You Are a Ghost. (Sign Here Please) Read online

  With that, Travis turned and strutted out of the casino. Vincent, his friend, and Brian all followed. Nathan was a little slower to catch on but finally evacuated with the rest of them. When he finally found everyone outside, he produced the little 8-ball and shook it hard. The bottom changed from, “Rulan’s Casino” to “Dead Donkey, Nevada.”

  A door appeared and Nathan courteously held it open for the others, who stepped through it one by one.

  “And so much for Rulan’s Casino,” Brian muttered. “The gambling joint where the wagers are forms and the games are all rigged, apparently. I don’t think I’ll ever come back here.” He stepped through the door.

  “I don’t know,” Nathan said. “I kind of like it here.”

  And with that, he too stepped through the door. When he closed it, it disappeared behind him.

  Director Fulcher sat stunned in his seat at the roulette table, ignoring the croupier as he asked if Fulcher would like to place another bet. He was surrounded by the flashing lights, the regular sounds of the slot machines, the cries of jubilation and of sorrow as the bureaucrats at the other tables won and lost, yet he was alone. Alone, but not yet beaten. The Director had one last card to play against Nathan before his superiors took his skull for a cane.

  He rose, straightened his coat, made his way over to the phone box, and began to fill out the necessary paperwork to dial an outside line.

  Chapter 24

  They rematerialized where they had left, in Dead Donkey park. Vincent almost immediately stumbled, fell down, and was bitten by a vicious squirrel, then tackled by a Muleball player who mistook him for a member of the opposing team which, technically, by the rules of Muleball, Vincent now was.

  Nathan ignored all this and left Vincent and his friend behind him, then wandered off to go socialize with the ducks at the pond. He whistled as he went and sauntered over to the edge of the water with Travis and Brian not far behind. Nathan dipped his hand into the water - it felt cool and clear and didn’t phase through his hand. He wasn’t a ghost anymore, again, at least until the next time he died.

  “You’re probably thinking that the next time you die, Director Fulcher won’t want to give you a body again,” Brian said.

  Nathan actually hadn’t been thinking anything of the kind. His mind was back on the cereal jingle, but he didn’t say so.

  “There is a way to force Director Fulcher to give you a body the next time you die,” Brian continued. “That would play to your advantage, wouldn’t it? It would finally put this whole matter to rest and stop Director Fulcher from coming after you, once and for all.”

  “That does sound like a good idea,” Nathan agreed once he started listening. “How do I do that?”

  “Simple. Director Fulcher always used to resurrect you every time you died after you failed to sign your Form 21B - Decedent Acknowledgement and Waiver of Liability because he was afraid you might sue him. So, to force his hand, all you have to do is sue him. That is my master plan for revenge. The lawsuit will bring further shame and disgrace to him, and his superiors will reassign him or fire him or possibly turn his skull into a cane, but in the meantime he will not be able to come after you and will be forced to resurrect you because of the pending lawsuit.”

  “But I can’t sue Director Fulcher,” Nathan objected. “He told me that because of the contract I have with him, I can’t sign any documents, and I would need to sign a legal document in order to sue him.”

  Brian’s eyes twinkled maliciously.

  “Of course I know that, but I have discovered that to sue someone in Dead Donkey, you do not have to sign any papers. Let us take a moment to thank your terribly twisted but functional municipal legal system. It now serves our purposes. The groundwork has already been laid. I made you file that complaint because prior to filing a lawsuit, one must seek an administrative remedy. That is the law, so protocol must be followed. Since Ian and Director Fulcher ignored your complaint, we now have grounds to sue Fulcher for repeatedly allowing you to be mauled by a badger on the premises of his department. As the responsible manager, he is the liable individual. However, we needed to get all this done before the courts close for the day. I have noticed you do not do very well with day to day plans, Mr. Haynes, so I assumed that extending my revenge plot to a second day would be pointless. Also, there is something upcoming tomorrow called ‘The Festival of the Symbol,’ which appears to be a court holiday in this city-”

  “The Symbol!” Nathan agreed emphatically. “It’s very deep and symbolic.”

