“It's not? Are you sure?”
“Of course I'm sure,” he said, starting to move away.
Blaine stepped in front of him. “Wait a minute. You look exactly like him, even down to the radiation scar. Are you sure you aren't Ray Melhill, a flow-control man off the spaceship Bremen?”
“Quite certain,” the man said coldly. “You have confused me with someone else, young man.”
Blaine stared hard as the man started to walk away. Then he reached out, caught the man by a shoulder and swung him around.
“You dirty body-thieving bastard!” Blaine shouted, his big right fist shooting out.
The man who so exactly resembled Melhill was knocked back against a building, and slid groggily to the pavement. Blaine started for him, and people moved quickly out of his way.
“Berserker!” a woman screamed, and someone else took up the cry. Blaine caught sight of a blue uniform shoving through the crowd toward him.
A flat-hat! Blaine ducked into the crowd. He turned a corner quickly, then another, slowed to a walk and looked back. The policeman was not in sight. Blaine started walking again to his hotel.
It had been Melhill's body; but Ray no longer occupied it. There had been no last-minute reprieve for him, no final chance. His body had been taken from him and sold to the old man whose querulous mind wore the jaunty body like a suit of ill-fitting, too-youthful clothes.
Now he knew his friend was really dead. Blaine drank silently to him in a neighborhood bar before returning to his hotel.
The clerk stopped him as he passed the desk. “Blaine? Got a message for you. Just a minute.” He went into the office.
Blaine waited, wondering who it could be from. Marie? But he hadn't called Marie yet, and wasn't planning to until he found work.
The clerk came back and handed him a slip of paper. The message read: “There is a Communication awaiting Thomas Blaine at the Spiritual Switchboard, 23rd Street Branch. Hours, nine to five.”
“I wonder how anybody knew where I was?” Blaine asked.
“Spirits got their ways,” the clerk told him. “Man I know, his dead mother-in-law tracked him down through three aliases, a Transplant and a complete skin job. He was hiding from her in Abyssinia.”
“I don't have any dead mother-in-law,” Blaine said.
“No? Who you figure's trying to reach you?” the clerk asked.
“I'll find out tomorrow and let you know,” Blaine said. But his sarcasm was wasted. The clerk had already turned back to his correspondence course on Atomic Engine Maintenance. Blaine went up to his room.
13
The 23rd Street Branch of the Spiritual Switchboard was a large graystone building near Third Avenue. Engraved above the door was the statement: “Dedicated to Free Communication Between Those on Earth and Those Beyond.”
Blaine entered the building and studied the directory. It gave floor and room numbers for Messages Incoming, Messages Outgoing, Translations, Abjurations, Exorcisms, Offerings, Pleas, and Exhortations. He wasn't sure which classification he fell under, or what the classifications signified, or even the purpose of the Spiritual Switchboard. He took his slip of paper to the information booth.
“That's Messages Incoming,” a pleasant, grey-haired, receptionist told him. “Straight down the hall to room 32A.”
“Thank you.” Blaine hesitated, then said, “Could you explain something to me?”
“Certainly,” the woman said. “What do you wish to know?”
“Well — I hope this doesn't sound too foolish — what is all this?”
The grey-haired woman smiled. “That's a difficult question to answer. In a philosophical sense I suppose you might call the Spiritual Switchboard a move toward greater oneness, an attempt to discard the dualism of mind and body and substitute —”
“No,” Blaine said. “I mean literally.”
“Literally? Why, the Spiritual Switchboard is a privately endowed, tax-free organization, chartered to act as a clearing house and center for communications to and from the Threshold plane of the Hereafter. In some cases, of course, people don't need our aid and can communicate directly with their departed ones. But more often, there is a need for amplification. This center possesses the proper equipment to make the deceased audible to our ears. And we perform other services, such as abjurations, exorcisms, exhortations and the like, which become necessary from time to time when flesh interacts with spirit.”
She smiled warmly at him. “Does that make it any clearer?”
“Thank you very much,” Blaine said, and went down the hall to room 32A.
