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Tommy remembered exactly how he died.
He tried not to think about it a lot—how his dad had finally snapped and just hit him over and over and over again. His crime hadn’t exactly been subtle. Tommy had watched as the police had taken him away. Dream was paying for what he’d done. Tommy should’ve been able to rest easy, but it seemed that he was paying for his father’s crimes as well. Even as the cliffside cottage he’d lived in deteriorated in its abandonment, Tommy remained, his soul tied to a music disc that gathered dust underneath his bed—the only thing that had brought him any solace in life.
He couldn’t play the disc anymore since the record player had broken, but he still had music. Years after his death, someone named Wilbur Soot (according to the name on his guitar case) started journeying over the hill to play for hours every couple of days. Tommy would sit and listen. Wilbur played the saddest songs, but they were beautiful.
Part of Tommy wanted to let him know he was there. If he spoke, Wilbur would hear him. Every now and then, he’d say a few words when the wind was blowing—lyric suggestions, compliments, that sort of thing. He could let Wilbur believe it was his own head, hearing things in the breeze. Tommy couldn’t risk scaring him away, though, so most of the time he stayed quiet.
Then, one day, Wilbur talked to him.
He was packing up, getting ready to leave, when suddenly he paused and looked around. “Are you there?” Tommy froze, wondering what had tipped him off and terrified that he’d be too scared to ever come back. “Phil says I shouldn’t come here—a kid died, or something. People say he haunts it. That and-” he knocked on the wall, which creaked. “Bad structural integrity. Most people seem a lot more concerned about the ghost, though. But… you’re nice. If you are there. I mean, you’re just a kid, aren’t you?”
Tommy was seventeen, thank you very much.
“Well, I’ve said hello,” Wilbur sighed, slinging his guitar case over his back. “Hope you liked the music.”
He left before Tommy could say anything back.
—
The next time Wilbur came by, he didn’t say a word. Tommy watched him closely. Was he supposed to say something? Maybe Wilbur had dismissed himself as crazy, and if he said something he’d scare him away forever. Tommy couldn’t lose his music.
Instead of staying just inside the now-decrepit cottage as usual, Wilbur sat by the side of the cliff to play his guitar. Tommy looked after him cautiously—it was a sizable drop into an unforgiving and probably icy ocean. He could touch the physical world briefly, if he put enough effort into it. If Wilbur fell, Tommy needed to be ready to pull him back at a moment’s notice.
Wilbur didn’t even sing. He just played the guitar half-heartedly. Something was very wrong, and Tommy couldn’t put his finger on it.
It was the moment that Wilbur gently set the guitar to the side and just stared at the drop, one foot dangling off the edge, that Tommy realized what it was.
“Hey.” Wilbur jumped a little at that sound of his voice, and Tommy reached a hand out to steady him. “Might wanna get some more distance between you and that drop, Wilbur.”
He looked around wildly. “Hello?”
“Hi,” Tommy replied. “You talked to me yesterday.”
“Oh, shit, you’re actually real?” Wilbur exclaimed. “I thought I was just, y’know…”
“Just what?”
“Just pretending, I guess,” he said, managing to look exactly where Tommy was standing. “I wanted someone to be there.”
“Well, I’m here. Tommy Innit, at your service.” He saluted him, and to his surprise, Wilbur shakily saluted him back. “Wait a minute, can you fucking see me?”
“Yeah…?”
Tommy laughed. “No way! That’s so cool!”
“Oh!” Wilbur didn’t quite seem to know what to do with that. “Um, great! Have you… been here the whole time?”
“Yup.” Tommy cracked a grin. “I’ve been dead for longer than you’ve probably been alive.”
“How old are you, then?”
“Seventeen. Still.” He shrugged. “Ghosts don’t really age, y’know?” Wilbur was staring at him—Tommy couldn’t tell if he was scared or just curious. “I really like your songs.”
His eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Yeah!” Tommy assured him. “Music is the best, man. I used to have this record player, but it doesn’t work anymore. I fucking love hearing you play.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“I didn’t want to scare you off! It’d be so boring here without you.”
“I thought you’d been dead for ages.”
Tommy nodded. “And it was very boring before you came along.” He glanced at the cliff. “I don’t want to go back to how that was.” They were both silent for a moment. “Let’s get a little further away from the edge, yeah?”
“Right.” Wilbur didn’t move, eyes drifting back to the ocean below. “Um…”
“Wilbur. You don’t want to die tragically, trust me.”
He looked up suddenly, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “What? Who said-”
“No one said anything, but I’m not stupid,” Tommy huffed. “Look, when you die without living all the life you were supposed to—if you get in an accident or get killed or- or kill yourself or whatever—you don’t get to move on. I’ve tried, but I’m just stuck here. It’s not fun.”
Wilbur fidgeted with the hem of his sweater. “It’s got to be peaceful, though, right? Nothing to worry about besides just existing.”
“Just existing is terribly boring, Wilbur.”
