It is true that you don’t get the best haunting gigs with a name like the Vociferating Wraith. The alliteration was good, Milly had been advised, but it needed work. The Screaming Spectre or Shambles-of-the-woods, now, those were monikers that could curdle milk. The best hers could do was probably to sour it.
Then again, she hadn’t been great with names during her life either. Her son Anastasius had made that very clear. She had pointed out that he could shorten it to Annie. It hadn’t helped.
It is also fair to point out that she hadn’t had a lot of spooking practice. Nobody had visited the House in years, despite her best efforts to keep up the place. She had maintained the generator. The humidity and temperature were optimal, as was the pressure. Admittedly, the lights didn’t work except for bouts of flickering, but this was intentional. So were the ominously creaking airlock hinges.
Milly would even admit, begrudgingly, that she was unlikely to ever reach the heights of terror scaled by the most infamous of her trade. While her foot-tap-and-vanish was world-class, her wails of anguish could on some days be better described as yelps of mild anxiety. She tended to forget her rattling chains. She was too polite to slam doors. The cold winds she weaved were too humid, which tended to induce uncomfortable stickiness rather than an icy shudder.
The Vociferating Wraith was mediocre at her job, and that was fine. But she still had a sliver of pride, all be damned. Which was why there could have scarcely been a more insulting reply to her apparition than a hearty “Thank god!”. The spirit floated a few inches above the ground, gobsmacked.
“This is Red House Station, right? It’s half buried, I barely spotted it.” said the tall figure in front of Milly from behind microphone static.
Milly nodded, hesitantly.
The newcomer extracted a small device from a crevice in her costume. She inspected it, clanked a few steps forward in a preoccupied manner, and seemed satisfied. She pocketed the device. There was a deep hiss, not unlike that of a grandfather very pleased with his meal. The round helmet of the space suit came off to reveal an even rounder head attached to a young woman. Her gaze seemed to indicate that her mind was far away.
Her nose seemed to indicate that special modifications had had to be made to her helmet to accommodate all of it, mused Milly nastily.
The newcomer strode off into the darkness of the station, leaving the Wraith to float despondently by herself.
Henrietta Stein had graduated from the Academy a few years back. Her trajectory in life had been pointing upwards when it intersected with an unfortunate moon and resulted in a crash. She was the only survivor of a crew of 10 excellent astronauts and Ronnie. As far as Henrietta was concerned, Ronnie had it coming. He was the sort of man to forget his tether while out on a space walk and ask whether you happened to have an extra on you. She was surprised he had made it long enough to die in a crash.
Once, Ronnie had misplaced a bag of candy so thoroughly that they were unable to find it for several days, an impressive feat in the tight quarters of an 11-crew vessel.
“Guys, I think there’s something in my suit.” he had announced one day while him, Henrietta and a couple of others were out working on a satellite.
“Unlikely”, came the engineer’s assessment. “No alien parasite would slither into a suit if it involved the risk of you crawling inside with it.”
This had done little to calm down Ronnie.
“Listen, I think it’s coming toward my neck.”
“Screw off!” said the engineer.
Ronnie turned toward him with a hurt glare. The engineer quietly handed him a screw and shifted his drill to the next one.
“Oh.”
Then a clink came from Ronnie’s microphone.
“Err… I found that candy bag.” he said glumly. “That’s what I was feeling. I guess I must have slipped it into my suit and forgotten about it.”
“Roger that.”
“There are currently three pieces of chocolate orbiting my head.”
“Are they in stationary orbit?” Henrietta asked.
“I guess.”
“You might just be a misunderstood genius.” she said.
Ronnie inflated with pride.
“Misdiagnosed, too.” said the engineer cheerfully.
Ronnie deflated, slightly.
“No, I mean it.” continued Henrietta. “You might have discovered a viable alternative to the nutritive puree we suck on on longer walks.”
“The only disadvantage being the Ronnie sweat seasoning.” replied the engineer.
“I will concede that it needs some refinement, as all innovation does at the beginning.” said Henrietta.
Later, when they were inside the ship, Ronnie had offered to share the remaining chocolates. Nobody wanted to risk it, but he had simply been happy to find there were some left. Bag half full, that was the sort of fellow he had been.
Those had been good days. They had been good people. Now there was only one, digging among the distraught wreckage for anything that could still be used. In the glow of a purple dawn lighting up both sides of the horizon, among the ragged shapes of bent steel, one was still standing.