It was a small grey room with several armchairs and a loudspeaker set in the wall. Blaine sat down, wondering what was going to happen.
“Tom Blaine!” cried a disembodied voice from the loudspeaker.
“Huh? What?” Blaine asked, jumping to his feet and moving toward the door.
“Tom! How are you, boy?”
Blaine, his hand on the doorknob, suddenly recognized the voice. “Ray Melhill?”
“Right! I'm up there where the rich folks go when they die! Pretty good, huh?”
“That's the understatement of the age,” Blaine said. ‘“But Ray, how? I thought you didn't have any hereafter insurance.”
“I didn't. Let me tell you the whole story. They came for me maybe an hour after they took you. I was so damned angry I thought I'd go out of my mind. I stayed angry right through the chloroforming, right through the wiping. I was still angry when I died.”
“What was dying like?” Blaine asked.
“It was like exploding. I could feel myself scattering all over the place, growing big as the galaxy, bursting into fragments, and the fragments bursting into smaller fragments, and all of them were me.”
“And what happened?”
“I don't know. Maybe being so angry helped. I was stretched as far as I could go — any further and it wouldn't be me — and then I just simply came back together again. Some people do. Like I told you, a few out of every million have always survived without hereafter training. I was one of the lucky ones.”
“I guess you know about me,” Blaine said. “I tried to do something for you, but you'd already been sold.”
“I know,” Melhill said. “Thanks anyhow, Tom. And say, thanks for popping that slob. The one wearing my body.”
“You saw that?”
“I been keeping my eyes open,” Melhill said. “By the way, I like that Marie. Nice looking kid.”
“Thanks. Ray, what's the hereafter like?”
“I don't know.”
“You don't?”
“I'm not in the hereafter yet, Tom. I'm in the Threshold. It's a preparatory stage, a sort of bridge between Earth and the hereafter. It's hard to describe. A sort of greyness, with Earth on one side and the hereafter on the other.”
“Why don't you cross over?” Blaine asked.
“Not yet,” Melhill said. “It's a one-way street into the hereafter. Once you cross over, you can't come back. There's no more contact with Earth.”
Blaine thought about that for a moment, then asked, “When are you going to cross over, Ray?”
“I don't rightly know. I thought I'd stay in Threshold for a while and keep an eye on things.”
“Keep an eye on me, you mean.”
“Well…”
“Thanks a lot, Ray, but don't do it. Go into the hereafter. I can take care of myself.”
“Sure you can,” Melhill said. “But I think I'll stick around for a while anyhow. You'd do it for me, wouldn't you? So don't argue. Now look, I suppose you know you’re in trouble?”
Blaine nodded, “You mean the zombie?”
“I don't know who he is or what he wants from you, Tom, but it can't be good. You'd better be a long way off when he finds out. But that wasn't the trouble I meant.”
“You mean I have more?”
“Afraid so. You’re going to be haunted, Tom.”
In spite of himself, Blaine laughed.
“What's so funny?” Melhill asked indignantly. “You think it's a joke to be haunted?”
“I suppose not. But is it really so serious?”
“Lord, you’re ignorant,” Melhill said. “Do you know anything about ghosts? How they’re made and what they want?”
“Tell me.”
“Well, there are three possibilities when a man dies. First, his mind can just explode, scatter, dissipate; and that's the end of him. Second, his mind can hold together through the death trauma; and he finds himself in the Threshold, a spirit. I guess you know about those two.”
“Go on,” Blaine said.
“The third possibility is this: His mind breaks during the death trauma, but not enough to cause dissipation. He pulls through into the Threshold. But the strain has been permanently disabling. He's insane. And that, my friend, is how a ghost is born.”
“Hmm,” Blaine said. “So a ghost is a mind that went insane during the death trauma?”
“Right. He's insane, and he haunts.”
“But why?”
