Author: Michelle Franklin, Word Count: 666
Featured in Spooky Archaeological Story Moot: Live Stream – Halloween 2023
It is entirely possible for wights to have ghosts, and Ozzy the garden wight had one. Skeletons are only human by-products, Ozzy being bones possessed by sense, and his spirit being a shiftless layabout.
From the approaching frigid pall, a ghost suddenly appeared. It was thin and limbless, hovering pathetically like a ragged sheet on a line. It could not scare Ozzy if it tried; it lurked just behind him, wilting like an old bag, dangling on vaporous loom. Its face tried to grimace and failed.
“I’m ignoring you,” said Ozzy, carrying on with his job. “I’m putting down my cutting clover, and I am ignore you entirely.”
The ghost hovered deplorably. It breathed on the back of Ozzy’s neck, speaking in a fathomless tones. “Hhhhhhoooooooohhhh…”
“Yes, very good,” Ozzy’s jaw clacked. “You’re mighty proud of yourself for saying half a word. All very clever, I’m sure.”
The ghost just hung there like an unwanted lampshade and pretended to be horrid.
“Hhhhhhhhhhooooooooooooooohhhhh…”
“You can stop all that wretched wheezing,” Ozzy demanded. “You don’t have lungs and neither do I.”
Myndil scurried over to greet the lugubrious ghost. “Oh, halloo there! Look, Ozzy, your friend is back—or is it just you, because I don’t know if being friends with ourselves counts. We haven’t see your ghost for sometime now. Glad to see you again!” waving his hand in the ghost’s face, trying for a reaction and receiving nothing. “Does he have his own name? Or should I call him Ozzy the Second? Or perhaps Ozzy junior? Or perhaps he’s the senior one of the two, because he separated from you and became a ghost before your body became a wight.”
The ghost, who had no choice in the matter but to hang about and make oowoo noises in a vague impression of Ozzy’s voice, looked like it tried to wave and gave up half way through.
Aodhgan seemed bemused. “Your ghost?”
“Don’t act so surprised, Master Wolf,” Ozzy’s skull chattered. “Not in front of the heleniums. They’ve only just begun to bloom.”
“But how can you have a ghost? You’re a wight, and an autonomous one.”
“I am, and you are a man and a wolf also. A man can be two things.”
“But your bones are here, and your consciousness speaks through them.”
“Yes, well, my flesh and feelings had to go somewhere. I keep what remains of my organs under a monument, so no one can accidentally retrucidate me, and the flesh is long rotted away. My feelings, however, went with my spirit, which now wears the billowing remnants my pathetic life like a gauze.”
The ghost did not like what bordered on political commentary and began to sob, only there were no ducts to cry out of. It went “Hhooooooooooooooohoooooooooohohohooooommme,” and shook unimpressively.
“My apologies,” said Ozzy, with apparent embarrassment. “It’s going to do this all day.”
Aodhgan was trying to make sense out of it. “So… you haunt yourself?”
“Yes, and I apparently have no choice in the business. Now you see why I shoo it away like a leper at every opportunity.”
“Hhooooooooooooooooooohohoooo—”
“Will you stop crying!” Ozzy’s jaw crackled. “You’re a grown ghost. How would you like it if all the other ghosts could see you carrying on?”
The ghost ignored his entreaties. It only hovered over Ozzy’s shoulder and whispered in his ear: “Hhhhhhooooooohohooommmeeee…”
Ozzy leaned on his monument and made an empty sigh. “Being undead makes me want to kill myself.”
“I’ve never heard of ghosts haunting their own bones,” said Aodhgan.
“Well, Master Wolf, not every undead creature is unfortunate enough to be undead in two forms,” Ozzy replied. “My ghost doesn’t appear often, and usually only at night.”
“A shame it never comes inside,” Myndil lamented. “Many people keep their skeletons in the closet, but I think they ought to let them out, because they must be lonely in there.”
Ozzy was already planning to build a shed around his ghost and leave it there.
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