Henrietta heaved and grunted and at last unearthed the intact crate. There wasn’t much in terms of supplies, but it was enough. The moon she had crashed on was Boucheporn, which, she had been reliably informed, had been named after a town of the Old World. It was small, rocky and barren, unremarkable in every way except the one that mattered most: it had once housed a temporary research station. This moon was far from inhabited systems, but there was a chance. A chance was all she needed.
She wasn’t quite up to snuff on her Lorentz equations, but Henrietta estimated that about a century had passed here since it had been abandoned. Yet to her astonishment, Red House Station was alight, warm and welcoming. It was also slightly haunted.
Milly glided along the smooth, shadowy corridors, with the fading folds of her milky dress billowing behind her. The suspicion was starting to creep up on her that, far from possessing anybody, she had become a host. She felt as if coffee and biscuits had a non-zero chance of happening in the near future. She would not stand for it. If for no other reason, then at least because she had no corporeal legs to speak of.
When she finally reached Henrietta, she was fiddling with a fuse box. She was really pressing Milly’s buttons, too.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes?” said the astronaut, without turning.
“Err.” said Milly, enthralling orator.
It was something she had never thought she would have to explain.
“You are aware that this is a haunted house, yes?” tried Milly lamely.
“For a given value of the term ‘house’, yes.”
“And that I am a ghost?”
“Yep.”
“Oh.”
A few sparks sizzled away from one of Henrietta’s tools. A few seconds of silence evaporated.
“You don’t seem afraid.”
“Why should I be?”
Milly considered this.
“The chill of an intangible being of pure cold approaching you? The sound of footsteps at night when you’re alone? The empty echo of chains? Your nightstand taking flight in an attempt to join the yearly migration?”
Henrietta turned around, her brow furrowed in puzzlement. And there were those eyes again, eyes that seemed to say that they had gazed into the infinite and had discovered no hotels or monkeys with typewriters, but something they had never been quite able to recover from.
And yet this woman seemed suddenly puzzled, which only added to Milly’s already overflowing reservoirs of confusion. Then, she extended a hand.
“My name is Henrietta.”
Reluctantly, the ghost shook the proferred appendage. Their hands passed through each other, so it was for the sake of form more than anything else.
“I’m Milly.”
Henrietta smiled at her, then returned to work. The Now-Rather-Quiet Wraith sat on the floor beside her and sighed.
“It was you who kept the generators going for this long, wasn’t it?” said Henrietta.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Milly frowned.
“It’s rather unlikely that anyone will visit an uninhabitable lunar station, isn’t it?” she said testily.
“Right… Um, were you trying to attract visitors?”
Milly felt like she was talking to the type of person to take an IQ test and ask if it is open-book.
“This is all rather upsetting…” said Milly, changing the subject. “You know, in the old days things would have gone differently. Nobody respects the craft anymore. You used to get teens stepping behind the creaking door, never to be seen again. Young grooms cowering in fear. Village elders with lanterns whispering warnings. Now they come in and unblinkingly tell you that you have to start paying rent! The nerve!”
Milly settled down and sighed again.
“It’s the same everywhere. The colonies, the Edge, the Eighth Planetary System, the Old World. Nobody seems afraid of ghosts anymore.” said Milly sadly. “People stopped caring.”
Henrietta still looked mistified. Then, above her head, a lightbulb flared to life. This was because she had fixed the fuse, but comprehension had also dawned.
“It’s not like I asked to haunt a space station, like that’s a pleasant-”
“I get it! You think you’re a ghost, don’t you?”
“Er… I am a ghost.” said Milly slowly.
“Right. But you think you’re a ghost ghost! Remarkable!”
Milly gazed at her with the mix of pity, concern and disappointment normally reserved for dogs who ate something colourful off the ground and are now suffering the consequences.
“And you wouldn’t remember, naturally! Brilliant!” eeked Henrietta in the joy of discovery, her sorrows temporarily forgotten.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to have a lie down?” said Milly.
Henrietta was already on her feet and picking up speed.
“And why couldn’t a memory do just that, after all?” said Henrietta excitedly, as she disappeared around the corner.
Delusion often struck those stranded in space, thought Milly sadly. She wondered if it wouldn’t be less cruel to just shut down life support and start over.
The ghost grunted, got off the ground and floated in pursuit, worried that Henrietta might encounter sharp objects.
Milly reached her as she was entering the main command module of the station.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll show you. Is the onboard computer passworded?”
“Yes… It’s the top row of keys.”
Henrietta rolled her eyes and typed it in. Inevitably, it booted with a jumpscare. Milly grinned awkwardly.
Henrietta’s fingers typed quickly. Eventually, there was a very final click.
“Steven Conroy. Pamela Azumaya. Kumal Anderson. Nina Anderson. Peter Kucliezski. Sir Michael Underwood. Any of those names ring a bell?”
