Diary of a Dead Man 1 of 2

The following is a compilation of 3 chapters from my newest story. Forgive the title, I'm totally up for suggestions if you've got any. I will be posting the second half next Monday. As always comments and criticisms are appreciated.

Thanks,

-Mac

Diary of a Dead Man

By, Ashton Macaulay

 

 

     “Tonight ladies and gentlemen, I propose to you something of a fantastic nature. For years we have wondered what happens after death and I have at last obtained conclusive proof! Death is not the end; there is a world beyond this one where we can live on if we so choose. Ghosts are no longer a thing of mythology and fear, they are a reality, and one that we must learn to accept, study, and live in peace with. Poltergeists and possessions will no longer be topics of fear, but sources of scientific debate. Today I will take you on a journey into the supernatural nature of our reality.

     “As we are all no doubt aware the effects of quantum observers have long been debated. Can the mere act of observing an object or action change the outcome or meaning of said action? More simply: Does standing next to a falling tree affect the sound it makes? Through my research I have come to believe that the spirit world operates on a similar principle. Through our fear and mythos surrounding the dead we enable them to continue existing. They feed off of it like a power source, and reside in a plane parallel to our own.”

     It’s always interesting listening to the sound of a prominent scientific career grinding to a halt. I feel for him, I really do, but that’s just the way it is. For someone who was considered to be a crackpot he was actually pretty close to right. The speech continued for another twenty minutes before he was booed off stage. I’ll spare you the details. To make a long and torturous story short employment quickly became difficult to find. He died several years later, alone with his books.

     Martyrs for science: Seldom found, and gone too soon. It would have made a nice headstone, but let’s face it, no one wants to spend money to immortalize a crackpot.

1. Who Am I?

I don’t really know how to start this, so I guess I’ll begin with who I am. My name is Brian, I’m 21 years dead and I work at a hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I guess work is a strong term, haunt would be more accurate, but it sort of diminishes the effort that goes into the job. The man who gave the speech used to be a well-renowned scientist and professor of physics until one bender too many took him in to the realm of paranormal science. It’s a noble endeavor, but when matters of the spirit are discussed in scientific forums, it becomes more of a witch-hunt and less of an enlightened debate.  

The hotel itself is old, built in the late 1800s to accommodate the sudden population boom. Oddly enough it’s the ghosts from that era that seem to interest people the most, but there’s hardly any of them left. As it turns out ghosts get bored, end up finishing their ‘unfinished business’ and get on with their afterlife. Limbo can be fun for a while, but sooner or later everyone has to leave.

I’m not sure who will end up reading this (if anyone), but my therapist says writing will help me cope with the sadness. Getting sandwiched between a mobile phone stand and the front bumper of a semi-truck is a hard thing to forget I guess. At least we have a psychologist, nice guy really. Blew his brains out in the hotel lobby a few years back. He said that the field was dying because of pop culture and he couldn’t stand to be part of a useless corporate mechanism. It was quite the spectacular display of insanity. Lucky for us he wasn’t ready to move on. He holds sessions in the crawl space between the twelfth and fourteenth floors. Superstition often leaves unused real-estate. I never thought I’d spend the afterlife journaling, but here I am.

What exactly do I do? Well I’m one of about a few hundred ghosts that currently inhabit the Hotel Chambroux. Yes, I did say inhabit, we all still live here, if you’ll pardon the use of the term. If human beings had the power to switch their view between planes they’d be astonished about all the shit that goes on right in front of their noses. Me? Well, being dead takes away that luxury. I see both worlds at all times, which leads to a rather comical cavalcade of the dead and the living passing right through each other.

That bullshit The History Channel talks about, chills and whatnot from ghosts being present? If it were true our climate would better resemble the last ice age. We may not outnumber the living, but there’s a fair amount of us still around, and for the most part we just go about our daily routine. That is, unless we’re working. That’s where the lonely physicist comes in.

