Reg squirmed in his chair like an eel pulled from the sea. The sterilized waiting room air wormed its way up his nose and down his throat, its chemical burn scorching the inside of his lungs. His skin felt unbearably dry, which was odd, frankly, considering the inexplicable dampness of the stiff cushion beneath him—an unfortunate reminder to always look before choosing one’s seat in the emergency room. Alas, there weren’t any other available chairs. Not better ones, anyway. A pity, as the eight-foot troll sitting across from Reg was glaring down at him as if his mere existence was a personal affront to the senses.
There’s no way he knows. Sit still. Blend in.
Reg’s left hand clamped over the armrest, fingertips digging deep into the hard plastic. His right palm rested on the lid of the shoebox in his lap. The box bounced in time to the nervous tap of his left foot. His shoe struck the gray tile repeatedly, a speedy blur of worn leather that would’ve put a hummingbird on amphetamines to shame.
There was a flat-screen television mounted in the corner. Reg had his head twisted painfully to the side, squinting at it as a means to avoid engaging with the troll.
The troll paused its efforts to crush Reg through unrelenting eye contact, overcome with the sudden, pressing need to sneeze. The big fellow wrinkled his upturned snout and said, “Ah…”
Oh, no. Not again. Reg braced for the inevitable. From the corner of his vision, he could see the pressure building behind the troll’s beady black eyes. The big fellow’s wrinkled face scrunched tighter, cracked lips curling to form an unbecoming snarl, revealing a top and bottom row of yellow, conical teeth. Surely the troll would cover his mouth this time, right? Once was an accident, but twice? Twice was a blatant violation of the implicit social contract where everyone unanimously agreed to keep their body fluids to themselves whenever possible! Reg simply wouldn’t stand for it.
Literally. He was determined to sit and silently stew like a coward. Causing a scene was the quickest, most sure-fire way to blow his cover. Reg wasn’t about to do that. Not here. An emergency waiting room was the absolute worst place to reveal his secret.
“Ah…” the troll said louder.
Reg squirmed.
“Ah…”
Dear gods, here it was. Reg scanned the neighboring rows of chairs, desperately searching for a last-minute vacancy. No such luck. The only available seats were those that had suffered a fate worse than an explosive troll sneeze. Reg was semi-certain he could see ectoplasm dripping from the one three chairs down.
“Achoo!”
Reg threw up his right arm to shield his face without thinking. It was too little too late. The resulting cloud of wet sputum and disease coated the front of him in thick troll slime. Oh dear lord, Reg lurched forward, gagging. Ectoplasm wasn’t the only thing that was about to soil the freshly mopped floor.
“Whoa, buddy, not here. Go upchuck in the bathroom,” a gruff voice said from Reg’s left. “Do it over the trash can, at least.”
“Ugh,” Reg moaned, head hanging limply between his knees. The sharp edges of the shoebox pressed painfully against his stomach, but he lacked the willpower to do anything about it. This was his life now, stuck in the eternal limbo of the emergency waiting room, awaiting an update that would never come, covered from head to toe in otherworldly goo.
The man to Reg’s left stood, muttering some insult about half-breeds under his breath as he stormed off, opting to take his sprained wrist elsewhere.
Do it for Tera. Reg squeezed his eyes shut, attempting to block out the wet, hacking cough across from him. Having successfully cleared his nasal passages, the troll had moved on to another, equally effective way to spread contagions. Lovely.
You’re here for Tera. Stay for Tera. She would do it for you.
Reg’s foot tapped harder against the gray tile. Even at full speed, the rapid staccato was no match for his neighbor’s wet cough. Reg wasn’t a doctor by any means, but even he could hear the phlegmy rattle of death that plagued the troll’s deteriorated lungs.
Probably what killed him.
That was Reg’s biggest gripe with hospitals. Forget the long waits, contagious mouth-breathers, and unnatural fluorescent lighting, it was the people that bothered him the most. Particularly the dead ones.
Unlike the greater Haven Burrow population, Reg was not blind to the supernatural. He saw them all: the young, the old, lost souls of every shape and size from every walk of life. Seeing ghosts was easy. The real trick was ensuring they didn’t notice that he could see them. The best way to accomplish this was to remain apathetic to their presence, treating them as the rest of the world did—like a ghost. It wasn’t anything personal, it was just that ghosts always had problems and Reg didn’t have the mental fortitude to solve every single one he happened upon outside of normal work hours.
A chill shimmied down his spine as someone took the vacant seat to his left. An adolescent voice asked, “You alright?”
