Memento Mori

The pain had stopped. Silence reigned. She didn't know how long it had been.

It was no longer cold. A fluid, embryonic warmth enveloped her.

It was no longer dark. A hazy, cloudy light penetrated the blackness.

Dim awareness sparked within her, and tentatively, she reached out into the soft light. She encountered a thick, rubbery barrier, which gave way under pressure but did not break. It felt warm and vaguely organic, like human skin or the pads on the feet of a cat. Claustrophobia and curiosity drove her forwards, and she pushed harder against the filmy substance which seemed to contain her. Very slowly, a dim sense of understanding emerged within her dulled consciousness, and with it came a stab of panic.

Kelly tore at the barrier with her fingernails. She pushed, she stretched, she clawed.

Finally, a section tore open. Stagnant air flooded her cocoon. Grasping the sides of the tear, she ripped it open wider, forcing the thick, gluey material to give.

She emerged into an unknown but wholly familiar place.

Kelly was huddled on the floor, curled up into a little ball and hugging her knees, like a child practicing the duck-and-cover routine. Long, thin strings of plasm rolled and dripped off of her as the caul fell away. The ruined, skin-like sack she emerged from crumpled around her. Already, the sack seemed to be shriveling down, further suggestion it was alive somehow. Or at least, as alive as this place could be.

Lifting her head, Kelly looked around her through a wave of glossy black hair, her eyes alight with anger, terror, horror. She was trembling so violently she thought she might shake apart. Her own darkened bedroom lay around her, a thin, hazy light filtering in through the window on the far side of the room. A hush lay upon everything, letting her hear a soft sighing sound she associated with traffic on a distant highway or wind in the mountains.

The air in here was stale and warm, yet somehow tense, almost electric. Outside, she could hear a light, musical tinkling in the distance. Wind chimes, stirred in the breeze by an approaching thunderstorm. The thought conjured images from her nightmares, of tornadoes and flooding and black clouds. Not the sort of thing you saw in Manchester , England , but definitely a lurking fear here in the American Midwest.

The problem was, she didn't remember ever having wind chimes here.

Blinking, breathing in the heavy air, Kelly's eyes darted about. The bedroom looked lived in. The bed was messy, the covers drawn back from someone sleeping there. But everything was dingy, heavily covered in dust and in a depressing state of disrepair, much like it had been when she first moved into the house. She watched a large, spindly spider crawling along the wooden floor in front of her, its mottled black and yellow limbs moving lazily, almost in slow motion.

Shivering, Kelly closed her eyes and sought to banish these things from her sight, to push away the Shroud and see the real world again for what it was.

Nothing happened.

Kelly blinked uncomprehendingly, applying her will more forcefully to restore her sight to normal. The Lands of the Dead were not a place she wanted to see now, especially in this dreary, haunted place. She wanted to see light and colors. And Jesse. She was desperately aching to see Jesse again. And get outside, where the air was fresh and cool.

Again, nothing happened.

Horror dawned on the young woman. Memories and realizations slithered back into her mind, like ice sliding down her skin.

She violently thrust them away.

Bolting to her feet, Kelly lost her balance and stumbled backwards slightly, falling onto the bed. A plume of dust rose up around her as she hit, pitching her into a fit of coughing as she waved away the heavy, suffocating cloud. She felt immensely weak and unsteady on her feet, and when she mustered the strength to move again, she took it slowly and with great care.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Kelly glanced around. Things had been rearranged, she noticed with a frown. Someone had come through and cleaned up. None of her books were here. The photograph from her study, of she and Jesse at the Official, was sitting on the nightstand, next to a glass of tepid, stale water and a carton of Jesse's cigarettes. She knew the glass. It was one of Jesse's, but there was a spider web crack running along one side, as if someone had dropped it hard. The sight flooded her with sudden, inexplicable sadness. Hadn't Jesse once told her a story about that glass, while she was unpacking? She couldn't remember.

"Jesse?" she called, her voice weak, "Jesse, are you home? I feel...ill..."

Silence, but for wind chimes.

A chill came over her. Ill. I've been ill.

Frowning, Kelly put a hand to her forehead and tried to think straight. She remembered something about a hospital, doctors performing surgery on her. Pain. Coldness. They'd been trying to repair her, like a piece of broken clockwork. How long had she been sick? What was happening around here?

The feeling of coldness deepened, causing her to shiver, but she banished such thoughts.

"I've been ill and Jesse starts redecorating behind my back," Kelly whispered jokingly to herself, but the humor sounded feeble and nervous in her voice.

"She must have brought me home to recover," Kelly reasoned to herself, half-heartedly.

Coughing again, she tried to clear her throat and call more loudly. "Jesse?"

A loud, angry thumping answered her from the ceiling, like someone beating on the floor upstairs with a broom handle. The noise startled Kelly, who glanced up nervously to try and pinpoint the location of the sound. A thin trickle of dust and pieces of cobwebs fell from the ceiling from the force of the beating. "Jesse?" she asked in a small voice, "Is that you?"

We have no upstairs. That's the attic.

With renewed strength fueled by anxiety and doubt, Kelly slid off the bed and made a circle around the bed, trying to get her bearings. She stopped to glance out the window, wiping away a layer of grime and filth from the glass to get a better look at the world below. Fry Street looked just as dejected as usual, though there was no activity to be seen. There was movement out at the university, people milling about to and from class, some of them scurrying in a great hurry. It was the sky that held Kelly's attention the longest, though. It was grey and ominous promising storms and violence in the afternoon. She felt it in the air.

The wind chimes sounded louder here. They must be downstairs, on the old-fashioned front porch overlooking the street. From the sound of the chimes and the stirring of the bare tree branches outside, it must have been quite windy. Kelly could almost feel a pressure against the window as she touched the glass.

