A Ghost of a Chance 5

Chapter V:  Resurrection

I sat in a plush chair in a large oriental-style palace room.  Several seats were positioned along the wall to my left or right, but none of them were filled.  As I looked around, my gaze occasionally catching the clock, I pondered what this Koenma person would be like.  He would have had to be rich in order to have afforded a place like this, let alone pay for its upkeep.  Beyond the door to the left of the clock I could still make out the sound of the hustle and bustle of workers doing who-knows-what.

This door was opened, and Botan stuck her head through the door.  “Sorry for the intrusion, but would you like another room?  I know that this one is rather—”

“Yes, a change of scenery would be nice,” I interrupted.  I got up from the chair and followed her out the door, back into that ocean of noise.  Between the maddening noise of phones ringing, papers rustling, keyboards clacking, and all of the other normal sounds of an office, I almost wished that I was back with Suzaku.  Almost.

Eventually we diverted our path from along the office cubicles to a hallway; I was extremely thankful for this.  As I was led down this hallway, the lights grew dimmer, the din of the office becoming a faint echo.  As we got closer to a door on the opposite end of the hall, I could feel a chill run down the length of my spine.  It was like the feeling of walking into a graveyard on a cold, foggy night.  Botan shivered, but continued to lead me down the hall.  “I never really liked coming down here to these graveyard suites,” she told me.  I fully agreed with her.

I could hear the faint melody of a piano being played; its music was definitely more relaxing than the draft blowing from the doors on either side of us.  However, the music sounded sad, almost longing for something in these haunted hallways.  As we got to the door from which this music wafted, Botan laid a hand on the doorknob and slowly opened it.  The door creaked softly on its hinges.  She ushered me inside and slowly shut the door.

The room seemed more like a crypt than a room in a luxurious house like I was expecting when I first entered the hallway.  The only lighting in this room was a pair of candles hanging on the wall and dimly flickering on either side of a piano.  A person was seated at the piano, and a bouquet of flowers rested on the top of it.  The person seated at it stood straight up in her seat, but her head was weakly hung on her shoulders.  Her light blue fingers lazily but expertly drifted across the keys, every note echoing in the silence of the chamber.  Her blue hair draped down sadly with a white bridal veil on it like a rug on a clothesline in a rainstorm.

The notes she played clutched at my chest, right where my heart would have been had I been alive.  I walked over to this pianist, being careful not to interrupt her concert.  I couldn’t help but smile, though.  She was playing so beautifully, and she was barely trying.  I was right behind her when she stopped playing abruptly.  I halted dead in my tracks, caught off guard.  “You think I couldn’t hear you?” she said.  I didn’t reply.  Instead, she continued.  “I heard the door squeak as you entered.”

She sighed and turned to the side, gazing at a lit candle by the piano.  “Ah, well, I guess I could use some company, whoever you are.  Botan brought you here, didn’t she?”  I still didn’t reply, and neither did she look at me.  “She was scheduled to bring me here too, almost two hundred years ago.  I had just died in a town on the other side of the forest from London.  I was planning to escape there as soon as I was married.

“However, my romance and my life were cut short by my murderous husband-to-be.  When Botan came to pick me up, I refused her offer to go, vowing a fairy-tale’s ending for me:  only my true love could set me free.  Botan agreed to this, mostly because she was swamped with people dying of the Black Plague.”

Her voice gained a slight bit of cheer as she began the next part of her story.  “My vow was fulfilled when a man by the name of Victor van Dolt said his vows to me.  Unfortunately, that union was also a disaster.  He was already betrothed to someone else, causing an entirely complicated mess.  My evil husband-to-be also got mixed up in this Bermuda Triangle as well.  He eventually got what he deserved, but I decided to leave there for a new afterlife in America.  There were too many happy memories that I couldn’t relive where I was.

“Or so I thought.

