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My name’s not really Pooky, of course. I wish I could remember who it was that called me Pooky. I’m sure they were sweet and funny and loved me a lot. They’d kind of have to be, to think of a nickname like Pooky. Being a ghost does funny things to your memory, though. All the worst parts of your life are clear as day, while the nice things like having a pint with your friends, and cheese omelets, and the light of the sun are all so distant as to be practically hypothetical. The person who gave me that lighter could have been any one of several romantic partners, or even my mother. Actually... probably not my mother. She always hated that I smoked.
Anyway.
You probably think it’s strange that an Eldritch Archaeologist and Explorer First Class was so afraid of death as to become a ghost, don’t you? After all, it’s a pretty risky profession. Surely one would become inured to the idea of their own mortality if they spent their days poking around cursed tombs and such. Well, joke’s on you - I was terrified of death long before I went into eldritch archaeology.
Here’s the thing. When you’re diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer at 17 and told it’d be a miracle if you make it to your thirties, your risk-assessment abilities pretty much go out the window. So I went into the most stupid, dangerous, and exciting career I could think of. It was almost a dare, a challenge to death. Come to think of it, that’s the reason I started smoking, too. It was like saying to the universe, “oh, so you want me to die of cancer, huh, well what if I want that too? What now bitch! Better think of something else!” And you know what? It wasn’t the cancer that killed me after all. Take that, universe.
I’m sure plenty of people, when confronted with the idea of dying young, use their time for, I don’t know, religion and self-reflection and doing the most good with the time they had, et cetera, and come to terms with it well enough. Otherwise we’d be up to our ears in ghosts. Not me, though. I was scared the entire damn time. Just tried not to think about it, mostly. Not really a good strategy in the long term, but ha! what did I know about the long term? Honestly, the closest I got to a real coping strategy was some comedy self-help books. Some well-meaning and tactless friend had gifted me a copy of Facing Death with Grace, Dignity, and a Shotgun: The Pastor Drom Story. Anything even a hair more serious would have been shoved in a drawer and aggressively forgotten, but this one sounded funny, and well, I did have a shotgun (useful for those little demons you sometimes get in abandoned temples).
Surprisingly, it was great. Funny, irreverent, but just insightful enough to make me think about actually taking some of the advice. I think I had planned to check out some more by the author, maybe even start meditating or something. Turns out though, I didn’t have that kind of time.
The stupid thing was, the Librarian Prince’s tomb wasn’t even a job - it was just research. There was a book there with a history of the severely haunted crypt in the Glass Wastes I was going to next. Apparently an earthquake had shifted something enough that the crypt’s tunnels had connected to an aquifer, and the local villagers had hired me to fix it so they could drink from their well again. In eldritch archaeology, preparation can be life and death, and I guess this time, it was death. Maybe I let my guard down, thinking it would be easier because it wasn't an official job. Maybe it was just an off day. I’d been having more and more of them recently. You know the kind - when your whole body hurts, down to the bones, and your brain’s practically turning inside out with the effort of not thinking about how you’re getting sicker and sicker, and it might not be long before you can’t work at all, maybe a year, or two at the outside, until you’re dying in a hospital bed, oh God, oh God?
No? Probably just me, then. Anyway. Hope those poor bastards got their well un-haunted eventually.
As a (presumably) living person, you might not know a lot about ghosts. Well as a ghost myself, I can say - me neither. That is, I knew about ghosts as an occupational hazard, not a possible future. Aggressively avoidant, remember? So I knew how to detect ghosts, and exorcise them, and a couple methods to ward them away, but I didn’t know how a ghost is created . Why at the moment of death some people just leave, and some don’t, or can’t, or won’t. And really, I still don’t know. I just know that I was terrified. Because when you die impaled on a spike, it’s not right away. It’s just enough time for you to know exactly what’s happening, and all your old fear to come rushing back in, like you’re seventeen damn years old again and crying in the bathroom of a doctor’s office because you don’t want to die.
And then I was dead, and still here, and half relieved and half even more scared for it. Why I was still here - well, I have an inkling or two now, but at the time it felt like it was all me. My choice, or my fault.
