Friends on the Other Side

"Don't be," said Susan, after a second, "at least my sisters came through it untouched and with actual powers. I wouldn't wish for it to go any other way if it were to happen all over again."

"Wait," I said, "your sisters also went through part of what you went through?"

She had mentioned that she had been with her family, but I hadn't realized they had gone through something similar to what she had. Up until this point, I hadn't even realized she had a family left. I didn't have one. I hadn't had one for decades—or even a century.

The thought made my ghostly chest ache. The Phantom wasn't like me. I knew that. So acknowledging that she wasn't as separated from her family as I was shouldn't have hurt nearly as much as did.

"Yeah, it was the three of us who ended up in this mess," said Susan," our parents...well...they're still alive, they survived. We didn't but apparently we were meant to. Its all tangled in ways that I don't know if I've full understood and I'm probably confusing you, but I guess the simple answer is yeah. Those two are out walking somewhere right now actually. That's why I'm here all alone at this hour."

"Do your parents know?" I asked.

I shouldn't have asked the question. No matter what the answer was, it was going to hurt. Either I was looking at someone who understood my own conflicted feelings after my family's death, or I was looking at someone who was lucky enough to still have parents to go back to.

"I...its hard to say," said Susan. "From the one time we were allowed to observe from afar, I think they just think we died. And that's all they know, that's all they're allowed to know until one day this can all be reset properly."

I didn't get what The Phantom meant about something being reset, but I did understand what it was like to be separated from your parents. I hadn't seen mine in over a century. It was different, of course. They were gone long before I became a ghost. If they hadn't died, I would have probably never become a ghost.

What I probably should have offered was some kind of condolences to show that I understood at least some of her pain, but instead what I found myself asking was, "Haven't you ever tried to let them know before?"

"Once...but," Susan said, voice cracking ever so slightly," its not a good idea. That much was...very clear."

"...Oh," I finally said, and left it at that.

I looked back out ahead of us, not wanting to continue the conversation any further. I awkwardly cleared my throat for good measure.

"So," I started, "you mentioned needing to fly to see the demon on duty earlier?"

"Yes, this is such an abandoned patch so there's one demon for multiple places and she might not be here at the moment, doesn't look that way anyway," said Susan, latching on quickly to the change in subject.

"Great," I said. That made things nice and easy for us, didn't it?

Crossing my arms and resigning myself to my probable fate of being flown across this place by the Phantom, I added, "So where would she be right now, if she's not here?"

"Well, on one of the three other planetoids she oversees," said Susan," it won't take that long to go to all of them."

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Planetoids? What were those? I knew what planets were, but hadn't ever heard of that.

"Good," I said, giving a stretch. "I have a body I need to get back to."

"Great, I hope you don't mind a little turbulence. I can technically fly in this realm because I was kind of sort of given special permission but being not technically properly dead means its not something that was meant to happen and it gets a bit...bumpy."

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I didn't know what turbulence was, but I pretended like I very much did and wouldn't mind it at all. "I can handle it."

"Cool," said Susan, holding out a hand, and willing it to be as solid as she could possibly make it. "Hold on tight. Sometimes I might flicker, I don't have full control...but hopefully we don't find out what happens when you drop a person that's technically not dead in the land of the dead."

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