  It’s not exactly the quantum observer, but he was close. Essentially if we want to continue existing in between worlds we need power. It’s not like a battery or something that can be recharged, but more of a syphoning of humanities general belief system. Every time an article comes out debunking ghost hunters (total crap by the way, but all publicity is good publicity) we have to lower our population cap. That means a few souls that either have to expedite themselves through the process of coming to terms, or face non-existence (still less complicated than the immigration policies of the living).

Our image and mythos is maintained through hauntings, strange phenomena and routine poltergeists. Possessions often get attributed to us, but that’s not really our area. Most of us aren’t even vaguely satisfied by the power of Christ, much less compelled by it. That work is left to those on the other plane, the more final plane. You know? Demons and such. I don’t much like them, but for the most part they stay out of our business and we keep our heads down, those of us who still have them that is (The French Revolution was a rough time).

Hotels are one of the best places for our work. There’s a new group of patrons almost every day, and the proportion of the living per square inch is ideal. Old hotels are better, and the more sordid the history the better. New Orleans is great for that. We’ve got a high religious population, the highest belief in voodoo in North America, and more ghost stories than we can keep track of. It leaves us with a high rate of susceptibility for occult experiences, and an ever increasing population of ghosts…

A Typical Day at the Office

“Alright everybody settle down!” The man speaking is a tall, skinny Frenchman who suffered cirrhosis of the liver at far too young an age after his wife left him for a German body builder. Around him restless group of dead men, women, and children take their seats in one of the staffrooms we have created. A great many of them are dressed in old-timey clothing (you’re stuck with what you died in), but the modern styles have begun to make an appearance.

The thing about ghosts is, they’re very impatient. Getting us to sit still for more than a few minutes is nothing short of absolute pandemonium, and when we’re working it gets even worse. When you’re not sure how long you’ve got to come to terms with your past things get a little dicey.

“Now look, the holiday season is coming up.” He’s of course mostly referring to Halloween. October is the one month where everyone seems to take a break from what they consider to be hard logic and go out in search of something more fantastic, and we exploit it. More than half of the year’s hauntings occur in October and they usually provide enough ghost stories to keep us going on the bare minimum for the rest of the year. We could try as hard in the other months, but as it turns out, death does not cure apathy.

  “Today is a busy day. I’ve got a group of Atheists on the 3rd floor that look like they might be about to make the jump into skepticism. Molly, Shannon, I need you to do a Bloody Mary and a creepy twin at midnight and 2AM. I want them screaming at the top of their lungs and clutching at their shorts when they leave the building.” Atheists are tough, but screwing with people’s world views, while difficult, can often be very rewarding.

“Edward!” A man in a powder wig and Civil War getup stands properly and salutes. The prick wasn’t even in the army, just really liked to reenact the war on Sundays. He always fought for the south. “You’re going to be the ghost of General Pillam. There’s a group from the history channel trying to summon him on the twelfth floor. They should be holding a séance around 3:15AM.”

  “Yes sir, I’ll be there sir.”

  “Fantastic. Brian, Megan, you two are on poltergeist duty. There’s a writer on floor 12 and a couple that think it’s a good idea to hide away in the ballroom for a quickie. Show them the error of their ways, and make a real mess of it. That ballroom used to be one of my favorite parts of this hotel.”

  “Christ.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing, we’ll be there.” Pipes in Megan. She’s cute for a manic depressive. The scars on her arms don’t even obscure her beauty all that much. If I had a sex drive (yes that does die when we do) I might be interested, but I don’t, and so I’m not. Still, she’s better company than general Prick Pants.

“Yeah, we’ll be there.”

“Good, everyone else you’re on thermostats, disembodied footsteps and mournful wailing. Make it cold, and make it creepy!” Most of the ghosts don’t get to the big show. They perform minor acts that cause discomfort and anxiety. You’d be surprised by how little it takes for someone to believe a room is haunted. I mean, they’re right, but still, there’s not a whole lot for them to go on.

When we were done with the meeting Megan and I moved out of the storage closet and into one of the many long, red, carpeted hallways that adorn this fine establishment. The hotel was busy, bellhops were moving like madmen. It was just beginning to be peak season, meaning a full house and lots to do, which was fine by me. Keeping the body (spectral dust and duct tape?) busy seems to help ease my mind.