I don’t think any living person can understand what it was like to be a ghost for those first years, or at least I hope to Saint Amaranthia they can’t. How boring, and lonely, and frightening to be aware of nothing but my own slowly mummifying body, not able to move or speak or even weep. How added to all my old fear of death was a new fear, that after decades or centuries of this I would be driven mad and raging, to become the worst kind of poltergeist, and then another explorer would come along and exorcise me just as I had exorcised so many, and never spared a thought for what happened to them afterwards. At a year or so I started trying to break the tether myself, but I couldn’t. I was good and stuck.
When Drom came along I didn't know who she was or why she was there, just that she was the first voice I had heard in years, and that she felt friendly and kind. I would have done anything to stay with her. And maybe all that straining endlessly against my bonds helped a bit after all, because I was able to leave my bones behind and attach myself to the lighter. Later, when I realized that she was in fact Pastor Drom, the self-help writer, the only person who had helped me face my death even a little, I had to laugh. The saints work in funny ways, I guess. It did attach me to her even more, though. I was so grateful to be out of the pit and with a living being who noticed me - I would do anything for her. She talked to me like I was a person, even though she couldn't see or hear me. It made me feel less dead.
It was for Drom I learned how to keep the lighter lit, just because she asked. After a while (time as a ghost was still fuzzy) I could even flick it on and off as I wished. It took a lot of energy, but it seemed like I was getting stronger, the longer I was with Drom. I don't know if it was some kind of necromantic power she had, or just love. Maybe those were the same thing, to her. Certainly it didn't matter to me. I tried to use my new strength to communicate, lighting the flame in morse code. Drom didn't know morse code, though. She saw the lighter flashing and said, "aw, Pooky's got a bee in his bonnet! Don't set my desk on fire!" So all I ever said in that way was "thank you."
It didn't matter. She understood me well enough without words.
After enough time, I could feel that my material bond was loosening. That with some effort, I could break it, be free of the zippo lighter and go somewhere else. Stop being a ghost. I guess that enough exposure to whatever it was that Drom had will do that to a ghost. I didn’t, though. For one thing, I kind of liked being her lighter. It felt - comforting, being near her, and she made me laugh. And I got to go on adventures, like I did when I was alive, and I felt useful sometimes - needed, even. But even that wasn’t the whole reason. Really, I was still scared.
How on earth is a ghost still afraid of death? you might be wondering. Well, hell if I know, I’m not a necro-psychologist. But I had spent so much of my life being afraid of dying, and trying not to think about it, and this kind of existence was enough like life that I could pretend, and keep on not thinking about it. Plus, if I’m being honest, I’d seen enough in my short career as an eldritch archaeologist to make me doubt the inherent benevolence of the universe. It’s not that I didn’t believe in the saints - I’d prayed to Saint Amaranthia often enough. But I just didn’t have the faith that any god or saint would watch out for me, personally. So I stayed.
And I’m glad I did. Looking back, with the knowledge of how everything turned out, I don’t regret anything, not one decision I made in life or death. How many people can say that?
It’s every eldritch archaeologist’s dream to boast that they saved the world - and little apocalypses happen with enough regularity that if you’re in the business long enough, chances are good you can. But the chance to help save the world from an undead apocalypse didn’t mean as much to me as being able to hold Drom’s hand, and to tell her I would stay with her, and that she would be okay.
And she was, wasn’t she? Okay, I mean. Look at her now, settling into a new life. Not exactly what I thought would happen, I have to say. And I’ve got a complicated mess of feelings about it all. Because when you say that to another person, to a dear friend, your only comfort… you mean it. You have to. At the moment I said “it’s going to be okay,” it felt more urgent than life or death itself that it be true.
And it was.
So now, in the messy tangle of my heart, there’s a lot less fear.
I can feel my tether breaking, now. Soon I will be gone whether I will or no, and I suspect Drom will continue to carry a lighter that is just a bit strange, with only the memory of once holding a living soul. Will she miss me? Maybe. Not much, though. She has her friend, and I’m positive she’ll attract more - I don’t think she can help it, nor can anyone around her resist it. But I will miss her. She taught me a good way of living, and she taught me how to die. I guess for some people it just takes a little longer.