“I lived in the northern part of the states at that time.  My peace was shattered when I was kidnapped and sent to Pennsylvania as part of some ridiculous machine.  I thought that I would be a slave forever, until someone else rescued me.  That someone was a boy, only twelve or so, but he defeated my captors and eventually destroyed their base.  I almost immediately fell in love.  Third time’s the charm, right?”

She chuckled slightly at her own joke, but her demeanor quickly shifted back into misery.  “I watched over him for almost a year before today.  That’s when a demon named Suzaku amassed a huge army of the dead refugees and attacked the city where the boy lived.  I did my best to lead the boy to Suzaku and aided him as he fought the demon, but even he wasn’t powerful enough to stop Suzaku, even with my aid.  He was killed at the demon’s hands; I fled before I learned what the fate of his corpse was.  Botan came to me again, and I agreed to go with her this time.  My heart could only take so much, especially after three disasters like those.”  A tear formed in her eyes and fell to the cold stone floor.

I took up the seat next to her and laid my hand on her shoulder.  “I know just how you feel; I got separated from a loved one, too.”

She sniffed and turned towards me.  “Really?  Who was it?”  She froze as soon as she saw my face; her eyes grew wide as she looked upon it.  A smile curled the ends of her lips, as did the ends of mine.  “Michael?  Is that you?”

I nodded ‘yes’ and said, “It was you, Emily, that I was separated from.  Ever since you showed me your compassion, throwing yourself in harm’s way to try to save my life, I decided then that I should return that love to you. However, I was planning on growing up a little more first.”

Emily chuckled again, this time in genuine happiness.

…

“So, how do you suggest we get to Spirit World to deliver this sack of garbage?” Hiei asked.  He picked up the scythe off of the ground and licked the blood off of the blade.

Kurama hoisted my bleeding body over his shoulder and replied, “We find the portal back there.”

“How do you know that there is one, Kurama?”  Yusuke asked.

“Because there are so many dead people.  Botan and the Grim Reaper are bound to be competing for their paychecks here.”

Yusuke looked confused again and scratched his head.  “I thought that Botan was the Grim Reaper.”

Hiei sighed and replied, “Only on your half of the planet, like in Asia, Africa, and Europe.  The Americas are dominated by the actual Grim Reaper.  You know, with the hooded robe, the scythe, and the skeletal body and all that.”

Yusuke glared at him, obviously annoyed at the insult to his intellect.  He turned to Kurama again and asked, “So how do we find him?”

“He’s bound to show up sometime in a place with this much death.  All we have to do is find him.”   Hiei and Yusuke followed after him out of the theatre.

When they got outside, they all looked around in different directions.  “You know, you guys,” Yusuke said, “Suzaku is still at large, and we have no idea where he might be hiding.  Stay on your guard and try to subdue the Reaper if you do see him.”

The other two nodded their comprehension, all of them separating and running through the city at top speed.

It took them less than a minute to comb the entire city before they met up back at the entrance to the theatre.  None of them found the Grim Reaper.

“Well, seeking him out didn’t work,” Yusuke muttered.

“What we need is for him to seek us out.”

“And how do you intend to do that?” Hiei asked.

Kurama smirked and laid my body down on the ground right in the middle of the street.  He beckoned his fellows to follow him back into the theatre.  They both obeyed, all three sets of eyes watching the body.

They waited for a little while before a figure in black and riding a scythe flew in next to the bait.  The figure got off his ride and stooped next to the body.  The figure immediately jumped to his feet in disgust, shouting, “What the heck is this?  I already took care of this body!”

He turned around, but he found his scythe missing.  He looked all around for it, his red eyes getting redder by the second.  His eyes finally rested on Hiei, who was now standing in front of him with two scythes in his hands.  Kurama and Yusuke walked out of the theatre and confronted the Reaper.

“What do you three want?” he asked them.

“Take us to your portal to Spirit World,” Hiei demanded.

The Grim Reaper looked down on him, snickered, and asked, “Now why would I want to do that, small fry?”

Hiei frowned and replied, “Because if you don’t I’ll snap your scythe in two, and I don’t just mean the shaft.”

