Insomnia

Thanks, people!


Warnings: some violence


Stage Three

Gregory Jade was not a patient man without his cup of morning coffee.

The coffee machine remained broken, and so he had opted for buying coffee from one of the cafè’s further down the block. It had tasted awful, nothing like what he was used to, and in the end he wound up throwing it into a dust bin without even drinking half of it. It was high time that he bought another coffee machine and got his morning routine back. He was not a man that needed much to get by, hence the sparse furniture in his apartment, but coffee was vital- coffee and cigarettes.

He blew a ring of smoke into the air and watched it dissolve with disinterest. His nerves were frayed after last night- he had tossed and turned in his bed all night without getting a wink of precious sleep. Smoking helped calm him down.

Old worries and incidents had caught up with him last night, and he had not been able to push them out of his mind.

Gregory touched his chest with a glove-clad hand above the heart, as if he’d be able to draw the cold out through the ribcage. It stung uncomfortably and made him hands and feet feel like ice. He imagined the layer of thin, blue ice that covered the surface of his heart and the inside of his lungs and made it hard to breathe without discomfort. Of course, there was no ice in any literal sense- Gregory knew what it actually was.

His fingers bent the cigarette and threw it to the ground, and they twitched still when he squeezed it with his other hand. He held the trembling hand and waited to regain his control over it, but nothing happened.

“Fuck,” he cussed in a whisper and held it up in front of his face.

Pain tingled in his fingertips.

‘Go back to sleep. Please.’

He grit his teeth and tried to fight of the pain that was moving through his fingers to his wrist.

‘Please.’

Something shifted inside of him, and Gregory hissed softly with relief when his hand again became his own. What had triggered it to wake up now? The last time his hand went out of whack was last year, after a particularly hard exorcism that nearly put him in a coma. He pulled off the glove and stared at the pale scars that criss-crossed at the back of his hand.

“Are you trying to tell me something?” he asked, though he expected no answer to his question. It had gone back to sleep. Gregory frowned and put his hand in his pocket- out of sight, out of mind. But his mind was already spiralling into the past, remembering the incident that gave him those scars.

He’d been twelve and foolish enough to try performing an exorcism on a female spirit that haunted his grandmother’s house. The result had been catastrophic. His grandmother had walked in to find him on the floor, clutching his wounded hand while screaming his throat raw. She had seen him buck and toss, but the spirit had been invisible to her eyes while it was torn it two parts. One part had vanished into thin air, maybe gone off to the after life. The other had been drawn to Gregory and melted into his body through his chest. It covered his insides, stretched out thin across tendons, veins and organs, and Gregory never stopped feeling the cold aura that the spirit radiated.

From time to time the spirit woke up and tried claiming control over his body, but it was too weak to gain control over more than a single limb and often chose the scarred hand because a connection had already been made through that limb when he performed the unsuccessful exorcism years ago.

Well, it was about time to get started.

Gregory checked again that his car was locked (who knew what the people in this area could do to it otherwise?) and went into the same building he’d visited yesterday, the location of his ghost. He hoped he’d be luckier today and actually meet the ghost. If not he’d have to track him down, and that could prove difficult without Max’s assistence. He’d like to avoid contacting his co-worker if possible for the simple reason that they didn’t get along very well.

No ghosts waited for him outside the apartment today, though Gregory got goose flesh when he walked down the corridor because of the high amount of spiritual energy that filled the building. A lot of people had died around here, and it was sad to think that no one could see them. Strangely enough, he could feel nothing when he stood outside the door, and he wondered whether the other ghosts were all too afraid of this place.

The inside of the apartment was dark, just as he’d left it the night before.

Gregory inhaled sharply when the cold air enveloped him and his frozen insides responded by trembling. He stopped, flicked on the light and stared at the living room with narrow eyes. It seemed his wish had been granted- he was not alone today.

He brought his hands out of the pockets, removed the other glove and prepared himself to perform a restraint spell, should it be necessary. The words were ready on his tongue, English and Latin mixed into each other.

A sharp movement from his right side had him turning his head, only to find that a lamp had crashed to the floor. It broke into pieces, but the pieces remained untouched. After what he read in the report he’d almost expected the ghost to propel them at him to chase him away.

“My name is Gregory Jade,” he spoke in a clear, firm voice,”and I’m here to talk to you. Please show yourself. I’d hate to resort to violence.”

The answer came in the form of a bottle of soy oil that suddenly appeared right before his eyes. Gregory was too used to things like these to be startled, and he followed it with his eyes, trying to determine whether it was the ghost himself that was holding it, or if it was strong enough to lift things without actually touching them. Slowly the bottle floated away from him and was turned upside down, the lid flipped open. The dark liquid poured to the floor, creating words in shaky, childish letters.

‘You look girly’

Gregory raised an eyebrow. Was that sarcasm, or was it meant to be an insult? He might have long hair, but he did by no means look girly.

“Show yourself,” he repeated, and his hands clenched with anticipation.

