Read Online Thirteen Days of Midnight by Leo Hunt - Free Book Online

around and all that,” the Judge continues. “They’re in L.A., most of ’em.”
    “Los Angeles? Why?”
    “Discussions was being held with your dad.”
    “A motion picture,” says the Vassal.
    “Really? I thought he died in England.”
    “Foreign soil, I’m afraid,” says the Vassal, bowing his head.
    The kettle boils, and the Judge picks it up and pours the water into my mug. If I look out of the corner of my eye, I can see the kettle floating in midair. When I look straight at him, the Judge comes slowly into focus, blurry at first before adjusting into a bright, sharp figure.
    “So you were all in Los Angeles, and Dad died. Have the others just stayed there? Are they going to come back?”
    “If you call them,” says the Vassal, “they must come. All of them.”
    “How long would that take?”
    “Call them right now? A day, maybe,” says the Judge.
    “But . . . you’re ghosts. How can it take you time to go anywhere?”
    “I didn’t realize you was now an expert on being dead, boss. How does it take us time to go anywhere? Same as it takes you bloody time.”
    “Well, I’m sorry,” I say.
    “We enjoy certain advantages due to our incorporeal state,” says the Vassal. “We can travel as the crow flies, so to speak. There are limits on where and when we may voyage, but they are not the same as those that limit the living. Walls and flames, mountains and oceans: such things pose no boundary. We are restricted by the movements of the stars, the music of the spheres. When the planets are in the wrong configuration, there is very little we can do.”
    “So you can’t just go back to say, America, right now?”
    “There is only one who can be in all places at all times, and we are not he.”
    “Like God?” I ask. “Are you saying there’s a God?”
    “That all right for you, boss?” asks the Judge, thumping the tea down at my right elbow.
    “I know that there is,” says the Vassal, “although this heathen may tell you otherwise.”
    “It don’t seem very likely,” says the Judge. “I been dead near thirty years now, and I ain’t got one sniff of a pearly gate.”
    “And by whose judgment is that counted as evidence?” asks the Vassal. “You have not been to the other side, colleague. None of us has.”
    “The Shepherd’s been,” says the Judge. “Went to the other place and came back, too. Told me about it.”
    The Vassal stares at the ceiling.
    “The Shepherd?” I ask.
    “Another of the Host,” replies the Vassal finally.
    “We ain’t speaking ill of the dead,” says the Judge.
    My head is starting to hurt.
    “Listen,” I say, “can you all, like, take another order or whatever?”
    “Of course,” says the Vassal.
    “Take a day off. I’m sure normal service, whatever that was, will resume . . . soon. I would think. But for now, you can all take the day off. Look around the town, or something.”
    “Our gratitude is boundless,” the Vassal says.
    The Judge gives me a crooked grin, then nods.
    “You want supper made?” he asks.
    “I’ll get a pizza. Just, like . . . enjoy yourselves, I suppose?”
    For the first time the ghosts are genuinely smiling. They bow to me and then walk out through the wall and into the garden. The Vassal keeps walking, toward the town center. The Judge lingers, as if deciding what to do. When he sees that I’m still watching, he grins before vanishing, like someone switched him off.
    I take a deep breath and walk upstairs with my cup of tea. Ham is in my room, wrapped up in my duvet. He grunts anxiously.
    “It’s all right, boy,” I say. “They’ve gone.”
    I sit and rub his head, running my fingers through his tangled fur. I don’t know what to think. When the dead were here, in my kitchen, it was easier. I couldn’t doubt myself, because it was happening to me. Now that they’ve gone, the doubts come flooding in. This is just stupid. There is no such thing as ghosts, because — well, there just isn’t, no matter what