It can’t be much longer. You can do this. For Tera. Distracted, Reg answered without thinking. “I’ve survived worse.”
“Alright, cool. Just checkin’.” There was a thoughtful pause before the same voice fired off another question. “I gotta ask though, what’s in the box?”
Reg inhaled through his nose, and held it, before expelling his breath from between his pointed teeth. He unfolded his upper half and sat straight in the chair, pushing the black hairs that clung to his sweat-soaked forehead out of his eyes. He glanced at the speaker and then, clearing his throat to disguise his nervous flutter, replied, “A tonic toad.”
“Really?” The teenager’s eyes bulged. “Can I see it?”
Mental fortitude be damned. At least the kid wasn’t sneezing on him. “Probably best not to open it here.” Reg patted the lid with the flat of his hand. “Tonic toads secrete a highly toxic poison through their skin. A single touch can prove fatal.”
Not for humans, fortunately. The poison from a tonic toad merely induced a severe hallucinatory reaction for most of mankind. Reg knew this as it was the precise reason he was stuck spending his Friday afternoon in an overcrowded emergency room. He’d warned Tera not to touch the amphibian without first donning her protective gear. Once more, his business partner proved incapable of learning through any other means but her tried-and-tested method commonly known as the hard way.
“Why do you have it here?” the curious teen pried.
“It bit my partner.” Reg’s restless gaze switched back to the flat-screen television, fearing that if he stared at the kid any longer, he’d betray something better left unsaid. “She’s in one of the back rooms, getting seen.”
“And you’re not with her?”
“It’s better I stay here. Too many ghosts beyond those doors for my comfort.”
The kid’s voice dropped to a whisper as if he’d just been let in on a scandalous secret. “You can see ghosts?”
His reluctant gaze settled back over the teenager. Reg held back a wince as he took in the full scope of the boy’s appearance. Poor kid couldn’t have been older than seventeen. Reg’s words rang hollow. “I can talk to them, too.”
“Damn.” The kid’s eager expression fell as the weight of realization settled over him. Not all souls knew right away and, from his coloring, this one was fresh off the coroner’s table. The teen’s gaze dropped to his blood-splattered shoes. “You were the first person to acknowledge me. I thought maybe that meant all of this was just some crazy dream.”
“Sorry.”
“You mind if I hang here with you for a while? I don’t think I can go back upstairs. My mom’s up there, you know. Won’t stop crying.” There was a noticeable chunk missing from the side of the teenager’s skull. He pointed at it, trying his best to fake a smile. “Word of advice, wear your seatbelt. I overheard the doctor say I would have lived if it’d been on. Stupid way to go, man.”
Reg made a mental note to continue putting off his driver’s license indefinitely. “Stay as long as you want.”
Think of something else to say. Think of else something to say. Stop staring at his brain. “I'm Reg.”
“Spenser.” The teen offered his hand out of habit, before realizing it was a pointless gesture. The pitiful smile bled from his face as he stared through his semi-translucent fingers as if truly seeing them for the first time.
This was why Reg actively avoided the emergency room. No one ever died happily in the hospital. Every one of them was a sad case, taken before they were ready. Confused, scared, and alone, many stuck around, unwilling to pass on to the spirit plane. They spent the rest of their sad existence destined to wander the halls, slowly losing fragments of their shattered sense of self with each passing year. Reg’s heart sank, knowing what cruel fate awaited Spencer if he refused the reaper.
Reg felt compelled to say something, anything, to lighten the dismal mood. He lifted the shoebox several inches off his lap. “Do you want to know how my partner got bit by a tonic toad?”
Spenser brightened at the prospect. This time, his smile was genuine. “Hell yeah.”
The job, Reg explained, had started like any other. A house, a family, and a haunting—a false one in this case. After weeks of inexplicable sounds coming from the basement, the desperate homeowners reached out to Reg, believing they had a wayward spirit on their hands. From the moment Reg and his business partner, Tera, arrived at the property, he knew that there wasn’t a ghost inside. The only thing haunting the house was its questionable sense of decor. As this was the sort of sentiment he was forbidden from uttering out loud, Reg dutifully stuck to the facts. He assured his clients that whatever they were hearing, it was most definitely not a ghost.
And then something went thump in the basement, determined to prove him wrong. He and Tera went down to investigate and soon found the culprit—a tonic toad. Tonic toads were an illegal species bred for the highly-coveted hallucinogenic properties of their poison. The toad in question had likely escaped captivity and found its way into the basement. Reg had planned to contact the local sanctuaries in search of a permanent home for it, but then Tera had to go and get bit, resulting in an unexpected detour to the emergency room. One unforgettable cab ride later, and here they were with Tera being treated in the back, Reg in the waiting room, and the toad confined to a shoebox on his lap.
