I have other plans.

Why do I take these cases at all?

It really wasn’t about the money. (And really? What uses would I have of money?) It was about power. Power that I coveted. Power that I needed. I exist in my current state because of magic, and it was magic that was going to get me out of it again—and back to my life!

The magic that made me what I am was very powerful; and my goal was finding some way to (safely) dispel its effects. Thus far, I have had little luck. That is why I became a paranormal detective. My real reward was in the nature of the cases I come into contact with, and my ‘fee’ being whatever magic I can then study and utilize for my own needs.

That was the beginning and end of it.

In that regard, the powers Alejandro’s Prophet possessed intrigued me; for if there exists magic powerful enough to make a whole world, then it should also be more than sufficient to break the charm’s hold over me.

I was excited, admittedly.

It’s been years since I’ve had to live like this, ever since the Canadian government’s obligation to the Obama administration had been responsible for sending me overseas (there, now you know why). I sincerely hoped, in 2025, I will have found the solution to finally get off this lonely road I walked.

But it wasn’t always like this—

~

You might be wondering how I learned magic, especially as a ‘ghost’. I can tell you right now it was my wife’s great-grandfather who told me the small piece of smooth, white-green rock resting on my physical neck was responsible for protecting my consciousness outside my body. It was also he who spent a year teaching me magic, molding me into what I am today.

Oh, he was also dead; and has been since 1914.

It sounds like something out of a comic book, but it was the truth.

In my room, I turn towards the hospital bed. The chair next to it had a small, state-of-the-art pink laptop sitting upon it. The lid was flipped up, and the screen glowed brightly in the dimness of the bedroom. On it, messenger apps sat in a series of overlapping windows; and I was checking once again my contact list for a reply from Gramps.

Nothing.

For years, that contact had been dormant. I didn’t have to open the message history to remember the conversations I held with a dead man (who, given the time when he was alive, should have no idea how to operate a computer anyway). The account is an old one, from before I became what I am now. I was surprised as anyone during those first few months of my new existence when I found help just waiting for me there, on the same night I was returned home. I was still coming to terms with what my un-life has become, and my wife had gone to bed exhausted. As she did sometimes, she had accidentally left her laptop in the room—

—opened and turned on.

This exact same screen stared back at me back then.

That’s when a message popped up on my soon-to-be neglected social media feed.

I’ll spare you the details. I barely understand myself. All I knew was I was planning on contacting my wife as soon as possible, when the messenger app opened by itself and the bouncing bubble expanded to fill the screen. On it was a new contact named Gramps, and he had written, in all caps:

[DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!]

And then afterwards, immediately:

[KID, DO EVERYTHING I SAY. I KNOW WHAT YOU’VE BECOME AND I CAN HELP.]

And help, he did!

A few lines of text proved who he was; sharing intimate details about the Yams that only someone who was part of the family tree could know. I had my suspicions back then and still have not completely convinced myself otherwise today; but given the lack of any other explanations, I’ve chosen to accept ‘Gramps’ for who he said he was.

He had this advice for me: [DO NOT MAKE CONTACT. IF YOU DO, THINGS WILL GO BADLY FOR HER. MAGIC TAKES A TOLL AND BOUNCES BACK; AND NONE MORE SO UPON A LOVED ONE. IF YOU VALUE HER LIFE, YOU WILL OBEY.]

There’s no need to say who ‘she’ is. Gramps instructed me on magic, and I studied harder than I’ve ever had to in life. When I had mastered these powers enough, Gramps had suddenly severed contact. The name remained on my messenger app, but buried deeply in an account that my wife has never bothered to check. The final message I had gotten from him came only days before I began my new life as Clark August, and it had read, simply: [GOOD LUCK!]

I haven’t heard from him since.

The laptop remained where it was. My wife came in earlier tonight, and left it there, opened. She had been working late, responding to emails forwarded from the clinic. Then, she had gotten a call and hurried out to answer it. I watched her do all of these things, and she hasn’t come in since.

