Dust Ghosts

This is my first SERIOUS attempt at writing a complete short story--the longest piece I've written to date. All helpful comments are welcome, but I would especially like to know if: there are confusing or conflicting points. the characters distinct enough. there are grammar and punctuation errors. it is too fast or drags. I. CARL DEPARTS The dust ghosts were mostly unaffected as the night breeze blew through their bodies with a flow that slightly itched. A tubular glow, stretching from the bottom of their necks to their navels through their ectoblastic form, flickered like, but not so fragile as, a candle's fire. Alex interrupted the stillness of the early autumn night, but first he looked at his three companions expecting them to read his mind. "Does anybody besides me see how futile this is? We've walked for miles and haven't found an inhabitable place yet." Their Elder Leader, Carl, slowed his pace, stopped, and contrived his most pensive pose. "I agree," he said after a moment while looking nowhere in the distance. "I too feel this endless walking is pointless. The others are most likely wondering what's taking us so long to return with any news, and I'm fairly sure they're tired of waiting around a burned wreckage." Manny and Sara listened without comment. They, along with Alex, watched as Carl reached into his netherself and pulled out what appeared to be a silver locket--old but polished. "I was saving this for a dire emergency...and I think this situation is just cause." Carl held the relic by its speckless chain which sparkled even in the night's moonlight; he looked at it dramatically. "This compass was passed to me by the former Elder Dust Ghost far before your time.

He relinquished it with a dire warning: if used, the one who opens it, the Bearer, will become flesh again." He paused to allow the others the realization of what he was saying. "Once I open this cover, you will never see me again." His statement alarmed Sara. stay with us?"

"You mean, you won't

Carl thought--almost cruelly--to be such a sweet, big-hearted person, Sara could say some to the stupidest things. Standing nearly a foot and a half taller than Sara, Carl cocked his head a little to the left and looked down at her with a refrained pity, but genuine, father-like love. Manny knew exactly what Carl was thinking just by his countenance. So that Sara would not see, he turn his head to hide his smile; in a less serious situation, he would have hidden a laugh. Sara was hypersensitive and her feelings had to be handled with at least a touch of delicacy. Alex reached up and palmed the rear of his closest confidant and father figure's right shoulder, guiding Carl to turn in his direction. Emotional situations always brought back Alex's usually well-tamed stammer. "M-maybe I spoke too soon. If it means something so drastic, th-then it can't hurt to search some more." Alex knew his words wouldn't change Carl's mind. Carl's expression was impenetrable. Carl smiled down at his young friend with affection and a little condescension. "No, we've been without a home for nearly a week now," he said. "Long enough. When I open this case, the compass will point to the direction of your best prospect for a new settlement." Carl quickly opened the compass to avoid any further protests. The needle pointed northwest. Alex's emotions were mixed: on one hand, they would finally find a place to colonize; but on the other, he would be losing a valued friend and leader. But Alex sensed a different sort of glad/sad feeling from Carl. In retrospect, Carl

appeared a little too quick to make the decision, like he'd already considered it, like he'd planned it but with a motive Alex couldn't conceive. He knew Carl would genuinely missed them; no one could have faked the care he had shown all of them, but did he want to become flesh again? Carl turned his downward glance to Manny who stood only a few inches taller than Sara's skinny five feet. "Manny, I give this to you with the same warning. Once you discover the pointed-to location and close the cover, the compass will be ready for emergency use again." Carl placed the compass into Manny's hand and gave him an intensely serious stare. "Understand you are not required to use it--directly because of the consequences. It is a choice." Manny was surprised that Carl handed the compass over to him. Was this some unspoken semblance to a chain of command? Was he now to be considered the leader of their cabal? He took the compass guiltily. While he was honored to be their next Lead Ghost, he knew he would never use the compass. He didn't consider himself a coward or un-noble, he simply had no desire to ever become flesh again, no matter what the situation. "There's nothing we can do to change your mind," Manny stated. "I've opened it, so it's too late. The metamorphosis will happen at any moment." Sara stepped closer to Carl, but looked towards the ground. She was as bad as any male when displaying deep emotions. "I will miss so much. How will you survive a second life?" "When I visited my mother last Thanksgiving, I noticed she still had my birth certificate in her 'box of important papers' in the attic." Carl immediately regretted what he had just said, but he kept his composure and continued nonchalant hoping to glide through his slip. "She couldn't see me then, and I'll have to be sure she doesn't see me this time either--in the flesh; her heart

