Shades of the New World

Chapter 79: Unrequited love

After his death, Evan had turned into a spirit of some sorts. For the first few days, he simply stood near his rotting body, without even registering what had happened. The newborn ghost never realised how easily one could just... Die.

He spent that time in regret and thinking about all the things he could've achieved in life. He thought that it would've been better if he at least got killed by some robber, or contracted an incurable disease, or even slipped on a thin sheet of ice and broke his fucking skull. Anything was better than this.

After a few hours of raging, the ghost finally calmed down and started wondering about his circumstances.

What was he supposed to do? Wasn't he supposed to go to hell like all those people who read his book told him to? What did god want from him?

And after asking all these questions and finding no answers, Evan decided to pray.

He prayed for answers, for revelations, for signs and for punishment. Utter silence.

Unable to hear the answers he so desperately wanted, Evan decided to venture outside. He wondered if others would be able to see him, or if he could affect reality in some way. When he was raging at his death before, he could freely pick up some items and throw them around. But the mess Evan made was already gone, like nothing ever happened inside the room.

Evan decided to do some experiments, and he concluded that he could touch any object, but if he tried to pick them up, an ethereal copy of the object would be created and the original would stay in place. If the ghost lost physical, or should he say, spiritual contact with the ethereal copy, it would disappear soon after.

The ghost also did not need either sleep or food. He never felt tired or spent. Peak condition at all times, but his mind did feel the need to just sit down and enjoy a moment of respite sometimes.

Evan sighed and tried to go out but fear took over his body like someone had grasped his heart and refused to let go. Evin stood at the doorstep for some time, before he slapped his cheeks and resolved to go outside.

Walking out of the doorsteps, he was met with a beautiful sight of an empty street covered in a thin rug of snow. It was just after dawn, so most people had not left their houses. As the ghost walked on the snow, his footsteps would ruin the perfectly level ground before they disappear promptly.

Something about this discovery startled Evan greatly, and the man frantically ran around the area and rolled on the ground to leave at least some kind of impact. Alas, the footsteps of the dead could not be found on the snow-white street.

Soon, others started appearing in the street. They took no notice of the ghost rolling on the ground and went on about their businesses. The previously level ground was now riddled with an array of footsteps. One of them phased through Evan, which left the spirit dazed with horror.

A certain realization started emerging inside Evan's head.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" he muttered.

It was ironic how seeing his dead body did not fully convince the man that he was dead. Instead, it was the fact that his footsteps disappeared and the ones of other did not was what nailed the coffin for him.

"My life was a joke, my death was a joke, and it seems that my afterlife will also be a joke," Evan joked in a self-depreciating tone.

Evin looked at these memories and could only sigh with lament.

'Afterwards, my life became a gradual descent to partial madness. I guess I could be proud of the fact that I stayed half-sane after all that,' he thought. According to his memories, the first few years after his death were filled with confusion and disbelief.

After Evan died, his body was found two weeks later, when a mailman came close and smelled something foul inside the house. He called the police, and they found a badly decomposed body inside, sprawled on the ground, like he had been knocked out, but with no sign of an attack and no signs of a burglary.

The forensic scientist who was in charge of his case was having a hard time finding the cause of death, before the police found the butcher and the latter explained how sickly Evan looked when he came to him.

Evan was present in most of the procedure, but all of these were unimportant details compared to one thing. His parents' reactions. He vividly remembered how they first reacted to it all. His mother's broken wails and his father's defeated expression, filled with guilt and regret. A silent tear streaming down from his eyes. It was the first time he ever saw his father cry.

A tear appeared in Evin's eye, as he was once more reminded of those days.

Evan's mother started having nightmares after that, dreaming of the deaths of her other two children. She became more and more unstable, always lashing out at others for the smallest reasons.

Evan was worried for her health and started spending time inside his parents' house, looking over them as they began to cope with his death. He truly felt helpless, knowing that there was nothing he could do to help them.

