Hi folks
I’m a little late for Halloween, but it’s never a bad time for a ghost story, even if it’s a silly one.
This is the tale of Jasper, poor, humble ghost. Destined to haunt a clapped out Fiat Uno for the rest of his immortal days, he sees a last-gasp attempt to change his world and grasps it with both hands.
Jasper was surprised and not just by the sounds of lips crushing together in the front seat. That was surprising in itself, what with the car’s owner being just about the saddest, most unattractive man ever to drive a Fiat, which was really saying something. What was far more surprising was the presence of a woman so outstandingly beautiful that even he, in his incorporeal and normally entirely-sexless state, was aroused.
Aroused was the wrong word. It brought back old memories of hardening in certain places and softening in others, of the rush of desire and the racing of a heart he hadn’t felt beat in over fifteen years.
A better word was admiring. He admired Tony for not only convincing such a lovely to spend time with him, but also to come in his car and engage in some tonsil hockey with him. He also admired her. She was long in the leg and possessing of a heart-shaped face framed with long dusky-brown hair and eyes into which any living man would happily lose themselves.
Jasper couldn’t lose himself. He’d been trying. God, he’d been trying. He’d spent most of the last fifteen years trying every damn thing he could think of to find that elusive freedom. But nothing worked. So instead he spent his days driving to and from work with Tony and spending long dull hours in the car park.
In a vain attempt to block out the sound of Tony’s increasingly heavy breathing, he thought back fifteen years to the day when this car, driven by an old and not-entirely sane old man called Mr Hilson, ran him over. The pain had been indescribable, which wasn’t such a bad thing as he had no one to whom he could describe it. One minute he was waiting for the bus, the next, BLAM!
He had about five seconds on the pavement, looking up at the bumper before something shifted and he left his body. The person who appeared before him wasn’t the driver. Some dude in a white baseball cap and robes that were far too white to be real sprang into life and shook him by the hand.
‘Hi, Jasper, that’s a tough one.’
‘Tough one?’
‘You dying and all.’
‘I’m dead?’ He looked down at his body and the crowd beginning to flock about it like seagulls around an unguarded ice cream cone in the hands of an inexperienced child.
‘Oh yeah. That sucks.’ Jasper said
‘Absolutely does. Couldn’t have put it better myself. Still, that’s life.’
‘Actually, isn’t that death?’
The angel, because after all, that’s what Jasper had to assume it was, burst into laughter, holding his sides until tears ran down his face.
‘Yeah, enough already, I wasn’t actually trying to be funny.’
The man in white stopped, wiped a tear from his cheek and nodded. ‘So, kid, what’s the choice?’
‘Huh?’
‘Well, you have two choices. You’ve been killed in a tragic way and not taken from this realm. Could be someone thinks you want revenge, could just be they’re on their lunch break up there. I don’t know. What I do know is that you now have a choice.’
‘And they are?’ He sighed. It didn’t carry much weight now that he didn’t have lungs, but he put everything into it and felt at least slightly better. This was unlikely to end well.
‘Choice one,’ the angel ticked them off on his fingers, ‘you can come with me to purgatory. You probably won’t be there long, just until someone gets back to the desk upstairs. Hah, I’m just kidding.’
‘About what? The choice or the desk thing, cause neither’s very funny.’
The angel wrinkled up his nose. ‘Ease up, young fella, just trying to lighten the mood.’
‘Lighten your own mood, but do it quietly.’
The angel raised one perfectly-manicured eyebrow. It stood out, white hair against his black skin.
‘Do you dye your eyebrows?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Do you dye your eyebrows. I mean, I’ve never met a guy with white eyebrows before.’
‘You met many angels, have you?’
‘No, admittedly, you’re the first.’
‘Well then.’
Jasper waited. The angel waited. He blatantly dyed them. Weird. ‘What’s the second choice?’
The angel rubbed his hands together. ‘Ahah, this is the fun one. The other choice is to become a ghost. You can haunt this sucker until he goes stark-raving mad.’
‘Nice. What an angelly suggestion.’
‘Haunting is a perfectly legitimate way to spend your afterlife.’
‘Is being a ghost like I think it is?’
‘That depends upon what you think it is. You can’t touch anything so you can’t feel. You can’t talk to the living, except the one you’re haunting, and most of the dead will ignore you.’
‘But I’ll still be here?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the catch?’
‘You mean, aside from not being able to touch anything or talk to anyone?’
‘Yes, aside from that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
The words echoed round and round and drowned out, for just a moment, the sounds of Tony’s tongue working overtime. That lying bastard of an angel. In all his explanations, he avoided mentioning one key part of all this. He was haunting a car. That meant being stuck to it for the rest of his eternal and painfully long life.
Jasper went on holiday in the boot and would occasionally spend a few crazy minutes going round with the tires, but the truth was, there was little joy in haunting an automobile. He’d made the best of it though. The old man who ran him over went completely mad a few months later, thanks, he liked to think, to his outstanding haunting. After that, the Fiat was sold to a seventeen-year-old Tony.
For some reason, Tony couldn’t be haunted. He didn’t react to any of Jasper’s excellent scary ghost noises and the small points of contact he’d established with the old man didn’t work. Fifteen years on and Tony was boringly sane. To make it worse, the car was seeing more action than at any other time in its life.
One of the downsides of being a ghost was a complete lack of libido, so having a hot girl being slowly undressed before him was about as stimulating as Tony’s long and futile rants to talk radio that occupied their long trips home. Stimulating wasn’t a word Jasper would ever use to talk about Tony.
He went to work every day, occasionally drove to the cinema and on one, particularly memorable, Sunday last year, drove up into London. Fourteen years of the dull bastard, with at least another fifteen before the car gave out.
