I miss the eerie, chilly, breezy after touch effect of glancing through some ethereal appendage of one of our bodiless friends. They are the keepers of our history. They speak an endless stream of whispers as they string up the past to dry on the sun drenched clothesline of time. It is from there that they analyze and modify the outcomes of our future. I miss their daily warnings, warm tidings and courteous manner. Something happened to them to make them leave.
I only experienced a bit of the bright, shining wave that struck my small town, wiped all power and electronics, but kept everything in a smooth, rolling, bright-as-sunshine glow for five days straight. I was locked in my study, serving my role as Transcriber of the Ancients. The old souls would come and speak to me, entering my home whistling some dancing melody, or tapping lightly on many surfaces at once. Oh, how I enjoy their company.
The ghost that visited most often had named himself Barnaberus. Not his name while is physical life, all ghosts choose new identities that will not keep them tied to the personality they graduated from the physical with. Their work binds them for great lengths of time with humanity, but they still evolve. They still can grow. Barnaberus was a huge prankster. He used to silently enter my study and light a week’s worth of work aflame. As I’d dash for water and put out the flame, Barnaberus would appear, wheeling in the work I’d done to replace the ethereal counterpart that he’d swapped and created the illusion of a blaze. That, and he chewed gum loudly and smacked his lips quite loudly if I ever began to doze during one of his twelve hour, constant stream of thought lectures on this or that kingdom, or some brilliant personage long since past.
I hadn’t seen Barnaberus for…counting…6, 8 days since the start of that bright whirlwind of light. I couldn’t do my work without him. I needed him to give me an accurate and full account of the historic deeds of the town called Mollweather, which was full of uniformly strong willed people, for the next series of my writings.
After a crumbling round of overcooked eggs and toast, my attention locked on finding Barnaberus, I decided to walk the streets, hoping to gather some clue, some vague intuition that would lead me to our ethereal brethren. Each person I passed seemed a little dazed, their gaze just shy of focused. If I stopped a man or woman to enquire as to whether they had any helpful information, it would take a moment for their eyes to shift in my direction. Always they looked like they would have rather stared straight ahead and continued on whatever path they were, seemingly, aimlessly treading. Growing a bit desperate, after at least fifty or so similar encounters, I shook a man who was walking with his arms stuffed full of fresh bread. I don’t know why I shook him, I just had to get a different response than I had gotten up until then. I grabbed his shoulders and shook. For an instant, his body seemed to prefer no resistance. It went along quite easily with my pull until suddenly he stiffened up and bellowed, “Stop, you madman!” and as I released him, he took ten paces further on his way. On the eleventh step he stopped, spun in place, looked me right in the eye and said, “I don’t know why, I don’t know why they’ve all gone. I just know it’s all for the worst. Some years ago they left for three days. That was lonely enough. I wish I could know why.”
I apologized to the man and offered him a cup of tea for his troubles if he didn’t mind the company. Thankfully, he accepted. The man was right about the loneliness without our ghosts. It was painful, like a bit of the wind of each breath was constantly being siphoned. In my kitchen, Enan, as I came to learn the man called himself, sat easily, if a bit crookedly on the chair in the corner next to the icebox. “What were you doing when you first noticed they were gone,” Enan asked.
“Just writing,” I responded.
“About what?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve been doing heavy research with Barnaberus for the last few weeks on the old town Mollweather.”
“Hmm. What were they like?”
“Heroic. All of them. Not a single weak-kneed slouch in the bunch. From all I’ve learned, I guess the town ran peacefully for at least six generations, since the first family moved there and staked a bit of its land as theirs for a town. Great people, the Mollweathers.”
“Mmhm.”
All thought seemed to cease for the moment. Or perhaps it simply slowed to a pace just below consciousness. We sipped our tea with a hazy synchronicity. Silence rang through the moments. As I was about to set my tea cup on its saucer, a knock, that would have startled even the most hearty Mollweather native, bounced soundly through my home. I had already leapt up involuntarily. I stood half erect and simply waited for a few moments. Enan looked at me, set down his cup, his shirt wearing the renegade liquid response to his surprise, and then nodded towards the door.
As I crept towards the door, still a bit unnerved, a loud whisper rushed through the slight crack between the portal and its frame. “Sibelius! Sibelius! Run! Run, you’ve got to run! Let me in, quickly!” I eased the door open to find my neighbor, Frank Muzzlehorn, frantic and weary in ways I’ve never seen his usually calm personage.
“They’re coming for you! All of them, and you’ve got to leave sooner than now! What have you been working on for the last few weeks?” All Frank’s words were bound and thrown out as one.
“Just some easy research on Mollweather.” I said.
“Good. I don’t know what they’re after, but take what you have of that and hide it. Then come with me.”
I raced to my study and began opening the panels in the wall that held my most precious documents and began to quickly, but with poise and control, as if the documents themselves might become upset by rough handling, and began to add the Mollweather documents to the space.“A race from death is never enjoyable, nor complete without companions. Enan, I dare to request you might jig along beside us?”
Enan nodded and introduced himself to Frank while I stuffed the last of the documents into the panel. As I reached for the removed panels to replace them, an enormous liquor bottle, lit aflame with a rag in the top, sailed through the large window pane in front of my desk and splashed liquid nightmare on most every surface. I watched in slow motion as the liquor flame bounced squarely on the middle of my Mollweather documents, consuming from the middle to both ends. A voice invaded my consciousness, interrupting my startled frame of mind. “Stop. You cannot move and cannot escape. You are ours.”
“Like hell,” I screamed aloud. I thrust my hand deep into the flames, securing a burning grasp on one hundred or so equally burning pages and withdrew them from the heap, threw them on the floor and stomped the flames out with my feet. I grabbed my bundle, matched papers with the bundle, and grabbed a cold bottle of liquid from my top drawer, and an old, wooden pistol from the bottom.
“I don’t care who they are, but we are never caught.” And we tore out the side door, our hearts unsure of what progress these events might unfold into, and bounced straight into the jaws of death itself.
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