll capture too much evidence and they'll never leave.'
Though her brows arched and her gaze was wary, Arielle floated after the ghost and settled near the doorway to the living room. Here, they were out of range from where Benny and Kylie continued to brandish their special device, hoping to catch more voices.
"You... you don't want them to stay? To find proof that we're... here?"
Shaking her head, the ghost crossed her arms. "No, definitely not. Not yet, at least. Certain secrets... should be left alone."
Arielle shifted beside her. "But... then what's the point of us being here? Why are we... ghosts?"
"Oof, those are some deep questions, hun," said the ghost, spinning to face Arielle, who had goosebumps all over her skin. Her fingers fidgeted, her legs jittered. "Calm down, okay? All in due time. You'll understand things when you need to."
"When I need to?" A flutter of color covered Arielle's cheeks. Had she been alive, she'd be flushing with anger. "I need to know now! I'm dead, I was murdered by a fucking ghost—"
"—whoa, whoa, whoa, sweetie." The ghost narrowed her gaze and her nostrils flared. "Murdered? You think you were murdered by one of us?"
Arielle's mouth gaped open, and she pointed at the stairs. "Yes! It pushed me down those," she motioned at the smashed mirror, "and stabbed me with broken mirror shards! Look!" She lifted her shirt to below her breasts, revealing the dozens of slices in her lower belly, leading up to her rib-cage. "There's one over my heart, too, but I won't show you that one," she said, letting her shirt slide back over her stomach.
The ghost caught on to the sudden shyness in Arielle's shrugging shoulders. "Oh please, ghosts don't care about that." She scratched the back of her head, her nails digging into her scalp, then brushing through her thin but silky tresses. How she'd loved her hair when she was alive; a rich midnight shade, with tones of blue that shone in the moonlight. "Ghosts feel little, after a time. But you, my sweet," she winced, "you weren't murdered."
Arielle's flush intensified—the ghost imagined her skin had turned purple. "Are you kidding me? I remember it, more and more the longer I hover here thinking about it! Some fucking ancient-times specter bullied me into coming here, then she shoved me down the stairs, then she threw those things at me! And she smiled when doing it!"
The ghost pouted. "I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but she... whoever she was... didn't murder you."
"But—"
She whipped her finger out and pressed it to Arielle's lips, which shocked Arielle into backing away. Ghosts could touch each other, but not humans; she'd have to explain that to her, eventually. "I'm not denying she might have lured you here and played around a bit. Some spirits are... rude."
"Rude?" Arielle's shoulders tensed and she looked ready to bite the ghost's head off. "She haunted my best friend, then spooked my other best friend and I, and drew me here, and threatened me!"
"Threaten is the key word," said the ghost, stretching her legs. She'd been sitting in the same position for hours, and ghosts weren't immune to sore limbs. "I don't doubt she played games and was bitchy. Some of us are like that. I've never seen this chick you're describing, but... who knows, she might have been hiding."
"So you... you didn't see her? Ever?" Arielle deflated like a popped balloon. "She's... not here?"
"Not that I've noticed. I'm usually the only one hanging around in this house." The ghost sneered as she sniffed in the habitual dusty aroma, the lingering dread and despair looming in the air.
"But the... the shards..." Arielle gawked down at her tummy, her lower lip protruding, her cheeks draining of color. "They tore into me, they... I have the scars..."
"You fell on them, darling." The ghost lifted a finger towards the mirror. "After you tripped down the stairs—no one pushed you—you stumbled onto some shards that had wedged between floor-boards. So yes, they did tear into you, that's for sure. But no one assassinated you. You'd be in a different location if that were the case." She shivered at the thought, but hurried to mask her face so that Arielle wouldn't pick up on her worry.
"Fell. I fell?" Arielle whipped her chin up and closed her eyes, as if seeking to re-imagine the scene. "You... you saw it?"