Jasper sighed and whimpered a little, before raising himself out of the foam and assuming his usual place atop the dull-grey back seat. With luck, Tony and his unexpectedly-hot conquest would transition to the back seat and he could go up front and stare at the sea.
The waves were one of the few sounds Jasper still enjoyed. There was something in them that soothed him and calmed the anger that boiled below his… the top layer of his ghostly figure. He took a pointless deep breath and closed his eyes. As per usual, the lack of eyelids made him groan and thump his hands against the seat.
He thumped his hands against the seat.
He was touching the car.
His eyes widened and he shouted in delight. That was when he realised the couple in the front seat had gone absolutely still.
‘Tone, what was that?’
She called him Tone. That was so sweet. Jasper ground his teeth together and stared at them. They were staring straight at him, although of course, they weren’t. He tried a sound.
‘Woooooo, I’m going to eat your face.’
Not his best line, but the girl went a lovely shade of bloodless white to match her knuckles where they gripped the side of the chair. Tony looked bemused, as though he could maybe hear something, but wasn’t sure. Or maybe he was sure, but had decided he wasn’t going to believe it.
‘I really am. I’m not joking. I’ve got fangs the size of your arm and I’m going to tear you up.’
He grinned, nodding as he rocked back and forth on the seat. The car creaked and his smile broadened. It was like all his power had returned, just like that.
‘Tone, what the hell is going on? This isn’t funny, if this is supposed to be funny, it isn’t funny.’
‘Sweetheart, I’m not doing anything, really. What do you think is going on?’
‘Someone’s speaking and the car is creaking.’
‘Well, it’s an old car—’
‘So old cars talk, do they? Come on, take me home.’
‘Oh, come on, don’t be like that, I—’
‘I will come for you while you sleep. You think you will be safe but just when you lay your head on the pillow, I’ll be there.’
Jasper surged this way and that, slamming against the windows and backs of the seats. This was it, this was his chance. When she glanced into the back seat, he saw the tears in her eyes. They were wide and moving rapidly from nervous to outright terrified.
He had to drive her further, take her to the brink until she did something stupid. The sound of the sea came to him and he smiled. Of course.
‘Go. Drive now, as fast as you can. If you don’t, I’ll kill you. I’ll rip out your entrails and use them to hang you with. I’ll pull your hair out and shove it down your throat until you choke. I’ll tear your limbs off one by—’
‘Tony, we have to go.’
‘Wha—’
‘NOW. We have to go now.’
‘Sweetheart, we aren’t going anywhere, we just got here, I mean, come on.’
The petting became a fight. It was glorious to watch as she leaned across Tony and started the engine. He was so surprised he sat and watched her grab the wheel.
‘What the hell are you doing? We aren’t goi—’
‘JUST DRIVE, PLEASE, JUST DRIVE, PLEASE—’
‘I’ll eat your liver. I’ll tear it from you while your heart still beats and—’
‘Please,’ she was sobbing now, tears running down her face. It was so close, ‘please, we have to go.’
Tony, in his infinite stupidity, tried to put his arms around her. She punched him in the stomach and took the handbrake off, grabbing the wheel. With every ounce of strength he could muster, Jasper booted the back of Tony’s seat. It was the equivalent of a nudge, but it was enough to surprise Tony and distract him from the car beginning its slow roll forwards.
‘Honey, just talk to me for a minute, okay. Come on, what’s wrong. Was I coming on too strong?’
The lady had her face in her hands and was crying as she shook it back and forth. ‘Please, just go, just drive.’
‘Neither of you will survive. I will end you so no one even knew you existed. Your children will not remember you—’
‘I don’t have any children.’ She howled into the air.
‘But you would have. And when you did, they wouldn’t remember you.’ Okay, that one sucked.
She raised her head and stared into the back seat. Her mascara was smeared across her cheeks and her mouth shook. Their gaze met but he didn’t think for a second she could see him. Except when she spoke, it sounded like she was speaking just to him. ‘I’ll never have kids, not since granddad went mad. I couldn’t do that to my kids.’ The answer came between sobs.
A smile lit up Jasper’s face as it all clicked into place. She’d mentioned something about it being creepy making out in her granddad’s car when they pulled up. That was why it was working. That was the secret. She was old Mr Hilson’s grand daughter. Old Mr Hilson who’d run him down all those years ago.
‘Your grandfather was called Hilson.’ He used his best, scary doom and gloom voice and grinned even wider as she clapped her hands over her mouth.
‘I drove your grandfather mad. It was me who did it and I’ll do the same to you. You will all go mad, every last one of you. You will never be safe, you will never be alone.’
He waited for a response but she was past caring. Following that joyful revelation, she was past doing much of anything except cry a lot and be hysterical. Jasper felt the slightest pang of guilt. She was innocent and didn’t deserve to die. Still, too late now. Ho hum.
Tony opened his mouth then seemed to realise the car was moving. Now you’d think, in this sort of situation, the driver would respond logically. He had two brakes he could apply at any time. They were moving fast enough that it might have taken both, but that was also an option.
Unfortunately, when the girl you had been certain you were going to do the dirty with only moments earlier was in a sobbing ball of tears beside you, things don’t happen logically.
Tony yanked the wheel. He was, ostensibly, trying to wrest it from her hand. However, what he did instead was haul the car straight across the narrow strip of gravel that formed the rest of the parking area and aimed it at the cliff edge.
As they struck the wooden barrier, Jasper had time to reflect how lucky it was that he wasn’t haunting a smart car or something else small enough to be stopped by it. Then they were over and the car tipped nose down. The fall was well over a hundred feet and the last words Old Mr Hilson’s granddaughter heard were,
‘Free at last, free at last.’
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