“Ooh, tough guy.  Okay, I’ll show you where the portal is.  I’m done with my shift here anyway.”  He held out a bony hand from his robe, and Hiei grudgingly gave up the scythe.  Using it as a walking stick, he started to hike up the street.  Hiei picked up my body as he, Yusuke, and Kurama followed.

As they hiked behind the Reaper, Kurama asked, “What do you mean you’ve already worked on this body?”

“Like I said, I already reaped that spirit; at least, Botan did.  She came here not too long ago and picked up this guy’s spirit.  She said something about a special assignment she was on, picked him up, and left.  She came back on a second round to pick up one of those damned zombie rebellious.”

Yusuke was really stumped on this one.  “A zombie what?”

“A zombie rebellious.  They’re living corpses of people, mainly from the time of the Late Renaissance.  Most of them were Botan’s fault, especially in one town around London.  There used to be a whole city of them beneath the town before Koenma sent me throughout Europe to bring back all of them.  Botan was such a slacker back then.”

They continued to hike up the street until they got under the cover of the trees within the suburb.  The progress from there was uphill until they got to the top of a small hill, where another street intersected the one they were on.  The Grim Reaper led them down this new street to the east about a fourth of a mile before they took another turn up a steeper hill.  At the top of this one they came to a retirement home.  A swirling yellow vortex stood active right next to the brick entryway of this building.

“Everyone inside,” the Reaper commanded.  “This portal takes us straight to Spirit World.  I would have made it closer, except my original assignment was a little old lady who bit the dust.”

Yusuke and Kurama leapt through the portal near automatically, but Hiei stayed behind a second.  He turned his head and drank deeply from the blood leaking onto his shoulder.  He wiped his mouth off and jumped into the portal.  The Grim Reaper followed closely behind, the portal sealing up behind him.

…

“WHAT!?  You’re telling me Kurama and Hiei are coming back here!?”

“Yes, Prince Koenma, sir.  They are expected here within the minute.”

Koenma cringed in his swivel chair and turned it around, crossing his small hands.  “What business could both of them have here?  I understand Kurama, but Hiei?  He hasn’t come here since his theft of the spirit items.”

“Why don’t you ask us yourself?”

Koenma froze on the spot, his eyes left wide.  His pacifier dropped to the floor.  He slowly turned around, meeting Hiei’s red eyes with his scared brown ones.  Hiei still had my body slung over his shoulder, the blood from my wound leaking down his side.  A blood stain was also leaking from Hiei’s lips.

Kurama stepped out from the hallway leading into the office, as did Yusuke.  Koenma breathed a sigh of relief and asked, “What business do you have with me?”

Hiei dropped my body onto the desk situated in front of Koenma.  “We need a complete healing for this deadweight, pronto.”

Koenma studied the body carefully and asked, “Is this the body of Michael Heilmann?”

“As far as we can guess,” Yusuke replied.  “But I don’t understand something.  If this guy’s the next host for a super powerful demon, why don’t we just leave him for dead and end the line of the demon’s possession victims?”

Koenma picked up his pacifier and handed it to his assistant.  “I’m glad you asked that, Yusuke,” he replied.  “You see, the curse that the three demon kings put on Sakurayo lasts only as long as he possesses a human through it every thousand years or so.  Even though he’s been revealing his victims earlier and earlier, we must appease his requests or he’ll be released.”

“Oh.”

At that moment, Botan walked through the door to Koenma’s office.  “Hello, everyone,” she said, her eyes drifting around the room at all the guests.

“Botan, please fetch Michael Heilmann,” Koenma said to her.

Botan’s sweet face soured at this order.  “But I just took him down to the—”

“Now.  We need to do this quickly.  I’ll heal up the body while you go fetch him.”

“Okay,” she grumbled.  She walked out of the door and back down the hallway.  She ran past the office employees’ cubicles and quickly ducked into the second hallway leading to the graveyard suites.  She sprinted down this hallway at top speed, half out of anger and half out of nervousness from the hallway itself.