The bottle dropped to the floor, and the silence that followed was deafening. Then, as if the ghost also thought so, the stereo suddenly began blasting music at full volume. Gregory jumped in surprise, turned and stared at the machine. The green light on the stereo was flickering unsteadily, something that told him for real that he was dealing with a strong ghost. He didn’t move an inch when it switched to playing the radio, rapidly changing from channel to channel until it settled on a radio play that he could not recognize. But the music was low and threatening, violins and keyboard creating a spooky atmosphere that was supposed to put the listener in the right mood. Gregory was not amused, not particularly frightened.

This ghost had the mind of a child, if he could judge by the childish attempts to scare him.

“This is your last warning. I will harm you if you do not co-operate with me,” he said, and though the radio was louder than him he had no doubts that the other could hear him just fine. “There is no need to play pranks on me- I’ve seen it all before. It is childish and immature.”

The channel changed again, or so he thought, and the voices began to sound raspy. Words were drowned in the static noise, but when he listened closely enough he could single out the voices. The channel had remained the same, so the ghost must be close to the stereo to affect it that much. The sound of breathing replaced the noise; deep, raspy breathing that sounded like it belonged to an old man.

“…a….hief….you st….”

What was that?

“You…thief!”

The ghost was accusing him of being a thief, he thought ironically. He imagined that it had done a lot more damage and thievery in its living life than Gregory had ever done. No, wait – the photograph. Gregory HAD taken the photograph last night, the one with the skinny, pale boy in it.

“Was it yours, that photo?” he asked slowly.

“Y.E.S,” the stereo told him.

Okay, this was going somewhere. The line of communication had been opened up. Now he needed to be careful, and perhaps he could persuade the ghost to show itself. If that happened he’d try to restrain it and hear it out. He just needed to play his cards right, even if he was on shaky ground.

“Do you want it back?”

Silence.

“N.O.”

“I can keep it?”

The static returned, but the stereo had not been turned back on, and Gregory felt as though he was inhaling ice with how cold the air around him had turned. He waited patiently, but on edge, and his scarred hand twitched and trembled, a reaction to the temperature. Soon enough he would be exhaling mist, and his teeth were threatening to clatter any second. His normal hand formed a seal with two fingers.

“Can I keep the photo?”

The lights went out.

Gregory cursed as the stereo came back to life, louder than what should be possible, and the volume only seemed to increase. His eardrums felt as though they were being hammered in by the intrusive techno that played. He rushed over to the stereo and pulled the cable from the wall. It went dead and left him in complete darkness. The silence grew so loud that his own breathing sounded intrusive and harsh.

“Your name is Trent, isn’t it?”

Something crashed to the floor a little to his right and broke, followed by the sound of rattling as something was moved around in the kitchen. He thought he vaguely could see the outline of a kitchen drawer being opened and an object taken out- a long, thin object.

A knife, he realised. Gregory swallowed and put his palms together to form the seal he needed. His eyes were concentrated on the knife that was floating in the air, then suddenly hurled at him with alarming speed. A little hiss of surprise sizzled through his teeth, and only his sharp reflexes saved him from having the knife planted in his shoulder.

“Subsisto!” he shouted, just in time to deflect the knife and send it flying off into another direction. It hit the wall and remained there, the handle protruding and swaying after the impact.

Enough was enough. He had no wish to play any more with this silly ghost.

He held out his hands, clapped them once and turned them palms up.

“Thy substance I bind, lock of souls, to stay,” he spoke. “Thy voice I bind, lock of minds, to speak. Thy heart I demand, lock of mist, to show.”

His eyes closed when the shudder rippled through him and made him clench his teeth. The room grew colder, cold enough that Gregory could see his own breath turn to mist when he exhaled, and his fingers grew stiff. Goose flesh covered his arms and legs. Inside his mouth the teeth began to clatter in response to the lowered temperature, but he held his chin high and repeated the spell, ready to keep at it until it worked. He could feel the invisible wall that separated him from the ghost, the wall that separated the living from the dead; he pushed harder, harder, pushed until the seams came undone in a mess and vanished, thread by thread.

The softest of lights cast long, dark shadows on the walls and floor as the ghost began to take a physical form.

Gregory held the air in his lungs, excited, but also in awe at the beautiful, blue colour of the light that trailed along invisible arms and gave them substance. It shaped a pair of long, thin legs that looked like sticks inside the torn and faded jeans that covered them, then a thin, but lean torso that hardly held any muscle at all. The t-shirt that followed was dark – Gregory supposed it was black, but since the ghost could not take on a human form again its colours would always look duller and less real-, and the skin that he had thought looked translucent in the picture really was ethereal and paler than marble. But no veins showed through now, no blood flowed through the ghost’s body.

The head was the last thing to form. Wispy, white hair spilled over the ears and clung to the neck, and the long fringe covered the right side of the ghost’s face and hid the eye from view. Gregory stared at the angry, thin line that was the mouth, saw how the corners of it twitched with anger that could not be released as long as the spell was at work. His eyes took in the finely shaped, but small nose, and at last, the eye.

The ghost’s visible eye was narrow as it stared at him coldly, and Gregory forgot to draw his breath, pinned by the bluest of eyes that ever had met his own.

