“You’re being morbid,” objected Clare’s father. “All this talk of dying. It’s not natural at your age. You should focus on living your life to the fullest.”
Clare answered carefully, staring at him across the dining table of their family home. “I’m not morbid. I’m practical. I’ll be dead a lot longer than I’ll be alive. That’s why it makes sense for me to focus on that phase of my existence.”
Her father frowned. “That phase? What phase—! When you’re dead you’re dead. There ain’t nothing to focus on.”
She shook her sixteen-year-old head. “What if there was?”
Her father tore his attention away from his pork chop long enough to snort. “You planning on sticking around as a ghost?”
She knew he’d intended his words as a joke. But he had guessed her meaning. “That does seem the way to go.” What other choice was there? The body was doomed to decay.
“Oh, Clare. There ain’t no such thing as ghosts.”
She stared at her own plate of pork and potatoes. “I agree. That’s why I’ll need to figure out how to become the first real one.”
In the silence that followed, she picked up her knife and hacked at the slab of meat.
The nurse recoiled at Clare’s approach. Clare ignored the woman’s reaction. She was used to it. Twenty-three years a ghost roaming the world was long enough to develop a skin thick enough to handle people’s prejudices.
It went without saying that her skin was—regardless of its thickness—ectoplasmic in nature.
“Is he still in room three?”
The nurse nodded, not knowing how to behave. Clare was not merely an apparition, she was famous to boot. How could she not be? The ‘ghost girl’ herself.
She went in, forgetting to open the door first—it was getting harder to remember the trivial details of the living.
Her elderly father lay still in the hospital bed, entombed in tubes and medical equipment. He was at death’s door. Unlike Clare, he’d ventured into such territory through necessity not choice.
Ancient eyes blinked open. “There you are.” His voice was a croak.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She could see in her father’s eyes that he’d picked up on her unspoken thought. Him, on the other hand…
“Tell me it’s not too late to learn how to become a ghost.”
He kept asking. Kept hoping her answer would change.
“It’s the kind of thing you need to start practicing early in life, so you’re ready when the moment comes.” She hadn’t figured out the secret until he’d turned forty-five and she’d reached twenty-two. Too late for him. Perfect for her.
“So, all I gotta do is last a few decades more, and practice how to pass over every day ’til I get it right.” He coughed, the sound rattling in his dry throat. “Easy.”
“Sure, easy.” She stroked his clammy brow, taking care not to let her fingers pass through his skin. Interacting with the world was a never-diminishing challenge.
“I’m worried for you,” whispered her father. “You’ll last forever, but everyone you know will pass into nothingness. You’re the only one who’s mastered this ghost business. You’ll be so alone, and I won’t be here to help you.”
“It’s fine, Dad.” She concentrated on keeping her fingers solid. “It’ll all be fine.”
In the corridor, the nurse’s eyes kept sliding to the door of her father’s room. The room where his corpse lay, the cancer the inevitable victor. “He won’t turn into a ghost?”
“No,” said Clare. “Life after death’s something you have to work at. Not everyone is cut out for it.”
The nurse’s attention snapped back to her. “There’s no Heaven?”
“The afterlife I invented is the only one I know of.”
She made for the exit. Impatient, she relaxed her grip on gravity and slipped through the floor. To her, the world was an embarrassment of three-dimensional shortcuts.
She’d be alone, that’s what her father had said.
He didn’t get it. She had eons. Tracts of eternity in which to tutor others, to guide them in her secret ways.
Maybe only a few each decade would replicate her success. But they would dwell in perpetuity alongside her, and their ranks would slowly grow until they became legion, with her as their founder: their unliving, unaltering Eve.
No, she would not be alone. She needed only the quiet patience of the dead.
Let the living distract themselves with endless physical sensations, each one of their lifespans gone in the blink of an eye. They couldn’t see it yet. The future was already decided.
The world belonged to the dead, and the dead weren’t going anywhere.
It was the most natural thing in the world.