Erica Lindquist & Aron Christensen

 

The drive back was quiet. Sam considered turning on the radio, but the stuff that passed for music these days was rough, crass shouting about drugs, blood and sex. Even the oldie stations no longer played the songs that Sam knew.

So he drove in silence.

It was getting late. The sun sank down behind the city’s angular skyline, setting the clouds afire with color. At least, Sam assumed that the pale streaks across the heavens were colorful… Looking out at the world through his color blind rented eyes was like staring at old photographs.

Not an unfitting analogy, Sam thought. His entire life was like a series of outdated snapshots. Dusty, forgotten and relegated to bottom-shelf scrapbooks in this modern age.

The drive took only half an hour, and then Sam was pulling into the sunken parking lot and riding the elevator up to the loft apartment that he could never think of as home. Sam knew the right key by feel, but when he twisted it in the lock and stepped inside, there was no feeling of comfort or relief at his return.

Sam flipped the lights on and sank down on the stylish white futon. A newspaper lay on the glass-topped coffee table. Sam considered pouring himself a cup of wine and reading it, but what was the point? He would not be able to taste the wine, and the news would be inevitably depressing.

He went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face and scrubbed at his cheeks with the clean white towel. Sam stopped, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

It wasn’t like him to brood like this. Sam Trent was a soldier, or he had been during the Second World War He did as he was ordered, fought in defense of innocent lives. It was a simple life. A good life. When the war was over, Sam had not wanted to give it up. So he joined the police force. It seemed like a good way to keep fighting for those who could not fight for themselves.

That was a long time ago, before the ghosts. Sam grimaced at his reflection, at the face he wore but which was not his own. That was before he was murdered.

But his own death was long ago now, before Arphallo was even born. Sam had only struggled up to the Light fifteen years ago, after twenty-eight years of… nothing. Not even the Darkness. For most ghosts, if they did not return within a few weeks, they were gone. Just gone, forever swallowed into Emptiness.

Not for the first time, Sam wondered if his unusual absence had… distorted him, somehow. He licked his dripping lips. He could feel the water, wet and cold, but could not taste it. Did water have a taste? Sam wasn’t sure anymore.

Most ghosts enjoyed the full range of their hosts’ senses. Touch and smell and taste… They leapt at the chance to enjoy worldly pleasure once more, from food to sex to drugs. But Sam’s senses were dulled, somehow blunted. The whole world was a movie that he watched from the back row of a darkened theater.

No, Sam reminded himself sternly. That wasn’t true. He was a cop, and a good one. He helped people every day, living and dead. Being a ghost meant that the exorcism spells and rituals no longer worked at Sam’s command, but that made his expertise no less valuable.

I was one of the first police exorcists in the world, damn it!

Sam stared into his host body’s dark eyes. The biography provided by his lawyer said that they were brown, though the biography mentioned nothing of color blindness. Someone had not been as careful as they should have been.

Brown eyes. Sometimes, Sam thought about asking Arphallo about it. About his eyes, about his strange lack of senses…

 

 

Arphallo Sirus was a talented and often brilliant exorcist. He knew instinctively many of the things that Sam did not. It was not simply his more recent, more modern education in the Dark arts. Arphallo was young for an exorcist, a rank not usually achieved until about age thirty. Arphallo was still three years shy of that, but well deserving of his duties.

As he always did, Sam decided against bringing the problem to Arph. His partner’s youth was its own issue. Arphallo had joined the police right out of college, without any other sort of real-world experience under his belt. As a result, Arphallo was prone to floundering, letting himself drown in the work. He had no ability to maintain any kind of detachment. Perversely, it often made the job more difficult. The young exorcist was irritable and snappish with witnesses, or shy and withdrawn from fellow officers.

No, Arph had his own problems. Adding to them would help no one.

Sam nodded to himself in the mirror. It was a modern one, without silver in the reflective backing. Sam could see only his host’s face, without even a faint shadow of his own features. Sam ran his hand along his cheek. It was smooth, young. Younger even than Arphallo and thinner than Sam had ever been, even during his trimmest army days.

And handsome, Sam admitted, in a wan and ethereal sort of way. It was a pity that he could feel so little in this body. How many years since Sam enjoyed a woman’s touch? Not since his breathing days?

Sam returned to the living room. Where would he take a woman, anyway? Here? Sam laughed quietly to himself. Not likely. It was not his apartment. A hotel? It would have to be a cheap one; Sam saw very little of his paycheck. Most of it went to Sam’s host as fee for the high-risk use of the healthy young body.

Any woman content with a low-rent room was not worth Sam’s time. Besides, it was not as if he could be sure to get much pleasure out of any time with one. Sam did not know how far his lack of sensation extended and found himself reluctant to explore the problem. It was almost as if Sam could not properly possess his host’s body, like Lotz or those other kids who made puppets of unwilling humans.

Sam shook his head. He was long overdue to leave this body and return control to its proper owner. He tore the topmost page from a nearby pad of paper and scrawled a quick note.

Sorry to return your body so late. A case came up that required some overtime. Arph and I are off duty for the next week. I’ll be back next Monday morning. Enjoy your weekend.

- Sam Trent

 

He signed his last name without thinking. It was an almost ridiculous formality in a letter to the man with whom Sam shared a body. The long-dead exorcist sighed and leaned back on the futon. He closed his eyes and let go, relaxing his hold on the body. Releasing his shape, Sam always imagined, like ice melting into formless water and simply slipping away.

Sam fell into the Darkness.

* * *

Asher Janson opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, painted the same blank white as the futon cover. He did not sit up, did not look at the note Sam had left. Asher didn’t need to. He had watched Sam write it.

He threw an arm across his face. The skin felt hot, sweaty. After almost two solid days with Sam in control of his body, Asher was used to the cold, breathless feeling of being skinridden. Preferred it to the sticky reality of living flesh.

His eyes watered, dripping salty heat down his cheeks. Even with his lids closed, the bright bursts of color were too much. Too bright, too rich after two days of black and white.

What would Sam do if he ever found out that Asher watched through his eyes? Not just his eyes… Even Sam’s thoughts were no secret to Asher. What if the ghost ever asked Arphallo about the strange, dull sensations, the color blindness?

Asher’s heart raced and hammered against his ribs. Cold sweat pricked on his forehead and ran into his hair. Arphallo did not know yet, but how long until he figured it out? Asher curled into a tight, unhappy ball at the end of the futon.

Then what? There had to be some rule about it, some law about wakeful hosts. And then Sam would break his contract and go find some other body. Asher would be alone again, trying and failing to manage his own pathetic life.

Everything was so much better with Sam Trent in control. The old, dead soldier was collected and confident in a way that young Asher Janson could only admire, with no hope of ever emulating.

The five years since becoming a host were the only ones that seemed right at all. Sam never had to call Asher’s alcoholic mother or visit his father’s grave. As a boy, Asher often wondered why his father’s spirit had never found its way back. But as years of abuse and struggle crept by, he understood. Emery Janson had nothing to come back to; certainly not his failure of a son, the gangly teenager who had trained day and night but still only barely managed to make it into the police academy.

But Sam Trent had come back through the Darkness. Strong, certain and with the skills to return to an already impressive career. If Asher could not be a success, he could play host to someone who was. At least, he would once Sam returned on Monday.