Reg put his heart into the retelling. He spoke loud enough to be heard over the troll’s obnoxious coughing, employing his best voices and a whole arsenal of animated gestures. It was a once-in-a-lifetime performance, and yet, despite it all, Spencer only cared about one thing. “You work as a medium?” A spark of recognition lit the teenager’s eyes. “You know what, I thought you looked familiar. Where have I seen you before?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Being only half human, Reg’s otherworldly heritage cursed him with the inability to lie. Didn’t stop him from stretching the truth when needed, though. “Oh, you know,” he said, losing immediate interest in the conversation, “I just have one of those faces.”
A familiar jingle cut through the soft murmur of the waiting room. Reg’s gaze snapped to the television screen in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of himself, adorned in a ridiculous getup, prancing on camera like a trained circus monkey. The tips of his pointed ears burned hot as he sank lower into the plastic chair, mortified.
The commercial had been Tera’s idea. After six years working together as paranormal crime consultants, the pair were burnt out. They agreed to quit the practice and try something new. With Reg’s paranormal abilities and Tera’s talent for people, the obvious choice was to pivot to the colorful world of spiritual mediumship. Such a drastic change required rebranding, however, hence the ungodly commercial. Tera insisted it would appeal to their desired market. They were after suburban homeowners, bored housewives, and private gatherings—the sort of easy clientele that guaranteed a steady paycheck. Reg reluctantly agreed to the commercial. A better life dangled tantalizingly within reach. He could feel it. And all it cost was the low, low price of his dignity.
The commercial ended and Reg breathed a sigh of relief. It didn’t last. For reasons known only to the dark forces behind prime daytime television advertising, the commercial looped, replaying the entire thing from the beginning. If it were not for Tera, Reg would have abandoned his physical body then and there and jetted out the automated doors, destined to never be seen again. Or at least until Monday, when the resulting hangover wore off.
“I knew you looked familiar!” Spencer said. “You’re that detective that’s like part Grim Reaper or something, right?”
Reg resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Or something.”
He was spared from further discussing his unconventional lineage when one side of the double doors opened, allowing a disheveled woman to stagger out into the crowded waiting area. Her left hand was heavily bandaged and she walked as if she’d just been kicked out of a bar, but, all in all, at least Tera was walking. That was good, considering Reg had yet to secure them a ride home.
Tera spotted Reg and waved her bandaged hand, cracking a woozy smile. Turning sideways, she shuffled awkwardly through the overspilling aisle, apologizing every step of the way, until she reached him. To Tera, the seat across from him appeared empty. She collapsed into it with a grateful sigh, totally unaware that she’d just sat on a ghost. The infuriated troll stood and stomped off, still coughing.
“How are you feeling?” Reg asked.
“The inside of my eyelids feel fuzzy.”
A step up from visual hallucinations, Reg supposed. “You mentioned that to the doctor, right?”
Tera hated hospitals almost as much as he did. Her reasons, however, had more to do with how frequently she wound up in them. Tera was a unique combination of fiercely independent and woefully accident-prone. Insisting she could stitch a gaping wound just as well as any doctor, she often neglected to tell the medical staff the full extent of her injuries. It always circled back around to bite her in the butt in the form of a second, sometimes third, visit to the emergency room.
“Yeah, yeah.” Tera mimicked the way the plastic figurines on her dash bobbled their comically oversized heads each time she floored it over a pothole. “Doctor says it’ll wear off in a few hours. Gave me a prescription for antibiotics and told me to go home and rest.” Her half-lidded gaze moved from Reg to the seemingly empty chair to his left. “Noticed you talking to yourself when I first came out. Got a new friend you want to introduce me to?”
Reg rendered Spencer visible with a flick of his wrist.
Visual manifestation was Reg’s specialty, a consolation prize for being born of controversial heritage. Not human enough for the humans, and too human for anyone else, Reg’s powers offered some small comfort knowing he could collectively terrify human and nonhuman alike with a simple sweep of his hand.
Not Tera, though. She was a grizzled veteran to his antics and merely looked on at Spencer without so much as a raised eyebrow.
Spoilsport.
Tera turned back to Reg, her head flopping, as though her neck was now part noodle. Her eyebrows furrowed, caught somewhere between confusion and disgust. “What is all over your face?”
