It was a dark and stormy night. Creatures lurked in the shadows. And if you listened closely, you could hear them wail in between the rumbling thunder.
Cliché? Perhaps. But, then again, what haunted house wasn’t?
“Remind me again why we’re here? I don’t care for spookiness.” The man furrowed his brow as he looked around the old mansion’s atrium. The speaker was Mr. Rupert Murtent Jr., the bald, bourgeois ghost from before. And, like before, he was not a happy camper.
We—“we” being me, Andalon, Ibrahim, Yuth, Larry, and Dr. Finster—with Dr. Finster being the therianthropic-looking transformee who housed Mr. Murtent’s soul—stood in the mansion’s main atrium, at the foot of a grand staircase.
The kind that goes up a little, to a landing, and then forks to the left and right as it goes up a little more, and wraps around to the other side of the room.
Four-sided support pillars stood behind us, on either side of the entryway, wrapped in dark vines of plastic ivy.
Dr. Rathpalla stood on the lowest steps, leaning against the stairs’ balustrade.
Like any good haunted house, the mansion was poorly lit, courtesy of the candelabra-shaped sconces up on the walls and the support pillars. The LED bulbs in them had holographic projections that made them look almost indistinguishable from real, flickering flames.
They must have cost a fortune.
There was a large, arch-topped window on the wall of the landing in the middle of the grand staircase, and, despite the constant rain, a wan, cyan light leached through the glass. The light filled the room with its dreary shade, making it feel like the building was at the bottom of a lake, drowned long, long ago. Dead tree branches crooked around the wrought iron framework on the outside of the window, contributing to the sense of arrested decay.
“Well?” Mr. Murtent asked, staring at me with crossed arms.
“It came down to a choice between this memory, or one of my memories of riding a roller coaster at the Elpeck Prefectural Fair,” I said.
“Why?” Yuth asked.
“Well, I was thinking of off-beat places that would be conducive for group therapy.”
Dr. Rathpalla clapped his hands as he laughed at that. Ibrahim found the situation deeply amusing.
The mansion in which we stood—a gorgeous old gal dating back to the early days of the First Republic—had been Witchriver’s premiere Celdmas attraction; Witchriver being the neighborhood out in the Valley, where I’d grown up.
The best thing about Witchriver was the name, which, in my humble opinion, is really, really cool. According to legend, the eponymous river was either used to drown pagan witches back in the First Crusades, or it was the site of pagan rituals back in those days. Perhaps both—though there was always the possibility that the story had been concocted by the real estate developer as an advertising gimmick.
With me still lacking confidence in my world-building abilities, I preferred to make mind worlds using the places in my memories, rather than building them from scratch.
And what a place she was!
Both inside and out, the house was as beautiful as she was spooky. Like most buildings of its era, its exterior was a hodgepodge of ornate details and ginger breading, and they wrapped all the way around, to boot. As a kid, if I walked past the mansion at sundown, the silhouette of the mansion’s witch’s towers and high-gabled, shingled rooftops against the darkening sky looked like a city made of dreams.
None of us ever saw the owner—a Mrs. Parbold—and obviously, me and my classmates were convinced she was a witch—albeit a very, very nice one‚ because every year, come Celdmas time, she’d pull out all the stops and turn her house into one of the best darn haunted houses this side of anywhere.
As to how we got here? Well, after explaining the basics of afterlife management to the other transformees—how to keep your ghosts happy; how to keep your ghosts from being corrupted into demons; etc.—and with a little help from Greg—I’d come up with a way to demonstrate the ghost management process to the SHG’s transformees first-hand.
The idea was to use the physical contact trick that Greg had used the other day, when he’d pulled me into his voxel-based mind-world. By making physical contact with several transformees at once—that is, by holding hands—we were able to link our minds together and roam around in each other’s mind-worlds.
Really, the hardest part had been deciding what location to use. (Curse my indecisive brain!)
Anyhow, my colleagues had just finished summoning ghosts of their own, as I’d instructed.
I stepped into the middle of the room and clapped my hands. “Now we can get down to business.”
Andalon mimed my hand-clap, and, considering she was standing right beside me, it looked absolutely adorable. The spirit-girl was on cloud nine. For so long, she’d wanted to interact with the other transformees face-to-face, and now that she could, she was having the time of her life.
“So,” Larry asked, “how are we going to do this?”
With everyone back in their human form, Larry was once again the largest of us, a true giant of a man, and very imposing in those khaki suspenders of his.
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Thankfully, I’d worked with several other groups of transformees before extending the invitation to Ibrahim and the others. As I’d correctly surmised, figuring out how to do these demonstrations and getting into a rhythm had been somewhat awkward, especially on my first attempt, so I’d wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing before I did it in front of people that I knew on more than just a professional basis.
“Excellent question, Larry,” I said, nodding in his direction. “In response,” I added, addressing the group as a whole, “I have a question for the transformees with us this evening: how many of you have played around with making mind-worlds, the way Greg has?”
“I made a library,” Ibrahim said, “for doing all that reading.” He waved his hand dismissively. “It wasn’t all that impressive.”
“Not much,” Yuth said, “I’ve been occupied with helping the other transformees with their changes.”
“Same,” Larry said.
“I created an ocean and an archipelago,” Dr. Finster said. In his human form, Dr. Finster was an average looking man, distinguished by his short hair and slightly freckled cheeks.
“Any reason why?” I asked.
“Yes,” Dr. Finster replied. “I’ve always wanted to know what it would be like to be a whale,” he explained, “so, I made a patch of sea, and then made myself a whale.”
“What was it like?” Larry asked.
