The Mystery of the Shattered Glass

A man was seated on a skinny office chair behind a great oaken desk of the well-lit room. Another man, younger and smelling faintly of cigarettes, is looking up at the blank ceiling from his spot on a posh leather sofa.

The air is heavy with sharp tension and neither man looks at one another. Mike sighs and checks off another question from his checklist, noting his patient’s refusal to answer the simple question about his childhood. The man called Daniel was impatient and hard to deal with, but Mike was more than used to this kind of behavior.

Daniel thought that he’d rather like to punch this Mike, this therapist that his parents had insisted he see—something Daniel thought had little to do with his flunking history grade. The sun glares in harshly from the large window with a sobering view of New York City and Daniel longs to be outside.

“Daniel, can you tell me about your school?” Mike tries again, hoping this question is somehow less offensive than his previous ones.
“Sure thing, sir,” Daniel says, stifling a yawn, “It bites ass.” Mike frowned in annoyance.

“Can you be more specific?” Mike asks, scribbling once again, this time in red ink. Suddenly, there is no need for Daniel to be more specific because the window shatters abruptly, throwing heaps of glinting glass all around the quaint office.

“What the fuck!” Daniel yells, leaping from his cushy spot on the sofa and glaring accusingly at Mike, who looks quietly perplexed and remains seated. Mike ducks under his desk, and Daniel’s eyes widened and he scurried under the desk as well.

“What should we do?” Daniel whispers urgently.

“Well,” Mike says, shifting his position. “We should call the police.” Mike, without further ado, accesses the phone but stays safely under the desk, although he is becoming uncomfortable with Daniel’s close proximity and sudden child-like expression.

“Yes, er, I’d like to report a,” but Mike is unsure of what to report, “A mysteriously shattered window,” he says finally.

“A what?” asks a tired impatient voice of a woman who’d obviously been at work too long.

“The window shattered and I’m crouched under the desk in case there’s another attack. I have a teenage boy with me and we would appreciate it if you could send someone,” Mike says seriously.

“Do you think it’s the terrorists?” Daniel asks, looking suddenly fearful. Mike shrugs; he doesn’t know.

“I doubt it. I think a terrorist attack would be a little more damaging than broken glass,” Mike says, deciding it safe to venture from underneath his desk. He examines the damage and finds no foreign objects or possible explanation. 

Daniel finally gets up, but doesn’t take his former position on the couch—it’s covered with glass, although most of it showered onto pedestrians outside the building. He sits on Mike’s desk, causing him to frown. Mike notices three separate pens rolling from the desk when Daniel changes position, and a few papers flutter away.

The police show up, finally, yet Mike is not relieved. The police are clueless and seem to suspect the whole thing was staged. They glare at Daniel, which he ignores, and question Mike. It looks like it came from inside, they say suspiciously. Mike has no explanation.  After an hours’ grueling visit, the police withdrew. Daniel’s eyes widen in revelation and he says,

“My God, you’re not going to charge me this whole time are you?” Mike rolls his eyes and shakes his head, although he does smirk when he considers it.

“No, but I very well could,” he says. Daniel sighs and sits down.

“So this is off the record,” he asks.

“There is no record,” Mike replies truthfully. His scrawling hardly counted as record.

“Then what have you been writing in that book about me?”  Daniel asks, eyebrows furrowed worrisomely. Mike begins to respond, but is interrupted by a loud rapping at the door.

“Cleaning crew!” a voice yells before a woman barges into the room. She eyes Mike and smiles slowly, eyes trailing over his figure.

“Goodness, what a mess,” she comments, “What happened?”

“Beats me,” Daniel mutters, edging away from the woman and towards the door.

“No explanation. The window shattered, and no one seems to know why,” Mike says.

“Daniel, I’m going home. Consider this session over,” Mike says, rubbing his temples in frustration.  As he’s leaving he hears the cleaning lady chuckle and mumble to herself.

“Maybe a ghost did it,” she says, and Mike pauses for a moment. An unlikely explanation is more credible than no explanation at all. Mike thinks it through as he unlocks his Chrysler, and he recalls a stream of strange incidents—occurrences that had stumped him before.

He thinks of how he has always managed to keep his work office in complete disarray, while his home was orderly and functional. He remembers all the days he comes in and looks for books he had left in his desk drawer, only to find them lying on the couch or in a nearby chair. His glasses, if he left them, were almost always in a different location than his memory. Before now, he had chalked it all up his own shortcomings and pathetic memory, but now—Mike pulls over to a service station and pulls out his cell phone, dialing Celia, an eccentric cousin.
Celia answers groggily and Mike is surprised. It’s 4:30 pm, after all.

“Celia, did you just wake up?” he asks. She mumbles incoherently and doesn’t need to say anymore, because Mike knows exactly how she sounds when she wakes up—manly, to say the least.

“What is it?” her decidedly deeper, raspier voice whispers.

“Just meet me at my house as soon as you can, all right? And bring your kit—you know the one, which is involved with unusual investigations,” he says. She agrees and he hangs up, suddenly dreading the next 12 hours.

