9. Man Down #3
Camille rolls their eyes. “It matters not, anyway. Almost everything I’ve learned from my training at ExorSquad has turned out to be .
. . c’est des bêtises . . . it is a big fucking load of rubbish.
The difference between a level two and a level three is the difference between a regular ghost and a poltergeist. You and I, and all of us here, are average, everyday ghosties.
Level twos at most. What lives in the east wing and in the abandoned lighthouse, well that’s your poltergeists right there.
Before I died, I thought I—me, a living human being—would be able to feel ghosts .
. . Not possible. Only certain ghosts. Only level threes or fours can physically touch people.
The exact types of ghosts you don’t want touching you.
“Waste of my time, and for what? Now I’m dead too.
I thought okay, maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe I can have a bit of fun being a ghost. Gerald bastard Pickett told me that level twos could manifest in front of people, move things, have a little .
. . whimsy. I cannot do anything of the like.
It is, how you say, a huge fucking dumpster fire. ”
“Cam’s only been dead for . . . less than a year,” Jeanie says, as she consolingly places a hand on Camille’s back.
“You’ll get there, darling.” She turns to me.
“The longer one’s been a ghost, the more powerful a spirit they become.
If you saw a full apparition this far from the ley line, they must have been quite a formidable spectre.
What did they look like? Did you see any features? ”
“No, no features.” Internally, I’m kicking myself for not taking it more seriously when it happened. For dismissing it all as exhaustion or a trick of the light. “But they were tall. Taller than most regular people.”
My eyes fall upon Trystan. Taller than him? I’m not sure. It could’ve been him, but the shapes were all wrong. The shadowy figure was too angular, too boxy—a long squarish head and sharp square shoulders—and Trystan is all soft flowing hair and soft billowy shirt.
Unless I’m projecting because I don’t want it to be him.
“Do you think this shadow spirit is the one who killed me?” I ask, unable to remove my gaze from the handsome surfer.
Jeanie hums. “It’s difficult to tell, really. There are a few older ghosts who lurk in the old abandoned servants’ quarters, but . . . they rarely step out of the east wing.”
“They’re terrifying, though,” Camille says. “Even Trystan won’t go to the east wing.”
“Nah, no way. Fuck that,” he says. “Some of them don’t even have faces.”
Peter’s shaking his head. “They wouldn’t kill a fleshie, though. Especially a fleshie who’s done nothing wrong. You said you saw vapour?”
“Not quite vapour . . . I don’t kn—” I begin, but Peter cuts me off.
“It has to be a fleshie. There’s no way .
. .” He’s still shaking his head. “Look, I’m the oldest ghost in this room, or at least I’ve been dead the longest, and even I wouldn’t be able to bring that chandelier down.
” He walks over to the antique and motions to grab the wire cord flopping over from the centre.
His hand sails right through it. He tries again and again, getting redder in the face and visibly more frustrated each time, but nothing happens.
“If one of them was out of the east wing, yeah, maybe they could’ve killed Gary, but they .
. . just wouldn’t do it. They’re not like that.
They keep themselves to themselves. They almost never bother us unless we’re doing something we shouldn’t be, but even I’m not convinced they could float all the way over here and murder you without being spotted by one of us. ”
It’s a relief, to be honest. It confirms that I was right yesterday. Only a living, breathing person can take another’s life.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to find out a bit more about the older ghosts. Even if just to cross them off my list of suspects.
“How would I go about meeting these east wing entities?” I ask.
Jeanie gasps. Pixie’s mouth falls open. Josh looks up from his phone screen.
“You have a fucking death wish or something?” Stove says. “Isn’t dying once enough for you?”
I’m genuinely confused. I thought ghosts couldn’t kill people. But then, I guess I’m not people any more.
“They wouldn’t bother you if, say, you bumped into them in the corridors, but heaven forbid you should seek them out,” Jeanie says.
“There are only three ways to kill a ghost.” Camille holds three fingers up.
“One . . . exorcism. Very unreliable, very bad repercussions when it goes wrong, very stupid people try this one.” They put a finger down.
“Two . . . the ghostie finishes their unfinished business. If you believe in that horseshit.” Another finger.
“And three—and this is the only reliable method to destroy a spectre—you take them to the east wing, and you let the poltergeists decide what they want to do with the spirit.”
I swear the temperature of the honeymoon suite drops by at least five degrees. Helga, who’s still on the phone to the cleaning contractors, wraps her free arm around her upper body.
“What do they do?” I ask.
Trystan answers. His words should be comical, and on any other day I would have laughed if someone had said this to me, but now, in the face of seven other ghosts, none of whom are smiling, there’s nothing even remotely funny about it. “They’ll eat your soul.”
It takes me a few seconds before I gather myself enough to ask, “What do you call the entities in the east wing and the lighthouse?”
“The Old Scares,” Josh says, and everybody shivers.
“For all intents and purposes, they’re the closest thing we have to ghost police,” Peter adds.
“They keep us all in check,” Stove says.