Kelly started to turn when she spotted something out of the corner of her eye. A reflection in the window glass. Turning her head back slightly, she tried to see what it was against the grey light outside. It looked foggy, nebulous, in the room with her. She glanced quickly to the right, scanning the room, but saw nothing. When she looked back, the fog had gone. A smudge in the glass? Their own resident ghost, normally quiet during the day, lurking about somewhere?

The young woman shivered.

Something was wrong. It felt colder in here suddenly.

Shuddering, Kelly rubbed her arms for warmth, looking nervously about the empty bedroom. A sinking feeling went through her, like a chunk of ice going down her throat - hard, painful, cold. The floorboards didn't creak or make a sound as she walked across them.

She made her way downstairs, feeling her way along the narrow, darkened staircase and into the main room. The curtains were drawn against the long window overlooking the porch and front yard, but a soft light filtered through the thick material and around the edges. No one seemed to be home. Everything here was in a similar state of disrepair, the death and darkness of Oblivion creeping into her perceptions from across the Shroud. Again, she tried to clear the taint of death from her sight, but the effort was meek and accomplished nothing.

Despair settled over Kelly as she stood in the empty living room, gazing upon her and Jesse's belongings, covered in dust and the discoloration of time. She'd had dreams like this before. A thousand years could have passed. Mankind might have wiped itself out by plague or warfare. Either way, the world seemed lonely and uninhabited.

The wind chimes continued to sing outside, clearer now.

Trying to shake off the feeling, Kelly went to go out onto the porch. The fresh air would do her good.

Reaching up, she grasped the tarnished deadbolt - though she knew it was really brand new, since she'd bought it from the local Home Depot when she moved in - and as her fingers came upon it, she gave it a firm tug, accustomed to its tightness.

Nothing happened.

Frowning, Kelly pulled harder, trying to force the bolt. It wouldn't give. In fact, no amount of fighting or wrestling with the latch would make it budge an inch. Cursing under her breath, Kelly grabbed hold of the metal knob with both hands and wrenched as hard upon it as she possibly could, straining the muscles in her arms and shoulders in doing so.

Her fingers, slippery with sweat from the effort, finally slipped.

Kelly flailed at the air, trying to catch herself, but fell backwards into a nearby coffee table, striking her shoulder hard. Pain lanced across her shoulder and into the arm, sending a wave of nausea and dizziness through her. She twisted about and collapsed to the floor, landing on a slightly moldering Oriental rug she didn't recognize, grimacing and cradling her throbbing shoulder.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Kelly clutched her hand to her breast as if it were burned or broken, waiting for the sting to go out of her shoulder and arm. She glared at the door for a long minute, breathing in angry gasps while the pain subsided.

"Goddamn it," she whispered.

Climbing to her feet, clutching her wounded arm, Kelly shied away from the table and went back to the front door. She hadn't budged the latch yet either, despite her breathless tugging and pulling. She eyed it warily. The door was a massive thing, solid oak through and through, but she damn well wasn't going to be a prisoner in her own home just because of a fucking door.

Kelly angrily smacked the door with the flat of her hand.

Or she tried. She nearly wrenched her arm out of the socket as her hand met empty air.

Her eyes widening in shock and wonder, Kelly stared at the door, then at her hand.

Kelly lifted her hand again, shaking. Her fingertips came close to the smooth grain of the wood before jerking her hand back slightly, as if expecting an electric shock. Then, tentatively and with a sickening expectation of what would happen, she touched the door in a slow stroke. But her fingers made no contact with the polished wood. Her hand only grasped air, as if the door were no more substantial than dusty sunlight coming in through the window.

She tried again. Nothing.

A tear trickled down her cheek. A third attempt, again futile.

Kelly closed her hand into a fist, dropping it to her side.

She stared at the door insensibly, then shuddered as the coldness of truth wormed through her insides again. Out of habit, her hand came up to finger her father's pocket watch, to clasp the cool metal in her palm as she so often had since he died. But her hand came upon only soft fabric. Blinking, Kelly glanced down. The clothes she was wearing weren't familiar, though they were vaguely in her style. High-collared white blouse, an ornate red and gold vest, black jacket and jeans. The vest had a place for her father's watch, but it wasn't there. A pang of panic went through her. That watch was the only connection she had to her father. How could she have possibly lost it?!

No, it was safe. It had to be safe. Jesse, Steph and the others wouldn't let it get lost.

Would they?

Shuddering, Kelly backed away from the door, falling back to the safety of the living room, where she turned slowly in place, scanning the room in search of...something. The shadows were lengthening on the walls, the air growing bitterly cold against her face and hands. As she came to face the curtained windows, a strong gust of wind buffeted the house, sending the wind chimes into a manic swirl of musical notes. The building rattled under the blow.

The rational part of her mind told her there were gaps in things - in her memory, her awareness, even in her thinking. The rest of her shrank away from such thoughts. The conflict between the two made her queasy and angry, and she closed her eyes, trying to stem a rising tide of madness inside of her.

Growling deep in her throat, Kelly opened her eyes again, swimming with tears. Marching up to the window, she swung her arms wide to draw the curtains back.

They didn't move. She never even felt them in her grasp.

Her voice was a small moan. "No..."

She clawed at the curtains with her fingers, fighting to gain any purchase whatsoever. As the futility of the effort burned itself into her brain, Kelly sank to the hard tile floor, shaking violently. The caul returned to mind then from the locked away portion of her consciousness. The dripping plasm coming off of her when she emerged. The shadow in the window glass. The little changes around the house. The doctors and their torture machines digging into her brain, her spine, in a twisted nightmare realm she knew oh so well.

Her stomach churned.

Hugging herself tightly, Kelly curled into a ball on the living room floor, trying to shut out the dawning horror of understanding. But the barriers of forgetfulness and self-deception were falling away like dominoes, each realization like a nail driven into her skull. Into her heart. A hysterical, sobbing laughter started bubbling out of her as she lay there, convulsing and trying not to scream.