“Peaceful,” Dr. Finster replied. “And relaxing.” He sighed. “I just wish I could interact with real dolphins and whales. Can they talk to each other, and if so, how much, and is it like the way people talk to each other, or is it something different? I’ve always been curious about that.”
Mr. Murtent scoffed. “This is crazy talk.”
Dr. Finster narrowed his eyes at the spirit. “On the contrary, I’ve been trying to keep myself sane,” he said. “Why don’t you try turning into a wyrm, Rupert, you greedy son-of-a-bitch! It’s not a walk in the park.”
The balding man’s mustache bristled in anger.
“Slither,” Dr. Rathpalla corrected, with a wry grin.
Dr. Finster snorted. “You’re not helping, Ibrahim.”
“Please, please don’t fight,” Wendy-Jane said.
The dowdy middle-aged woman Larry had chosen as his ghostly guest sounded like we were about to ruin brunch. “Things are bad enough already.”
“Everyone, just…” I spread my arms to either side, “…just calm down. We’re taking things one step at a time.” Then, clearing my throat, I began reciting the script I’d prepared for the occasion. “So, as any psychiatrist could tell you,” I glanced at Dr. Rathpalla, “therapy is based around the psychological formula that psychic damage equals trauma plus time. With enough time, trauma will curdle into all sorts of painful experiences. It becomes our regrets, our fears, and our frustrations. You can think of this damage as a well-worn road. Every time we travel down the road, the unpleasant feelings they create sink in deeper and deeper, making it only that much more difficult to move past them and reach a state of greater inner peace.”
“Well said,” Dr. Rathpalla said.
I bowed my head, said, “Thank you,” and then continued. “Out in the Thick World—Thick World is wyrm slang for physical reality—moving past lingering traumas can be incredibly difficult. You have to confront them, and cultivate mindfulness to keep yourself from falling back onto the well-worn roads. In the Thick World—other than certain psychotropic drugs that are, unfortunately, still classified as illicit substances—communication is the best medication we have. Talking to other people can help us see ourselves in a different light, and maybe find a way around trauma’s well-worn world. Unfortunately, that can only do so much; it’s not like we can tap into each others’ minds directly.”
I pointed at the floor. “But, here, in the Thin World—that’s wyrm slang for a mentally constructed reality, by the way—… here, we can! We can share our thoughts and experiences, and even live them as if they were our own. As far as therapy is concerned, it’s like having a cheat code.” I looked over the four transformees one by one. “In this practice session, we’re going to make sure you know how to use this ‘cheat code’.”
For my next trick, I made text appear mid-air, floating at my side, with Andalon helpfully pointing to the bullet points as they appeared, one by one.
“By the end of today’s demonstration,” I said, “you should be able to…”
• Access your own memories at will.
• Access your ghosts’ memories at will.
• Experience your ghosts’ memories as if they were your own.
• Make your ghosts experience memories (yours, or other ghosts’) as if they were their own.
• Link your ghosts’ thoughts to yours or to one another’s, so that they can experience subjectivities other than their own.
“With these tools,” I said, “we can help the spirits of the dead overcome their grief and traumas, and in doing so, we keep the forces of Hell at bay.”
I glanced at Andalon. “Thank you, Andalon.”
She curtsied, and then I made the words disappear.
“You know,” Dr. Finster said, “other than some… problematic personalities,” he rolled his eyes over to Mr. Murten, “I have yet to see a ghost turn into demons.”
“Of course you have,” I said. “There are at-risk ghosts right here in Ward 13.”
“Wait, really?” Larry asked, looking more than a little bit spooked.
“Yes,” I said. “Haven’t you noticed the ghosts that look like walking horror shows? The fungus growing in their bodies? All the body horror?”
“Well, yeah…” Dr. Finster said.
“That’s them starting to turn into demons!” I said.
Dr. Finster blanched. “Oh.” He lowered his head slightly. “Fuck…”
Yuth nodded. “Early on, there were times I thought I was going crazy,” she said. “Monsters would come out of nowhere and start chasing! Sometimes, they even attacked me in my dreams. It was like seeing my own fears thrown right back at me.”
“Exactly right,” I said. “And, I take it you all know about the zombies, right?”
“Zombies?” Yuth muttered. “Genneth, please tell me you’re joking.”
“You should take a moment to check the internet while it’s still operational,” Larry said. “There are loads of videos of them. The zombies are everywhere, and there also these big, hulking flesh collages that look like slaughtered meat come to life. I figure we’ve only got a couple of hours left before they reach WeElMed.”
“Shit,” Yuth said.
“At the moment,” I said, “our working theory is that the zombies are what happens when the fungus turns people into demons directly. As for us, because the souls Andalon has put in us no longer have bodies, the demonic conversion process happens to the spirits within our minds.” I shot pointed looks at all of the ghosts in attendance. “And don’t fool yourself into thinking that thoughts can’t hurt anyone. Once turned into demons, the corrupted spirits can hijack your psychokinetic abilities and use them to harm others, especially if you don’t have strong control over your abilities.”
Larry gave me a wide-eyed stare. “That’s… terrifying.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said. Putting on a smile, I nodded and got back to business. “But, enough about the scary parts,” I said. “Let’s leave the horror to the haunted houses and get started with the lesson. You know what they say,” I swung my arm enthusiastically, “there’s no learning quite like doing!”
“Genneth, I’d tone it down a little,” Dr. Rathpalla said, softly.
I nodded. “Right, right.”
Fudge, I thought.
Yes, it was petty of me to worry about making a fool of myself while teaching people how to guard against the armies of darkness, but, still, I worried.
I looked over the transformees. “Well… does anyone want to go first?”
Nearly everyone turned their gaze to Mr. Murtent, whose expression immediately fell.