  “Whatever. The point is that we have to get to the courthouse to file the lawsuit before it closes. We can teleport there using the Bureaucratic Transit Device.”

  Nathan took out the 8-ball and shook it. The words on the bottom stayed the same, but a door appeared out of thin air anyway. Several geese honked in surprised annoyance at it, while the ducks telepathically laughed at the geese for their stupidity; the ducks had used their telepathy to foresee its appearance. Ducks and geese do not get along very well.

  “What do you think of this plan?” Nathan asked Travis.

  Travis shrugged.

  “You have defeated the bureaucrats by legalistic means before, Mr. Haynes, and on the whole these means have proven to be more effective than my suggestions. I continue to suggest running, but perhaps a lawsuit can be your path to overcoming Director Fulcher once and for all. If he is removed from his post and his position is re-engineered out of existence, then maybe you will have scored a decisive victory against the cosmic bureaucrats. However, if this attempt fails, I move that we should leave Brian behind and again try to flee the city for a safer location, where the bureaucrats will not find you.”

  “Okay,” Nathan agreed. “Let’s try this first.”

  Together, the three men again walked through the door and found themselves standing outside of Dead Donkey’s courthouse, not far from the airport.

  Dead Donkey’s courthouse was a fairly nice courthouse, given the ruins and tenements of the urban squalor that surrounded it. It had a white stone exterior, painted brown in many places, with sturdy columns rising up from the top of its steps. Unfortunately, the architect had not quite managed to get these columns to link up with the ceiling above and they missed, and instead served as the nesting ground for some of Dead Donkey’s native birds, Donkeyhawks, which cawed out predictions about commodity market volatility to the incoming litigants. Instead of a blind-folded woman holding a scale, the statue of justice outside of the courthouse was another statue of Harry Goldbug, the stock trader with a massive grin on his face, fistfuls of cash in his hands, and two attractive young women hanging off his arms. The plaque said, “donated by the estate of Harry Goldbug, designed by his widow,” followed by the inscription, “he died as he lived: being sued.” Brian eyed it suspiciously before ascending the courthouse steps. Travis ignored it, while Nathan stopped to smile at it. None of them knew that Harry Goldbug had not actually died being sued, but that was beside the point.

  They walked into the courthouse and found the lobby essentially vacant except for a handful of bored-looking security guards standing near the metal detecting and security check equipment that one usually sees in courthouses. The only other figure was a man across the security line who was hurriedly walking from one room to another. He would quickly march up to one room, ranting angrily about how busy he was, then open the door, look inside, and turn around, march to the other door across the hall, then repeat.

  Brian paid this man no attention and approached the metal detectors. He was relieved to see them. Bureaucrats like courthouses (except when they are being sued), because they are centers of administration, law, procedure, and, in essence, bureaucracy. However, everything in Dead Donkey has a nasty tendency to be twisted and strange so Brian had feared that the courthouse would be too. So far, though, everything had looked exceedingly normal. He approached the security line, and a guard started to give him a spiel in bored tones.

  “Remove your shoes, jacke
t, gloves, empty your pockets into the tray, and be particularly sure to place any metal items you might have there so we can scan them. Keys, loose change, cell phone, or anything metal has to go in the tray. Sharpened objects, weapons, and any optimism you might have are absolutely not allowed inside the courthouse.”

  He eyed Nathan suspiciously, who tried to stop smiling.

  They emptied out their pockets, though no one was carrying much of anything, and moved to walk through the metal detectors. They all passed without incident, but the guard picked up Nathan’s Bureaucratic Transit Device and stared at it.

  “I’m going to have to confiscate this and hold it until you exit the courthouse,” he said. “8-balls aren’t allowed on the premises.”

  Nathan shrugged, still trying not to smile, and the security guard put the device in a little baggy.

  “What’s your business in the courthouse this afternoon?” he asked.