He stood up, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “Are you a hallucination? Are you just some figment my brain came up with because I’m too much of a coward to jump?”
“No,” Tommy said emphatically. “I’m real, and I’m telling you that you shouldn’t do it.”
“Why not? I could still sing for you as a ghost, you wouldn’t lose your entertainment source-”
“You’re not just my entertainment,” Tommy scoffed. “You- you’re all I’ve got, man. I can’t leave this cottage, okay? I can’t. I can’t go find something else to do. You’ve been giving my music for years. I- I kind of feel indebted to you, honestly! I want you to be happy, and death won’t do that for you.” He crossed his arms stubbornly. “I’m gonna be your guardian angel, bitch,” he declared. “You’re not dying on my watch.”
Wilbur put his head in his hands. “Please stop.”
“Too late,” Tommy informed him cheerfully. “I’ve already formed an attachment to you. You’re my emotional support alive person. Now talk about your feelings, we’ll figure this out.”
“I’m not talking to you about my feelings.”
“You’ve got to talk to someone,” Tommy insisted. “Besides, who else am I gonna tell?” Wilbur glanced sideways at him with skeptical eyes. “Please?”
“What do you want me to say, Tommy?”
“There’s a reason you’re here. What is it?”
A glassy expression fell over Wilbur’s eyes. “You really wanna know?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
Wilbur leaned back onto the ground. “My dad,” he said, choking up. “He cares about me, I know he does, but he’s never around.”
Tommy scooted closer to him, glad to have him talking. “Yeah?”
“His work keeps him busy. And I know he does it to support me, but he doesn’t come home a lot and when he does he just doesn’t listen. It’s like he’s got this idea in his head of who I am, but that idea is from years ago and he won’t change it. No one else in this shithole gives a flying fuck about who I am—he’s the only one that can care, that can listen, and he just… doesn’t.”
“I listen to you.”
“I didn’t know you were real until three minutes ago.”
“Fair. Continue.”
Wilbur threw his arms into the air—it looked like he was reaching for the sky. “That’s it. That’s my shitty little sob story: my dad just doesn’t get me. So horribly sad. There are so many people out there that have it worse than me, and yet I’m still the one sitting on a cliff.”
Tommy pursed his lips. “Just because other people have it worse doesn’t mean you aren’t hurting.”
“There’s no reason for me to be hurting this bad.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’re fucking hurt, dumbass,” Tommy said. “And I can say that! My life was way shittier than yours! My dad moved us out here so that he could hurt me without any neighbors to hear me cry! He literally beat me to death! But y’know what?” Wilbur didn’t look at him, so Tommy put his hands on his hips and repeated himself. “Y’know fucking what, Wilbur Soot? I always wanted my dad to love me. I wanted him to give a shit. I know what it’s like to want your dad to know you and care about you and for him to just not. It fucking sucks, man. It really does. You’re allowed to feel like absolute rubbish—there’s no trauma benchmark bullshit you have to clear to feel sad. Alright? There isn’t.”
Wilbur shrugged. “So?”
“So, what?”
“So how do I not want to throw myself off a fucking cliff, then?”
“Um.” Think, man, think! “Talk to your dad?”
“Tommy, I do that.”
“Do you ever tell him how you’re feeling?”
“... No.”
“Then start there.” Tommy silently congratulated himself for being so good at therapy. “I could- I could even go with you, if you wanted.”
Wilbur raised an eyebrow. “I thought you couldn’t leave this area.”
“Well, I could, if you took my disc with you,” Tommy said. “I can’t really hold onto it long enough to get it anywhere, but, uh, my soul is tied to it. If you take it with you, I’ll follow. I can be there when you talk to your dad, if that’d make you feel better.”
“And you won’t, like… possess me or some shit, will you?”
Tommy grinned. “If I was going to possess someone, I could do better than you.”
Wilbur snorted in quiet amusement. “Ouch.” He sat up with a sigh and ran a hand down his face. “Alright, I can’t believe I’m doing this. Where’s your disc?”
Something warm and excited bloomed in Tommy’s chest. “I’ll show you.”
—
It was almost unreal, being able to leave the cottage. Tommy had been there so long he’d almost forgotten that he could.
Wilbur led the way to the edge of a picturesque village that Tommy had been to a handful of times when he was much younger. He selected a house that looked no different from the rest around it, and Tommy slunk in the door behind him.
“Phil!” Wilbur called. “Hey, Phil, are you home?”
An unfamiliar voice shouted from upstairs. “Yeah, mate, one second!”
“It’s a miracle,” Wilbur muttered. “Wonder how long ‘one second’ is.”
It turned out that one second was approximately two and a half minutes.
Phil, as Wilbur’s dad was apparently called, came down the stairs with a smile. “Wilbur! Where’ve you been?”
“Playing the guitar. As usual.”
He started sorting through unopened mail on the counter. “Oh, that’s nice.”
“I, uh, I wanted to talk to you.”
Phil paused. “What about?”