“Yeah.”
“A-ha!”
“That’s the crew of the Red House Station. I’ve navigated that console when I was bored, you know.” said Milly indifferently.
“Right. But details about the deceased almost always trigger the directive. Are you sure you don’t remember anything?”
“Yes.” said Milly, still not quite following. “Listen, I wasn’t part of the Red House crew when I was alive. None of them died here, anyway.”
“Of course you weren’t them!” said Henrietta.
“I came to haunt this station from another place, because everything else was taken- wait, what do you mean of course? And what directive?”
Henrietta sat down in one of the plush armchairs and glanced around the room. It had the air of a corporate office where somebody had stuck random blinking lights as a last-minute measure to ward off drabness. They hadn’t done a particularly good job. She then looked at Milly.
“Answer me this: did you maintain the upkeep on the station in the hope that humans might return so that you could slowly terrorize them?”
“Er… yes. That is… what ghosts do.” said Milly guiltily.
“Right.”
Henrietta leaned back in her chair.
“I don’t suppose you recall what ghosts are. That is normal.”
“Of course I know that. Spirits of those who died a gruesome death, damned to rove the world in search of justice or vengeance. I don’t remember who I was, to be honest, but the end can’t have been pleasant. Now I have to terrorize the living.” shrugged Milly. “That’s how it goes.”
“It’s not true.”
Milly raised an eyebrow.
“Are you aware that a few centuries ago humans started developing technology that allowed us certain telepathic capacities?” said Henrietta.
Milly considered this for a few moments.
“You know, it’s weird. I didn’t remember it until you said it, but now it feels as if the information was always there and I just wasn’t looking.”
“Right. Well, eventually applications to this invention other than for sex were developed. That tech isn’t great even now, but it has its uses. Anyway, that is when ghosts first appeared.” said Henrietta.
“I know for a fact that there are stories of ghosts from much earlier epochs.” said Milly doubtfully.
“Tales of spirits, yes. But no such thing manifested in physical reality before last century. That is because ghosts are not dead people, but living memories. It’s a very rare phenomenon, but it has been studied. I took a course on it in college. It was an elective.”
Milly rolled her eyes.
“A ghost is what remains when a powerful thought is left without a thinker. Albeit an anomaly, a particularly forceful and desperate thought can escape the mind of the dying telepath and establish an existence of its own. This is not fully understood, but it is known that it will forge for itself an identity. It will create a narrative to stand between it and the void in the same way that the single-cell organism builds a membrane to shield itself. It can live for as long as it has a story, a justification for existing.”
Henrietta thought for a moment before continuing.
“I suppose the best way to put it is that ghosts are floating memories, kept alive by a delusion of some kind. In that sense, humanity had ghosts before too. Libraries were full of them.”
Milly was silent for a while.
“That is why you said that of course I wasn’t one of the crew. Because I was never a person at all.” said Milly.
“Yes.” said Henrietta. “I’m sorry.”
The woman waited an apt amount of time before resuming her story.
“Normally, ghosts do not behave like you, though. They are sad little mopes that hang around cluelessly close to the spot they were thought.”
“So what makes me special? That I believe I’m a ghost like in the old tales? Chains and billowing sheets?”
“Partly, but there is more than that. You have embodied stereotypes that were never real and turned them into a survival strategy. Your reason for existing is to be a spooky ghost. You created for yourself a personality and a job, however strange. You even planned ahead and built an environment to suit your - ”
“Delusion?” said Milly flatly.
“Yes!” came the reply, a little more enthusiastic than Milly would have liked. “Of course, you didn’t know all that as a protection mechanism. The narrative only keeps you alive for as long as you believe it is real.”
The wraith waited. A moment passed by, followed by another, then a few more waddled past like frightened ducklings.
“So now I know my whole existence is bull. How am I still here?” said Milly.
“Oh, that’s easy. Same as with humans. Just because you know your reason to be is made up, it doesn’t mean you really believe that.”
Milly sat down, discombobulated.
“I don’t believe you’re lying. In an odd sort of way, it makes sense.” she said. “You mentioned something about a directive.”
“Yes. My lecturer was saying that all ghosts have a reason to exist that anchors them. Their directive. It is usually to pass on an idea or a message, but they only remember it when triggered by a memory related to the tragedy that brought them into being. That’s what I tried with the names.”
Milly slumped into her armchair and fell silent. There was a lot to think about.