As she approached the final door, the sound of piano music filled her ears.  This music wasn’t the same music she had heard before when she had escorted me this way.  This music was happier, more lively.  Curious she opened the door a crack and peeked inside.  There, at the piano, she saw two pianists.  Their fingers danced across the keys like figure skaters across ice.  They were in perfect synch with each other, their music filling the room and flooding into the hallway.

When they finished their current piece, the two pianists turned and faced each other, smiling warmly.  Botan instantly recognized them, even in the dim light.  “Are those Michael and Emily?” she whispered to herself.  She continued to watch and see what unfolded.

…

I looked into Emily’s eyes, took her hands in mine, and said, “You play beautifully, my dear.”

“You play debonairly as well,” she replied, “for a beginner.”  We both had a kind laugh at this final comment.

I heard a small noise and abruptly stood up from the piano, turned towards the door, and said, “We can hear you, you know; so what do you want from us?”

Botan nervously tensed and fully opened the door.  She cleared her throat and announced, “Prince Koenma wishes to see you now, Michael.”

“Oh, does he now?” I asked as I walked towards the door.  Before I exited the room, I turned to Emily and said, “I’ll be back, Emily.  Just wait here.”

She nodded with a smile and sat back down on the piano bench.  I exited the door, not quite closing it all the way but leaving a little crack of light.  The piano music started again, the tune just as happy as it was a few seconds ago.

I followed Botan down the hall and back to Koenma’s office.  As soon as I stepped through the doorway, all eyes turned on me.  I got a little skittish as I looked around the room.  All of these guys looked bigger and unfamiliar to me.  However, when I saw Kurama, my demeanor calmed.  I stood a little straighter and walked into the midst of the group, my eyes still studying these two new friends of Kurama.

“Nice of you to join us, Michael.”

“Nice to know I’m needed, but by who?”  I looked around at the people in the room and asked, “Which one of you is Koenma?”

I heard a throat being cleared at the desk in front of me.  A teenage voice followed it up.  “That would be me.”

I crossed through the group to the front desk.  Seated in the swivel chair at the desk was a toddler with a pacifier in his mouth and wearing a round hat almost twice the size of his head.  The toddler’s clothes were a mix between regular and baby blue hues.  He looked up at me with calm brown eyes as I looked back down at him, my face half hysterical.  “Okay, kid, where’s your father?  Is he off on business or—?”

The toddler forcibly gripped the collar of my shirt and dragged me down to his eye level.  “Listen here, wise guy,” the toddler angrily snapped, “I am Koenma, and just because I look like a baby doesn’t mean that you can talk to me like one!  I’ve already had to deal with him—” he pointed to one of Kurama’s companions, the taller one with the black hair “—and I don’t want to have to deal with you!”  He released his grip on me, allowing me to stand up again.

I angrily snorted and retorted, “Well, excuse me.”

Koenma sighed and folded his hands.  “I’ve repaired the damage to your body,” he said.  “If you want to return to Living World, I just need one final preparation:  the breath of life.”

Kurama stepped forward from the group and asked, “You mean CPR?”

“Precisely.  In a case like this, it would usually be someone who really wants him back—” I raised a hand to offer a suggestion, but Koenma dismissed it sternly.  “—who is alive, but in light of the current circumstances, we’ll have to make due.”

Kurama’s companion that Koenma had pointed to earlier cringed when he said this.  “You mean one of us has to do it?”

“Yes, Yusuke.  It has to be you, Hiei, or Kurama.  That is, as long as you want to have a home to return to one of these days.  You three can decide amongst yourselves who it’s going to be.”  Koenma turned his swivel chair around to settle the matter, grinning slightly.

Yusuke and Hiei turned a slightly sickly shade of green as they looked at my body straightened out on the desk.  Kurama shot them both a glare and brought my body to the floor.  “No need for you two to be so rude.  This isn’t Kuwabara we’re dealing with.”

Hiei scowled and replied, “Not exactly, but he’s close enough.”