In the end, the screaming won.

Kelly succumbed to the madness for a long time, allowing it to obliterate rational thought and awareness. Days, even weeks, seemed to flit by in a dim, grey blur, like H.G. Wells' time traveler voyaging unknowingly into the distant future. Life happened without her in a headlong rush, leaving her behind in its wake. She was just a memory now. And like all memories, she would eventually fade.

Eventually, the madness rolled away from her like the outgoing tide.

The question burned in her mind as she stirred. How? How did this happen?

She dissected her memories the evening she awoke, sitting in the middle of the living room floor on the unfamiliar rug Jesse must have bought in her absence. They were garbled, as she knew they would be. A bitter, hollow laugh came out of her, though nobody heard it. She was intimately familiar with this side of existence. She'd been living and breathing death all along, since her earliest childhood memories. Hadn't she always expected this to happen? Hadn't she lived with the foreknowledge of her inevitable slide into the forgotten?

There had been an automobile accident, of this she was certain. There had been doctors cracking open bone to connect wires to her brain and electrodes to her spinal cord, but she knew that to be a dream torture foisted upon her by someone else. The sad, solemn faces of Stephen and Jesse swam by in her thoughts, looking down upon her from some immeasurable distance. They had been with her near the end, trying to help her.

But she had still died.

Murderer, she thought darkly, glaring into the night, Whoever the fuck you are, whatever you are, I am going to make you suffer for bringing me back here. For reducing me to this!

A tear ran down her ashen cheek. She bowed her head.

Like all memories...

The details of the accident were hazy at best. The transition through death had stolen much of her last few weeks of life. The older, more familiar memories had more substance, and she clung to them tightly for fear of losing any of them. To say that existence as a ghost was tenuous at best was a laughable understatement. She knew this place well. She'd wandered the darkness of Sheol for centuries once already. She would do so again if need be. But she could not abide the debilitating loss of self, of identity and cohesion, that threatened her soul at every waking moment.

..I will eventually fade.

Focus, she ordered herself tearfully, Focus, god damn you.

Hawthorne . The old spook would have answers for her, if she could bear the sadness and despair of seeing him again as one of his - their - kind. All her mocking and self-righteous barbs toward him amounted to nothing more than guilt here. She'd squandered her life. Wasted precious time on drugs, sex and pointless rage. Jesse was one of the few good things she pulled out of her life, and she couldn't even have her anymore.

Jesse still lived in the house, though. She'd sensed her presence during her long, agonizing dormancy, and even now she could feel her nearby. The smell of the young woman's skin and perfume was faint but heady, a crack in her silent prison that allowed glimpses of the happier times in Kelly's memory. She nursed the guttering flame of her love for the dark-eyed, mischievous young woman. Jesse was still here. The thought brought fresh, burning tears to Kelly's eyes. It gave her some small pittance of hope.

It will fade.

Giving herself a shake, Kelly tried to force her drifting thoughts into some kind of order.

Stephen. More than Hawthorne , he would have answers. And more importantly...

Kelly leapt to her feet as if struck by an electric shock.

Stephen can see and hear me.

How could she have possibly forgotten that?! Stephen had the power of mediumship, just as she once did while living. He used a different terminology for it, but it amounted to the same thing. Not only would Stephen and BTG know what happened to her, but he was a window upon the sunlit world more useful than the handful of meager Arcanoi which lay, rusted, abandoned but still usable, in the dustbin of her memory.

Assuming, of course, that she could leave the house.

She'd known it was a Haunt when she moved in here, though strangely, the house's original occupant had yet to make her presence known, except perhaps for the banging on the bedroom ceiling on that first, bleary morning. Most likely she was avoiding the newcomer. Or perhaps, Kelly thought, she'd simply displaced the sweet, badgering old woman entirely.

Moving about shouldn't be a problem, Kelly thought. At least she hoped so. Though she'd lived here for nearly two years, several months of which were spent with Jesse, Kelly didn't feel particularly bound to the house itself. She hadn't investigated her old Sanctum yet, though she suspected its power would have already dissolved, particularly if Jesse expanded into the room. She'd tried to keep Jesse out of there, away from her library and collection, but...well, she was dead. It wasn't like she needed the space.

Sighing, Kelly covered her face and fought off a wave of despair.

Going upstairs, she looked in on Jesse, sleeping restlessly in their bed. She stirred slightly as Kelly sat on the edge of the bed beside her, brushing a few immaterial fingers against the young woman's cheek. She even mumbled something slurred in her sleep, but she didn't wake. A faint smell of alcohol came off of Jesse's body. It might have been stronger, even overpowering, on her side of the Shroud, but with her senses dulled, Kelly couldn't really tell.

She sat there for a long while, watching her lover sleep.

Eventually, she gathered the wool of her thoughts together and forced herself to start moving again. Kelly gave the house a once over before she left. The futility of it made her want to laugh or cry, since even if there was some danger to Jesse there was precious little she could do to protect her in this state. Still, only when she'd successfully reassured herself that Jesse was safe - for the time being, at least - did she go back to the front door.

It sat there, impervious and immobile.

It seemed absurd that a simple door could imprison her within the house so easily, but she lacked the strength and the knowledge to effectively project her will across the Shroud. She, who'd grown so accustomed to working magick and bending reality to her wishes. There were ways around this obstacle, of course, but she was too weak and she dared not try to use the half-remembered knowledge she possessed. At least, not yet. Desperation was always a great motivator, particularly here.

Well, there's one way to do it.

Glancing over at the coffee table, Kelly sighed and squatted down beside it. "Kelly Brooke," she whispered, "Welcome back to the fold of masochism. We knew you'd be back..."

Fixing a grimace, she slammed the palm of her hand into the corner of the table.