"The whole thing." The ghost tugged on the hem of her t-shirt, bringing it farther over her hips. She loved long fabrics, but often the shirt she manifested wasn't long enough. "I couldn't interfere, since I couldn't touch you, and all. Otherwise I would have... I'm sorry, sweetie. It's never easy. But as I said, you will get used to it."
Arielle's shoulders drooped as she opened her eyes again. The ghost guessed they'd been a vivid green or a harmonious hazel while she was alive. And she pictured her hair as crimson, or maybe mahogany. It was always hard to tell in the hazy, limbo-like world she resided in.
"So... where are we?" Arielle rubbed her upper arm and glanced around herself, stopping for a moment on Benny and Kylie, who had drifted into another room on the opposite side of the house. "What is this place?"
The ghost straightened up her slouched posture. This was her favorite part—explaining the depressing yet oddly beautiful location most ghosts ventured to. The faded yet soothing and peaceful place where spirits reflected on their lives, reminisced over memories good and bad, thought of any unfinished business they'd need to attend before moving on. The ghost loved it here so much she hadn't pondered the reason for her being there, and ignored her soul's urge to understand why she was stuck, why she hadn't gone straight to her final resting place.
"This is the Void," she said, her voice vibrant with a pinch of excitement, a soupcon of mystery. "An area for ghosts with unfinished affairs, or who died unexpectedly and need additional time to process the meaning of their death. A dwelling for those of us who weren't quite ready to leave the world of the living, but who aren't quite ready to progress to what awaits us after death. A limbo, of sorts." She smirked, proud of her explanation. She'd been rehearsing it for years, but hadn't said it out loud, as no newbies had popped up in recent times.
"I'm... in limbo?" Arielle blinked, and an air of disgust and dismay woke in her expression. She wrinkled her nostrils and turned towards Benny and Kylie. "Is that why everything is so... sepia-toned? Like an old photograph or an Instagram filter?"
The ghost had no clue what an Instagram was, but she did agree they seemed stuck in an old-time picture. The flushed out burgundies and the yellow-ish grays and the off-white walls gave that impression; but it had never bothered her. Color was too bright, too harsh on the eyes, anyway.
"I suppose?" She settled in the doorway of the living room and sighed. "It's actually relaxing, isn't it?"
"No." Arielle grunted. "I like color. This is depressing. And I want to talk to them!" She threw her arm out to gesture at the two humans, but twisted her neck to the ghost. "I don't like this! If I'm dead, then I'm dead, but I'd rather find Stella and Jade, make sure they're all right. I shouldn't have to stay here, I don't have... unfinished affairs," she used quotation marks as she rolled her eyes, "okay?"
The ghost's belly grumbled, loud enough for Arielle to hear. She lowered her arms and stilled.
"Sorry." The ghost flashed a fake smile. "That happens when I'm... tested. Listen, kid." She shimmied in front of Arielle, blocking her view of Benny and Kylie. "You are stuck. There's no moving on until you face what's keeping you here, and that's a fact. Because if you're here... something is tethering you to the Void. And with time, clarity will come to you, and then you'll end up where you're supposed to."
Arielle peeked around her, seeming desperate to keep watch over the living beings as they continued to ask silly questions like, "Arielle, can you hear us?" or "Arielle, can you talk to us again? Why are you frustrated?"
"So... I'm locked in this house, and I'm not allowed to communicate with them?" She blew out her cheeks and stuffed her hands into her pockets. "And it's all gloomy and quiet and... smelly?"
"Smelly?"
The ghost sensed her patience drizzling out. She enjoyed educating, but not when her pupils refused to acknowledge the beauty of their surroundings. The gloominess was an acquired taste, sure. But the silence was such a reprieve from the outside world, bustling with stress and violence and ignorance. And the smell? It took some getting used to, but soon Arielle would enjoy it as the ghost did. Stale but familiar, dusty but not irritating on the nostrils. Better than the obnoxious perfumes and the pollution and the shit. She missed the scents of nature; but one only had to meander in front of the house to catch a whiff of it.
"You're slow. Slower than when I was watching you. But you'll learn, Arielle. You'll learn."