Good Spirits by B.K. Borison - 3

S he watches me in silent, frozen astonishment from her place on the couch, her brown eyes blown wide, her blanket clutched tight to her chest. After a passionate initial response, it seems she’s decided to pretend she’s invisible.

That’s perfectly fine. I’m a patient man.

I’m still recovering from the shock of the television remote nearly clipping my ear. While violent reactions to my appearance are not out of the ordinary, I can’t say I was expecting it from this tiny woman in ridiculous pajamas.

I turn halfway and reach into the tree behind me, extracting the slim device while she processes. I set it neatly on her coffee table.

She makes a garbled, sputtering sound.

Lovely.

“You don’t—” She swallows, sucks in a sharp breath, then exhales again. “You don’t look like a ghost,” she finally says.

“Well …” The word falls out of my mouth and hovers there, uncertain. I’m not used to people doubting my existence as I stand in front of them.

“Well?” she repeats, staring at me in bewilderment. There’s a mug in the shape of a Christmas tree at her elbow and enough candy canes hanging from various light fixtures to probably be a fire hazard. Clutter occupies every inch of available space. This house is a disaster, but … festive, I suppose. A festive disaster.

I try to summon all my ghostly bravado. “I am one.”

“A ghost?”

“Yes.” I nod. “I am a ghost. Or a spirit. Whichever you prefer.” She gives me one slow blink in response. Her hair is a mess of wild, blond curls, tied back in a haphazard ponytail on the very top of her head. Two strands break free, brushing along her high cheekbones. She digs her fist into her eye, seemingly trying to clear her vision, then drops it again, blinking blearily at me.

“Of course. That makes sense.” A slightly hysterical laugh bubbles out of her, her eyes rolling to the ceiling. “You’re a ghost,” she says under her breath. “He’s a ghost.”

I nod. “Yes. I am a ghost.”

The smile drops from her face in increments. “You’re a ghost,” she repeats, sarcasm fading into disbelief.

“A Ghost of Christmas Past, yes.”

“Sent to haunt me?” She digs a finger into the middle of her chest. “Me?”

I hum in the affirmative.

“I’m being haunted? Right now?” She squints, her nose wrinkling. “This is—I’m having trouble believing it.”

“That’s a fairly common reaction.”

“You’re haunting me ? Me. I’m a good person. I pay my taxes. I feed my neighbor’s cat.” She squints. “Are you sure you’re not just breaking and entering?”

I shake my head, gesturing at the room. “I didn’t break or enter. I appear where I am summoned. It’s an unintended consequence of the general haunting.”

She shifts beneath the blanket, mouth twisted in thought. This happens, too. The slow bleed from shock to confusion to denial. The way people try to make sense of my sudden, unexpected appearance. I know I don’t look like a ghost. I look like an ordinary man. Brown boots. A pair of dark jeans. A warm flannel. I’ve never bought into the flash-and-bang routine the way some of my colleagues do. There’s no point in a costume, really, when my appearance out of thin air usually does the trick. I’m not about to start wearing a long white cloak for the drama of it all.

Though perhaps I should. It might speed things along.

A note for next time.

Her eyes slowly crawl back to mine and something about her expression scratches the back of my mind. I tip my head to the side and study her. She feels … familiar. Like the edge of a memory I can’t quite grasp. Or an … impression, almost. A song I’ve heard before.

“Have we met?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says, voice faint. She shifts on the couch and the light hits her from a different angle. The feeling drifts away. “You tell me. Are you a stalker in addition to a vandal?”

I roll my eyes to the ceiling. “I did not break into your home, Harriet. I used my magic.”

“Magic,” she repeats, skeptical. “You do realize that the method of breaking and entering doesn’t invalidate the actual breaking and entering, right?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Can we please move on from the breaking and entering bit?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I would. Desperately. I’ve barely started this assignment, and I’m irritated. Typically, this feeling settles in around the second or third memory. Spending my holiday season haunting the very worst of humanity hasn’t exactly softened my edges in the afterlife.

Some of my magic escapes my careful control, the lights in the room flaring and then dimming. Her eyes grow wide.

“Do that again,” she breathes.

“No.”

“Why not?”

Because it wasn’t intended, but she doesn’t need to know that. “Because you’re not in charge.”

That seems to ignite a fuse of rebellion within her. She sits up straighter on the couch, the blanket she has wrapped around her shoulders slipping a bit.

“I want proof,” she demands.

“Of what?”

“Of your … ghostliness. Do you have some sort of documentation?” A slender hand emerges from beneath the blanket, holding a candy cane. The end of it is sharpened to a point. “A … badge, perhaps?”

“A ghost badge?”

“I don’t know how these things work.”

