Sarah Brown.
That was her name.
Wilfred grabbed the first book that lay on top of his piled boxes, one he bought for university notes a while back but found it too nice to write in and ended up doodling in the margins of the textbooks. It was a hardcover one, convenient to write poetry or love letters to nobody in particular – yet, of course, his younger self would scorn at him for the way he's currently using it.
Shaking a ballpoint pen, he managed to put pen to paper and circle a name on the centre of the first double spread of lined paper.
'SARAH BROWN', it read.
Looking up at her, she merely grinned.
He had spent all morning on that sofa, unmoving and attempting to suppress the surplus of headaches as well as trying to make sense of the situation.
Despite his cynicism, he had to admit it - he always followed logic rather than superstition due to the two being on opposite sides of the 'sanity' spectrum, but in this case, all logic led to what he believed to be superstition.
After much incoherent sobbing and 'why me?' exclamations, Sarah sent him a pointed look with a raise of her eyebrows and asked him what he hoped to gain by whining about it.
He simply turned red out of embarrassment, wiping the snot from his nose and wondering why a child acted more like an adult than he did.
"If you want me to help you make sense of things, I need you to man up and help me." She simply stated.
"Right… but I'm helping you too, no need to be so mean." He murmured under his breath through a shaky voice from his audible crying moments prior.
That's right, they made an agreement.
Wilfred didn't understand how ghosts worked – he thought that to make an agreement with someone who's from the spirit world, would he have to bargain with the grim reaper? Perhaps use a blood pact? He scrapped the latter idea rather quickly since he realized she had no body; how would she shed blood for a satanic blood pact? He realized that later too, when they attempted to shake hands after making the agreement, only to have their hands pass directly through each other.
She laughed lightly, yet her hand lingered over her hand for a few moments more before clenching and unclenching it.
Wilfred just shook his head at what he agreed to.
Seeing him glance harshly at his notebook as if contemplating the situation, she laughed.
"What's so hard about the task I gave you?" She then leant down and pouted, "Is tiny little Wilfred finding it hard to piece it together?"
"What isn't hard about it?!" Wilfred erupted, raising his hands to clutch his head as if it were the only thing grounding him, "What was it you said again? Ghosts hold onto… onto er… um-"
"Ghosts hold onto strong emotions, typically resentment." She finished coolly as if she recited it a hundred times prior, which she probably will at the rate Wilfred keeps enquiring her to repeat.
"Resentment, huh? So before you guys died… you felt some surge of anger, but towards what?" Wilfred pressed on finally, not bursting into tears at this aspect like he previously did.
She tapped her chin for a few moments.
"It's different for everyone – it could be a person, institute, concept and so on. If you feel pure resentment, or just emotions, right before you die, you latch your soul onto the world and your spirit will linger until your resentment dispels."
Wilfred didn't entirely understand, but nodded like he did.
"You don't understand, do you?"
He shook his head instantly.
"Well, take me for example," She motioned to the book that he had on his lap, and he straightened his posture at the motion, prepared to make notes on what she was saying, "The last few moments before I died, I had pure anger and hatred towards a person… or was it an institute? One of the two, but I recall cursing them out, claiming to 'get revenge' one day… hah, ironic isn't it?"
Wilfred lowered his pen after writing 'pure resentment' and looked at her with a sullen gaze.
"Do you… do you not remember what killed you?"
"It isn't a 'what'." She smiled, yet it seemed so distant, "It was a 'who'."
"A… a who…" Wilfred murmured lightly while writing it down.
Sarah sighed, knowing it took a while to click in his already riddled mind.
He finally paused.
He looked up.
Mouth agape.
"Someone… someone fucking killed you?!"
Shrugging in response, Wilfred realized how serious the situation had gotten.
"Don't just shrug! What the actual fu…" Looking at her expression, he coughed, "… hell."
Sarah merely nodded, yet her expression wasn't as sullen as it was previously due to Wilfred's constant panic that was admittedly amusing.
"Well, if I died from a terminal illness, I wouldn't have much resentment, would I?"
Glancing at her deadpan face and back down at the pen clutched in his hand, he had to admit, he did think of that earlier. Murder or some form of unjust killing would result in resentment to latch a spirit onto the world, but seeing it in person made him feel sympathetic on levels he couldn't fathom.
"Do you know anything else?" Wilfred enquired lowly, "Do you know who it is?"
"Nope."
Wilfred groaned internally.