“Peractio,” Gregory whispered, and the soft light faded and would have left them in darkness again if not for the ghost’s own, shimmering light that spilled over the floor. As expected, the ghost had no shadow to cast.

“I’ll ask again; your name is Trent, isn’t it?” Gregory wasn’t sure he liked the way his voice trembled with the effort it took to break the silence. The ghost didn’t bother to reply. Instead it did a peculiar thing- it leaned back, crossed its arms over the thin chest and seemed to be sitting quite comfortably in the air, although the angry look vanished and let a bored expression take its place.

“And why should I feel obliged to answer a thief’s question?” it drawled and pursed its lips. The voice was light, the voice of a teenager that hadn’t become a man quite yet.

Gregory stared.

Was the ghost…sulking?

“I’ll take that as a yes. And if your name isn’t Trent, but something else then I’m not going to call you by whichever other name you have,” he said. His limbs relaxed as the cold began to withdraw from the room. He stuck his hand into his pocket and took out the photograph, then proceeded to put it on the nearest table and take a step back.

“You’re an ass. An ass with girly, gay hair,” Trent remarked and raised an eyebrow at him.

“That would be your opinion.”

Gregory had no intention of letting a silly ghost rattle his cage. Especially not over something so mundane as his hair cut. He kept his expression neutral while Trent measured him with his blue eye. There was something disturbing about the way Trent eyed him so lazily, yet sharply.

“I was sent here to exorcise you. You have caused a lot of people grief and terror that was unnecessarry.”

Trent snorted and covered his mouth with a hand to keep himself from laughing out loud; Gregory watched how his shoulders shook and waited for it to pass.

“You’re here to send me off, huh? Is that it? So much for telling me that you wanted to talk!” Trent said accusingly and pointed a finger at him. “I know your kind- I know the tricks you play on mine to get it your way. You talk and talk and try to worm your way into our chests to make us agree to willingly be exorcised.”

Surprisingly, there was no anger colouring the ghost’s voice. If anything at all, Gregory thought he sounded amused. The lights came back on, and he blinked to get used to the brightness of it. When he opened them again he found himself staring straight into Trent’s eye, the ghost’s face inches from his own. The smile that played on his lips sent a little shiver down Gregory’s spine when he remembered what the man’s ghost had told him last night.

“He has a taste for sadism. His name I do not know. But you best not fall asleep in there, otherwise you might wake up dangling from the roof, my friend.”

Gregory quickly raised his arms to fend for himself, but hands grabbed him by the wrists and pinned them in a firm grip, much firmer than what you’d expect from a dead person. He gasped, shocked, when Trent’s hand closed around his throat and squeezed. The fingers dug into his windpipe and cut off the air he sorely needed, and his eyes bulged from their sockets. He took a step back and stumbled in his own feet. The loss of balance sent him crashing to the ground, still with Trent attached to his throat, and he bucked up from the floor and writhed, feeling desperate for air.

Above him Trent was smiling from one ear to another, and the light that shone in his eye did not belong to a normal teenager- it was the look of a madman.

One of Gregory’s hands came free, and he shoved it upwards, despairing when it went through thin air and did nothing to help him. Little noises came from his tight throat, noises of pain and utter desperation.

“Silly, little Greg- did you really believe you could get rid of me just like that?” Trent cooed softly while Gregory flailed with his arm and legs beneath him.

Then, just as suddenly as he’d attacked his hand was gone, and Gregory was once again free and able to breathe. He sucked in greedy gulps of air and grabbed his sore throat, coughing while his lungs began to function again. They burned from the lack of air. He felt lightheaded when he sat up, and his vision swam when he tried to focus on Trent’s shimmering, smug face. He slapped his palms together and began to chant, something that made Trent shake his head and groan.

“Expel!” Gregory shouted. “Thine hands I bind.”

Gregory watched the bonds that began to wrap themselves around Trent’s hands tightly, and he grit his teeth and repeated the words when the ghost struggled and tried to remove the restraint. The blue eye widened for a moment, then quickly narrowed, and Gregory used the chance to get back up on his feet and continue with a spell to exorcise Trent completely. Obviously, the ghost realised this, because he growled and spat Gregory in the face.

“Phasma meum….quiscete, Trent. Sleep. May thy heart rest at last,” he whispered.

Trent sneered at him, then suddenly smirked, and Gregory watched in horror as the bonds he’d placed on him broke and fell off. The spirit sleeping inside of him stirred and filled his lungs with bitter cold.

When Trent looked at him again his smile was triumphant and gleeful, and his tone of voice was sarcastic to the point of annoyance.

“You can’t do it,” he mocked. “I’m not like those other weak ghosts you have dealt with before. I’m the real thing- a proper ghost. And I’m not going anywhere until I’ve caused my share of misery.”

Gregory grit his teeth, ready for another assault. Trent moved closer, but no attack came. Instead the ghost smiled – a warm, sugar sweet smile- and took Gregory’s chin between his fingers.

“I’ll make you cry so hard that you’ll dearly wish you never took this job, silly Greg.”

And there was no doubt in Gregory’s mind that Trent meant every single word of it.

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