60. Rejection

Ten neat stacks of paper, they had been. Exactly ten, and exactly the same, each page carefully numbered, checked, checked again and finally, with extreme care, put into ten thick envelopes. Then, meticulously, the ten addresses – not the same addresses, obviously, because that would have been pointless – and then the correct amount of postage, after carefully weighing the ten envelopes. Nothing was left to chance. Everything was as it should have been.

Then the trek to the real world, dangerous and difficult, not just because the annoying half ghost child tended to attack any ghost that so much as came near the portal, but also because traversing the ghost zone while trying to keep ten neat packages that – neat – was a near impossibility. Skulker had passed him, shooting at some ghostly rabbit, the Lunch Lady had thrown an unhealthy pile of meat at him in passing, and of course Youngblood had tried to stick chewing gum on them.

All attacks had been deflected though. He had made it, had even managed to avoid the hero of Amity Park for long enough to get to a mailbox and quickly dump his ten packages in there before being blasted by an overzealous Phantom and his two pesky friends, who fortunately were too thick to take note of the fact that a ghost has just dropped something in the mail.

It had been that fact, and that fact alone, that had kept him upright for the remainder of the day. Or at least, the remainder of the day after he had been released from that infuriating thermos.

And so he had waited. Nervously pacing his vast library, aimlessly typing in meaningless poems on his old typewriter, leafing through books of lesser writers than he, he had tried to pass the time. A week passed. Two. Three?

The daily check of the mail had become a routine matter, and even though the ghost boy obviously didn't like him peeking out of the portal, there wasn't much he could do about it except glare. He had already established in a very early stage of his plan that the mail was always brought down to the basement and put on the table to look at later. He had a perfect view on the table. The only thing he needed was a quick hand.

So when one day, before he had gone to check the mail, he was suddenly disturbed by the pesky ghost child with a haughty smirk on his face, he was quite taken aback. It wasn't yet time for the mail to arrive, he was sure of that, yet here the boy was, floating in the middle of his library, holding what looked like a stack of envelopes.

"These," the boy said, carelessly waving the envelopes, "Have been arriving at my house for a week now. The last one was two days ago. I waited for a bit to see if more were coming, you see, but since it has been quiet for two days, I guess this is it. There's ten of them."

He looked at the envelopes. Ten envelopes. All addressed to G. W. Riter. His name, no, his pseudonym. And of course the ghost boy's address, because how else was he going to get an answer... the boy had intercepted them. That was unexpected. He hadn't taken that into account, hadn't thought it possible that the oblivious boy would even glance at the mail, but obviously, he had. His big oaf of a father usually took the mail down and dumped it on the table for his wife to look at later. Lifting the mail addressed to him out had seemed like a menial task...

"I wasn't sure what to do with these," Phantom continued, still waving the ten envelopes, which, now that he looked closer, all had been ripped open. He felt his anger rise.

"So I opened them," Phantom said.

Now that he looked closer at the ghost boy, he got the distinct feeling that the brat looked smug. An uneasy feeling began to creep up. The fact that the boy was here, holding his letters the way he did, it did not bode well.

"You actually wrote a book?" Phantom asked, eyes glittering, "An actual book? You?"

He sat up straighter and squared his shoulders, suddenly feeling he had to defend himself, and not liking it one bit. "I am a writer," he said stiffly, "Hence the book. I should think that obvious."

Phantom started laughing. "Duh," he said, "You write. And write. You never finish. You can't, you're a ghost."

Thoroughly annoyed now, he floated closer to the boy, until he was almost within arm's reach of the letters. He looked at them hungrily for a moment, and with some difficulty tore his eyes away from them. He'd get them, one way or the other. Surely Phantom remembered just what kind of power he had?

Phantom seemed to have read his thoughts, because waved his hands in a defensive manner. "No no," he said, "I know what you can do, I'm not here to... I just came to... well..." Suddenly, he grinned evilly. "I came to deliver them. Sorry I opened them and all. But they're yours, so..."

Ghost Writer stared at the letters, now suddenly held out in front of him. He hesitated, looked up at Phantom's innocent face that reminded him way too much of Youngblood and then back at the letters again.

It was a trick. It had to be. Why would Phantom take the trouble of delivering his mail to him?

Slowly, he reached out and grabbed the letters. Phantom let go and floated backwards somewhat. They didn't explode. They didn't suddenly turn to dust in his hands. They were still there.

"Well," Phantom said, "Have fun with them."

And just like that, he was gone.

The letters. Ten letters from ten publishers. And Phantom had delivered them to him. If Ghost Writer had been human, he would have swallowed. This couldn't be good.

Brushing his fingers over the ragged edges where Phantom had sloppily opened the envelopes, he floated back into his realm, traversing his library with the hundreds, thousands of books – none of them by him though, sadly – and entered his study. The typewriter was waiting for him, and he frowned at the thing. If Phantom had done something to his letters...

Suddenly impatient, he shook the first letter out of the first envelope and began to read. 'We regret to inform you...'

Disappointment, but it was to be expected. Not all of them would accept his book, of course. He opened the next.

'After careful consideration... don't think it would fit in our list... wishing you the best of luck..."

He ground his teeth. Luck had nothing to do with it. Quality of writing, that was what it was all about. He opened the next, but put it aside after the first sentence. The fourth had a long explanation, but ended with the same message. He opened letter after letter, but finally had to admit his defeat.

Silently, he sat for a moment, considering his options. Then, he got up, sat behind his typewriter and entered a new sheet of white paper. He stared into the swirling green distance for a while, contemplating the story he was going to write. A drama, a tragedy. A tormented, lost main character. He smiled.

He was going to wipe the smirk right off of Phantom's face.