The Haunters

As we have officially entered Autumn and have begun our farewell to September, it should come as no surprise that thoughts of ghosts and ghouls have crept into my mind. Here is a little teaser of something different, slightly controversial, and a little off the wall. Oh, and just so you know, taking the new Zzzquil sleep aid and then watching random crap on your iPad? Let's just say that, well, the result is what you find below.

I, as always, remain interested in your feedback. Enjoy!

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The Haunters

            Tristan didn’t care for being dead. She hated it, actually. For her, the worst part was never again being able to taste pizza, her mother’s apple crisp, or a good steak. Ironically, she also missed the one thing she had always complained about: the harsh, New England winter. Still, by and large, death wasn’t all that much different than life, with a few exceptions.

            There was no food. It just wasn’t necessary. That part took some getting used to. The apartment in which she “lived,” the one that she had wanted desperately but couldn’t afford, was exactly the same as she remembered, only there was no kitchen or bathroom. In fact, there were no kitchens or bathrooms anywhere. Nor was there ever rain, or snow, or the sound of street weepers at five o’clock in the morning. It was an oddly idyllic existence. If there was somewhere she wanted to go, she simply needed to think of it. That part she didn’t mind. Still, she couldn’t shake the resulting bitterness she felt for losing her life so abruptly.

            Tristan Woods was on the upswing. A vibrant, beautiful and incredibly intelligent twenty-eight year old graduate of Harvard Law School, she had been handed a clerkship with the one judge that the political pundits had nearly unanimously pegged as the next Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Tristan had just written her first majority opinion and was riding high. Perhaps it was her elation that caused her to drop her guard and acquiesce to Ron’s pleadings.

            The last thing she remembered in life was the cold strength of Ron’s hands wrapped around her throat, and the horrific regret of having finally accepted his request for a date. Dinner wasn’t what she would have described as enjoyable. Ron Nevers was a little odd, but she had figured that if she went on one date with him and allowed him to get it out of his system, he would have backed off. Sadly, that wasn’t to be the case. Had Ron had better judgment in drug dealers, he might have only raped her. Instead, the Rohypnol he had slipped into her pink cosmo was barely strong enough to cloud her thinking long enough for Ron to get her back to her apartment and onto her bed. Her senses cleared slightly around the moment when Ron was undoing her belt. Feeling his weight on top of her, she screamed. Ron reacted violently, gasping her neck in an attempt to silence her. As her last breaths escaped her, Tristan prayed Ron would be caught and punished for his crime. He never was.

            The events that followed seemed like a dream. She stood at the gates of Heaven, greeted by Saint Peter. He appeared very much as most would expect: long, flowing robes, white hair and beard, and a voice that soothed and calmed. After their initial meeting, each time she saw him he had taken on a form more familiar and comfortable, wearing instead a grey, pinstripe suit with a neatly pressed white shirt and yellow tie, his hair and beard neatly trimmed. He could have been anyone walking down the streets of D.C. on any given day.     

            There were streets, and buildings, and parks, and rivers. Had she not known she was dead, she initially would have never known the difference. It took some time to adjust, but she still would have much preferred to live out her life before entering eternity. Aware of her anxiety, the Council of Angels knew Tristan would be a perfect fit and soon recruited her for the Haunters.

            Throughout history, God had always been described in tandem as a merciful and vengeful God. Even in death, Tristan avoided the debate. The truth was, there was as much bureaucracy in death as there had been in life. Guardian Angels, haunting, disease, disaster, pretty much everything you could think of, was still God’s will, of course. However, the details were generally left to the Council of Angels which would administer the will of God through delegation. It was by its suggestion that Tristan joined the ranks of the Haunters.

            The Haunters were a group of angels brought together for the purpose of convincing, through ghostly persuasion, those in life whose crimes and misdeeds went unpunished, to repent. It was, in essence, a form of coercive redemption. If they did not repent, then upon their death they would find themselves passing through the gates of Hell towards an eternity of damnation. 

