Rain pours down on him, it feels heavy. Heavy like chunks of iron, bludgeoning and bruising his flesh. Of course, water doesn’t work that way, unless it comes as a crashing wave taller than a house.
But it feels that way, and in the numbness of this moment, that is all that Jacob can do.
Feel.
Feel the water drops on him, the lack of wind that makes them feel heavier, the silence all around mixed with the noise in his mind. Jacob feels his heart beating inside, slow and with no rush. This angers him, for how dare it still beat behind muscle, sinew, bone and skin when it should have been ripped out. It should be somewhere else, separated from his flesh, not just his soul.
This anger fades, the frustration stays but only as a flicker, or the embers of a bonfire that died long ago. He does not have the energy to be angry, and he is unwilling to summon more of it.
Why should he now? He does so all the time, at every step he takes to either recover his life or make it anew. So why shouldn’t he be allowed to rest, wallow in self pity every once in a while?
He doesn’t sigh, he doesn’t even have the energy for that. Instead he walks, boots heavy with the weight of soaked leather. He does not shiver, he cannot.
Jacob’s unnatural biology was a challenge to understand when he first awoke . He is a ghost, an apparition, the spirit of a dead man come back to a mockery of life, violently inserting himself into the rotting cadaver of a different man, stitching flesh and soul together until it moves once again.
This wasn’t a thought-out process, a scheme that he followed in order to regain his life. It was willing, yes, but not planned. He moved, he chose and created a living body by instinct. And there was a lot he did not understand yet.
His heart, rather the heart he possessed but wasn’t born into, would pump blood through his body, allowing him to eat, breathe. He still had the emotional capacity to feel anger, sadness and joy. But the body could not shiver, he could not run nor jump, could not sing or speak sentences that were longer than ten words.
It did not make any sense, he built himself a new host with some qualities of life, but lacking in others. How could he walk but not run? It wasn’t pain, nor fatigue. He was tired now, but as a result of his deep seethed sorrow, not because his body wouldn’t respond. And sometimes it didn’t, like he was a program that had a bug in its code. His muscles twitched whe he tried to do anything but walk, his throat strained anytime he spoke, even his eyelids would itch if he blinked too fast. He felt like a programmer that didn’t understand his own code.
Perhaps thinking of it logically was the error. After all the biology of it went out the window the moment he, a ghost, possessed a corpse. But it was still baffling.
Why wasn’t he shivering as he walked under the heavy rain of mid-winter in this swamp of a city? Was it a problem of design or a lack of willpower? Was it a manifestation of a sorrow that went beyond the events of last night?
The events of last night, when the love of his life, Melanie, had more or less broken up with him and left with little explanation. To anyone else, it might have sounded fair enough. He’d been cagey about his life lately, hadn’t spoken much about his feelings and worse, had spent too many nights out with very little explanation.
He didn’t care however, it hurt and that was it. He had died and been lucky enough to, in less than a day, find a way back into his life. And he had told absolutely no one, after all how could he? Who would believe him?
After the hit and run, which, thinking about it, Jacob had yet to find the culprit, only those that, like him, had found new flesh to inhabit believed him. But those were difficult to find and, crucially, were most of the reason why he spent so many nights out. Finding ghosts to commune with, after some days of adjusting to this new horrifying unlife, looking for answers as to what this meant, why were they still here if their time had come. It was frightening and isolating, as a friend of the dead, there was no way he could stay tethered to the living. And so, she left, and he mourned.
Jacob is walking under the rain, pitiful , completely soaked and wondering what in hell would he do now? With a wandering soul that felt awkwardly placed in a walking body, re-shaped to look as he had before the crash (something apparently all other ghosts could do), but incapable of rushing or dragging in any way. He could walk through life and not much else.
And as he did so, he felt a call, a literal one. The deep, rough voice of a man who was as angry as Jacob had been a moment ago. Except this one seemed more willing to keep his ire aflame .
“Can I do something for you?”
“Yes. You can die again, monster.” It was spoken through gritted teeth and was accompanied by a swift motion.
The motion of the man’s arms pulling out a shotgun from under a raincoat.
Jacob’s eyes went wide. He wanted to duck, run or leap away. But, he couldn’t.
The constant melody of pouring rain was suddenly interrupted by a loud gunshot, the wet sound of blood and viscera splashing away, and the sudden thud of Jacob’s possessed body slamming onto the ground.
Then the hunter reloaded and walked closer.
“You monsters make me sick. I don’t care what the others say, we are here to hunt you down and deliver the only reward you deserve.” While Jacob was still processing the words, (what did he mean by “the others”?) the hunter pointed the shotgun at Jacob’s borrowed face. “Final death.”
As he looked up the barrel of the gun, Jacob smiled like he hadn’t in weeks. Here he was, an undead creature that had gotten a second lease on life, had blown it to pieces without even intending to, and about to be taken again by the deep darkness of the Abyss beyond the veil.
What a joke, it made him laugh. It made him angry.
“Any last words, monster?” The hunter asked, high and mighty at the other end of the gun.
“Boo.” Replied the ghost.
The spirit, the apparition that was guided by Jacob’s wrath had abandoned the rotting corpse it was in and slid through the weapon, moving up to the hunter’s face. The soldier of deliverance stumbled back, shocked, clearly not expecting that. Under normal circumstances he would not hesitate, but whatever Jacob was now needed less than a blink to apply his will on the man, as if all the energy, the motion that had abandoned him since coming back, had accumulated into a lightning bolt that moved quickly and with unstoppable certainty.
It went through the eyes and deep into the flesh. It felt veins, muscle, organs, a skeleton, a nervous system and a fast, beating, healthy heart. It felt itself echo through the flesh of a well-trained man, used to the split second decisions of battle and long years of grueling training. It found its place within, pouring and spreading itself around and over the soldier’s soul. Said soul fought back, determined, valiant and angry.
But Jacob was quicker.
“Lazarus…” It said, riffling through the memories of the soul fighting against it.
Lazarus Belowski, quarterback, marine, single most of his life, pride and joy of a father that never loved him, only his accomplishments. A man that had seen his fair share of horrors, both mundane and monstrous. Had fought against blood suckers, moon-beasts, and things from the other side of the veil. Had chosen to start hunting ghosts as well. Wraiths, he called them. And Jacob had been his first.
“Lazarus…” It repeated, feeling the man’s soul fighting back.
He had found Jacob, studied him, waited for him to be alone and forgotten. He hated Jacob, found him pathetic even in life.
“Let go of me! You’ll never take me, monster!” He was a brave, stubborn man.
He had done bad stuff, he had done good stuff. He may not deserve this. But Jacob did not care.
“Lazarus…” It finally said. “Lay down and rest.”
And so he did. The voice went away, nowhere Jacob could discern, leaving him alone once again.
In front of him was a rotting corpse, still wearing his old clothes, with no life in it anymore. He brought up his new hands. They were full of callouses, thick muscles and most importantly, vitality . He had never tried to inhabit a living body, and somehow figured re-shaping it would be much harder than before. But that was alright by him, after all he had no previous life to return to.
With a new opportunity to live, he wondered what he’d do. Perhaps he would finally find the bastard that had killed him, and pay them a visit.
Jacob smiled, and he would be smiling for a long while, for the rain did not feel so heavy anymore.
- After some vampire writing, playing and GMing I also got inspired to write an atypical ghost story, somewhat inspired on the TTRPG Wraith: The Oblivion but I've yet to read it so it's not a 1-to-1. Still a lot of fun to work on, although ironically I wrote this a while ago, I just got to editing it lol. Thanks as always Bibi for the help in beta reading and editing! :D
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