Mike decides to take a nap before Celia arrives and is dozing lightly on the couch when her knock startles him. He grabs frantically for his glasses and hurries to let Celia in. Celia is a picture of oddity with ultra-frizzy hair, purple-tinted glasses, and mismatched knee-socks. She brandishes a giant bag, which she slings into his armchair.

“So what’s this all about, Mikey?” Mike winces at her fake accent; he can’t identify it, and she seems to have a different one each time he speaks to her.

“I think there’s a ghost in my office at work,” he says dryly, rubbing his temples. They have a long talk about the ghost, in which Mike tells Celia about all the separate incidents and places emphasis on the window-shattering. Ghosts often elevated to violent measures if they are particularly unstable; most are harmless and uninterested in human life.

Celia sits a list of instructions upon the center of Mike’s kitchen table and they set off. Mike is responsible for the arrangement and preparation of various herbs and stones. Celia’s things are distastefully unorganized and Mike refuses to do anything until they’ve sorted it out. An hour and half later, the two are finally ready for the investigation.

They decide it better to wait until after dark, so they watch a movie about a werewolf that is grossly tasteless and overdone, but laugh anyway. The two of them trod down the apartment stairs and take Celia’s van, Mike sitting in the passenger’s seat reviewing a check list to make sure they haven’t forgotten anything.

They arrive at the office and Celia sets up the prerequisites for the spell—including a pentacle of salt and ground garlic, several white candles, and various burning herbs and incense. Soon enough the ghost was summoned, and Celia spoke to it softly.

Mike couldn’t see it, but he feels the presence of the ghost, as always. He knows it’s there because of Celia’s reaction. Once, when they were working on a case in his parent’s old mansion, he had insisted, since it was his first ever investigation, on seeing the spirit. It had been a disturbing sight for Mike to behold and sought never again to witness a ghost; they were foul, evil things in his opinion, but Celia insisted there were different types.

Celia looks mystified, and with glazed eyes she looks at him in what could be pity.

“Mike, the ghost is infatuated with you,” she states calmly, as if this were an everyday statement. Mike sputters.

“What? Impossible, “he says, ignoring the look on her face.

“Yeah, well, no it isn’t. It happens frequently; a ghost is unable to move on and clings to the living—often one in specific. She’s been trying to get your attention for ages, and that’s why she shattered the window,” Celia speaks.

“So? Get rid of it, I don’t want it haunting around my office, scaring my clients, moving my things,” he huffs stubbornly. Celia looks aghast.
“Mike, you’ve got to talk to her—give her a peaceful rest, if you know what I mean. She probably is dwelling because of something to do with an ex, and as his embodiment only you can solve it.”

Mike agrees, finally, and she enchants him and he sees the ghost for the first time—she isn’t nearly as ugly as he’d expected. She has a normal face, although it was fixed in a permanently mournful expression. Her eyes are completely translucent and look as if she has holes in her face, which is somewhat disturbing to Mike. She is obviously studying Mike’s reaction to her, but she finds little. His face is stoic and carefully blank as usual. She sighs in disappointment, which sounds only as a windy whisper of sound to Mike.

“Let’s just get this over with,” the ghost sighs, “I know you don’t want me. You’re just going to hear me out because that’s how it’s done—I tell my story and then find a semblance of peace. I doubt it’ll work—too easy if you ask me. But it’s worth a try,” the ghost babbles to him and he nods silently, grateful at least that he doesn’t have to talk to her—not yet.

“So my boyfriend and I planned a nice evening. You name it, flowers, movies, lots of sex—but here’s the twist. We were both, say, a bit fascinated with the morbid side of laugh—yeah, that’s a laugh isn’t it? The morbid side of life? Kind of like an oxymoron,” she says hastily.

“Anyway, we offed ourselves, like Romeo and Juliet. You know the one, don’t you? Never read it myself, but he liked the idea. So here’s the problem: he’s gone, I’m not. I’ve made myself sick with worry about why—where is he? Has he made it and found someone else or did he leave me? I just want to move on, but I don’t know how,” she blurts out, and then looks sheepish and worn.

“Well, you’re lucky, “ Mike says, “I’m a therapist. I can help you sort through this emotional baggage and maybe you can figure out the real reason you’re here. At least you can move out of my office then, huh? In return?”

“Yes, I will leave you if you help me. I think it’s lost some of the romantic appeal now that I’ve actually spoken to you. No offence or anything,” the ghost says quietly. Mike uses all the approaches he knows; he dissects the relationship. He asks about her boyfriend, and about her past, and about her parents—but still, he cannot say what is keeping her. Her answers are steady and clear, as if she has been thinking through the very same things.

He is utterly stumped. Never had a patient been so straightforward and honest as she, so why couldn’t he figure it out? Mike looks regretful and tells her he’ll be back with her next week, after he’s had a chance to analyze further. She looks disappointed, but nods slowly.

