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Mortimer

M y body was moving through the motions, stalking the piece of shit that dared to suffocate the world with his own, personal brand of evil, but my mind was elsewhere. It was unusual for me to focus on anything but the hunt, yet I had found a different sort of hunt that had sparked my interest.

That, in and of itself, was odd. My interests were solely based on ridding the earth of the scourge that was infecting it, but lately, my attention had been drawn elsewhere. To a woman, no less.

I had no need for women. The pleasures of the body had long ago been purged from my being, at the same time as I’d lost the breath from my lungs. But I hadn’t let that stop me. I might have been dead, but I certainly wasn’t gone. Nor was my wrath.

I stalked my prey from the shadows, my power swirling around me in dark tendrils that kept me camouflaged, blending me into the darkness like I was just another flicker out of the corner of your eye—a trick of the light. No one ever saw me coming. No one could stop me. I was death incarnate, come to make them pay for their sins.

He was completely unaware of my presence as he gobbled down his disgustingly greasy food, smearing it around his mouth and dripping stains onto his off-white wife-beater. An apt name for the article of clothing, considering the man wearing it did, indeed, beat his wife. The woman was so bloodied and bruised that she was utterly incapable of leaving the house, or else her husband would end up behind bars in an instant. She was too afraid to take a stand, firmly wedged beneath his dirt-encrusted thumb, which was where I came in. I wasn’t afraid to do what was necessary.

Sadly, that wasn’t going to happen today. With the wife stuck inside the house, my prey was taking the opportunity to intimidate her further by hovering while ordering her around. He was treating her like a slave, then using some random excuse to beat her for not performing to his satisfaction, yet she would continue to try to please him to no avail. There was no satisfying this man. He was merely looking for a punching bag, one made of meat and flesh, blood and bone. Something that would whimper in pain as he embedded his fists into them. Unfortunately for this woman, she had agreed to play that role for him the moment she’d tied her life to his through marriage.

But now, I was bored. My mind wandered back to the spirit with hair so white, it was almost like a beacon of her purity. And that’s exactly what she was, despite her adorable attempts to seem badder and stronger than she was. In life and her death, it was obvious she had never so much as hurt a fly. Her soul was untainted, but her pain, her fury, and the injustice she wished to right would eventually taint her if she were successful.

I wanted to see her flourish, to embrace the darkness in her quest for revenge. Perhaps then I could have a companion in this never-ending hell. I had learned early on how to become the antagonist in order to survive. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she would figure it out. There was an intelligence in her pretty little head that defied the binds that restrained her, pushed through the cage she was held captive in. Her killer, still at large, had trapped her even in death, and her desire for vengeance tasted oh, so sweet.

I crinkled my nose when the waste of space I was watching belched in his wife’s face, the scent of bile, beer, and grease drifting to me in my perch on the outskirts of the small, dimly lit room. I wasn’t getting anywhere with this idiot today, so I made the uncharacteristic decision to leave and find the newest object of my obsession.

It wasn’t difficult to merge with the shadows and use them to pull me where I wanted to go. I bypassed the regular, slower, mortal methods of travel, enjoying the sensation of the cool bite the shadows provided. They were frigid, almost to the point of pain, but it was a coldness that felt wonderful on my incorporeal form. Mostly because I was feeling something at all. If I wasn’t careful, I would forget what sensation felt like at all.

I found the girl talking with the living boy again, the two of them conversing far too close to my liking. I had already informed her of my claim, yet she dared speak to the same man again? A man who was not even of our realm? He was nothing but a mere mortal, easily manipulated and toyed with. Perhaps that was what she was doing, but the keen glint in her icy eyes twisted something ugly inside of me, an emotion I had never experienced and so could not name.

It irked me enough that I didn’t immediately make my presence known. I stayed far enough away, hiding within the trees as I used the shadows to spy on them. Their voices drifted to me with a single-minded clarity, all other sounds fading to the background, and then to nothing.

‘Because… I’m dying,’ the man announced, and my ears pricked up at that information. I sent a tendril of shadow to confirm, and yes, right there. His brain was riddled with cancer. He was going to join us sooner rather than later. I didn’t like that. He would get in the way. His soul was just as bright and pure as hers, and if he found her in death, he had the potential to bring her back from the brink of darkness. He could derail everything.

I could not allow that, not when she was so close.

She must have noticed the shadows doing my work, however, because her gaze followed the tendril as I brought it back to me, and she began to pull away from him. ‘This danger goes beyond death, Rhodes. I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

Ah, so his name was Rhodes . An interesting name that I begrudgingly admitted suited the man. No wonder she was so drawn to him. I had a feeling he was going to be just like his name suggested, growing life and beauty wherever he stepped, because he was just that pure. My exact opposite.

When she merged into the shadows as if she belonged there, and I would make sure she would soon enough, the man – ‘ Rhodes’ – scanned the trees one last time before taking off, climbing back inside his truck and driving away. I listened for a while longer just to see if he was truly leaving, and sure enough, he stopped at the campsite where he was met by his anxious guests.