“I-” Wilbur swallowed nervously. “I’m just going through some mental shit, y’know? Having a rough go of it. And- and I feel like you aren’t helping.”
“Well, I want to,” Phil said, slowly lowering an envelope. “Tell me how?”
“Okay. You- I don’t feel like you know me,” Wilbur explained. “Whenever I’m around you, I feel like you expect me to be eleven-year-old me. And I’m not and it’s…” Tommy placed a comforting hand on his shoulder for a moment. “Lonely, I guess.”
Phil pursed his lips. “I was about to say I didn’t know what to expect from you now, but I suppose that would just be proving your point, wouldn’t it?”
A half-hearted grin appeared on Wilbur’s tired face. “A bit, yeah.”
“So, what now?”
“About…?”
“About getting to know you now,” Phil said. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Wilbur breathed. “Yes, that’s exactly what I want.”
“How do we start?”
“No idea.”
“Uh, well-” Phil’s gaze fell on a kitchen cupboard. “I could make cocoa and we could chat about this more?”
Wilbur’s eyes lit up. “Sounds great.”
Tommy drifted away, not wanting to interrupt the moment. Things were going incredibly well, and Tommy was so happy for Wilbur, but… he didn’t want to intrude. And maybe, just maybe, the way Phil had accepted that he’d been doing something wrong and immediately asked how to fix it reminded him of things he’d never had.
Part of him started imagining what his life would’ve been like with a different family. He’d be Wilbur’s younger brother, and they’d be best friends. Phil would be a great dad, if his conversation with Wilbur so far was anything to go by. Tommy pushed those thoughts away. They weren’t reality.
Instead, he zoned out and stared at a wall in what had to be Wilbur’s bedroom until he was done chatting with Phil. Tommy had fine-tuned his wall-staring skills over the years. He’d had nothing else to do.
Eventually, the door creaked open. Wilbur jumped about a foot in the air before hurriedly shutting the door.
“Fucking hell, man! I didn’t know you were in here, you scared the shit out of me!”
“That sounds like a you problem,” Tommy said lightly. “How was the chat?”
Wilbur sat down, smiling. “It went great. There’s still more progress to be made, but… we made some.”
“That’s good.”
“I really can’t thank you enough, Tommy.”
The compliment struck him to his core. “Why’s that?”
“You talked me into doing this,” Wilbur told him. “You talked me away from that cliff. Here I am now, finally making progress with my dad. If it weren’t for you, I’d be dead in the ocean somewhere.”
“Oh,” Tommy said, his mind reeling a little bit as he realized what he’d managed to do—he’d saved not only a father-son relationship but a life as well. “I do my best, I guess.”
“Your best is the best. Thank you so much, Tommy. You were just what I needed.”
It was as if a weight had been lifted from Tommy’s shoulders. He suddenly realized what that weight was.
Somewhere else very far away, a quiet place that Tommy had only ever been able to imagine finally reaching, was finally in reach. The afterlife was calling him. You’ve fulfilled your purpose, something deep in his gut told him. It’s time to rest now.
Tommy really did want to rest.
“Hey, Wilbur?”
“Hmm?”
“Would you be mad if I left?”
“The house? No, you-”
“No, like, if I left left,” Tommy rephrased. “Like, finally went to the afterlife kind of left.”
Wilbur tilted his head to the side. “Could you do that?”
“I can now. I think that by helping you, I somehow… did my job in this realm. I can move on.”
“Do you want to?”
Tommy remembered sitting in the cottage with Wilbur, watching him play the guitar. He remembered sunsets and the song that his disc would play. He also remembered how Wilbur had a father he needed to spend time with—he couldn’t spend every second with Tommy.
“They’ve got to have music in heaven, right?” he mumbled distractedly.
Wilbur shrugged. “Don’t think it could be called heaven if it didn’t.”
“Then I want to go,” Tommy decided. “I’ll miss you.”
“You know what?” Wilbur sighed. “I’ll miss you, too, you little gremlin.”
“Wilbur-”
“It’s true. You’re a little gremlin.” He reached up to ruffle his hair but his fingers couldn’t find contact. Still, the ghost of physical affection made Tommy practically buzz with excitement. “I think I always knew you were there, watching me play. Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Tommy fired back. “That music was everything to me.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“I’ll sing your songs for everyone in heaven or whatever,” Tommy promised. “I guess I’ll see you in fifty years or so?”
Wilbur grinned, nostalgia for something he hadn’t yet lost shining in his eyes. “Sounds good, Tommy.” He tried the hair ruffle again, and this time Tommy managed to time it so that he actually did for a second. “Thank you for everything.”
“I’m still your guardian angel,” Tommy reminded him. “Alright?”
“Alright.” Wilbur saluted him, and Tommy didn’t hesitate to return the gesture. “See you on the other side.”
Tommy nodded. “See you on the other side.”
He leaned into the quiet feeling that promised peace, content with leaving Wilbur’s life far better than he had found it, and at long last Tommy found that he could rest.