“We don’t carry badges. Or any sort of documentation.” Her eyes narrow. “That seems convenient.”

I shrug. “Something for me to bring up at our next staff meeting, then.”

“Staff meeting? There are more of you?”

I nod. There are hundreds of us. Surely, she doesn’t think there’s just one Ghost of Christmas Past, haunting the world’s worst offenders. It would be an impossible task.

“Okay, fine. That’s fine. This is fine,” she whispers to herself. Her eyes flutter up and then away. Back and away again. The third time, her attention sticks.

“Do something ghostly,” she demands.

Good lord. This woman. “No.”

“Prove that you’re a ghost,” she insists. “Do something only a ghost would do. The light thing again.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s not a party trick .”

She grows smug. “That’s something a not-ghost would say.”

“I just appeared in your living room. I believe that should be sufficient.”

“You emerged from behind the tree,” she clarifies. “It’s possible you came in through the front door.”

I turn my head and stare pointedly at the deadlock on her door.

The chain is still notched. “I didn’t.”

“The window, then.”

“The window is also locked.”

Her eyebrows inch up her forehead, her mind searching for an explanation.

“Maybe I’m having a very elaborate dream,” she says, her voice going faint. She pinches the inside of her wrist.

I smirk. “You’re not.”

She huffs out an irritated breath. “You’re a little young to be a ghost.”

“Says who?” I shrug. “I died young.”

“And your voice. What’s going on with that?” I arch an eyebrow. “My accent?”

She nods.

“I died Irish.”

Her brows pinch together. “You’re not Irish anymore?”

“No, I’m still Irish.”

“Why aren’t you haunting a nice gal in Ireland, then?”

“I don’t know. This is the location I’ve been assigned.” I scratch at my jaw. “Probably because you Americans need more haunting than most.”

She gasps, affronted. “Rude.”

I shrug. “’S true. You lot are a narcissistic bunch.”

She goes quiet, thinking it over. The only sound is the hum of her television at my back and the crunch of her candy cane when she bites off the end of it. She’s wearing flannel pajamas with little reindeer all over them, her feet in thick red socks. The outfit is oddly endearing, if not wholly absurd.

“I’m being haunted by a ghost,” Harriet states. “I’ve done something terrible, apparently, and now I’m being haunted. By a ghost.”

“That’s the general gist of it, yes.”

“And you’re sure it’s me you’re supposed to be haunting ?”

I snap my fingers and a piece of paper appears in my palm. I unroll it and squint at the messy handwriting. Isabella, my supervisor at the Department of Hauntings and Spirits, prefers old-school methods. Our assignments are always hand-written and hand-delivered.

“You’re Harriet York, yes? Twenty-seven years old? Owner of the Crow’s Nest?”

She blinks at me, staring hard at where the paper materialized. “You have a piece of paper with my name on it?” she whispers. “I was given one, yes.”

“You’re really not doing much to dispel the stalker theory, buddy.”

I sigh. “This isn’t stalking. This is haunting.”

“Sure.”

“This is how things are done.”

Every Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future receives a missive from Isabella on the final day of November and—off we go. We have the month of December to change the ways of our recalcitrant subjects or they’re doomed to a life of misery and sadness. I am to pass off Harriet to her next ghost before Christmas Eve or she’ll forever be doomed.

Or something. I’ve never cared enough to investigate the details of what happens when my work is done. “Should we start from the beginning?” I ask. “Will that help you come to terms with what’s happening here?”

She tucks her legs beneath her on the couch. Another curl makes a mad dash for freedom. “We might as well try.”

“I am a Ghost of Christmas Past. I’ve been sent to help you mend your ways. We’re going to look through your past, so you can learn from your mistakes.”

“Okay,” she says slowly, drawing out the word until it sounds more like a question than a statement.

“Yes? Good? Ready to go?”

“Not quite.” She wedges her candy cane firmly in her cheek. “I have some questions.”

My shoulders slump. “Of course you do.”

“These mistakes—” Her voice softens. A flash of regret in her brown eyes. She blinks and it’s gone. “What are they?”

“All will be revealed when we visit your past.”

“That’s it?”

“More or less.”

She doesn’t look convinced. “And you’re sure I’ve made these mistakes? To have earned this haunting?”

I almost reach for the paper still crumpled in the back pocket of my jeans and thrust it under her nose. The paper has your name on it , I want to yell at her. Why are you questioning the magic of a Holiday Spirit? I drag one hand through my hair in frustration and anchor my palm at the back of my neck. “The magic decides. You’ve been deemed salvageable, if only you mend your ways. You must make amends.”

These mortals are always the same. They fight it at the start—say they’re good , they don’t deserve it—but they can’t outrun the truth. The memories don’t lie.

