Arc II, Chapter 72: Manor’s Blaze Eve

Two bodies.

I had died twice in less than a few minutes. First, I got electrocuted. I couldn’t blame anyone but myself for that one. Moonlight Morrow said we needed people to man the ghostly defense and I answered the call.

Second, I got placed in another body and propped up in a theater. That body died of… something. Magic? Evil? Convenience? And suddenly, I was a ghost.

I had to sit and think through everything I had just experienced even to comprehend it. My body—my real body—was still smoking when a bunch of NPCs started to haul it away.

That whole ordeal made me feel so small and powerless. Knowing that these people—if they could be called people—were so powerful that they could casually create a new body for me to use while on Deathwatch. Even after having died and come back, having been injured and healed, seeing the cold, casual way in which our captors wielded enormous power shook me to my core.

But I didn’t have time to shake for long.

Isaac was still standing in the rapidly draining jail cell, watching his body sink further and further down toward the ground.

I walked to the jail cell window and crouched down.

“You coming with me?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, but he did walk over to the window. Now, for the test, could ghosts touch each other?

My movie-watching experience said yes.

I reached in toward him with my hand. He reached out and grabbed it. It felt… not normal, but not that strange. Instead of feeling his hand properly, I felt a tingling sensation along with it. I pulled, and he rose up through the cell bars as if they were made of smoke.

Soon, he was standing next to me on the ground.

He looked around.

“It’s weird out here,” he said solemnly.

I followed his gaze.

All around us, we saw nothing but whiteness. White fog banks covered everything. It was bright, too, almost uncomfortably bright.

“Come on,” I said. “We still have a job to do.”

The fog banks blocked us from going anywhere we wanted. In fact, they only showed us one path. Out of curiosity, I tried to defy Carousels’ prodding and walked into one of the white, bright clouds that prevented me from crossing the street.

I couldn’t pass through it.

This was how Carousel must have controlled Departed during their dead walks.

“So I guess we really died,” Isaac said.

Kind of a belated revelation, but I couldn’t blame him for having a hard time with it. If I wasn’t trying to look tough like I thought I ought to, I might have been just as dazed.

I had something to focus on. I had a goal.

There was a reason that this scene had existed, after all. Isaac’s death had a purpose in the narrative. Well, our deaths.

This death was supposed to reveal information about our enemy. Not the Die Cast, but Roderick Gray.

It just so happened that I knew where Roderick was. When I saw all of the off-screen cameras back in the theater, I saw him sitting on a wooden bench a few blocks from the jail.

When I saw the direction the path in the fog banks led us, I knew where Carousel was leading us. It had an idea for the story.

On-Screen.

I was caught off-guard. I hadn’t thought about how we were supposed to act once dead. Surely, Carousel didn’t want us to do the whole “in denial of death” thing. That was tiresome. I went a different route.

Serene acknowledgment.

We were going to play it as if we understood what had happened to us. We would know we were dead and we were at peace with it. That should cut out a lot of the melodrama.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s Roderick.”

Isaac followed my gaze. He didn’t say anything. He just took a deep breath.

“What are the odds that he just happened to be a few blocks away when that thing attacked you?” I asked.

Thankfully, Isaac understood his role in the conversation.

“He was there when I got arrested,” Isaac said. “He was acting strange. At the time, I thought he was just nervous, but now, I think it was more than that.”

I laughed. “Being dead is strange. It’s like when you think of a good comeback in the shower, except it’s with everything. Suddenly, my whole life is in perspective.”

He nodded as we walked along toward Roderick.

“I’m starting to think I was the one who was wrong a whole lot more than I knew before. I think I was kind of a jerk,” he said.

I wondered if he was just saying that or if he actually had figured out why his character was killed.

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The whole putting life into perspective thing wasn’t just something I was doing because I thought it would work well for the story. It was real.

Even as we walked along our vibrant path toward the future mayor, things started jumping out at me. Realizations I never made in life danced around in front of me: memories, fears, and long-lost dreams.

I almost choked up. I had to force myself not to think back to my years growing up or my way of relating to people. I had a job to do.

“What is that; is that the flask?” I asked, pointing at the object Roderick had sitting next to him on the bench.

“No,” Isaac said. “He said he got rid of it.”

We got closer and saw the look of regret on Roderick’s face. He looked ashamed. Maybe even sad.

“There’s smoke coming out of the flask,” I said.

“That can’t be,” Isaac said, walking closer and observing the flask. “That would mean…”

I sat down on the bench next to Roderick as I pretended to have a wave of disbelief move over me.

The bench held my weight, just as the ground did. Ghost movies were funny like that. The seat of your pants and the soles of your shoes were not intangible, it would seem.

“That means he did this,” I said. “It wasn’t just the spirit going out of control. He sent it after you.”

Isaac screamed in Roderick’s face, but the man did not see or hear anything. We were ghosts. He wasn’t.

“I’m going to haunt him until he dies, and then I’m going to kick his ass,” Isaac said.

“No,” I said. “He’s not done yet. He’s still got Antoine and the Geists. God forbid, he may be going after everyone who knows of his involvement. That’s the psychic and her sister. Maybe even… Oh god, maybe even Kimbe—”

“Riley,” Isaac said. “I think I know where his next target is.”

I looked at him, confused.

He was staring at a newspaper that was on the bench on the other side of Roderick. The article was circled with the title, “Geists Throw Party in Honor of Dead Carlyle.”

“The guest list is set to include prominent members of the community, including the entire Geist family. Some invitees include famed director Riley Lawrence—”

“Aw shucks,” I said.