“You mean you’re taking away ten years.” Howard said no, he had it right. “I don’t understand. Why would adding ten years to my…death be that much of a hardship? I love it here.”
“You do now. But in a few hundred years you’re going to be bored. And bored ghosts get their asses zapped. You don’t want to be zapped. Trust me, it’s painful and sometimes you can’t return from it. There’s this guy on the other side…he is good, damned good, and he’ll put you in a world of hurt if you fuck up. Which I have no doubt that you’re going to do.” Howard wandered around the room as he continued. “I’d suggest that you move out of here. In a few months they’ll come in and take all your crap away and box it up and set it on the curb. There will be an auction, people will pay a whole lot less for your shit than you paid for it, and that will piss you off. When you get that way, you screw up and then things go badly for you. Trust me, move on now.”
“I don’t get this at all. None of this is making a bit of sense, you know? I’m told I’m dead, yet you and that other man can talk to me. You add ten years onto my life…death. Okay, what the hell am I supposed to do with myself for the next few months? I have to work.” Howard just stared at him. “This realm or whatever it’s called, I can just hang around here and do nothing? Why the hell would I want to do that?”
“You were murdered, right? Okay, let me give you the quick version. You were murdered, more than likely about to do something—or you have done something—that makes it so no one came to collect you. Happens more than you know. Anyway, you were murdered and now because you are a shithole, you have to be here. When you’ve done whatever it is you need to do to fix it, or you get your ass zapped, you can move on.” Joel asked him what that might be. “I don’t know. Damn it. Why is it that I have to take care of the idiots?”
When he suddenly disappeared, Joel just sat there. He knew less now than he did before, but one thing that did stick out in his mind was the selling of his things. That wasn’t going to happen. Not so long as he was…well, dead. He started to laugh and then got up to look around. There had to be something he could do. Anything.
Going to the kitchen again, he found it empty, and it was dark in the large room. The clock on the microwave said it was four o’clock. Joel had no idea what time of the day that was, and looked around for something, anything to help him out. He’d been dead for one day, and he was already going stir crazy.
“It will only get worse as you go on. Time has a way of making you crazy when there is nothing to do.” He turned and looked at the ghost standing there. This man was older and dressed as if he’d had a bit of money before he’d died. “I’m not here to help you in any way. Just here to give you this. It’s a handbook, I guess you could say.”
Joel looked at the thin, tiny book. “There’s not a lot of information in that, I’m guessing. And what do you mean, I’ll have nothing to do? I have plenty to do. Making money is my business, and I have a woman to find. She’s going to be my wife. I’ve decided that this is all a bad dream and I’m going to wake up from it.”
“You were killed. You were going to hurt someone, and one of our kind stepped in and knocked you out of the way. We can do that, protect what we left behind.” Joel wondered if the man at the house had gotten into trouble for killing him and doubted it. Things like that never worked out for him. But the man in front of him continued. “Time is weird with the dead. A minute can seem like a lifetime. Less really when you’re not doing anything productive. But when you’re working, helping out, time has a way of going quickly. Your time will also be shortened should you want to leave here.”
“And what if I don’t want to leave here? What if I want to go on as I did before? Living my life the way I want to.” The man shook his head. “I should get something for being killed. I had my whole life ahead of me.”
The man nodded to the book. “It will answer questions as you put them to it. Say you want to know the date, as you’ve been trying to figure out, then it will tell you. If you want to travel, which you can do, it will tell you that as well. Some things it will answer, others it won’t. It’s like that.”
“So you’re here to give me a book that may or may not help me.” The man nodded. “And the other, me wanting to live my life like I had before, I suppose you’re going to tell me that that’s not going to happen either? I’m telling you right now, I am Joel Delaney, and I make things work for me.”