Advice to New Ghosts

It begins like this: 

You can see your body, but you're not in it. 

It's different for everyone, of course. Maybe you die in a car crash, and you wake to see yourself hanging upside-down in the warped and crumpled vehicle, blood dripping, face unrecognisable.  

Maybe you die in your sleep; you think you're having some sort of out-of-body experience, or a strange dream, because there you are—right there, curled up so peacefully beneath the covers. 

Or maybe you're like me and it was a long time coming, so you die in a cold hospital room amidst tubes and machines—your pallid, lifeless body lying beneath the thin white blanket, standard hospital issue—while your family stands around, quiet and sombre, their hands resting on that waffle-textured cloth, tears slipping down their puffy-eyed faces. 

How do you react to seeing your own self, cadavarised? 

Maybe you freeze. 

Maybe you yell. 

My advice? Stay calm. You're not the first to go through it, and you won't be the last. 

I was a screamer. 

Not that anybody could hear me. That was the most frightening part of those first few moments—not the sight of my own dead body, but seeing my mother look right through me.  

As the initial shock ebbed and panic began to set in, I stopped screaming. I walked over closer to the bed. There were about ten people in there—my parents, brother and sister, grandad, aunts and uncles.  

"Mum."  

She didn't flinch. 

"Mum!" 

Her head was lowered, shoulders heaving, occasional noises escaping her; awful noises.  

"I'm here! Look at me!" 

I screamed the words, desperate, leaning in close to her hidden face. 

She froze for a second—could she hear me? Sense me? 

And then let out an unearthly wail that ricocheted from the cold white walls. My father placed a steadying hand on her feeble frame. 

It was no use. 

I stepped back then, and looked at the wasted figure on the bed. She looked nothing like me. Her cheeks were hollow, skin translucent, hair barely clinging to her flaking scalp.  

She repulsed me.  

If I still had the use of my faculties, I suspect the bile would have risen in my throat and my stomach would have clenched. Instead, a heavy sense of disgust settled over me, clung to me like a cold, wet coat, or a spider's web. 

When you know you're on your way out, it clicks a little sooner, I think. 

I was dying... 

There's my body... 

I'm not in it... 

You put two and two together.  

And then what do you do? You've never been a ghost before. You don't know many dead people. Maybe your grandma, but where would you find her, anyway? 

So you do what you've always done. 

You go home with your family.  

My advice? Don't. Those first few days are ugly.  

But you won't listen to me; you'll go home. It's familiar.  

You'll want them to notice you, to know that you're there, so you'll try to get their attention; you'll focus on the light switch, willing it to flick on or flick off; you'll flourish your immaterial hands at that expensive vase on the table, trying to knock it over, or to move it at least, even an inch; you'll try to grasp the doorknob, to turn it and push open the door. Nothing will happen; the lights won't flicker, the vase won't shift, and the doorknob will slip right through your hand. 

That kind of interference takes years of practice. 

Then dawn will approach and some deep and ancient instinct will tell you to run.  

My advice? Listen.  

You must listen. 

See, there's this tension you've been feeling, like an invisible tether pulling you back. It tightens, tautens, the further you wander from your body. And when you sense them coming—because you will sense them, before you see them—you'll let go and let yourself snap back like a rubber band to that fleshy rotting carcass you used to live in, six feet underground. Or, in the early days, in the freezer on the hospital's lowest floor. That's what you'll do if you're smart. 

I wasn't smart. 

The atmosphere shifted and an icy ripple flickered through me. I knew I should go—but how could I—there was my mum, like I'd never seen her before. She sat silent at the table, staring out the window, her eyes glazed over. Her face sagged, all the life gone. Her jaw was slack, mouth drooping at the edges, and gravity had control of her cheekbones. It was like someone was pulling down on her cheeks, un-plumping them, gently removing the wrinkles she'd accumulated with all those smiles she used to give me. I couldn't leave her. 

And there was the fact of my body; that horrible, empty shell of me. I didn't want to see it.  

How naive I was.  

As the light began to crack through the windows, I caught my first glimpse of them. Dozens of them, rapidly approaching. 

It's hard to describe. 

If you picture a vaguely humanoid creature with vast, feathered wings, long fangs dripping something molten, all of it made of fire—burning too bright for the living human eye to behold—you'll have something in your mind's eye that only vaguely resemble the devil-demons descending upon my childhood home as I stood, immobilised with fear.  

They poured through the windows, the doors, the walls. Their hellish screams filled the air. Their taloned hands reached out as they drew rapidly nearer. I screamed—and closed my eyes, bracing for the searing heat of those claws, certain I would be torn to shreds. 

Something hit me, forcefully, propelling me forward. I opened my eyes in time to see the contents of the pantry before the door slammed shut and submerged us in total darkness. Someone was in there with me—I could feel them. 

"Amber, listen to me." Her voice was urgent. She grabbed my hands. 

She grabbed my hands. 

"We don't have much time." 

I knew that voice. 

"Grandma?" 

"Amber, listen. Can you feel your tether?" 

"My what?" 

Something strange was happening to my sight. It was as though the blackness of the dark—not the darkness itself, but the colour of it—was receding, revealing my surroundings to me. There were my fingers, outstretched before me; there were the pantry shelves, now. 

"Can you feel something tight, connecting you to your body—drawing you back?" 

"Yes, but—" 

"Give in to it." 

"But I don't want—" 

"Amber, listen to me. You need to go back to your body. You'll be safe there." 

I could see her now. It was really her. Not a white, washed-out version, hovering an inch off the ground—actually her, just as I remembered. Her hair was curled and close to her head, that faded, grey-streaked auburn colour. Her cheeks were rouged pink.  

"Safe from what? What are those things? Where did they come from?" 

"There's no time. Those creatures are straight out of hell, and they will drag you back there with them if you don't listen to me. They can't exist in the dark; it extinguishes them. That's why we're safe right now in here. But I don't know how long we have until they figure out a way in." 

I could see a flickering light creeping under the pantry door. 

"I don't want to leave! What about mum!" 

"They can't touch the living; your mum is safe. You can come back tonight. But Amber—you're a ghost now. Why do you think ghost stories always happen at night? We hide during the day. Now go!" 

"Grandma, I'm scared. I don't want to be alone. Can't I go with you?" 

"We don't have time for this! Go back to your body. You don't want to come with me. You don't need to see that." 

I should have listened. My advice to you—listen to seasoned ghosts. They know things. 

"Grandma! Take me with you. Please!" 

The door burst open. The fiery demons reared over us, flames licking the doorway, and lunged. 

Grandma took my hands and we bounced—there's no other way to describe it. It's like that game at the fair where you're strapped to a bunjie cord and you have to run as far as you can before the cord bounces you back; we were being bounced back. But it wasn't my tether—I could feel mine still taut.  

It happened in the blink of an eye—one moment we were in the pantry at home, and the next, we weren't. I was dizzy for a few seconds, and then everything began to shift into focus. We were inside my grandmother's grave.  

My grandmother had been dead for the better part of five years.  

Do you know what five years does to a corpse? 

All the softest parts are gone. The body is shrunken and leathery.  

My grandmother's eyes were hollow, her face a patchwork of papery skin and dried-out flesh, shining white bone peeking through the occasional gap. Grey hair still clung to her hideous scalp.  

I recoiled. 

If you heed just one piece of my advice, new ghost, let it be this: snap back to your own body when the devil-demons come.