Meanwhile, I released the spell and Percy was sound asleep next door. I’m standing once again in my own room—in my own prison—before my unmoving body, as moonlight poured in through the window. A pale glow washed over my unmoving physical form, and nearby, the infernal beeping continued looping endlessly. My hands shook beside me as I stared at the charm on my own chest. In the silvery glow, the edges of the jade pendant flickered brilliantly.

I throw up my hands and shout my frustrations to the ceiling.

No one heard.

The reason for my anger was apparent when I turned away from the body to the door. I heard a voice outside.

Her voice.

Mary spoke on the phone, laughing giddily; and I’ve not heard her laughing in that way for years now.

I waited.

She did not come back in.

That, I admit, scared me more than anything else I’ve ever had to deal with.

Mary continued talking.

I saw her pass by the bedroom door, dressed in her pajamas. This time, she did not have a towel wrapped around her head, and her black hair fell over her shoulders, bouncing with every giggle. She had her smartphone pressed to an ear, even as she reached up to rub lotion on her neck. I saw her sleeves roll backwards, the pattern of white kittens on pink blinking at me as she did so. I stood only a few feet away from her and yet, for all intents and purposes, I no longer existed in her world.

I continued watching.

I held my gaze on every aspect of her being.

So familiar, and yet so strange and distant.

Her laugh infuriated me in a way I had not thought possible, for I realized it was because she was laughing the same way she used to do so with me.

I don’t know who was on the other end of the line; but I could guess. The call had lit up her phone and she took one look at the name before hurriedly picking up. She had not put down the device since.

All throughout their conversation, I could sense the happiness that had taken hold of her.

Then I heard her mention very clearly from outside my bedroom door: “Church.”

This was the guy!

This was the man with whom my wife had been mum about to her own mother. This was the man who convinced her that the professed charms of ‘Mr. Clark’ wasn’t worth looking into. When she refused the invitation, I thought nothing of it. Now—well, saying it bothered me would be an understatement.

I threw a look towards the hospital bed.

Counted the slow rising and falling of my own chest.

Breathing. Alive. But for all intents and purposes, I was a goner.

My real body was a vegetable; and was it so difficult to imagine that, after all these years, Mary was finally ready to move on?

Was it right then, that I wanted to stop her, at any cost?

I turned back to the door. More laughter came bouncing down the hallway. I heard her footsteps through the walls, and then, even though she had no reason to do so, the soft whisper of her bedroom door being closed. It used to be our bedroom.

My bedroom.

Briefly my mind travelled back to last night, when the Yams had been over. My wife’s response to her mother’s pestering rang out in my memory.

“He can hear you, you know.”

I can.

I really can.

~

When my wife went to bed, I began to work. I did so reluctantly. What I really wanted to do was to curl up into a ball in a corner, and go to sleep. That, too, was denied me. Spirits did not sleep; and believe me, I’ve tried. I looked back towards the door. Mary was not coming back.

Not today.

And maybe not even tomorrow.

I sighed and turned to my window.

Toronto lay just beyond it in the dead of night. The city was not asleep, but it was quieter. I was well aware of the time, and looked out upon the lights dotting the buildings across the street. I counted the flickering stars until the stroke of midnight.

Then, I acted.

I threw myself into my business.

The matter with my wife could wait until morning. I already have an idea of how to proceed; and it would not be pretty. I hated myself just for thinking it. Jealousy has a way of making you feel bad about yourself, as it often revealed the kind of ugliness you often saw in others (but never believed you could possess as well). In comparison, dealing with a fanatical religious army and their thousand years old Prophet, who carried inside him the literal key to the end of the world, was much easier and more relaxing.

I looked at my window.

My lips moved in silent greeting.