Pain lit up the imaginary nerves along her arm as the sharp edge punctured her ectoplasmic corpus. Kelly growled as a ripple of dizziness flushed through her again, concentrating her thoughts on ignoring the pain. As a ghost, she knew most everything - pain included - existed only in her mind, because she expected and desired it after years spent amongst the living. She looked like Kelly Brooke because she believed she should. She felt pain because it was expected with injury. Granted, it wasn't all in her head. Having pieces of your soul ripped away by a solid oak wedge hurt like fuck regardless of your plane of existence.

She was reminded suddenly of a vehement argument between herself and Lanthinel, over whether wraiths' existence and suffering had any real value or not. Ghosts, by many accounts, were only echoes of the person they once were. At best, they were half-people, the earthly aspect of their soul clinging to the mortal world in desperation against dying. Lanth thought nothing of slaughtering the ghosts in the Egyptian desert, slashing away their corpus and sending them to Oblivion. They weren't really people, after all. And it's not like he would ever suffer the indignity of Sheol.

The memory made her angry and sick at heart, but she forced herself to pull out of it. Sinking into memories was dangerous. She had no substance, no biological or mental connection to the rhythms of life in the real world, and as such time seemed to flash by with frightening speed when she wasn't paying attention. It was like living inside a dream.

"Echo my ass," Kelly muttered as she climbed to her feet.

Now insubstantial, she pushed herself through the front door as quickly as possible. It had about as much solidity to her now as the air itself, but the sensation of passing through a material object still unnerved her greatly. She felt a slight drag on her corpus as she stepped out onto the front porch, as if part of her insisted there should be resistance to her passage. One simply shouldn't be able to walk through a solid oak door.

Kelly's relief at being outside soon faded. There was a pall over everything, the heavy sky shone a pale, sickly light onto the world around her. The sun wasn't visible, only a ceiling of menacing clouds the color of bruises, which may or may not have really existed. The feeling of an approaching thunderstorm lingered in the air, but there wasn't a breath of wind. An eerie calmness covered the decaying city street.

Early morning had come while she was inside the house. A sigh worked its way out of her. How long had she wasted, thinking about Lanthinel and Egypt ?

The wind chimes were silent.

Kelly glanced over to her right. They hung from a wire at the far end of the porch, near where a round table and chairs had been set up, presided over by a fine antique rocking chair she used to keep in her study. The chimes were silver and gleaming, one of the few things seemingly untouched by Oblivion's taint, and in the middle hung a yin and yang emblem. This brought a faint smile to her lips. Jesse must have purchased it while thinking of her.

Walking over, Kelly brushed her fingers through the chimes to no effect. Not a single chime stirred under her touch, as she expected. Not even a breath of wind from her passing.

"Tinkle, tinkle," she sighed.

Putting her hands in her coat pockets, Kelly left the house and started walking. Activity was light this early in the morning. A few cars cruised by, driven by sleepy young men and women on their way to work or school. The university was already coming to life. As she walked along, keeping a wary eye out for automobiles and other annoyances, she could pretend this was but a normal morning. She obeyed the pedestrian signals and crosswalks, trying to ignore the blank stares of people in their cars, peering through her. Impatient for the light to change when nobody was even walking by.

Kelly also kept an eye out for other wraiths and spectres. So long as she avoided Cement City , she thought she would be safe enough. Most of the demons and harassing ghosts hung about there, but that wasn't always the case. Besides, she still had plenty of enemies over here, though most of them were either in Stygia or half a world away. Not that space had any more meaning to the dead than time. She had no idea who her killer was and what enemies she might have that she didn't know about. But then, traveling through Sheol always involved some risk.

It was a long walk to Stephen and Jolie's house.

Kelly knew the house was warded, though not to what extent. Getting inside was something she'd worry about when she arrived. If nothing else, there was BTG, and if she had to she could camp out on the lawn until someone noticed her. However long that might take. A bitter laugh came out of her, sounding flat to her own ears. It was now an adventure just getting people to notice her. That was something she'd never had trouble with before.

Her feet fell into familiar grooves. She realized halfway there that she was following her old route when walking the city, past the Grind where she got her lattes and bagels every morning on her way to work. Through the university grounds to admire and say hello to the students along the way. She even lapsed deep into thought like she normally did, watching one foot fall in front of the other, oblivious to the goings on around her. It was a meandering route, and Kelly struggled against the urge to stop off at her normal waypoints out of habit. A shit load of good coffee and bread was going to do her now.

God, it's hard to concentrate.

"Welcome to the neighborhood, Kelly Brooke," a laconic voice said.

Kelly glanced up, hair falling across her cheek.

She was at the far edge of the UNT campus, in the shadow of two tall buildings whose names she couldn't recall. A wiry, dark-skinned man stood at the other end of the artificial canyon, dressed in blue jeans, a tight burgundy tee shirt and a plaid overshirt with the sleeves rolled up. From head to toe he was marked with strange symbols, some of which she recognized from the Order of Hermes, others likely of his own invention. His eyes were a solid, inky black, without whites or irises, and they gleamed as he smiled slyly at her. Kelly recognized both the symbols and the darkened eyes as marks of prolonged Arcanoi use.

"Nehru?" she asked hesitantly.

Kelly knew him. He was recently dead, a college student of Indian descent whom she'd tried to help while she was alive. One of the few intelligent and coherent ghosts amongst the maddened spirits wandering the streets of Denton . Normally a passionate, brilliant young man, there was something dark in his manner now. Almost angry.

"I was beginning to wonder if you were a wraith or just a phantom," the man said dryly, his voice laced with grim humor, "It gets hard to tell the difference sometimes. You've walked this way a hundred times since you got here, I bet. You've soaked into the place. No wonder you're walking here now. Sucks to be dead, doesn't it? Hard to break old habits."

Kelly looked down and away, wounded.

"Hey, don't take it so personally," he admonished more gently, walking up to her.