And I can’t move on until I fulfill my ghostly duties. I have no interest in lingering any longer than I need to in this infernal place. I’ve spent a hundred years lingering . I’m tired of standing still.

I hold out my hand, impatient. “Let us begin.”

“I mean, we could. I guess,” she says. “Or we could wait.” I barely resist a groan. “ Why do we need to wait?”

“Because I’m not convinced this isn’t a medical event and I don’t feel up to a haunting tonight, thank you very much. You can proceed back to whatever corner of my mind you emerged from, and I can go to sleep and chalk up this entire evening to a weird batch of peppermint tea.” She frowns and presses two fingers to her temple. “Or a concussion.”

“While I’m delighted to hear that I align with whatever dreams you might be having, that’s not how this works. I can’t just disappear. I am bound to you for the holiday season until you recognize the errors of your past and I can hand you off to a Ghost of Christmas Present.”

She laughs, borderline maniacal. “Oh good. More rules.”

I nod. “Yes. There’s a transition process.”

She mouths the words transition process . “This is all very organized.”

“Yes,” I concede. “It’s not how I expected it to be either.”

I didn’t have a choice when I died, but if I did, I wouldn’t have chosen this. This utterly mundane existence, watching other people go about their lives while I stay exactly where I am. Haunting terrible humans. Watching their dismal, sad memories.

After more than a hundred years haunting the worst humanity has to offer, I can hardly remember my human life. It comes and goes in flashes of color and sound. Robin’s-egg blue. Sea-glass green. Pale, pale pink. Waves lapping at the side of a ship and a church bell, somewhere in the distance. A lighthouse on the shore.

Flashes, instead of moments. I’ve lost everything I used to be. Now I’m this instead. A shell of a man forced to endure the worst of others.

I hold out my hand again, frustrated. “Time to begin.”

She doesn’t move. “No thanks.”

I drop my hand. “Harriet.”

She picks up her mug. “Ghost man.”

“You can’t avoid your fate.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Oh, that’s a very good line.”

I shift on my feet, uncomfortable. I heard another Ghost of Christmas Past say it once. It always seemed very powerful.

Apparently not.

“How can I get you to take my hand?”

Her eyes trail along my shoulder and down the length of my arm, considering. Being a ghost means I’m rarely seen—almost never studied. It’s an unusual feeling. Her slow perusal sends awareness tingling down the length of my spine.

My fingers twitch.

She snaps her gaze back to mine. “I’d like to talk to your supervisor, Ghost of Christmas Past.”

“Oh, please. Don’t be that person.”

She laughs. A bright burst that slams out of her body. She laughs like she’s made to do exactly that, and it’s enough to have me teetering on the edge of indecision.

“Then you talk to your supervisor,” she says, still grinning. “That’s how you can convince me to examine my past, or whatever it is you claim you do.” She tugs her discarded blanket back into place, wrapping herself like some sort of burrowing creature. Her cheeks are pink and her lips are candy-apple red. She matches the lights on her tree, all colorful and bright. A little frazzled at the edges. “If you show up again tomorrow, maybe I’ll believe this wasn’t some weird fever dream.”

“That’s all you need? For me to return?”

She nods, looking past me to where the movie is still playing on her TV. I remember the year White Christmas came out. I sat in the very back of the movie theater with all the mortals, a box of Hot Tamales in my lap and my heart in my throat. I watched Danny Kaye spin Vera-Ellen around and around in a pale pink dress and felt an ache in the palms of my hands. Homesick, or something like it. A tug beneath my breastbone for something I couldn’t reach. Something I couldn’t even name .

That wisp of familiarity grips me again.

The creak of a boat beneath my feet. Sea salt air and my hands on burnished metal.

Pale, pale pink.

“Tomorrow,” I repeat slowly, trying to grasp the feeling but failing, dallying in the middle of her living room. This has never happened before. I’ve never had someone refuse to take my hand and … ask to speak to a manager. Short of tackling her to the couch and forcing her to agree, I can’t make her relive her past. She needs to choose it.

Another one of our little rules.

“Yes. Tomorrow.” She uncovers a popcorn bowl from out of nowhere. Her own sort of magic. “If you use the window when you leave, please remember to shut it all the way. It gets drafty.”

I blow out a breath, amused despite myself. “I won’t be using the window, Harriet. I’m a ghost.”

“So you say.”

I take a hesitant step back toward the tree. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell her firmly. Perhaps by then, I’ll gather my own resolve.

She shoots me a distracted thumbs-up. I roll my eyes and tug at my magic. It sweeps up and over me before she can offer any more excuses.

Or lob anything else in my direction.