'Thankfully, nothing bad happened to my family afterwards, and they started to get better slowly, but surely,' Evin thought in a reminiscing mood.

Evan decided to leave his home after he felt that things had calmed down. He wanted to search for others like himself, to converse with someone else and find some answers.

When he was living at his parents' house he did everything he could think of to affect the world of the living. His will was thoroughly smashed by these attempts, so he decided to change his approach and search for clues in the world of the dead.

He actively started spending time in morgues and cemeteries, hoping to see someone be reborn as a ghost or a spirit like himself. Eventually, staring at dead bodies became a hobby of some sorts to him, but that was a story for later.

When he was going around these places filled with death, he stumbled upon a very interesting forensics coroner who worked for the police. An aged man, with a balding head and thick lines across his face. The old man was quite an eccentric. His primary way of talking was through yells and grunts, especially with police officers, but the law enforcement did not mind his character, since the man knew his job and did it well.

He also let no one inside his home, which he used as his autopsy office, and naturally, a constant stream of rumors flew around his house, where dead bodies were pried into on a weekly basis. The strictly no-outsiders policy did not help with the problem of gossip as well. But obviously, a closed door did nothing to stop Evan, who was now a ghost.

When Evan finally entered the house, what he found inside surprised him greatly. Amid the smell of death and decay, and a row of mummified bodies in glass top coffins assembled in one corner the house, a blonde-haired girl with pale skin, still with some baby fat on her face, diligently cutting a line on the stomach of a dead man appeared in front of Evan.

Her slender fingers tightly gripping a scalpel, drifting slowly, but deliberately. There was a certain mastery of her job that was apparent in the girl's actions. Sometimes, the old man would instruct the girl to do one thing or the other.

He acted stern and infallible with the girl, but when she wasn't looking, a beaming expression full of pride could be seen on the man's wrinkled face.

Evan started spending more and more time in this house surrounded by rumors. He soon found out that the old forensic scientist was expecting his own death and had decided to train his future successor. His daughter was his first choice, since the girl had no fear of the dead and she was sufficiently talented.

The girl's name was Layla Lockhoover. Watching her work gave Evan a feeling of awe and pride. He joined in with the old man to watch over the growth of the girl. The ghost did not have anything else to do, and a number of dead people came to this place anyway, so it was a win-win situation for him.

Gradually, Evan started learning more and more about the girl and her circumstances. The mummified bodies inside the house were the members of the girl's bloodline. The forensics coroner's ancestors were all distinguished in autopsy, slowly perfecting their craft over generations.

As for the girl herself, she was the serious and socially inept type. She hardly went out, spending most of her time with dead bodies. And when she did get out, the smell of rotten meat would permeate from her, giving no end to the rumors that surrounded her. Layla herself though, never gave a second thought to the stares and whispers. Her gait proud and steady, never wavering and never disturbed.

'She was basically the perfect individual that I described in my novel. Detached from society, only focusing on perfecting herself. No wonder I got obsessed with her at the time,' Evin realized as he remembered.

After the spirit spent three years with the family of coroners, Evan had hopelessly fallen in love with Layla. Although no spirit appeared in front of him from the dead bodies, Evan was too infatuated with the girl to care. After Layla became an adult, her stern gaze and sharp cheekbones finally lost their baby-fat, creating a young woman who looked like she was in her early thirties. Most would not consider her to be someone pretty, but to Evan, she was like an incarnation of Aphrodite.

During this time, Evan felt like he was living. He would sleep in the same room as Layla, silently looking at her, and sometimes covering her with an ethereal blanket. Eventually he began to stay as close to her as possible, but not quite enough to touch her. He knew that if he dared to touch her, his body would phase through and his perfect illusion would be destroyed.

He knew he was living in delusion, but it still felt nice to pretend to live.

Evin, on the other hand, was having a hard time living through these memories because of the shame and cringe. He personally checked every memory related to this period from the "Earth Info" pile that would go to Kena and made sure that none of these shameful memories were part of them.