No, Edie hadn’t really cared for Jessica at all.
“Well… erm… make yourself at home.”
Make yourself at home? What was she saying? She’d never had Jessica to stay in her flat when she was alive and now she was asking her spirit to make herself at home. In fact she couldn't remember ever hanging out with Jessica except at various weddings of mutual acquaintances. Not that Edie went out much anyway.
Edie watched as Jessica positioned herself on the end of her bed. There was no corresponding dip in the mattress; it was like the ghoul floated on the duvet.
She must be dreaming.
“You think you’re dreaming,” stated the ghost.
“Well I must be.”
“Edie, for once in your life stop being a lawyer and doubting everything. Use the senses God gave you, why question everything?”
“Because senses have a habit of being hijacked, that’s why. Little things can affect them; I could be overworked and hallucinating.”
Edie knew she was clutching at straws, but what was the alternative?
The beady gaze of the spectre was making her uneasy. Added to that was the way that whilst the ghost sat still, her hair, gown and wedding ephemera were agitated. It was as if someone had opened an oven and let the hot vapour out.
Odd, very odd.
“If I wanted I could have had a piece of cheese after dinner and I'd be imagining George Clooney instead. It’s all bollocks.” Edie said going on the attack as she always did when feeling uncomfortable. But also wondering why she hadn't imagined George Clooney.
At this, see-through Jessica gave her a scathing look and then raised a cry, so truly gut wrenching and melancholy, that the hairs on Edie’s neck rose and she clutched her duvet closer to her, moving it to her mouth so she could bite on it and stifle her scream.
“OK, OK. I believe in you.” Edie said.
“Thank God for that, those cries are hellish on one’s throat.” The apparition coughed politely.
“So it’s lovely to see you and all Jessica, but why are you here?” Edie’s voice trembled even as she tried to sound calm and professional.
“I can tell you where I would be if I had a choice. I would be living it up the other side of the pearly gates. As it is I’m stuck round here doing the spiritual version of social work.” The ghoul sighed and slumped slightly.
Edie waited. The spectre then sat up straighter and fixed its stare on her.
“OK so here’s the thing, Edie, supposedly everyone is required to love selflessly. I know; I rolled my eyes too. You are supposed to go out and ‘spread the love.’ Not just love of course, but also all that hope that it supposedly produces, and share it. With the whole world. All a bit vomit inducing, I thought. But that wasn’t the end of it. Oh no, and this is the doozy… If you don’t go out and ‘spread the love,’" Jessica-that-was used her fingers to make quotation marks, "well, you spend death wandering the earth, witnessing all that love and stuff and not being able to share in it. Did you know there was a contract? People should let you know these things. I was told it was all set out in the small print. But who has time to read that?”
That which had been Jessica threw up its hands causing the chain to rattle and a blizzard of pink glitter to fall on the duvet.
“And the chain?” Edie asked.
“Another one of those pesky Ts & Cs which no one tells you about; allegedly the links represent every time I scorned love, focused on work and the minutiae of weddings. When I didn’t see through the glitter and the tat to what was underneath it all, I made one of these damn links. Something about free will, I zoned out around then.” The ghost sighed. “And if you think this is bad… well you should see yours. You get extra links every time you act shark-like in those divorces instead of going for mediation. I particularly like the fetching penis deely boppers and magic wands they've put on yours.”
Edie was horrified. Not the boppers.
Edie was shaking, her teeth chattering. Frantically she looked around her and peeked under the duvet.
No boppers. No chain.
She checked again just to make sure.
“Oh, you won’t see it.”
Jessica’s superior voice was beginning to grate on Edie’s already frazzled nerves.
“But believe me,” she rattled her chain spewing more pink glitter over the duvet, “it is much, much longer.”
Edie couldn't see the end of Jessica's chain; it stretched from the bed and through the closed door to the room.
And hers was longer?
“But we aren’t evil people, Jessica. We sent all those wedding gifts and some bloody expensive ones too. We gave up our weekends and went to all the hen parties and all the weddings, even the ones we knew weren’t going to last. We said all the right things. And we get this?” Edie pointed at the chain. “Tell me it isn’t true,” she implored.
“Empty gestures, Edie. When did we ever congratulate them from the heart? We shut ourselves off from their happiness and our own. We had withering hearts behind our withering put downs. You remember don’t you? All those conversations and bets on who would be divorced first. We said how stupid they all were for believing in fairytales. And how we knew better. Well at least they did believe. Because I’m stuck carrying this chain on my own. Alone. For eternity.”
The ghoul shook its chain and sniffed back tears.
Edie shivered at the misery that came off it in waves.
“But you have a chance, Edie. You can change.” The spirit eagerly leaned towards her as she spoke.
“But how?” asked Edie.
“You will be haunted,” Jessica the ghost said, “by three Spirits.”
She was going to be haunted by more ghosts? This wasn’t happening. She was going mad. Maybe she needed to take some time off. She hadn't had a holiday in years.
“Three Spirits?” she said.
Jessica nodded.
“And this is my chance?” she asked falteringly.
“Yes.”
“My only chance?”
“Yes.”
“No other way?”
“No, if you don’t do this…” the ghost paused and then gestured down towards her outfit. Edie shuddered; the peach shiny dress and the pink glitter encrusted chain made her feel ill.
“Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one.”
“Can’t I take them all at once? I mean three nights of interrupted sleep are going to play hell with my work schedule,” Edie hinted.
The spirit Jessica ignored her.
“Expect the second a week later at the same hour; and the third in a fortnight. Edie, please, for your own sake remember this.” The ghoul stood as she said this and wrapped her chain around her arm.
A set of fairy wings fluttered against a pair of devil's horns.
“I’ve got two weeks of this?” Edie’s voice rose an octave or two.
“Better two weeks now than an eternity later,” The ghoul retorted.
When