wouldn't be able to take seeing me alive again and I wouldn't be able to explain." Now Alex knew. Why would Carl have been looking for his birth certificate? Alex felt ashamed of his next thought. Did Carl intentionally burn their original home just for this opportunity? Impossible! He visibly shuttered for having such a ridiculous thought and hoped the others didn't notice. That's one mystery he'd keep to himself. While in his thoughts, Alex almost didn't hear Carl's last words. Good-bye my friends...my family, now I have to go find a job." Carl tried to give the other dust ghosts a farewell hug, but they were rapidly fading. No eyes of the living can see a dust ghost and he was now fully alive again. He looked in their general direction for a few seconds, said good-bye once more in a lower voice, and walked away. Through the speckles of loose dust forming the outline of their former bodies, each dust ghost could see the others' inner light dim. Alex didn't even try to hide his young spectral tears. II.

ENEMIES REVEALED An little more than an hour and a half had passed before the dust ghosts found a two story house in the near distance and Manny saw that the compass needle no longer wavered in the general direction of their destination--it was locked in its position. The house ahead was their new residence. After arriving, the ghosts stood outside for a moment to consider the view. Age and weather left their natural markings, but overall the house appeared sturdy and livable. Silt and debriscaked windows didn't allow a preview of the inside. The remnants of an ugly shade of green paint, cracking like brittle, flaky skin, covered

the outer walls in patches; but aesthetics was the least of the ghosts' concerns. Manny especially liked the covered porch as they approached whose ceiling doubled as the reinforced floor of a second story porch. He would claim the upstairs room beyond the porch as his. He had that right now didn't he? Now to get in. The dust ghosts were similar to regular ghosts except for the speckled and loose smattering of dust that served as their skin, and the oblong light within their trunk. It was the light, the only part of them that could be considered solid, that would not allow passage through walls though every other part of them could. Using the dust ghost's selective degree of permeability, Manny made his arm completely vaporous--enough to reached inside near the doorknob; then, while his arm was still ghostly, he made his hand solid enough to turn the knob from the inside. The doorknob turned, but it wasn't connected to any locking mechanism; it served more as a handle. Manny felt upwards from the knob and found an oldfashioned security lock that took a quarter turn to the right to unlock the door. The dust ghosts barely stepped inside before they stopped as a unit in awe of the sight before them. The living room was covered from corner to corner with what looked like an indoor ground fog patterned with varying hues of violet, orange and yellow with occasional streaks of deep blue. The colors rolled and intertwined within each other like slow-moving ephemeral snakes. The haze at it's most dense core floated about a foot from the floor and tapered to a fine, smoky mist both above and below its thicker center. The ghosts could see only the upper portions of the taller furnishings clearly, the lower furniture remained obscured within the haze. The fog emitted a glow that painted the top parts of the furniture with a surreal radiance, like a lambent-lit sepia movie. Sara was captured by the way the idly clinging--and huge--spider webs absorbed the warm, ambient light.