  “I’m here to sue someone,” Nathan said.

  The security guard perked up a little.

  “Oh ho, a lawsuit.” Then he shouted, “A lawsuit!”

  The other security guards echoed the shout, “A lawsuit!”

  The first one hollered, “Someone is here for a lawsuit! Call forth the bailiff!”

  He turned back to Nathan.

  “The bailiff will come to take you to a court room.”

  Several of the security guards were still shouting, “a lawsuit!”

  Brian stared at them bemusedly.

  After several minutes, a big, broad man in a crisp police-like uniform approached Nathan and looked him up and down, as if sizing him up.

  “I am the bailiff. So here’s the guy who thought he would just waltz in here and bring the full force of justice down on some poor sap who crossed him. Do you really think you have what it takes to file a lawsuit, little man?” He started to prod Nathan in the gut. “You don’t really look like lawsuit material to me. Drop and give me twenty.”

  “Twenty whats?” Nathan asked curiously.

  “Twenty anythings,” the bailiff replied.

  Nathan fell onto his belly and patted the bailiff on the shoe twenty times. The bailiff rubbed his hands together. At this point, Travis glanced at Brian, Nathan, and the bailiff, and shrugged.

  “I will be waiting outside,” Travis said, then thrust his hands into his pockets and sauntered outside.

  Meanwhile, Nathan had finished rubbing the bailiff’s shoe.

  “Excellent. Now, before we can initiate legal proceedings, I have to swear you in.” The bailiff produced a book that had no title, but under the circumstances one might have reasonably expected it to be a bible.

  “Put your hand on it and hold up your other hand.”

  Nathan wasn’t good with instructions of this nature and fumbled a little, variously ending up with both hands in the air, or both on the book, or behind his back. When he finally got it right, the bailiff cleared his throat.

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  “No,” Nathan answered cheerily.

  The bailiff paused.

  “Good answer,” he said, and then removed the book. “And you’re about to find out why.” And with that, he pushed open a nearby door, and led Nathan and Brian into the courtroom.

  Chapter 25

  The laws in Dead Donkey were not legally consistent with the state law of Nevada, or the federal law of the United States, or indeed any other legal jurisdiction known to man and bureaucrat alike. Laws in Dead Donkey were ever-changing and often unwritten, or when they were written, were written in ways that no one understands, sometimes in dead languages that no one knew how to speak anymore. Legal proceedings in Dead Donkey, therefore, generally conformed to the code of “make it up as you go along, and it’ll probably all work itself out sooner or later,” which it usually did, and judges handed down whatever punishments amused them, like sentencing convicted killers to a lifetime of hard labor as a mayor’s aide or a professional xylophone fence manufacturer, which amused them a lot because everyone knew the xylophone fence factory had burned down a long time ago.

  Brian knew all this, as he had investigated the legal particulars ahead of time to make sure his master plan for revenge would work. However, when he entered the courtroom, he was fairly sure that the lone man who advanced to meet him was not a judge. In fact, he was not totally sure they were really in a courtroom at all.

  Admittedly, the man who had come to meet them was wearing a sweeping robe, which might be consistent with his being a judge, but Brian did not think it was a judge’s robe. The man was himself tall and well-groomed. His face I might loosely describe as not-unhandsome, but any not-unhandsomeness he might have had was spoiled by his malicious smile. Nathan was unfazed. He’d seen a lot of malicious smiles today, and things were almost never as bad as the smiles made them out to be.

  The man clapped his hands together.

  “I am afraid there is not going to be a lawsuit today after all,” the man said. “Court is cancelled.”

  Brian frowned at him.

  “Who are you?”

  The man emitted a low, dark, evil chuckle. It is a peculiar quirk of evil people that they like to chuckle evilly and grin evilly. If they didn’t, it would be much harder to tell that they are evil, and they might get away with more evil deeds than they would otherwise, but it seems to come with the territory. After finishing his chuckle, the man grinned evilly.

