Chapter 2: Life After DeathVernon Castor (he
never used his first name) had always been good at fixing things, so, when the tram he was travelling on broke down, it was natural to offer to help. Unfortunately, he didn’t understand this newfangled electricity stuff as well as he thought and touched something he really shouldn’t have.
Many years later, the tram was converted into a diner, complete with resident ghost.
Vernon rather liked being buried there – the circumstances of his death had left him afraid of almost everything, including the dark and other ghosts: the cemetery wouldn’t have suited him one bit. The diner, on the other hand, was brightly lit all night and had customers at all hours. Some of them even talked to him.
One night, an attractive young woman in a distinctly unflattering overall stopped to chat. Oddly, she claimed that she had also been electrocuted and knew just how he felt. He was about to ask her to explain when the approach of dawn forced him back into his grave.
She visited him at the diner again a few nights later and he found out more about her strange life – or lives.
Then, the next time he was able to emerge, he found his gravestone had been moved. He was now indoors, in Anastasia’s house. In fact, she seemed to have a whole collection of urns in her bedroom – and there was another ghost having a nap on her bed. How very odd.
Apart from filling her house with ghosts, she seemed nice enough – and very interested in him.
She spent far more time with him than with the other ghosts who shared her house. In fact, she was quite obviously keen to be more than friends.
Soon, they were going steady - or as steady as you can go when one party spends most of their time in an urn.
The next thing he knew, she was inviting him to feel her tummy.
Anastasia was getting frustrated. The people at the science lab had been ‘on the verge of exciting developments’ in their research for so long that she was losing hope. Meanwhile, her own studies had yielded a potion that she was virtually certain could restore Vernon’s lost youth – but he wasn’t substantial enough to drink it.
She really wanted her child to have two parents who were there all the time. Maybe it was time to summon Deirdra again.
“Hello again, Ana. And pregnant at last. Who’s the father?”
“B Vernon Castor. “
“
B Vernon? What’s the B stand for?”
“I have no idea.”
“You’re having a baby with him and you don’t know his full name? Oh well, please yourself. Do you want me to revive him?”
“I was just going to ask you whether that was possible.”
“Yes, I could bring him back to life – but that would be your third and final wish. You might want to save it for something else… and, of course, if you had any more children together, they’d be human. Maybe you should wait and see how this one turns out.”
She decided to wait a little longer and, only a few hours later, her phone rang. It was the scientists: they'd finally made the breakthrough. Since she’d done so much to help their research, would she like to bring along a ghost to be revived? Hoping she wouldn’t give birth on the way, she picked up Vernon’s urn and hurried off to the lab.
It appeared that they hadn’t quite got all of the bugs out of their process - but at least Vernon was around permanently now, even if he was still transparent.
That night, Ana went into labour. She hastily thought of a few urgent things for Vernon to do and locked herself in the bedroom.
She remembered being an admirer of the Pankhursts in a previous life, and even having met one of them. So it was natural that she would name her new daughter Christabel. She unlocked the door and called Vernon in to see their child.
He fainted.
With Christabel settling into a routine, Ana decided it was time to put her relationship with Vernon on a more formal footing.
And she had the perfect engagement gift.
“I, Bridgeport Vernon, take you, Anastasia Jane…”
Bridgeport?!The bride managed to keep her face straight for the rest of the ceremony… just about.
“So, honeymoon?”
“I thought we were agreed that we couldn’t afford a honeymoon – and that we didn’t want to leave Chrissie with that babysitter for longer than necessary.”
“No, I meant your parents. Did they spend their honeymoon in Bridgeport?”
“Yes.”
“And you arrived shortly afterwards.”
“Er… yes.”
“It’s a good job it wasn’t Barnacle Bay… or Strangetown.”
“Even Hidden Springs would make me sound like a mattress. Believe me, I’ve heard it all before.”
“Poor Vernon.”
Next chapter