Once they broke away from the view, the ghosts noticed the only sound was a displaced hissing from the otherwise disturbingly quiet room. This too felt like it was caused by the floor fog, though the dust ghosts could sense no apparent connection. Also, the atmosphere was dry and lacked the expected musty, dank odor of an old abandoned house, as if the fog sucked up all moisture and smell. "It's beautiful," Sara said though she barely heard her own words. Manny turned his attention back to the floor fog and observed that it was contained within the living room. He saw the fog stop abruptly and evenly at a doorless frame leading to the dining room to his right--as if some invisible barrier prevented it from entering the area. Considering the circumstances, Manny walked over to the opening to feel if such a barrier existed. It did not. "This is truly our new home," Alex said. He firmed his dusty skin enough to hug himself-almost femininely. For no reason Manny or Sara could see, Alex shouted, "What the...?" Alex felt an electric shock which startled him more from its unexpectedness than from any pain. As if Alex's outcry were a queue, Manny and Sara also received the attempted electrocutions. For the dust ghosts it felt no worse than human skin being bitten by a handful of ants, but every bit as annoying. A gender-neutral child's voice spoke from the center of the room. "We beg to differ, this is our home and we have no intension of sharing." The voice wavered in volume with an occasional word or two barely audible, but never rising above a conversational level. "Leave now, trespassers." The words were calm but had the firmness of a command.

None of the dust ghosts moved. The floor must have been hard wood because the ghosts could hear rapid ticky-tapping sounds approaching from the clouded vapor, like a small army of walking twigs. Manny, Alex and Sara saw their attackers for the first time. They viewed the largest spiders any of them had ever seen--ranging from a half- to a foot long on average--with hides of blacks, reds, pinks and tans--along with a few lime-green ones sporting multicolored spikes. As the spiders came closer, flanking them, the floor fog brightened a bit. The wavering voice asked, "Why did you not die? The previous residence were destroyed with one strike, yet you stand after repeated attacks." Manny spoke for the group. "We're not flesh. Your shocks have the most minor effect on us, so don't expect us to be afraid of you, even though you attacked us unprovoked." The spiders considered this and the voice hesitated. "What is this fog?" voice fell silent.

Sara asked after the spiders'

Alex mentally rolled his eyes at Sara's irrelevant question, but he was surprised when the spiders-or at least their spokes voice--actually answered. "It is formed when two or more of us share the same space. The more of us, the more and brighter the Essence. As you can see, there are many of us. Explaining the how-and-why would be like you explaining any of your inventions to a troglodyte--considering it could speak English. They would have no points of reference to understand any terminology or concepts you used, so that is all we will say." Manny swaggered towards the surrounding spiders

and said, "You said you murdered the last residence, so this house is really not yours to claim. You took it by the worst means. We would probably be doing the previous owners a favor by taking over instead of you." The voice gave an unseen smirk-laugh. "We have ab-so-lute-ly no intentions to leave because of you." It paused as if the mere thought was pathetic. "Excuse us now, we have things to consider. Feel free to explore the rest of what you will not be having. It will be more of a pleasure for us that way...when we kill you." The spiders' attitude stabbed Manny's ego and he was pissed. "You arrogant little bitches!" He spat the words with double the smugness he felt from the voice and twice the ire. "Do you actually think we're scared? I'll kick all your stupid little asses out by myself!" The emotion of Manny's words hurt his throat, he swallowed, and fell into a tirade of further expletives before calming. The voice said nothing more, but the ghosts could feel the spiders seething. The spiders tipped back into hiding within the smoky mist; their movement a little slower this time. Manny felt no fear from them. III.

WEND The ghost stood confused for a few seconds not knowing what to do next, or what to do about the situation as a whole. They truly weren't worried about any harm, but these spiders could be a grand nuisance. Alex said, "W-why not take their advice and look at the r-rest of the place?" He reached up to touch the mournful-looking balustrade to the left of them whose design would have looked better as a gate than a stair railing. Alex lead the way up and the others followed silently. Even though the ghosts offered no weight, the steps looked solid--

enough to support a full human. definitely reparable.