“You’ve got to stop mouthing off to him.”

“I hardly think that an exhasperated sigh counts as mouthing off.” I said, with an exasperated sigh as a perky bellhop passed right through me. Megan gave me a look that only the dead can.

“Just because we’re dead doesn’t mean you have to be miserable about it. We’ve got things pretty good here.”

“I’m not miserable. I’m just unsatisfied.”

“Well if you’d rather take the express train down below and shack up with a demon no one is stopping you.”

“What makes you so sure I’m going down?”

“Most of us wouldn’t be here if we weren’t. We’ve got an extension. A time to come to peace with our demons before we have to actually face them.”

“You don’t believe in second chances?”

“No. If we were going to go to heaven we’d be there. Nothing we do here is worthy of clemency.”

“We do a good thing.” She gave me the look again.

“Terrifying nuns and small children as if they are the devil himself is a good thing? I think you’ve got the fairy tales backwards.”

“We give people the time to deal with unfinished business. Without it what else would there be?” We came to a small door with the number 42 on it.

“You’re fooling yourself. What do you want to be this time: Books? Or Faucets and alarm clocks?”

“Books.” I said with a melancholy air.

“Let’s get to work then.”

The Story

What happened in that room was wholly unforgettable, but I’d rather not write it down right now. It’s been a long day and I haven’t the stomach for it. I’ll tell you a story though. It begins in a coffee shop not far from the hotel Chambroux. Two people sat there, a man, young, slender frame, not all that handsome, but not bad, and a woman, dark, also slender, with a shrewd look about her. The coffee table they sat at was recently wiped down, all so that fresh coffee stains could seep their way into the temporarily transparent glass.

“Come on, tell me what you’ve got. You’ve been writing for months and haven’t shown me a single page.”

“I’m nervous.” The man shrugged and took a diplomatic sip from his coffee cup. “This could be it, this could be the one that finally takes me out of this shithole, no offense.” The woman moved her arms in a placating gesture.

“None taken. It’s rough out here, I know. I used to be here, and I’m doing my best to help take you out, but you’ve got to give me something to go on.”

“Alright here goes.” The man cleared his throat. “I look into the mirror with tired eyes, soft, wet, and full of regret. The years have been kind to me and yet I have not been. I have no right to feel this way. The world was handed to me on a silver platter, but still I stand, watching myself decay, slowly, but surely passing into the abyss. How many days more will I stand here? 5,000? Or 5? It haunts me to know that the years that have been my youth are now passed and I stand on the threshold of making a new life. One step out the door is disgrace, or greatness. If only I had the wanderer’s feet to move.”

Both parties sat in silence for a moment, sipping their coffees. She stroked her long, brown hair thoughtfully, staring out the window for a moment at the stream of cars passing by. From the outside it would be hard to tell whether or not she had been impressed, bewildered, or both. “Come on Shannon, give it to me straight. Is it any good?”

“It’s morbid for sure, but I think you’re on to something. I want the first ten pages in my inbox this afternoon. None of that waiting three days shit. I think I’ve got a whole load of middle-aged mothers just unsatisfied enough to read it.” She reached for her wallet.

“No, please, let me.” He said politely.

“Hey, you might be a big shot soon. Then you can buy the coffees.” She left ten dollars on the table and started to leave. “Hey, listen. If any of that’s real, you might want to see someone. I can’t be losing my clients to ‘emotional outbursts’ if you catch my drift.” Writers have been known to overindulge in spirits and cosey up to deceptively dangerous shotguns.

“No problem! Sure! I’ll e-mail it to you right now!” He looked genuinely excited. Someone liked his work, it was the beginning of a new life for him. People were going to notice him, hear his words. He hopped up from the table and bounded into the street where he was promptly obliterated by a semi-truck. The laptop containing the only copy of his work was also obliterated, and scattered over the pavement. The man didn’t end up writing The Great American Novel, he ended up haunting people in a dreary old hotel for kicks.