simple twist of fate
by red-starshine
part seven: only happy when it rains
There was no one, ghost or living, outside the door to the hospital room this time, just a heavy feeling of foreboding that seemed to get worse the closer John and Chas got to the room.
Somehow, knowing what was waiting for them on the other side of the door this time only made it worse.
John pushed open the door to the room (the placard read 'COOKE' this time) and Chas peered inside.
Like with Tess, the body lying in the hospital bed was badly burned and covered in white bandages. Only part of his dark hair was shaved off. A tall man stood by the one window in the small room, staring out at the sun rising over the trees and the towering granite monument in Fort Greene Park. He was dressed in a black canvas jacket with faded denim pants, a silver wallet chain hanging from his pockets. His curly hair was a dark brown and reached the collar of his jacket.
He looked familiar, but Chas didn't know him, couldn't put a name to his face.
Cooke leaned his head against the window and let out a loud exhale of breath when he heard the door open. He muttered something quietly.
"What was that, mate? Couldn't quite make it out," said John, lighting a cigarette. Chas wrinkled his nose slightly at the smell and resisted the urge to reach over John's shoulder and pinch it out.
Cooke turned from the window, his eyes wide. He was young, barely looked old enough to drink. He took in John and then Chas, both looking at him and not at his body lying in the hospital bed.
"You can see me," said the man quietly, his voice hoarse. He took a shaky half-step towards John. "No one else does. They look at me like I'm not here."
"I know," said John. "Question is, do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Know why only me and my associate here," John gestured to Chas, "Can see you."
Cooke grimaced and then glanced at his body lying in the hospital bed. "I'm like some sort of ghost, right? But I'm not dead."
"Technically true, but you are hanging on by the thinnest of threads," said John with a sigh. "You do realize that, right? There's not going to be a miraculous recovery for you here. At this point, you're just running out the clock."
"But I'm not dead," repeated Cooke sullenly.
John rolled his eyes. "And here we go," he said quietly to Chas, his lit cigarette still dangling from his lip, before turning his attention back to Cooke. "In less than five minutes, that's not going to be true, I'm afraid."
"But I'm not dead," said Cooke again with a scowl, his voice lower, like what John was saying was pissing him off. The temperature in the hospital room, already cool, suddenly plunged. Frost quickly spread across the window behind Cooke's soul.
It was unpleasantly reminiscent of being inside the morgue's cooler.
"John," said Chas warningly, placing a hand on his shoulder. He could see his breath in the air. "Careful."
John nodded to Chas. "Mate, I know your emotions are runnin' high right now," he said to Cooke, "But you need to calm down."
Cooke's eyes, which had been brown before, turned white, completely erasing the pupil and iris. "But I'm not dead!" he yelled at John, his voice raw. A crack ran across the window
John pinched the bridge of his nose. "Jesus," he muttered.
"What the hell is this?" said Chas.
"Soddin' git's going poltergeist," said John sourly, throwing his cigarette down. "When souls don't go gentle into that good night, sometimes they can get a bit nasty, and then they cause all sorts of trouble. If he was already dead, this would be much worse." With an irritated sigh, he moved towards the body in the hospital bed.
"But I'm not dead!" Cooke screamed again. The window behind him shattered entirely, and the heavy tray table next to Cooke lifted into the air and shot towards John.
"Get down!" Chas tackled John, and they fell to the floor together in a tangle of limbs and John's trenchcoat. The table hit the wall next to the door a moment later, tearing a large hole in the eggshell-white plaster.
Chas tried not to think about what that table could've done to John's head.
John groaned, pushing himself up from the floor. "Oh, that bastard's getting a foot up the arse," he muttered.
"How do we stop him?" asked Chas.
"You try and talk him down," said John. "Maybe you'll have better luck than I did. "
"What're you going to do?"
"Me? I'm going to get that bloody soul of his to the afterlife, even if I have to kick him in the bollocks to do it," said John with an irritated sneer. "Look, keep him distracted and I'll try and get this taken care of."
Chas nodded. He peered over the edge of the hospital bed while John sat cross-legged in the space between the bed and the wall and began murmuring a spell in Latin.
Cooke's black boots were hovering at least a foot above the floor on the other side of the bed, his mouth turned into a feral grimace. The soul rose higher up into the air until his head almost touched the ceiling.
"Cooke?" said Chas, looking up at him. The blank white eyes just looked wrong in his face.
Cooke growled like a rabid dog as Chas slowly stood up, but did not send more furniture hurtling in his direction.
No, not like a rabid dog, Chas realized. A frightened dog – one that was in pain and was lashing out because it didn't know what else to do.
"Cooke, you're hurting pretty bad, aren't you?" said Chas.
That only elicited a thin hiss from Cooke, his vacant white eyes following Chas's every movement.
"Look, why don't you come down from there," said Chas calmly, walking around the foot of the bed to Cooke's side. He held out a hand to Cooke. "I think you'll feel better back on the ground."
Cooke stared at Chas's outstreched hand blankly, like he was trying to figure out the meaning behind it. But he hesitantly took it, drifting down towards the floor until his shoes touched the white tiled floor.
Cooke stared down at the floor, and when he looked at Chas again, his eyes were brown. Brown and full of tears. He clutched tightly at Chas's hand, the cold biting into Chas's skin. "But I'm no..." he began, then stopped. He swallowed. "I'm scared."
"I understand," said Chas. He gave Cooke's trembling hand a reassuring squeeze. "I'll stay here with you until it happens."
Cooke was silent for a long time. "My mother was here a few hours ago," he said. "But she left. I-I wanted her to stay, but she didn't see or hear me no matter what I did. I just - I don't want to be alone."
"It's all right," said Chas. "You won't be."
Cooke bowed his head and then let out a breath, looked up at him with obvious relief.
Then his soul vanished, fading away into tendrils of smoke.