Mike sighs in the cold parking lot outside his apartment. He doesn’t go up, not yet. He has some thinking to do, and he always stays outside to do his best thinking. A night like this was perfect; lonely and speculative and practically begging him to delve into its gloomy path. He gazes at the stars, and at the bushes and the small flowers by the sidewalk. The facts turn and shift in his head, but he thinks mostly of her—the ghost.
Who is she? His mind asks him. Who is she really? Who was she, as a person?

Maybe that was just it. He didn’t even know her name. He hadn’t bothered asking, he realizes, wincing.

He honestly doesn’t know why he’s so interested. Sure, he wanted the ghost out of his office. Still, that motivation wasn’t this compelling. Mike spots a park bench devoid of an occupant and sits, letting his chin fall between his hands. His eyes are glazed and mostly unaware, for he is living inside his mind.

Finally, after probably 30 minutes of silence and bafflement, Mike decides it’s time to leave. He bundles his jacket around him, but as the fabric stretches the air before him changes suddenly. At first it looks like wind shifting about bits of color, but it isn’t. Mike realizes that he is seeing a ghost, the spell of seeing still active from earlier that night.

It isn’t the girl ghost from his office, however. It is a male ghost, a teenager. Mike’s jaw drops in horror when he realizes it is Daniel, the boy from earlier—the afternoon. The boy who had been perfectly alive not 8 hours ago was before him, ethereal with faded limbs and fingers. He was examining himself, as if he were a foreign specimen.

“Hey, man, I remember you,” he says, looking forlorn. “You were my therapist, before I…I wonder what you’d have said if you knew.” Mike stares at him.

“Knew what?” he asks. Daniel’s eyes widen in surprise and he jumps about three feet back, away from Mike.

“Y-you can hear me? No one’s been able to…” he stutters. Mike sighs. He’s so emotionally drained he can’t stand it, and here’s the boy whose cry for help had obviously not been enough.

“Listen, kid,” Mike says, “I don’t know what happened to you, but I might be able to help you. You’re stuck in the mortal realm, okay? You can stay at my place tonight and tomorrow I will bring you to my office, and there you will meet another like you. I don’t know how, but I’m going to send you two on. You don’t deserve being stuck here after you’ve already had to live.”

Daniel shrugs and follows him home, making what he called “spooky ghost noises” during the entire trip. The next morning Mike calls Celia yet again and they once again enter the office, this time followed by an eerily cheerful Daniel. Once you’ve seen a ghost the first time, you can forever see them after—well, at least that’s what Mike guessed, as the spell of sight should have long ago dispersed.

However, he sees nothing when he enters his office. All of his papers and things are exactly how he left them, and there’s no ghost (except Daniel) in sight.

“Guess she’s moved on then, “Celia mumbles. Mike nearly shouts in frustration, but swallows it. It’s good she’s moved on, really—never mind all the stress he’d had over it. Of course she’d just vanished, simple as that, after all his worrying.  Daniel is hovering near Mike’s shoulders.

“Can’t say I’m disappointed. Didn’t want to meet her anyway,” Daniel says and places a ghostly hand on his shoulder. Mike shudders; it is quite cold. Daniel presses experimentally and the feeling goes right through his shoulder and Daniel’s hand is just stuck in, like his hand floated right through Mike’s skin and bones. Mike jumps away, unnerved.

“Don’t do that,” he says grumpily, brushing his shoulder off in attempt to shake that strange, cool tingling that remained. Daniel shrugs and asks,

“How come I don’t fall through the floor?”

“Beats me. Wish you would, though,” Mike says, a little more harshly than he’d intended. Daniel half-smiles, although he doesn’t look happy.

“I think I might hang around a bit in the mortal realm—ya know, to haunt you for a while. You were the last person to speak to me before I died, you know,” Daniel says and Mike flinches, willing his mind not race into images of how it might have happened.

“Yeah—sorry about that. It wasn’t…it wasn’t my fault was it?” he asked timidly. Daniel snorts and says,

“Of course not. I only met you once, what could you possibly do besides be a pain in my ass?”

Mike bursts into laughter, partially at the boy’s nonchalant attitude toward his own death, but mostly because of all the tension he’d kept roiling around in him.

“You’re fucking nuts, you know that kid?” Mike says, wiping away a tear of mirth. Daniel, predictably, shrugs it off.

“I’m going to hang out at your place for a while. You got a PS2?” Daniel says to him, and Mike is momentarily stunned before replying,
“Of course. Knock yourself out,” Mike laughs. Celia and Daniel wonder off, finally leaving Mike alone to his work. He sits down and tries to piece together what he’s learned about them, the dead, or the not quite living, or undead—whatever you’d prefer to call them. He thinks they are very much like people, only more screwed up with less assistance, and chronically lonely.

Perhaps this Daniel was clinging to him from lack of a father figure in his past life. Mike sighs and turns the page. There would be plenty of time for insane ramblings of ghosts, but now was the time for work—work with real people who had real problems. People like himself.
There’s a light knock at the door and a woman’s voice,

“Mr. Chambers? I have an appointment.”

End