Secrets.  We all have them.  How deep and dark are yours?  Is it the expensive new dress hidden in the back of the closet where your spouse won’t look?  A test you cheated on in the fourth grade?  The spouse you’re cheating on now?  The corpse under the porch?

They follow you—the lies—padding after you like a faithful pooch, dogging your entire existence until you’re called to answer for them.  Sometimes, you stand trial for your sins during life, and other times you manage to get away with the white lies, the infidelities, the darker, more sinister destruction.  But it doesn’t matter who you fooled in the mortal world, you can’t fool the ultimate Judge.  Every secret, every sin will one day lay before you like a map, and in Death, justice will always be served.

My secret stretches back over many centuries, lingering in the deepest caverns of my mind, a shadow of some terrible memory, a mystery even to myself.  If I could one day unlock that hidden annex, perhaps then I could finally move on, find the great reward—or punishment—that awaits me in the hereafter.  Until then, I’m cursed to wander Limbo, a restless, homeless spirit, collecting recently dead souls and leading them to the holy—or unholy—places I may never tread.

My name is Carys.  I’m a Spirit Guide.

I’ve been dead for about a thousand years now—a long time, even for a Spirit Guide.  Some souls have baggage; I have a trans-Atlantic freighter full of issues.  A few months ago, I thought I had finally won my ticket off this blue and white marble called Earth.  But I let my fear own me.  So now I’m back to doing the same thing I’ve done for ten millennia, shuttling the souls of the newly dead from this world to the next, clinging to the mortal world like the scent of smoke on a flannel shirt.

I could go on about the great inventions and innovations I’ve witnessed during my deathtime, but watching the world as a ghost isn’t the same as experiencing it as a human.  To a ghost, the mortal world is like watching an old movie with the soft filter on; everything is black and white and slightly blurry.  Limbo is a tease.  We can see everything (sort of), but we can’t really participate.  Ghosts can’t feel the sun’s healing rays, or hear the bluebird’s song.  We can’t feel the surf pull at our ankles, or the caterpillar’s tickle as he marches steadily across our palm with his little suction cup feet.

Ghosts can’t smell cinnamon or vanilla, or order a caramel macchiato.  We’ll never know the warmth of another person’s touch.

We can still feel pain and cold.  A stab from a demonic weapon or a blast of Hellfire hurts more than any mortal wound.  And there is still the fear of Death.  The Second Death.  The Death of the Soul.  The complete scattering of soul energy and obliteration of consciousness.  Other than that, dying is just peachy.

But my time is coming.  I can feel it like an animal feels the approaching storm.  The images that once lingered along the fringes of my memory are coming faster now, a jumble of scattered memories.  I know some most be real; I feel a tug of recognition when certain faces parade through my mind.  Others are so contrary, a vague mixture of water and flame, they cannot possibly be true.

After the events of last winter, I might be looking forward to checking out of Limbo.  Another Guide and I were tracking this renegade ghost and discovered a plot to open a portal and march a demon army into the spirit world.  A bunch of mortals and Spirit Guides were killed along the way, and we discovered a disgruntled Guide was in on the plan.  Ugly business.

To be betrayed by one of your own makes it all the worse.  I mean, I never liked the guy much anyway, and it is a relief when an unpleasant co-worker decides to leave.  But in my world, going to work for the competition means aligning oneself with evil.  When I meet him again it won’t be with an awkward smile at the local coffee shop while picking up our morning java.  Our next encounter will be on a battlefield.

Until then, I am reduced to waiting.  Waiting for someone to die.