The place was

Once on the second floor, Sara peeked into a bedroom that was situated on the east wall, to their right. She sensed the room was more feminine than it looked and said so; Manny and Alex listened with indifference. Sara, who at 44 died older than her companions, nostalgically viewed the faded and yellowed, irregularly hanging posters of various 80s Gothic bands: The Birthday Party, The Cure, The Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim, and a few more she couldn't recall at the moment. The house has given its age, at least since the last occupants. Two oddly well-kept books of poetry by Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire lay upon a desk by the window; Baudelaire's book, in its original French, was open to "Afternoon Song." Not so well taken care of school books were thrown apathetically on the dusty bookshelf to the left of the desk. Except for the wearing affects of time, the room as a whole looked in decent order. Plain dark-gray curtains fluttered behind the desk from the night wind passing through a break in the window. Again, the dust ghosts' inner glow wavered. "I think I'll spend most of my time here," said Sara. I like the atmosphere and it reminds me of my younger days." She saw a closet door on the north wall, beyond the bookshelf. As if proof of her first impression, a filthy black dress lay on the floor in front of it. Sara picked up the dress and shook off as much of the dust, dirt and brittle grime as she could, and wiped the inner window panes. The most immediate outside view within the approaching dawn light was scattered trees--mostly thin ones--already beginning their autumn shedding stage. A few meters beyond, Sara could make out heavily moss-cover stone steps leading down to a sunken garden of cranky weeds. She'd knew she'd change that this spring. Sara dropped the curtain and turned towards the bed which sat adjacent to

the window wall, leaving enough room for a small night table to fit snugly in the southeast corner. Before Sara could move out of his way, Alex headed towards an ancient cassette player lying informally upon the night stand. Alex died a year ago at 21 and had never seen a Walkman except on MTV's "I Love the 80's" when he was 17. The headphone jack was connected to a pair of small external $10 speakers, and Alex thought it strange that, like with the books of poetry, the Walkman looked a little too well-preserved compared to most of the objects in the room. Compared to today's digital devices, it was laughably archaic and Alex was bored in less than a minute of observation. He put the Walkman down and opened the table drawer which was full of odds and ends stuff mixed with a couple of dozen cassettes of bands he'd never heard of. Two new-looking packs of AA batteries stood out from everything else. "Manny, look at this. Do you think somebody's been living here? A bum or something?" Manny looked at the unopened battery packs and wondered how they got there himself. "How would they survive those spiders, even if the little assholes never came up here, how would some homeless person get passed them?" "We never walked around to the back of the house," said Sara, also curious. "There could be stairs leading directly to a backdoor on this floor. We've only seen this one room." They left the goth room and walked further down the upstairs hall. The doors to two other rooms sat closed on the northern wall. Manny opened the first which lead to the porched room he silently claimed earlier. It appeared to be a combination of an office, library, and reading room. The next door, almost at the end corner of the wall, was another bedroom which looked far more mature than the previous one. Manny guessed if there were no other bedrooms, this must have been the parent's room and the other their daughter's.

The room smelled of mercifully time-staled body decay caused by three skeletons--large, medium and small--with unevenly attached dried, gristly skin and tendons, lying neatly aligned on the bed. The electric blast from those spiders must have been so powerful on the living that even the bones look scorched. If these wer the victims, they must have died instantly. Now, why and how did they get here? Sara felt another presence in the room and said, "One of them didn't leave." "I feel it too...at the head of the bed," Alex said. Manny turned towards the energy and could tell the spirit was the daughter, the Goth girl. He told her they were going to change her a bit to make communication easier and he felt her consent. He turned to look at Sara and with a tacit exchange and she nodded in agreement. Sara stood motionless like a phantasmal sculpture with her arms outstretched, palms up. The dust in the room shimmered with an almost sentient hesitancy, then began to loosen from its surface and rise slowly. The dust floated towards Sara from every direction adhering to and intermixing with her outer form causing her existing particulated skin to darken and thicken. Sara stopped the ritual before her inner light became completely covered. That would have been like suffocation for a dust ghost. For only a few seconds, the dust particles fused and rolled with a boiling, liquid, undulation before reverting to their original form. After the re-transformation, the dust floated towards the spirit by the bed. The outline forming was indeed that of a small-framed young lady even thinner than Sara. The freshly initiated dust ghost appeared surprised by her new lucidity and form; she knew she was still dead, but now had the identical consciousness that she had when alive. "Who are you and what did you do to me?