Of course she doesn't know, that would make things too easy.
She then explained how she was hit on the head before she died, resulting in extremely foggy memory and an inability to recall the faces of who committed the crime. Wilfred buried his face in his hands, shaking it wildly.
"When did you die?"
"What month is this?"
"Late January." He decided, not recalling the exact date, nobody really knows the date when it's the weekend.
"Then around last January, I suppose, if I became a ghost directly after I died."
He was shocked. Last January? Everyone else he'd met seemed content with their ghostly life, mostly due to the fact that they've been like this for a while, but she passed away a year ago. That was so close! He tried to recall where he was around last year, but memories blurred instantly - Something about alcohol on new year's makes a person forget. She died so young, assuming her age by her childish looks and persona. He bit his tongue and felt instant regret and remorse. How could she be so okay with that? But it made sense, she seemed less accustomed to the whole 'dead' thing.
"I can't believe this… you remember when you died and the fact that you were murdered, but not anything else?"
"Yes, were you not listening?" She scoffed, "I remember being kidnapped, but everything after that is fuzzy."
"Can you try remember?"
She paused and looked away, a pout visible on her face with her eyebrows furrowed.
"I don't want to."
Wilfred glowered at her for a few moments before pity arose since she was just a child – of course she didn't want to recount the depressing and malevolent details of her demise. Realizing he possibly caused her rotten mood, he decided to change the subject.
"Do you know why I can see ghosts?"
Biting back a grin at how quickly her expression changed from gloomy to piqued with interest and avid curiosity.
"Did you wish really really hard? I saw that in a movie once."
She certainly was a child.
"Oh yeah every night before I went to sleep, I prayed to god and said, 'Please oh please let me see dead people'," He sarcastically mocked, shaking his head furiously, "Of course not! I never actually believed in ghosts! Sure, I was scared of them but the only comfort I had was believing they didn't exist!"
"Okay then scratch that out, let me think here... did you ever mess with spirit stuff? You know, demon books? Dig up someone's grave? Taunt a spirit? Or use - "
"- a Ouija board?" He hesitantly added, wringing his fingers together tighter until his knuckles turned a hellish pale.
"Yep! Oh wait... did you actually?"
He released the knot of his fingers and knocked himself on the head, mumbling 'stupid' over and over again until the girl started clicking her tongue.
"Me and a friend-" He stopped and recalled Lottie and a striking middle finger directed at him the previous day "- Someone I knew were just messing around with one of those toy boards last night, I mean it moved, sure, but I've never seen this happen before!"
"Last night? Oh, that's when it started happening right?" She deduced, feeling satisfied with herself as he nodded regrettably, "If I remember from those movies, did you say goodbye?"
He shook his head.
"Did you respect the ghost and board?"
He shook his head again.
"Horrible, haven't you seen any horror movie at all?"
He cringed.
"I doubt that doing that itself would've resulted in you seeing ghosts... did you do anything else?"
He mumbled under his breath, something even she couldn't distinguish as it sounded like garbled sounds.
"What?"
"I kicked the glass arrow thing."
"What?!"
"It broke."
"Oh, you are so dead," She joked, amusement laced in her voice, obviously not pinning Wilfred as the type of guy to kick something that has so much horror connotations to it. He buried his face in his hands.
"You can help me, right? Get rid of this, I mean?" His voice cracked, his vulnerability showing once more. Wilfred had always been a sensitive person and was no stranger to begging and being stupidly polite in regard to others. Some people would describe him as a pushover as he'd laugh and agree, not feeling the tinge of pride to defend himself because he knew what he was.
He was so caught up in the details of her end of the bargain that he never considered his.
"Well, not really." She laughed, "I agreed beforehand, but now that I consider it, what makes you think I, of all people, can help?"
"Well I feel like you of all people would believe me, you're dead, you probably have nothing else to do."
"Ouch, but true," She feigned hurt whilst grinning, "But out of all ghosts, why me? I could probably try haunt a house or something, I'm not completely jobless."
"The others seem... extremely angry or busy."
"Dude, I'm pretty sure I can't help you get rid of your... ghost vision thing."
"Okay maybe you can't help me with that, but maybe you could help me navigate this spirit world aspect, be my ghost bodyguard and help me out with this, I'd rather much not do it alone."
She let out an exasperated laugh, nodding despite that.
"Then, you help me, and I'll help you."
She seemed less sinister now with a sloppy grin plastered across her face.