Some impassioned speech about death, loss and damnation sprang to mind, but she remained silent. What good was it to argue with another ghost? He knew just as well as she the pain and despondency involved. Hadn't she tried to guide him through it?

"You have great timing, though, Kelly," Nehru told her, "Someone came through here several weeks ago, maybe a month or two now, harvesting. A lot of us got taken. At least those of us who remember who we are. Most of the phantoms got left alone. Some people tried to fight back, but it didn't do any good. Whoever it was was too strong. Probably some mortal mage or spectre looking to cause someone trouble in the Skinlands."

"Where's Hawthorne ?" Kelly asked.

Nehru shook his head, a thin smile crossing his face. "I don't know. I heard he was someone's errand boy for a while, but he's dropped out of sight. Nobody knows where he is, and nobody really cares. He was a prick anyway. Hopefully whoever's been sweeping the city got him, too."

" Hawthorne was a friend of mine," Kelly countered weakly.

"Yeah, Hawthorne was everybody's friend," Nehru remarked. "So what's it like, oh Great and Powerful Oz, to be down here with us peons?"

Kelly closed her eyes. Her voice was small, but gathered strength in indignation as she spoke. "Don't mock me, Nehru. I've been here before. I wandered this side of Hell for centuries before you were even born. But if you must know, it hurts. Like it hurts for everybody, having your whole life stripped from you. Show a little fucking compassion, why don't you? I was murdered, just like you were, only more deliberately."

"Not meaning to downplay your suffering, Kelly," Nehru smiled tightly, "Just curious."

"You know how it feels," she whispered.

Nehru smirked. "Must really eat you up inside, though, being back here. You never really had a life of your own now, did you? You've had one foot in the grave since the beginning, even though you tried to fight it. And to be stripped of sorcery and the love of a good woman. I don't normally approve of that sort of thing, but it's the only happiness you had, wasn't it, Kelly?"

"Don't push me," Kelly growled.

"Or what?" Nehru chuckled, "You're weak. You're pissed off and hurting, but you're still weak. I can see it. You're lucky the Legions don't have a presence here or you might've been sold into slavery or turned into an ashtray by now. Times are tough back in Metropolis. They need all the souls they can get, and the market is booming. Hell, I could bring you in myself, I figure, if I really wanted to."

Kelly glared at him. "You're threatening me?"

"Just pointing out your weakness, honey," Nehru shrugged.

"Piece of advice," he added, "Don't hold on too tight. Yeah, I'm sure you'll say you know that already, but I can see in your eyes you still don't want to admit you're gone. The longer you do that, the weaker you'll get. And stay in Denton , if you know what's good for you. Stygia's a madhouse. No sane person, or ghost, goes to that hell hole." A chuckle. "And us without UN peacekeepers. Even dead ones."

"I'll keep it in mind," Kelly frowned.

"You'll do what you want," Nehru remarked sarcastically, "But hey, it's your soul."

Eyeing the ghost warily, Kelly nodded. "Tell me something, Nehru. What happened to you? You're different than I remember."

For the first time, the man exhibited some genuine emotion. He shuffled his feet and looked away, and when he spoke his voice was quiet and tinged with sadness and anger, the most common passions of the Restless. "I lost a lot of friends to the harvesting," he told her, "There doesn't seem to be much point to anything anymore. You were the only person I knew who tried to help me, and now you're just as fucked up as I am. Maybe more so. I dunno. I don't care anymore. I'm holding out because I'm used to trying. Doesn’t seen worth it now. "

"I'm sorry, Nehru," she murmured, "I tried my best."

He glared at her, but quickly wiped the expression from his face. "Liar. You forgot. But I'll forgive you. We're all going to Hell anyway."

With that, Nehru walked brushed past her and continued on his way.

"Watch out for your Shadow," he called back over his shoulder, "It's stronger than you think. I've seen it in your eyes. And watch out for the red and the black. That's your enemy, and you’re wearing his colors."

Kelly turned to question him further, but he was gone.

There are certain inevitabilities about death.

You lose hold of the physical world and its cycles. Without the need to breathe, eat or sleep, you're a being of pure consciousness. A consciousness with no grounding the living world, free to roam and wander through emotions and memories of the past. Without physical sensations, your mind becomes caught up in a swirl of thoughts and imagined experiences. All that is left of you is a faltering, slowly fading ember of awareness roaming the world, gradually coming apart from itself. Concentration and focus are everything. Without passions, your dissolution is close at hand. You continue to exist only as long as you can hold on to feelings, memories and connections.

The same is true in reverse. The mortal world loses hold of you just as quickly, if not quicker. Emotions fade, memories wane. Even a parent or lover, without the object of their affection close at hand - or even the potential for contact with that person - will eventually find their feelings weakening. Memory of the lost person becomes spotty and doubtful. After a while, if you don't look at a photograph or video once in a while, you forget what the person really looked like. What their voice sounded like. Their reality grows dim as you can no longer conceive of that person being connected to your life.

This forgetting is what wraiths fight every moment of their existence.

Like all memories, I will eventually fade.

Some ghosts last longer than others. Whatever might have become of him now, Hawthorne held on for fifty years, maintaining the same churlish personality and self-interest he had when he was alive. Others, like the shell-shocked spirits Kelly occasionally saw flitting through the Official, were too far gone. They repeat the same conversations and actions they did before they died, unaware that the world has changed around them. They aree echoes of the people they once were, a looped video recording of a living person, played until the tape frays and snaps. Even they have some consciousness to them, Kelly knew, but it is thin, like the supposed atmosphere of Mars. They see and hear only what they wanted to see, and they do not really believe they are dead.

Nehru, if he kept up his current philosophy, would become one of those.