The rest of the day passed quietly. While Milly was tweaking creaky floor panels out of habit, her mind was elsewhere. Meanwhile, Henrietta was refurbishing the communications array of the Red House. She would need to get out the message that she was still alive if she were to have a chance at survival. Fortunately, the Agency had had plans to return to Boucheporn, so the comms equipment had been disassembled and neatly tucked away. When she was almost done putting it back together, she noticed that a single bolt was missing, in accordance with an unbreakable law of the Universe. It would have to do.
Later, they had dinner. One wasn’t hungry and the other had no digestive tract, but they had dinner nonetheless.
“It’s strange, but I still feel kind of embarassed that I didn’t scare you in the least.” said Milly.
“I mean, I knew that ghosts were harmless.” said Henrietta.
“You said ‘Thank God!’, though!” said Milly drily.
Henrietta chuckled.
“To be honest, I was happy to have the company!” she replied. “Listen, it’s not that weird that no one is scared of ghosts and ghost stories anymore. In the last century, people have had to deal with the horrors of planetary colonisation on a scale never before seen. Many have been through cruel wars, or ill in a tin can in orbit. Some have witnessed their planets’ entire ecosystems collapse.” She looked down. “Some have been sucked through malfunctioning spaceship toilets and expectorated toward the stars.”
“That would be, in technical terms, a cargo dump.” said Milly cheerfully.
Henrietta glared at her.
“I woke up today and I had to stare the Universe in the eye from among the wreckage, and know that I was utterly alone in the cold nothing. So when I found that there was somebody else, you can bet that I thanked any and all gods on the line!” said Henrietta. “That brief chill of utter, desolate loneliness will never leave my skull, no matter how much I struggle or beg.”
She breathed in and out.
“So there’s not a lot of folks left that you can scare with sheets.”
In the next days, the two fell into a routine of sorts. During the Boucheporn day, Henrietta would trek out with the comms array and mount it at some distance from the base, in a different spot each time. She would send signals into deep space until she tired out. During the night, her and Milly would talk until the woman fell asleep. Milly would never leave Red House.
Soon, they managed to get short distance radio working, so that they could communicate while Henrietta was out on the lunar surface.
“Milly, I have been meaning to ask something.”
“Yes?”
“Just a second.” said Henrietta. “Right, dish 2 is in position. I noticed yesterday that there was one room on the station that I had never entered. The door was locked.”
“Which room is that?”
“From the command module you take a left, then it’s on the left hand side at the very end of the corridor.”
“There is no door there.” said Milly.
Henrietta was silent.
“Yes, there is. Go check.”
Milly went, and returned.
“You were right. My mistake.” said Milly.
“So what is there?” said Henrietta.
“I don’t go there.”
“Why?”
Milly thought for a while. The dread slowly crept up as she realized that she didn’t know why.
“I’m going to check and return.”
“Roger that.” said Henrietta.
The woman continued her work, stabbing at the moon with tripods. Suddenly, a glint not far off caught her eye. She ambled toward the unexplored area in the purple dawn. As she got closer, it became clear what it was.
“Henrietta?”
“Milly? Listen, I’m not the first to crash land on Boucheporn! I’ve found a shuttle wreckage out here, though it’s hard to say when - “
“I know.”
“Heads up would’ve been nice, then.” said Henrietta.
“I’ve just remembered.”
“Oh.” said Henrietta, as this sank in.
“It belonged to my thinker. He was stranded here, much like you.”
“What is in the room?” said Henrietta, asking a question she desperately did not want the answer to.
“It’s, er… in the gloom, I couldn’t make it out. Like one of those ink blot tests. When it finally came into focus, I deeply wished it hadn’t. It’s him, my thinker. Or the leftover parts, anyway.”
“In that case - “
“I remembered the directive. It’s a warning.” said Milly.
Henrietta shrugged defiantly.
“Have you looked at the stars recently?” said Milly
“No.” said Henrietta firmly.
“We are at the edge of the Galactic convention, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So all of civilization is in the same area of sky.”
“Right.”
“It seems that my thinker did the math. This system’s sun is always exactly between us and them.”
There was quiet, as the meaning of this sank in.
“When the station was populated, they used to have a satellite chain to circuvent this, but it’s long been premiere scrap metal.” said Milly. “I’m sorry.”
In the shadow of the purple sun, the dread set in. Henrietta had nothing left to do but wait for death on this rock. So she grieved. Afterwards, she picked herself up and walked home in grim defiance, back to the Red House. She slammed the door on an ungrateful world. In defiance to the Universe, she sat down and talked nonsense all night. And she drank a glass.
“To talking moonshine!”
And, altogether too soon, Henrietta disappeared from the world. All that was left was what Milly remembered of her.
All that remained was the memory of a memory. And even that, in the end, faded too.
October 2019