THE LOWLY SOUL

A story by Anne E. Johnson
(Author of EBENEZER'S LOCKER, forthcoming from MuseItUp Publishing)

Nobody thinks about insects becoming ghosts. Granted, I never quite made it to “insect,” since I died as a caterpillar. That makes me the ghost of something between a larva and a butterfly, not quite grotesque and not quite beautiful. Like most folks, come to think of it.

            I ended my mortal journey squished under some kid’s skateboard wheel. Just as my ghostly self separated from the gelatinous goop on the sidewalk, I had to watch my pureed body getting slurped up by a dog.

            Once a ghost, I had no idea what I was supposed to do with myself. Don’t ghosts normally have a mission or purpose? I just kept crawling along the same sidewalk that I’d crawled in life. The kids skateboarded right through me. Not even my fellow caterpillars could see me (although one guy I’d known since larva stage seemed to get the heebie-jeebies when I rolled by). And though I chewed and chewed, I couldn’t take a single bite out of a leaf. It all seemed pointless.

            After many depressing days of crawling, I ended up in a cemetery. The graves lay amid big, shady trees and tall grass. A pleasant enough place to stay. At night I could see human ghosts, but the few times I tried to make friends, I found that nobody cared to bother with a caterpillar’s ghost.

Having no one to talk to, I sat on a rock and watched the others in their ghostly habits. Over time, I came to feel close to a number of them, although they ignored me. A soul yearns for any connection it can find.

There was one ghost boy named Billy, who’d died of the fever a couple centuries before. Nightly, his spirit chased living squirrels in and around the trees and graves. I don’t think the poor critters could see him, but they sure sensed his presence. You’ve never seen squirrels puff their tails up so big or scamper so fast.

Every night Billy would terrorize the squirrels for a while. Then the ghost of Jebediah Moses Faulkner would spiral around him like a slow-motion tornado and shout, “Mind yer manners, ya son-of-a-divil!” And Billy would go sit on his gravestone and pout. Every single night. I found the repetition comforting.

A lady named Valencia Reemes was another of my favorites. She must have gone crazy in life, because her spirit was loony as a tar beetle drowning in wine vinegar. Valencia staggered and flew, hopping and bumping and swirling through gravestones, twisting her arms this way and that. She was harmless, though, and the other ghosts would smile at each other and get out of her way as she came raving past.

So it was a peaceful existence in the graveyard, keeping myself to myself and watching the ectoplasmic entertainments. I could have gone on like that forever. But then I discovered my purpose.

One night the air changed suddenly, like wind scraping over an ice block in summer. There was something evil afoot, and every spirit felt it. Ghosts of all types flitted around the cemetery on high alert. Billy left the squirrels alone. Even Valencia Reemes seemed focused and vigilant.

But the evil ones got into the graveyard anyway, beastly creatures from the depths, who needed human parts for some hellacious experiment bridging life and black magic. Three of these long, shadowy shapes waltzed right on in and made a bee-line for Billy’s grave.

There was an immediate unity of purpose among the graveyard denizens. Jebediah led the charge. “Desecrate not these holy graves, ye Servants of Satan!” Every human ghost took up the call.

Ordinary mortal grave-robbers would have coughed up their spleens and run in terror, or simply died of fright on the spot. But these were true demons, and they were prepared for the well-meaning but unskilled attacks of a bunch of provincial ghosts.

With flashes of lightening from their jagged fingers, the demons spewed forth a wall around and above them, clear but wavy, as if it were water. The good ghosts couldn’t penetrate it, so they hovered around and above the thieves, powerless as little Billy’s coffin was dug up and opened.

It was at that moment that I realized my purpose. The spell wall protecting the demons didn’t seem to reach underground. So I dug. I burrowed. I squirmed deep into the soil. No, I didn’t have any idea what the ghost of one tiny caterpillar could do against the forces of the underworld, but I knew it was my destiny to try to help.

You’ll never guess what I found in that soil. There were the souls of half a million worms, bugs, spiders, and every other manner of creepy-crawly. I guess they’d been collecting there from the dawn of time, not knowing what to do, just waiting to be called.

They must have felt my energy, because they all began to burrow through the earth toward Billy’s grave. We emerged inside that spell wall, a thousand at a time oozing up from the soil. Our mighty army of lowly souls crept and crawled all over those demons. We chewed, we stung, and we bit mercilessly, with tooth, proboscis, and pincer.

The devil creatures wailed and tried to shake us off, but there were just too many of us. Finally, they gathered in the edges of their shadows and sucked in the magic water wall, then dissipated into the evening mist. Billy’s mortal remains were still in his coffin.

Jebediah Moses Faulkner had been a preacher in life, so he said a few prayers. The spirits of the humans looked at the ground and said nice things like, “What lovely bugs,” and, “I never noticed those cute little fellers before.” We all felt welcome and appreciated.

 And Billy’s ghost, grateful for the help of animals in protecting his resting place, has been kind to the squirrels ever since.