Reg glanced down, realizing too late his power had not only rendered Spencer visible but the paranormal ooze currently dripping down the front of him as well. “Ectoplasm,” he said, fighting the urge to leave his body. “Tera.” He managed to squeeze the words out between dry heaves. “Meet Spencer.”
“Hi,” Tera said.
“Uh, Reg?” Spencer was too preoccupied to return the greeting. He twisted around in his chair, having noticed the way the entire room went eerily silent. Every available pair of eyes were wide open and staring in his direction. “Can everyone see me now?”
Unable to speak, Reg merely nodded his head. Across from him, Tera scowled disapprovingly. While manifesting a ghost itself was not frowned upon, doing so in an active emergency waiting room may have crossed several lines. To Reg’s credit, he’d at least ensured there were no children present first.
Spencer turned back around in the chair and fidgeted with his translucent fingers, hesitant to ask, “Do you think you can take me upstairs like this? So I can say goodbye and all that?”
“Ooh.” Tera openly winced at the question. “Bad idea. Not unless you’re a fan of watching Reg get punched in the face.”
“What she said,” Reg agreed, steadily regaining his ability to speak. “Why? Do you have unfinished business, Spencer?”
“There’s some stuff I want to say.”
Reg held his hand over his mouth, forcing the last of his nausea back down where it belonged. Finally, he could speak without fear of letting something other than words roll off his tongue. “Will your mother recognize your handwriting?”
“Probably.”
“Hold this, please.” Reg shoved the shoebox unceremoniously into Tera’s arms and stood, fetching a spare clipboard and pen from the triage desk. The nurse manning the station gave him the side eye but said nothing. Returning to his chair, Reg offered the supplies to Spencer. “Write what you want to say.” Noting Spencer’s skepticism, Reg added, “Don’t think about it too hard. Just do like you normally would.”
Spencer’s fingers phased through the pen when he reached for it. He frowned. “How am I supposed to write anything if I can’t even hold the pen?”
“You’re thinking too hard,” Reg replied. “You’re interacting with the chair like normal because you sat down out of habit, relying on muscle memory. Do the same with the pen.”
On cue, Spencer’s phantom form immediately phased through the waiting room chair and struck the floor. Reg decided against telling the kid that floors weren’t any more real to him than chairs, for fear of having to fetch him from the basement. Fortunately, a few minutes of patient coaxing was all it took for Spencer to gain command over his ability to interact with the living world. It was a good thing, too, because Reg’s skull was beginning to ache from the strain of maintaining the manifestation.
When Spencer was finished, Reg recollected the writing materials and flipped to a blank page. “Your address?”
Spencer gave it to him, hesitantly, his voice marked with suspicion. The teen’s expression fell further the moment Reg folded the papers into a neat square and stowed them in the confines of his jacket. “You’re not going to give it to my mom now?”
Tera’s fingers tapped against the lid of the shoebox absentmindedly. “How quickly he forgets the face-punching part.”
“I run a medium business and your body is barely cold. I can’t be seen chasing down newly bereaved parents. I’ll mail it when I return home, anonymously.” The dull ache in Reg’s head was spreading. It wouldn’t be long before the inflammation moved into his sinuses. Reg wouldn’t be able to ignore the pain after that. He’d have to cut Spencer free soon, but not yet. Reg had some unfinished business of his own to take care of first.
He looked the ghost straight in the eye, man-to-man, or whatever the idiomatic equivalent of a human-paranormal hybrid to a ghost teenager was. “Can I give you a word of advice?”
Spencer shrugged. “Sure.”
Reg stood, collected the shoebox from Tera, and tucked it safely under one arm. He used his free hand to assist her from the chair. “Jump on the next ride out of here. A hospital is no place to spend the rest of your existence.”
Goodbyes said, Reg dropped the manifestation and, together, he and Tera walked arm-in-arm out of the stuffy waiting room into the fresh air outside. Harsh sunlight poured over them, reflecting off of the thin layer of compacted snow that crunched underfoot as they cut across the freshly salted walkway.
Tera shivered against him, her hot breath puffing into the bitter air in front of her. “You called a cab, right?”
“Two cab fares in a single day? You act like we make money for a living.” Reg laughed. With Tera’s truck still parked deep in the gated suburbs of some McMansion neighborhood, they had no other choice but to rely on Haven Burrow’s notoriously fickle transportation system.
Reg continued, “Thanks to that commercial, we’re on a strict city bus budget until we get your truck back.”