I scowled and snorted again, my eyes downcast at my feet.  “My future is in the hands of those two wimps?  I can’t believe it.”

Yusuke glared at me now, reddish rage lighting up his eyes.  His fists tightened as he said, “What was that, punk?”

I lifted my eyes up to him and replied, “You heard me.  If any of you are afraid to do it, I’ll enjoy watching your asses get kicked as you try to tangle with that demon.”

Yusuke growled, but he turned to his companions and said “Let’s settle this with Punch-Chop-Kick.  Loser has to bring that punk back from the dead.”

“Agreed.”

I sat on the desk as I looked over the game.  It went pretty much the same way as Rock-Paper-Scissors as far as I knew, except it went by a different name.  Yusuke and Kurama both stuck out a hand intended to do a karate chop, but Hiei stuck out a fist.

Kurama grimaced and said, “Sorry, Hiei, but chops beat fist.”

Hiei grumbled and bent to one knee.  He turned to me and growled, “If you even dare to show a trickle of a smile, I’ll make sure that you don’t have a body to return to.”

I gnashed my teeth at him and spat, “Are you inferring that I’m one of those goddamned fags?  Truth-be-told, I already have a girlfriend and think that fag-fuckers should go to hell.  I’ve already had a few bad experiences that I don’t want to recall.”

“That would be down the hall to your right, if you’re wondering,” Koenma piped up from behind his chair.

Hiei stifled a burp and muttered, “I knew that last drink would come back to haunt me, and in more ways than one.”  He bent low over my body and pressed his bloody lips to my undead ones.  After giving one rescue breath, he quickly stood up, regaining a serious composure.  Yusuke chuckled slightly, but Kurama elbowed him in the side.

My body coursed with a golden light.  I looked upon it with awe, and at the same time determination.  ‘Okay, this is now, or never,’ I thought to myself.  I stuck my hand into my body’s hand, my spirit phasing into the skin.  I laid myself over my body, making sure to align everything perfectly.  I slowly sank down to the floor, my spirit continuing to dissolve in the folds of my clothes and my skin.

When I was completely in one piece, my eyes fluttered open and looked around the room.  I got up off of the floor, but I instantly collapsed onto the desk.  My hands instantly clasped around my stomach.  “Does this place have anything to eat?  I feel like I’m practically starving to death!”

Koenma swiveled around, giggling in spite of himself.  “I expected as much.  Being without food for nearly twelve hours does take a toll on one’s appetite.  Luckily, I have a little something here for you.”  He bent beneath his desk and came back up with a steaming loaf of garlic bread.  My eyes watered as much as my mouth as he handed it over to me.  I sank my teeth into the end of it, hungrily devouring the whole loaf within a minute.  A stifled but still rather large belch confirmed my satisfaction.

“I thought you’d like it,” Koenma told me with a smile.

“Well, now that business has been taken care of, why don’t we kick Suzaku’s sorry face in?”  Yusuke suggested.

“Because we have one final piece of business to complete,” I told him.  “I’m not the only revival needed here.”

“What do you mean?” Kurama asked.

“A friend of mine also died today, but by unnatural causes.”

“You mean Garrett, don’t you?” Koenma asked.  He held up a file with my friend’s picture on it.  He opened it up and rummaged through it.  “Cause of death:  bullet to the back of the head; died at the age of twelve.  If anything, he would have gotten sorted into the Veteran’s department, due to his trigger-happy nature.”

“Yeah, that’s Garrett for you.”

“If you wish to bring him back, you’ll need to bring his spirit back here.  I’ll send Botan to fetch his body and make the necessary preparations.  The Veteran’s department is down the hall and three doors to your right, just past Heaven and Valhalla.”

“Okay, I’m confused.  How many places like that do you have here?”

“Any Great Beyond that has ever been described.  We try to satisfy every request that comes our way.  At the moment, we have about fifteen individual Great Beyond facilities.”

“About time to head out, don’t you think?” Kurama asked me.

“Yeah, I believe it is.”