"No need to ask if you’re new, not with that landing!” the glowing image of the old man said with a chuckle and a knowing look. His manner was folksy and his face craggy. He was clearly not a New Yorker. And what really stood out about him was the bullet hole in his head.
John’s first reaction was to step back, but just as before, when he’d been above the operating table, he found he couldn’t. Whether it was the unexpected viscosity of the floor or just plain stress he couldn’t tell, but his feet remained in position and he had to fight to retain his balance for a moment.
“Whoa! Take it easy, son! I ain’t going to hurt you!”
John sized him up and decided to take him at face value. If he were flesh and blood, he would hardly be a threat to John. Not only was John six-foot-two, but he was broad-shouldered, with the natural build of an athlete, which he kept lean through lifting weights and playing basketball––factors that had probably just saved him from being crippled by the fall. He had to trust someone to help him, and he desperately needed information.
Without further reservation, he blurted out his frustrations like buckshot: “I don’t understand what’s happening! I shouldn’t be here! I should get back, but I can’t move.”
“Back to where, son?”
“To my body. To wake up! To end this…” He paused, unsure of whether to call it what he hoped it was, a “near-death experience.” He finally said the words, but even as he did so, John had an overwhelming feeling of impending dread—the dread of being told something that he didn't want to hear.
The man paused a moment before responding, his tone almost apologetic, “There’s nothing ‘near’ about it, son. If you’re here with me you’re dead…or as good as. Until we decide to move on, we stay on Earth like this.” He gestured with a sweep of his hand over his glowing form. “There is no other option that I’m aware of.” He then became silent, studying John’s face for a reaction.
The words slammed John hard, with the force of a revelation, leaving him in a momentary daze. “But I just had surgery! They took my body away! I was still alive!” he finally protested.
“Then it looks like the operation won’t be a success.” The tone was sympathetic but carried with it a sharp edge of conviction.
John’s head moved in a slow, disbelieving shake. “No. No. I can’t be dying. My life was just starting! You’re not real. You’re not real. This is some kind of dream…. or hallucination brought on by the drugs used in the surgery! That’s it!” He focused back on the man’s head and his gunshot wound, trying to make sense of why this stranger would appear to him in a dream and with both of them as glowing spirits.
“Nine-millimeter straight through the noggin’. Wrong place at the wrong time,” the man said, smiling in response to John’s apparent fascination with his wound. “If I ever find the son of a bitch…” His voice trailed off as if he himself had become weary of making what had become, over time, an idle threat. Then, unexpectedly, he pointed at John’s lower abdomen. Looks like you had a violent arrival here yourself! Knife wound…must’ve hurt!”
John looked down; there was a hole in his replicated clothing. He pressed a couple of fingers inside and found a gaping wound. It triggered a memory of seeing a flash of a steel blade before he fell to the sidewalk outside the pub. Startled, he pulled his fingers out and looked back at the man in disbelief and said, “I was attacked . . . I remember now. But I can’t remember much about how it happened, and I have no idea why anyone would want to stab me!”
“We’re all here to find answers. I didn’t even see the gun or the person who shot me. Never felt a thing!” The old man turned to show John the back of his head. Except there was no back. The exiting bullet had taken most of it away, leaving a crater in the wake of the eruption of brain and bone tissue. John gasped and was surprised he could still feel sick. Very sick. His body convulsed violently.
“Don’t worry. That’s everyone’s reaction, and you can’t actually throw up,” the man smiled. “One good thing is that this injury does come in handy.”
“How’s that?”
“The bad’uns leave me alone, at least the ones that are fresh to this world. I guess they figure that they can’t do anything worse to me. But the truth is the bad’uns can still harm us.”
“Bad’uns?” John repeated, unconsciously mimicking the man’s accent. His concern for his own safety had now overcome his temporary nausea.
“Yeah, spirits of dead people, like us but bad’uns. You know, muggers, thieves, killers…the same as in the mortal world but worse… The longer they stay here, the nastier they get and the more shit they do. Some of them even find homes in the bodies of the living and when they do…they make them do unthinkable things. Most of us spirit folk—those with any sense—stay away from them and the people they find homes in.” His expression turned serious again. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep out of their way, too.” He paused and sighed. “I know you want to believe this is all temporary, a dream of some sort. I wanted to when I arrived. I was confused and wanting answers just like you. Then a spirit I met told me something that I didn’t believe at first, but which, thirty years later, I’ve found to be true.
“What did he tell you? John interrupted impatiently.
“Simply that dreams are never this perfect. He mentioned that some details in this spirit world, when you compare it to the real world, are always out of