Even before the automobile accident, Kelly knew the ghostly population of Denton had thinned. Some had fled to other Necropoli, others to Stygia. Many others were hiding, taking more care with their movements than usual. Something had frightened them. Only the shades and Oblivion-tainted spirits in Cement City prowled as usual. Quite a large number of them, as Hawthorne had tried to tell her before she died, had been swept up by whatever force came through the city, devouring or collecting souls. The mood of the city was ominous - indeed, Kelly could feel the Tempest battering against Sheol from the inside - but the threat seemed to have dissipated or moved on. She saw nothing of obvious danger.

The third inevitability of death was being ignored.

Kelly walked the streets with her head bowed and her hands in the unfamiliar jacket's pockets, glancing upwards here and there to get her bearings and look at the people going about their daily lives across the Shroud. She stood in a crowd of goth college students on a street corner. She walked between two friends having a vehement argument over war and oil. She waved half-heartedly to a little girl waiting at a bus stop. None of them saw her. Their eyes never even flicked across them with deliberate indifference. She simply didn't register. She didn't exist.

This was expected, but it was still excruciating. Human beings, and ghosts, hate nothing more than to be ignored and forgotten.

Eventually, she stood on the pleasant, freshly mowed lawn of Steph and Jolie's lovely two-story house, with the smaller guest house lurking in its shadow. The taint of death was greatly lessened here, though by no means gone. It infected the guest house especially, and Kelly could sense a trail of pain and suffering leading in its direction. The echo of Katherine's presence, no doubt. Stephen never spoke much about it to her, but she could sense from the shadows lurking in the guest house's vicinity that someone had died in there. Brutally. Kelly shuddered at the thought of Katherine bringing victims to Steph's home, to feed.

Stephen. She ached to think of him. Kelly had known Katherine was dangerous and unstable from the very beginning - what vampire wasn't? - but Steph had tried to help her anyway, the same way he tried to help Andrew. And now he'd lost her as well.

I'm right here, part of her objected, I'm still real.

Like all memories...

Shoving off a wave of sadness, Kelly ran her fingers up into her long, black hair and tried to collect herself, growling in irritation with her scattered thoughts. Stephen could help her. Or, at least, he would have answers for her. If she could force the disparate parts of her mind to function as a coherent whole long enough to speak with him rationally. In the meanwhile, time was slipping by. The hazy, overcast sky betrayed nothing as to the time, but it was slightly brighter. Almost noon perhaps, though that merely a guess. If she couldn't find Steph here she would simply walk to BTG nearby.

2

There was a noisy jangle and a thunk as the front door unlocked.

It creaked softly as the young man pushed the door open and stepped inside the old house, securing it behind him as an afterthought. Sunlight fell in a thin, dust sprinkled curtain across the living room, peeking through a gap in the velvet drapes covering the long window. His footfalls clocked loudly against the polished wooden floor as he walked farther into the room, then cut off as he stepped onto the oriental rug in the center.

Stephen glanced around.

It was cold inside the house, seemingly colder than the chilly February day outside, and the air felt heavy and oppressive. Perfect mood for a haunted house, really. Frowning, Steph drew back the curtains to let more light in, grimacing slightly as the room brightened. It did a great deal to lift the mood of the room, sunshine gleaming on the brass and lovingly polished wood décor. A faint smile crossed his face. Jesse, in perfect contrast to her rough and tumble demeanor, had placed a smattering of flowers and plants throughout the room. Even with her light touch, the room maintained the casual Victorian air he remembered.

"Kelly?" he called, his voice sounding flat in the large room, "Are you here?"

Silence.

Jesse was out of town this week, visiting her parents in Silver City , New Mexico , and the house had been left 'empty' since she departed on Monday. Kelly hadn't made an appearance since before that, and while her visits were irregular, they were usually more frequent. He was, after all, her most common link to the world of the living.

Walking in a slow circle around the room, Stephen paused at the mantle, scanning the photographs there with a soft smile. A picture of Kelly and Jesse at the Official, the club where they met. Pictures of their families and relatives. His eyes settled on a portrait he'd seen before in Kelly's office at BTG. Her father, Douglas Brooke. A kind, thoughtful and slightly sad-looking man, dressed in a three-piece suit, his gold pocket watch prominently displayed. Steph nodded to him slightly out of respect. From what he knew, the elder Brooke had been an attentive and loving father, not to mention very English. He influenced Kelly more than anyone else in her life, and his loss had been one of many tragedies for her.

Stephen heard the sobbing then, faint and coming from upstairs.

His voice was soft as he lifted his gaze toward the staircase. "Kelly?"

The feminine weeping grew quieter but did not abate entirely. Sighing, he ran a hand over his long hair and headed upstairs in search of her. A shaft of sunlight penetrated the darkness above the staircase, pouring in through the upstairs bedroom, and he lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the glare as he reached the landing.

Kelly lay in bed, atop the neatly drawn, old-fashioned quilt which covered it. She was halfway curled into a ball and crying, but the sound remained faint. Indeed, Kelly was faint, barely visible in fact. The pattern of the quilt clearly showed through her translucent form. Dust motes swirled in the air at his arrival, floating through the outline of her slender figure. As he watched, she seemed to fade in and out slightly in time with her ragged breathing.

"Kelly," he murmured gently.

She didn't respond, continuing to shimmer hazily. As he watched, she seemed to virtually disappear from sight, though the tremulous sound of her weeping remained in the air at a whisper's loudness. She came back into focus somewhat after a few moments, but dimmer than she had been when he first walked in. His presence affected how substantial she was, Steph knew. Kelly was aware of him, at least in an unconscious way.

Sighing, Steph circled around the bed and knelt down beside her. The past several months had been too frustrating and painful - for all of them, really. He was emotionally exhausted, but he still didn't care to see anyone suffer further, especially Kelly. Thus far her grip on the world had proven surprisingly strong, and he wanted to keep it that way.