I look

like--I don't know what the hell I look like." Sara took offense from the little shrew. Manny ignored the girl's, rudeness and said, "You are one of us now except you are more like yourself when you were alive--at least mentally. That light in your chest is like all your former self condensed to it's core, as opposed to dispersed--as you were a minute ago. In your previous form you had the option to be seen by flesh if you chose, but as a dust ghost, that is no longer and option." "A freakin' dust ghost? Are you serious? What the hell's a dust ghost? Look at me, I look stupid as shit! And no human can see me? How will I get things I need now if Jimmy can't see me? Can we be heard by the living?" "No. Who's Jimmy? Sara asked.

What things did you need?"

"Some crazy vagrant that found my house, silly fuck thinks I'm some kind of angel. He'd steal stuff for me and bring it here: books and magazines, scented candles, batteries. Those spiders--you've met them?--never leave the living room. You figure it. The bum comes through the back right down the hall." She spoke annoyingly close to monotone. "Damn, girl, can't you modulate your voice a little?" Manny said stressing his Latin accent on purpose. He burst out laughing. From the new dust ghost's last speech, Manny felt a connection and knew she'd get it. The daughter laughed. what's your name?"

"You're cool as hell,

"Manny, yours? "Call me Wend." Sara, who did not laugh, told the girl of their plans to move several families of dust ghost in,

providing they made a decision about those spiders. "I can say yes and no." Wend said blithely, but at least with a little more inflection. "If you can get rid of those spiders, yes. If not, I'd rather stay up here alone. Well, Manny could stay." "How old are you?"

Manny asked.

"I died at 22, but I guessed I'd be like forty something now. What are you, like thirty?" "Thirty-three at death. and Alex."

My friends here are Sara

Alex was jealous for no logical reason. "Now that we're all introduced, shouldn't we be doing something?" Wend said, "I know some...beings...that might help, but I don't know what they'll do. You're gonna have to work with me. They call themselves Second Shadows." "So what do we need to do?"

Alex asked.

"Nothing except be present. I'll have to summon them here; I've done it before a few times, but I couldn't sustain them by myself. They need at least three times the energy I emit to solidify with any kinda power. Four of us should be more than enough." "What, are they gonna drain us or something?" Alex didn't like the way this was sounding. Wend took a few steps towards Alex and wondered what he looked like when he was alive. She could tell they were similar ages, but the covering dust only outlines them with no deeper features. "You'll feel a little weak for like three or four seconds, then you'll feel normal again. They just need enough of our energy to form, then they can provide their own. I've got everything set up in my room."

IV.

SHOWDOWN

After returning to her room, Wend walked directly to the junk drawer. She opened it and remove one black, one red and one yellow candle. She set them up in candle holders that were stuffed in the dirty bookshelf and lit them. The odor of aloe and a mild amber perfume filled the room. "Two of you must cast a shadow on the closet door. When Jimmy helped me before, the one Shadow I invoked told me it had a partner, but it would take two casters to bring the other. I couldn't do the ritual and cast a motionless shadow at the same time, but now you're all here. Go over there and stand so your shadows aren't touching. Be as still as you can." Manny and Alex stood where Wend pointed. Wend took a cassette from the drawer and replaced the one already loaded in the walkman. The new tape was cued to Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead." Wend pressed play and performed an accompanying rhythmic Goth dance, weaving her hands in the air smoother than tissue in a slow breeze. A pink gray mist formed at her fingertips and dispersed into the air further intensifying the fresh aloe smell which was now the stronger of the aromas. When the song was over, the volunteers' shadows, on their own, temporarily detached from the door surface and move to the left, as if to make room for the shaping Second Shadows. When the summoned apparitions formed, Manny and Alex's shadows disappeared and they felt the weakness Wend mentioned. It lasted only a moment. The Second shadows seeped from the wall as unsubstantial, three-dimensional blackness. Present, but not quite. Small silver and brown insectile birds flapped erratically around the vague, roughly human forms of the Shadows, and never stayed from their assigned individual body. Their fluttering wings was the only sound for an instant. The Shadows acknowledged only Wend as she