I doubted they would be a problem, but I was keeping a close eye on their little psychic friend. It was cute that she thought she was powerful just because she was tuned into the veil. That’s what happened when you had experienced death or came close to it. She wasn’t as special as she thought she was. Take Rhodes, for example. He was dying and had accepted that fact, so he was able to interact through the veil of death with greater accuracy than the psychic.

Hence why he was able to see and speak with the girl.

It was a revelation that sent me into a cold fury, my shadows whipping around me in response to the sudden emotion. This was my hunting ground. How dare these psychic mortals encroach upon my territory and interrupt my hunt? How dare they disrupt my chances to entrap this woman to share the same fate? It wasn’t like she wouldn’t thank me. I would be helping her, after all, even if I was taking something for myself out of it all at the same time.

My shadows were a step ahead of me, dragging me through them until I was no longer within the trees as I watched the girl, but in a small office where both the troublesome psychics currently occupied. They were joined by the tall man and the short, dark-skinned woman, and they were deep in what seemed to be an emotionally draining conversation.

A conversation in which they confirmed the identity of my soon-to-be corrupted ghost girl. Kali, they called her. A beautiful name for a beautiful woman, one that was more fitting than they realised. My ghost girl shared her name with the Hindu goddess of vengeance and destruction. It was such a perfect parallel, my lips spread wide into a pleased smile. These mortal men and women may have been after her for their own reasons, but I knew now that they could never pull her back from the path she was on. Her fate was set, seemingly since her birth, and cemented in her death.

Excitement thrummed through me at the prospect of a companion, someone to share my eternal afterlife with as we grew our power and ruled from the shadows. When the female psychic stood and stormed out in a huff, it only exacerbated that excitement, drawing on that malicious part of me that hungered for blood, for the taste of my prey’s fear. She was running, and I wanted to chase.

So, I did. I had learned enough from observing their conversation, so I shifted through the shadows one more time until I was just outside the office we had just vacated. She was pacing back and forth down the length of the hallway. Fingers clutching anxiously at her clothing and her single thick braid, teeth dug into her full bottom lip, and her breaths came in heavy pants like she had just run a long distance. Her face was flushed with anger, but it was obvious it was an internal battle more than an external one. She had lost the argument in the office, and now she was throwing a fit about it.

How… immature.

She hadn’t noticed me yet, despite the shivers racing up and down her skin, likely attributing the goosebumps pimpling her arms to the propped-open front door. The breeze was tepid, cooled by the darkness of the interior of the building rather than the soothing warmth it had been when it had entered.

I decided to simply continue observing for a moment, to gather as much information on this woman as I could. I hadn’t seen any indication that she was one of the monsters I typically hunted, but if she was going to insert herself in my business, in the business of the dead, then I would ensure she had the right to. I wasn’t adverse to altering my rules to get rid of a nuisance, but only if it became a necessity.

She was muttering beneath her breath, her words loud in the stillness despite the sounds of the others’ voices filtering through the closed door. She didn’t have very nice things to say about me, and I found it immensely amusing. This puny, insignificant mortal woman had caught on to my dark energy and wanted to flee. Now that I had experienced death for myself, it baffled me how people were so afraid of what came next. The veil between the living and the dead was thin at best, their ability to sense us an innate ability within each of them, yet they ignored it. Purposefully. As if that would make it go away.

But that ignorance turned into a fear of the unknown, and even when an individual had accepted the ability to touch the veil, they still feared what was on the other side. It was a ridiculous conundrum, but one that I used to my benefit.

The conversation inside the officer was over before I could have any fun, the door opening to expel its occupants one after the other. Finally sensing me, though too late for me to truly enjoy teasing her, the psychic woman immediately latched onto the tall man. It was more amusing to watch them squirm when they were on their own, because human beings were pack animals and drew strength from another’s presence.

Pity, but there would be time for that in the future. For now, I would simply watch and wait. I wanted to gather more information before I acted, because it seemed like these mortals were my ghost girl’s loved ones, and if I hurt the people she cared about, I doubted she’d stick around willingly.

I paused, mulling over the shock that revelation caused. I had never cared about another’s willingness, not since before I died. So, why was this time different? I could have bound her to me, hunted her through any realm she tried to hide in, but though the idea of hunting her appealed to me, it wasn’t the same sort of appeal I was used to in my prey. This one was… different. Complicated. Complex. I could have collared her, kept her as a pet, but that didn’t fit the shape of these strange feelings burning through me.

I wasn’t used to burning. I was used to the cold bite of the shadows, the numbness of death. I wasn’t sure what this urge was, but I knew it needed to be mollified or else I would spend eternity wondering, plagued by unabated curiosity. I refused to let something like this pass me by, even if I was clueless about what it actually was.

I would just have to figure it out.