“Ghosts haunt,” Melhill said, “because they’re filled with twisted hatred, anger, fear and pain. They won't go into the hereafter. They want to spend as much time as they can on Earth, where their attention is still fixed. They want to frighten people, hurt them, drive them insane. Haunting is the most asocial thing they can do, it's their madness. Look Tom, since the beginning of mankind…”
Since the beginning of mankind there have been ghosts, but their numbers have always been small. Only a few out of every million people managed to survive after death; and only a tiny percentage of those survivors went insane during the transition, and became ghosts.
But the impact of those few was colossal upon a mankind fascinated by death, awed by the cold uncaring mobility of the corpse so recently quick and vital, shocked at the ghastly inapropos humor of the skeleton. Death's elaborate, mysterious figure seemed infinitely meaningful, its warning finger pointed toward the spirit-laden skies. So for every genuine ghost, rumor and fear produced a thousand. Every gibbering bat became a ghost. Marsh-fires, flapping curtains and swaying trees became ghosts, and St. Elmo's fire, great-eyed owls, rats in the walls, foxes in the bush, all became ghostly evidence. Folklore grew and produced witch and warlock, evil little familiars, demons and devils, succubi and incubi, werewolf and vampire. For every ghost a thousand were suspected, and for every supernatural fact a million were assumed.
Early scientific investigators entered this maze, trying to discover the truth about supernatural phenomena. They uncovered countless frauds, hallucinations and errors of judgment. And they found a few genuinely inexplicable events, which, though interesting, were statistically insignificant.
The whole tradition of folklore came tumbling down. Statistically there were no ghosts. But continually there was a sly, elusive something which refused to stand still and be classified. It was ignored for centuries, the occasional something which gave a basis and a reality to tales of incubi and succubi. Until at last scientific theory caught up with folklore, made a place for it in the realm of indisputable phenomena, and gave it respectability.
With the discovery of the scientific hereafter, the irrational ghost became understandable as a demented mind inhabiting the misty interface between Earth and the hereafter. The forms of ghostly madness could be categorized like madness on Earth. There were the melancholies, drifting disconsolately through the scenes of their great passion; the whispering hebephrenic, chattering gay and random nonsense; the idiots and imbeciles who returned in the guise of little children; the schizophrenics who imagined themselves to be animals, prototypes of vampire and Abominable Snowman, werewolf, weretiger, werefox, weredog. There were the destructive stone-throwing and fire-setting ghosts, the poltergeists, and the grandiloquent paranoids who imagined themselves to be Lucifer or Beelzebub, Israfael or Azazael, the Spirit of Christmas Past, the Furies, Divine Justice, or even Death itself.
Haunting was madness. They wept by the old watch tower, these few ghosts upon whose gossamer shoulders rested the entire great structure of folklore, mingled with the mists around the gibbet, jabbered their nonsense at the seance. They talked, cried, danced and sang for the delectation of the credulous, until scientific observers came with their sober cold questions. Then they fled back to the Threshold, terrified of this onslaught of reason, protective of their delusions, fearful of being cured.
“So that's how it was,” Melhill said. “You can figure out the rest. Since Hereafter, Inc. a hell of a lot more people are surviving after death. But of course a lot more are going insane on the way.”
“Thus producing a lot more ghosts,” Blaine said.
“Right. One of them is after you,” Melhill said, his voice growing faint. “So watch your step. Tom, I gotta go now.”
“What kind of ghost is it?” Blaine asked. “Whose ghost? And why do you have to go?”
“It takes energy to stay on Earth,” Melhill whispered. “I'm just about used up. Have to recharge. Can you still hear me?”
“Yes, go on.”
“I don't know when the ghost will show himself, Tom. And I don't know who he is. I asked, but he wouldn't tell me. Just watch out for him.”
“I'll watch out,” Blaine said, his ear pressed to the loudspeaker. “Ray! Will I speak to you again?”
“I think so,” Melhill said, his voice barely audible. “Tom, I know you’re looking for a job. Try Ed Franchel, 322 West 19th Street. It's rough stuff, but it pays. And watch yourself.”
“Ray!” Blaine shouted. “What kind of a ghost is it?”
There was no answer. The loudspeaker was silent, and he was alone in the grey room.