explained the situation, and the they offered their rendition of an understanding nod. Without a clue of what was to happen, Manny and the others followed the Second Shadows as they drifted downstairs in a floating, liquid movement. The party entered the living room to an electrostatic charge filling the atmosphere. The spiders appear immediately as if they had been waiting. Manny heard--"Abominations!"--from the direction of the Shadows and instantly the bug-birds from both Shadows began to fly impossibly fast like a psychic windstorm. The current lifted and spun the front-most spiders then slammed them into the walls dazed but alive. The dust ghosts joined in and grabbed the spiders not caught in the whirlwind and bashed them to the floor. The floor fog glowed brilliantly with the spiders' agitation as they tried to retaliate, but the brightness only strengthened the Shadows' attack. This gave the predators an idea and more spiders emerged from the cloudy mist. The ghosts heard a hollow suctioning sound as the spiders commenced vacuuming the floor fog into their bodies; the light glided along leaving the room in darkness. The murderers figured out the logical way to kill the floating black things. Confusion stunned the dust ghosts before they realized their existence was now the target of the suction. The ghost felt as if they were being pulled by a negative force into some chthonic void; the sensation was worsened because the force of the antipodal suctioning grabbed them from every direction--three dimensionally. The ghosts were helpless. Their dusty covering was the first to travel to nothingness and their beam within thinned and weakened. They resisted with their remaining strength, but, like in quicksand, struggling aggravated their plight.

Manny observed the others, like himself, were losing their consciousness--likely forever. Before falling to complete apathy, Manny saw the fog and glow returning too late; it would be impossible now to re-summon the Second Shadows and Wend was already unconscious. He simply wanted his second death to end. Sara's final sight was also the returning sensuous mist, but she focused more on how the sepia glow relit the surroundings with its luster. How could something so enrapturing be created by things so vile? With his fading vision, Alex found the shadows still standing. Apparently they didn't go anywhere, they must have simply been helpless in the darkness. Now they looked mad as hell and better prepared. He felt the vacuum upon him weaken when the spiders followed his gaze. The spiders realized they couldn't focus their vacuum on both the ghosts and their Essence. They had to make a fast decision: finish the transparent things and face the wrath of the new strangers; or release the intruders and refocus on the fog which hadn't completely returned. There may still be time if they reacted now. The Second shadows made the decision for the spiders by reacting first. The Shadows wailed at a volume, sounding 20 times their number, which dazed and distracted the spiders, and snapped the dust ghosts back to awareness. The Shadows' bug-birds flew raucously, cawing loudly to add to the wailful howling din. Their all-directional flapping and swooping evoked a concentrated icy wind that blew up from the floor. The spiders--even previously unseen ones--were captured and lifted to the ceiling--some spilling over the upper sides of the walls--and were held there like some insanely colorful arachnal ornaments. In an instant, the upward push flipped horizontally and the whirlwinding began again, exponentially gathering speed. Once the rotation

reached full acceleration, the spiders became trapped by a confining, in-pushing force and spun in an ablazed mass like a psychedelic cyclone. Oddly, neither the dust ghosts, nor anything else in the room was affected by the psychic tornado as if the spiders were its only focus. Once the Shadows felt sure that all the abominations had been gathered, all noise ceased, the familars were recalled, and the indoor hurricane stopped; the force from the sudden end hurled the spiders in every directions, splattering them to a thick paste of chitinous innards. The floor fog faded with each death until the only hint of luminance was the dawn's light filtering in spots through filthy windows. The Second Shadows howled at a lower register and the bird-pets consumed the remains of the spider gore, leaving no trace of the previous incident. Without acknowledging even Wend, the Shadows poured themselves onto the stairway and disappeared before they were halfway up. Wend had awakened after the first wailing. "I suppose I have to keep my promise. Shouldn't be so bad, though. Now that I can think and talk like normal, it might be good to have somebody around. But when I go to my room, I don't want to be bothered." "Fair enough," Manny said. The dust ghost felt sunken and drained, but even in their weakness, they were relieved to have a new home. End.