  “Of course you wouldn’t know me, Mr. Dithershoes, although I know you. Still, we’re not all strangers in this room. Mr. Haynes, how unexpected to see you alive and in good health. We meet again.”

  “Have we met before?” Nathan asked.

  The man nearly fell down.

  “Yes, of course we’ve met before,” he spat. “Don’t you remember?”

  “No?” Nathan said. “Sorry, I’m not trying to be rude. It’s just that I have brain damage-”

  “I am Quaestor Dominique Delroy,” the man said dramatically.

  Nathan stared at him blankly.

  “The Skeptikaiser,” Delroy added. “The Pan-Theocratic Counter-Luminary.”

  Nathan continued to stare at him blankly.

  “Occam’s Microscopist,” continued Delroy angrily. “The De-excommunicator! The Galilean Relativist!”

  Still, Nathan stared at him blankly.

  With a sigh, Delroy put his hand to his forehead. It is another quirk of evil people that they feel a powerful compulsion to explain to their victims exactly who they are and what their plot is. No one knows why they do this, but they get very frustrated when it doesn’t work out the way they want it to.

  “I killed you once,” Delroy said.

  “Er, did you?” Nathan asked. “I’m sorry. A lot of people have killed me. I have a brain lesion-”

  “I’m the head of the Church of Particularly Cynical Atheists,” Delroy said, stamping his foot.

  Even with this, Nathan continued to stare at him blankly. Delroy stared angrily back at him.

  “Right...” Nathan said. “So who are you?”

  “I’m the most powerful atheist in Dead Donkey! I killed you once and you should remember me!”

  Nathan thought about this for a while. Then a slow smile spread over his face.

  “Oh, I remember you now! You did kill me once.” Then he frowned. “You’re the man who killed my serial killer. That wasn’t very nice of you. I liked my serial killer.”

  Delroy waved the objection aside.

  “We have moved on from that, Nathan. I’m sure by now you realized that it was I who sent Ernie, your new serial killer after you.”

  “Ernie?” Nathan repeated. Slow, dawning comprehension showed on his face. “Oh, Ernie! The new serial killer! I remember him now. I almost forgot about him.”

  Delroy nearly fell over again.

  “How do you forget about a man who came into your home and killed you, then tried to murder you several more times?”
r />   “I had a very busy day,” Nathan objected. “There were ducks and plane crashes and a casino in it.”

  “Regardless,” the Skeptikaiser said with a cough. “It was I who sent the serial killer after you, and indeed I have been controlling the course of events all day. You see, I have been secretly conspiring with Director Fulcher to repeatedly murder you, Mr. Haynes, for my own reasons. That’s how I knew you wouldn’t come back to life when you died, but would instead return as a ghost. Our deal was that I would murder you, then attempt to assist you in gaining a new body and then murder you again so you would be repeatedly sent back to the afterlife where Director Fulcher would try to trap you. In exchange, Director Fulcher agreed to help me with a certain problem of mine. A most profitable accommodation. That is why I sent the serial killer after you, and that is also why I had Dr. Vegatillius - who you will remember is a Particularly Cynical Atheist - restore your body so you could come back to life, and therefore be killed again. It is also why Dr. Vegatillius had access to all of your corpses so readily. It is also how I knew you would come here, Brian. You may be a fine bureaucrat, but you are as nothing compared to Director Fulcher. He knew you would come here as part of an attempt to sue him and at the same time bankrupt Nathan with legal fees, thereby getting revenge on both of them. Your plan was so obvious to him.”

  “Wait,” Brian jumped in. “What problem did Director Fulcher agree to help you with?”

  A smile spread over the Pan-Theocratic Counter Luminary’s face.

  “Fulcher told me that by killing Nathan, and turning him into a ghost, he could be made to a haunt a certain person, a person who has been a thorn in my side for far too long and must be gotten rid of. Unfortunately, Mr. Haynes, you seemed too busy and self-involved to ever consider doing what I asked of you. Your recalcitrance is less than ideal. Do you remember this? It was slipped into your house shortly after your first death.”