I have done this a thousand times before and extended an arm, pressing my index finger against the frame. Somewhere behind me, my broken body’s heart-rate briefly sped up. The machine showed an uptick in my blood pressure, and it only happened whenever I cast this spell. I knew, in the beginning, Mary had grown concerned. She thought something was happening with me—for better or worse—until doctors assured her that fluctuations in the machine’s readouts were to be expected. Now, she hardly bothered looking over the daily emailed reports.

Just like how she didn’t come in tonight.

I suppose even love—true love—can’t last forever.

As I thought, I began my line. I traced my finger along the window frame. A fissure appeared, and inside appeared a pale, yellow glow. It followed my hand, as bright as a pinprick of sunlight, seeping from the seam I made by magic. This was the reason I can only perform this spell when my wife is away—or asleep. She may not be able to see me, but wandering by, she will certainly see—

this.

The window grew muddled as I continued my work. My finger moved slowly. The glass frosted over from the inside, and everything happened in complete and utter silence. When I was three-quarters of the way done, the glass began to crack at the edges. The people in the street would have seen nothing out of the ordinary. To them, my magical doorway was just a simple darkened window on the first floor of a townhouse in the middle of downtown Toronto. From within, I breathed out slowly. My work was finished; and I closed the borders of the doorway.

As I did so, the glow brightened. All that remained of the window was a murky grey mirror. In it, I finally saw my own reflection as a hazy, muddled silhouette. I put my hand against it, watching as my doppelganger—without any facial features to speak of—do the same from the other side of the ice. Then, in unison, we pushed together.

Crack!

From where my palm was laid over the surface, cracks blossomed outwards rapidly. A spider-web appeared, flowing towards the very edges of the window. From my gathered knowledge and research, I knew that if the cracks in the glass reached the glowing lines drawn into the frame before I could push open the doorway, the spell will fail. The fissures will enlarge as all matter broke down, and our mortal world will be consumed by a magical black hole. (That’s what tended to happen when you peel back the fabric of reality to peer behind it, into the space in between worlds.)

Thankfully, I’ve never failed.

Shards rained away from the window, and small icy flakes fell, vanishing before touching the floor. The narrow window became a door, which slowly swung open into a world not of my own making.

I saw stars.

I saw galaxies.

Hot, spiraling masses like flaming eyes in the darkness; and whirlpools of silver like spinning rivers of glittering sand. Looking up, moons and planetoids shot by in a blur, for the doorway I made led into the deepest, unfathomable reaches of (magical) space. I extended my hand towards the portal, and the very universe seemed to condense at my fingertips. Standing at the window of my townhouse in Toronto, I saw the explosion of far-off cosmos and bore witness to the final glimmer of dying stars. I can—should I wished to—touch the surface of our own sun, and rearrange the constellations in a distant galaxy as I saw fit.

What I saw inside the magical doorway was probably the closest visual approximation of what the human mind actually looked like. A magical map of imagination, and the endless possibilities that came with it. It was a realm unto itself, the space (I’m told) in between realities. For all its beauty, it was also a dead zone.

Nothing lived in it.

Gramps had shown me the existence of this place, and taught me the means by which to access it. He had called it the Graveyard of Spells, and that description was very apt. I also saw bridges and avenues stretched out into nothingness, leading to structures big and small. Some of these buildings were familiar in appearance, and others were beyond logical comprehension. Stairs that condensed upon themselves, which then held doorways into far off places. Upside-down castles falling slowly into a swirling, frozen galaxy. Some of the buildings and roads were very old; mere dirt pathways raining mud into the abyss. The builds likewise, moldy half-collapsed guard towers sat lopsided out of the rocks beside them.

Then, there were others, structures and passages alike which could have been erected yesterday. The place was a repository of every piece of magic ever conceived, and of spells cast. It was a library of vast, unfathomable knowledge that existed beyond the boundaries of physics and time.

I also have my own name for it. I called it the Arcane Archives.

Today, I need it for a personal matter.

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