Chanting under his breath, he took a minute to work a bit of magic. He then reached out and brushed a transparent lock of glossy black hair back from Kelly's face. She started and opened her eyes, jarred back to reality by the physical contact, so rare for wraiths. Almost immediately upon recognizing him, color and substantiality flooded back into her appearance, giving her the illusion of solidness. Though she was quite solid to him, for now. She lifted her head slightly, and the plasmic tears on her cheeks melted back into the skin, reabsorbed.

"Steph," she whispered.

Her voice strengthened as she focused on him. "What's wrong?"

Stephen laughed faintly at the question, gently smoothing the long hair back from her face. Her eyelids drooped under his touch, falling into the simple sensation. Her 'skin' was very cool under his fingertips, and much paler than when she was alive. He kept his touch light, slightly afraid of hurting her somehow, and drew back slightly to meet her gaze. Dark, glittering eyes stared back at him, widening as his touch withdrew.

"A lot of things," he conceded, leaning back to sit against the wall, "But nothing pressing right now. I haven't seen you for nearly a week, and I wanted to check on you."

"A week?" she echoed, brow furrowing, "When is it?"

"February 21^st," Steph promptly replied. This was routine by now.

Kelly considered this and frowned. "When did Jesse leave? Is she back?"

"No," he shook his head, "She left on Monday. Today's Friday. She won't be back until next Tuesday, remember?"

"Oh, yes," Kelly murmured, sighing.

"You were in a Fugue," Stephen told her, "I couldn't wake you."

Nodding wearily, Kelly propped herself up into a sitting position. The bed did not creak under her weight like it used to, nor was the quilt wrinkled from her presence, but in every other way she looked perfectly real to Steph. She glanced away from him for a moment, her eyes flitting around the room as she reoriented herself to her surroundings. Stephen thought he detected the faint scent of lavender, but whether it was a remnant in the room or an echo of her presence he couldn't be sure. Jesse's fragrances, mostly honeysuckle and chemical perfumes, buried the subtler smell. Returning to his feet with a small, tired sigh, Steph sat on the end of the bed, studying her in silence.

There was a long moment, during which Kelly seemed to lapse.

"I was tired," she said suddenly, turning back to him with a sheepish smile, "Jesse had just left for the airport. I missed her badly...I still miss her..." Hesitating, she took a deep breath to steady herself. "I must have gotten lost somewhere in between. I was going to visit you, though. I'm sorry."

"No worries," Steph smiled softly, "It's the first time she's been away..."

The words first time hung in the air between them.

"Tell me about your father," he said gently, hoping to change the subject. Kelly loved Jesse just as much now as she did when she was alive, if not more so, and she clung tightly to the memories of their time together. Neither of them knew how long Jesse would stay here, so close to painful memories, but they understood she would eventually move on with her life. Still, any distance between them troubled her, and Steph didn't want to hurt her. They'd all endured enough loss and suffering, and been made all too aware of mortality.

Kelly grew pensive, turning to him with still, dark eyes. "Why?"

"Just curious," he replied quietly, "You never talked much about him, but I know the two of you were very close."

A mixture of sadness and regret welled up in her eyes then, and it seemed to radiate off of her like heat. But then her gaze focused on the sad softness in his eyes. Though outwardly neutral, there was a weary, despondent cast to his expression, and he didn't look to have slept well. His eyes were bloodshot and tired, but they reflected much the same emotions she felt. Love, regret, uncertainty. Everything that had happened recently wore heavily on him. Kelly calmed somewhat, and she nodded slowly. "What do you want to know?"

Steph shrugged, running a hand through his long, black hair. "Anything. I just want to talk to you for a while."

Reaching out from habit, Kelly moved to brush a stray hair out of his eyes but stopped short, her fingers curling back into a loose ball out of frustration. Smiling faintly, he gingerly clasped her wrist and brushed her fingers against his forehead, demonstrating that she was still solid to him - for now. Taking a deep breath, Kelly smoothed his hair back, enjoying the realness of the sensation of her fingers moving through his hair. Steph closed his eyes under her touch. His tone was gentle. "So tell me."

"Alright," she whispered, withdrawing her hand.

She considered his request for a few moments, pouring over the shambles of her memory in search of something to say. Stephen watched quietly, mindful not to let her wander off too far, a fond smile creeping onto his lips. He wondered distantly whether Kelly knew how much he cared about her. Of everyone he knew, she understood his ideas and personality the best, and he had shared things with her none of the others would have truly appreciated. He'd trusted her enough to let her spend time in his own body, an idea which seemed more useful now that her immaterial state threatened her existence. Turning, he reclined against the pillows and backboard, waiting for her to answer.

"One evening, when I was fourteen," she murmured, "I went upstairs to my parents bedroom. They were planning on going out to dinner, and my older sister, Erin, was going to watch us. My mother was putting on her perfume and fixing her makeup in the mirror, and my father was putting his coat on. I heard them laughing from downstairs." She gave him a small smile. "That didn't happen very often in my house."

Steph nodded and smiled, listening. His eyes were closed again.

"My mother was usually upset with me over something," Kelly continued, "And they got into it fairly often because of it. Dad always tried to protect me from her. He knew I wasn't like Erin and Tricia. I was too much like him to follow the rules or stay out of trouble very often." She laughed softly, under her breath. "But they were laughing that night. 'I don't plan on growing old gracefully', my father was laughing, 'What a silly idea. If I have to grow old at all I'll do it kicking and screaming, thank you.'"

"My father was smiling, pleased with himself for making the joke, though I think he actually believed in what he said. He was definitely a product of the Sixties, you see. It never occurred to him that he should ever slow down or allow himself to become too comfortable. Like a lot of people, he wanted to act young his entire life, rather than lose touch with the world as he grew older. I admired him for this." Kelly bowed her head, a chink of sunlight from the window failing to light upon her skin. Instead, it fell on the far wall, unaware of her intrusion. "But then, I admired my father in many ways."

"He sounds like a cool person," Steph agreed. His voice feather soft.