            By and large the Haunters were comprised of those who had been victims of unpunished crimes in life. Tristan had gotten to know a few of them. She had befriended Trisha, a young, African-American teenager who had simply been sitting in the family room of her inner city home, watching TV, when a stray pulled pierced both the window in front of which she sat, and her skull. Gerald, barely in his fifties, literally died of a broken heart, having suffered a major heart attack upon learning that his wife of twenty-two years had been having affair with his own brother. And then there was Daniel.

            Had they been alive, Tristan could have envisioned marrying Daniel and having family. Around her age in life, Daniel stood at six feet even, and had the most penetrating blue eyes she had ever seen. Daniel had been the victim of a hit and run after chivalrously driving his sister home and walking her up to her apartment after a night of revelry. He was just getting back into his car when a drunk driver plowed into his open door, shearing off both the door and a good portion of his lower left arm. Overcome with shock, he bled out in the cold, Manhattan night, alone.

            “Alright people, settle down,” Michael said as he approached the podium. Haunters were still filing in to what resembled a university lecture hall with stadium seating. Fitting the stereotype, everything was stark white in color and the ceiling appeared to be nothing more than clouds. Tristan and Daniel sat next to one another and waited for their assignments.

            Michael, the angel in charge of the Haunters, dispersed files to the thousands of Haunters gathered. Time had no real meaning, so to all present it seemed as if they were the first to receive their assignments. Sometimes their duties would last a day in the life of their “Challenge,” as they were called. Other assignments could last months, or even years, though to the Haunters it was as if nary an hour ticked by. The job could be anywhere, at any terrestrial time. The only caveat was that, as a Haunter, you were not permitted to haunt those whose crimes led to your death. Neither retribution nor revenge were the purpose of the Haunting, and those who somehow managed to haunt their own perpetrator received swift reprimand and banishment from the Haunters for doing so. Salvation and forgiveness were the goals, not punishment.   

            “So, what have you got this time?” Tristan asked Daniel.

            “Investment banker. This guy pilfered millions from his clients. He still has the cash and an opportunity to give it back. I guess I’ll have to see if I can persuade him. You?”

            “Drug dealer,” she replied with dismay. “I hate these gigs. They’re so stubborn, you can never get them on the first haunting, which means inevitably someone still ends up strung out or worse from their drugs before you can turn them.”

            “Yeah, I had a couple of those. One time I had to blow up a guy’s meth lab and appear to him in the flames before he got the picture,” Daniel recalled with a grin. “The guy wet himself, and never sold another drug again. In fact, I think he volunteers at the Boys and Girls Club now.”

            “Well, I guess we’ll see what happens.”

            “Ok. See you later, gorgeous,” Daniel said with a wink. Had Tristan been able to blush, she would have. She closed here eyes, and when she opened them, Daniel was gone. Smiling broadly, she closed here eyes again and disappeared into her own assignment.  

            Typically the Haunters would spend some time observing their Challenge without making their presence known in order to determine the best method of haunting to convince the Challenge to repent. When Tristan opened her eyes again she was standing in the small, city apartment kitchen. The sink was filled with dirty dishes and Tristan was thankful she could not smell the food rotting in the open garbage can. Across the table were strewn hundreds of pills of varying shapes, sizes and colors. She was examining them when the doorbell rang and her Challenge walked through the kitchen.

            In his early twenties, he appeared much older. His arms were covered with tattoos, and had a small silver hoop pierced through his right eyebrow. His jet-black, dyed hair appeared as if it hadn’t been washed in weeks. Slender and wiry, he was every bit the stereotype. Tristan wandered into living room of the apartment to glean some insight into her Challenge when she heard the voices in the hall. At first she paid little attention. However, when the two men walked into the kitchen and the customer made his request, a strong feeling of anger, one she wasn’t supposed to feel, washed over her. Stepping into the doorway, she watched in horror as her Challenge filled a small plastic bag with Rohypnol and handed it to his customer. Ron Nevers paid him and displayed an evil grin. She had seen the grin before, and never expected to see it again.

© J.J. Goodman 2012. All rights reserved.