“This is why you need your driver’s license.” Tera rolled her head back with a groan. “We could have avoided all of this had you driven me to the hospital in the first place.”
“Ensuring we both ended up behind emergency room doors? No, thank you.” Reg consoled Tera with a smile. A real smile. The kind he wasn’t allowed to show clientele because of the way it made people squirm when they caught sight of his pointed teeth. Tera loved it, naturally, forgiving all of his past transgressions immediately. The unamused frown stretched across her face was simply Tera’s way of confirming it without openly admitting it.
They reached the end of the path, where the sidewalk turned into a dirty, snow-crusted expanse of open parking. Reg veered left, his arm still hooked through Tera’s and guided them toward the sheltered bus stop conveniently placed as far from the hospital’s front doors as physically possible. The bench was dry and significantly cleaner than the last place he’d sat. Best of all, it was dead people-free.
Tera sat and studied the posted schedule hung along the inside of the shelter. Her mind was on other things. “Were you serious back there?” she asked. “Are you really going to mail that letter?”
Reg skimmed the schedule, concluding that the next bus was due in fifteen minutes. Given the current state of the Haven Burrow public infrastructure, it meant he had a solid thirty minutes to hem and haw his way out of answering Tera’s question. He started things off with a noncommittal shrug.
Reg didn’t know what to do with the letter, honestly. Spencer’s parents had just lost their kid. They needed time to grieve. Sending an anonymous letter that claimed to be from their dearly departed son was messed up on too many levels to count. Reg had only offered it as a means to satisfy Spencer’s unfinished business.
“I believe your exact words were ‘I’ll mail it when I return home’,” Tera quoted from memory, proving that not even pain medication could dull her sharp memory. “Wouldn’t that count as a lie?”
Reg kicked a dirty chunk of snow loose from the sidewalk with the worn edge of his shoe. “I never mentioned anything about a stamp.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Tera didn’t sound altogether surprised. She allowed several seconds of painful silence to slink past before asking, “So you’re not doing it then, is that it?”
“I don’t know!”
Crap. He hadn’t meant to yell. Between Tera’s bite, the impromptu trip to the emergency room, the loss of a day’s wage, and dealing with ghosts, Reg’s fraying nerves had reached their limit. He sank onto the bench beside her. “Sorry.”
In a manner that defied all logic, in the way that only Tera knew how to do, she lifted her uninjured hand and conveyed a ‘water under the bridge’ gesture without uttering a single word. She’d already had a miserable day, she didn’t need to make it any worse by ending it with a fight. The tired look in her eyes assured Reg that had their circumstances been different, it was an argument she most definitely would have won.
Reg untucked the shoebox from under his arm and placed it back over his lap. He tugged the edge of the jacket up over the lid as far as it would allow, offering the box’s occupant as much warmth as possible. He hoped the bus was only the usual fifteen minutes behind schedule. The sun was low, already dipping behind the towering horizon of skyscrapers to the west, casting the lower parts of the city in shadow. It was about to get significantly colder soon.
“What would you do?” he asked.
“Me?” Tera mulled the question over in her head for several seconds. “I’d take the letter home and stash it somewhere safe. Let it sit awhile. No sense in making hasty decisions while everything’s still raw.” Shivering, she scooted closer to Reg and pressed against him, leeching whatever paltry heat his body could afford. “And then I’d go spend the night at my best friend’s house and stay up eating dry cereal and watching reruns until dawn.”
It was sound advice, the first part, anyway. The second half wasn’t so much advice as it was Tera’s way of indirectly communicating her plans for the evening. “Fine,” Reg relented, pretending it was him doing her a favor and not the other way around. “You can stay over, but I’m padlocking the cereal cabinet.”
The bus rumbled up to the stop some thirty minutes later. Tera boarded first, with Reg scurrying up the slippery steps after her. He followed her to an empty row near the back. They were barely seated before the rickety bus lurched away from the hospital with a protesting shudder.
Reg caught a flash of color out of the corner of his eye. He whipped his head over his shoulder, squinting past several heads to see out of the dirt-smudged rear window. An apparition stood on the corner. Its sickly fluorescent yellow aura burned bright against the dirty snow. The spirit’s head turned, tracking the bus’s movement as it barreled down the busy street. Cold dread pooled in the pit of Reg’s stomach as he watched the apparition grow smaller in the distance. In all his years, he’d never seen anything like it.
A chill slithered up his neck, setting every hair on end. The apparition was too far for Reg to make out what sort of being it had once been. Whatever it was, it looked big, it looked angry, and, worst of all, it was looking directly at him.