"My father came the closest to understanding me," Kelly commented, "That is, until I met you, of course."

The young man didn't open his eyes, but he smiled softly. For once, he didn't argue.

Kelly watched Stephen for a moment, sensing his gradual drift into sleep. Already, there was a flitting of images, feelings and ideas dancing about him, his drowsy mind echoing the things she said. She felt his affection for her, as well as the bottomless well of his regret, as if they were her own emotions. The two of them were connected, she knew, in more ways than one. They were a pack of two, sharing Uktena, whose presence Kelly felt lurking in the back of her mind, strangely comforting. Steph's feelings, reflected within her own heart, made her stronger, and her voice was more steady when she managed to speak again.

"I can't imagine the amount of anxiety and grief I caused my father. I was aware of Sheol from the beginning, and as a child I didn't know the things I saw weren't 'real'. I'd slip back and forth into spirit sight, and the things I saw terrified and worried me. I couldn't separate the two worlds. Also, there were wraiths, and at least one spectre, which came to me. A few of them were kind, appearing only rarely, but I think they tried to protect me as best they could. They told me the strangest things about themselves and about me. Or at least the person they remembered, that I had been. I've forgotten most of it. So I was not only confused and scared out of my mind half the time, but strange things followed me everywhere."

"At first, I'm sure my father thought I was acting out the things I read in his books. Dad never talked down to me. He respected my intelligence, and he used to spend hours teaching me about various philosophies and ideas. He wanted me to have an open mind. I fell in love with his stories, so he let me ransack his library whenever I wanted. In the end, it was dad's familiarity with science fiction and 'tales of the supernatural' which held us together. It was the language we communicated in. Without that trust and understanding, I would've been alone."

"Several of the wraiths used to skinride me," she continued in the slightly ashamed tone of someone who feels guilty for being abused, "I would wake up in the strangest of places, covered in cuts and scratches, with no idea of what I'd been doing. Most of what I got blamed for was petty, though I'm sure there were many other things which no one discovered. As I got older and began to understand what was happening to me, I was better able to resist, and things quieted down some. But by then I'd already earned my mother's ire, and she never let me forget it. My father must have felt helpless to deal with me, but he never let it show. He always protected me and listened to the wild stories I had to tell, and he let me get away with a lot of things on the side simply so I wouldn't feel like such a prisoner."

"At first, he repeated to mum what I'd told him, about ghosts and devils and the like. That's how I ended up in a psychiatrist's office the first time, and ended up on medication. I hated those fucking pills. They made me feel clumsy and stupid, and everybody already thought I was a freak or a disturbed child, so I avoided taking them whenever I could. My father knew how unhappy I was and he never told my mother any of my stories again. He still listened, of course. As long as we could talk, we were still connected. Eventually, when I was a teenager, I learned to keep quiet and pretend to be normal, so I could get taken off of the pills."

"I deadened myself," Kelly sighed, "And retreated from the world. For a time, I stopped seeing wraiths and Sheol. But I'm ashamed to admit a lot of the things I did. Unconsciously repeating things I'd done while being ridden, and expanding upon them. At least I was a typical troubled teenager, instead of a freak. But that's when my father and I drifted apart." She laughed softly. "He thought I was mentally ill, but he could deal with that so long as we had our trust, our common language. When I fell into drugs, alcohol, sex...the shit of life, we could no longer relate to each other..."

Her voice trailing off, Kelly glanced over at Steph.

He was asleep, but not dreaming. Just dozing.

The air was colder around them, Stephen's breath fogging ever so slightly with his slow breathing. Shivering, Kelly tried to clear her thoughts and force herself to focus on the real world again. It was late afternoon outside, and her former bedroom was in twilight. Time must have flashed by during her ramble, her mind wandering through the past, and the temperature of the room reflected the sadness and self-loathing she'd tried to keep out of her voice. She'd noticed that the strength of the emotions emphasized her presence here in the house. It was her Haunt, after all, and the Shroud was thin enough here that her presence bled into the living world. Kelly concentrated on shedding the dark thoughts, despite how much more real they made her feel.

The bedroom gradually warmed.

Kelly still felt cold, of course. As always.

Stephen slept more easily now, the shadow of her sadness having passed from him. He looked ill to her eyes, though. More so than most mortals across the Shroud. Depression wasn't a word Steph used to describe himself, but it was still etched on his face. Sleeplessness, grief and frustration all wore heavily on him, and Kelly was loathe to disturb his rest.

It was lonely watching him sleep, though. Like the long nights spent sitting on the bed beside Jesse, wishing to make herself known to the troubled young woman. Wishing she were flesh and blood instead of this insubstantial echo of her former self. Somehow, Kelly's mind never wandered during the night, nor did time dance by in the blink of an eye, as it often did during the day. She was too consumed with on her own longings at night, her concentration resolutely fixed on the woman she loved, who could have been a million miles away. Or long dead, for that matter.

How long would it be until Jesse's feelings for her faded? Until she left her? Like everyone in her life eventually did. If she couldn't hold onto them when she was alive, how could she now? What would she do then, without Jesse's love holding her here? Sink into the leather chair downstairs, curl up into a ball, and hide from herself and the world the way she used to in her father's study? How long before she was a thin and mindless afterimage of herself?

Like all memories...

Shut up, Kelly ordered herself angrily, squeezing her eyes shut, Just stop it.

A warm hand touched hers. "Kelly."

Stephen was awake and sitting up again, looking at her with concern. The bedroom was dark. A glance out the window confirmed that it was nighttime. What passed for the sun in the twilight realm of Sheol had set. Time slipping through her fingers ever faster.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, smiling wanly, "I drifted off while you were sleeping. I didn't want to wake you."

"You should have," Stephen sighed, a bit irritated with himself, "I came over here to keep you company, not fall asleep on you..."

Shaking her head, Kelly smiled. "You needed the rest."