the land of the ghosts

Soon Mavis and Adelaide came to be in the Land of the Ghosts. It looked just like the regular outside world, complete with subways and streets and buildings, but it was populated by ghosts. And all of the ghosts seemed to be going about rather ordinary everyday business.

"What are they doing, these ghosts?" asked Mavis. "Do they know that they are ghosts? Do they know that they don't need to catch a subway or stand in line any more?"

"They are ghosts that are in the in between" Adelaide responded. "Eventually they will move on and continue with more ghostly matters but for right now they are still living out their regular lives like regular Normals except that they are not Normals because they are dead. And they know that they are dead but until they finish their unfinished business with their lives that they had they can't move on."

"Oh how dreadful for them!" Mavis exclaimed. "Aren't they terribly upset about this?"

"Quite the contrary" Adelaide explained. "They know that they have unfinished business and they are very content to finish what they started. So until then they must go on doing what they need to do and keep on being who they were until they are ready to move on. And until then they still like and dislike the same things as before and they still have their jobs and their hobbies that they had before.

"See there, the man in the gray standing on the platform waiting for the tube? That's Ambrose. Ambrose was and is a historian. Usually he wears an old cardigan with leather patches on the elbows and smokes a pipe. But he can't smoke a pipe on the tube, even in the Land of the Ghosts, so he doesn't. And even now, as a ghost, Ambrose likes to bake and he likes to recite poetry and he likes to do push ups. But he still doesn't like, even though he's now dead, eating rye bread or coming across unfriendly people or seeing monster trucks. So really, even though he's a ghost, his life, or lack of it, hasn't changed much. And until he completes his lessons he'll continue on in the in between.

"And there, do you see the woman with the pocketbook slung over her shoulder? That's Edwina. Edwina is a waitress at a little diner where she works the breakfast shift serving french toast and coffee. Edwina likes to play cards and she likes to ride her bike and she enjoys jigsaw puzzles. But she doesn't like having to remember to take her vitamins (which now that she's dead she really doesn't need to do as much as she did before) and she dislikes white tennis shoes and she really, really dislikes lousy tippers.

And there, in this group, somewhere in there is Max. He's a tattoo artist from Hoboken and he loves to read the dictionary to learn new words and hopes that someone will want one of his new found words tattooed on their wrist. In the evenings he likes to practise his french and eat tangerines. But oddly enough he doesn't like the color orange. And he doesn't like loud motorcycles and he  doesn't like to eat chicken livers. Not at all.

"So you see, these are the ghosts that help to keep the Other Side and the World of the Normals from colliding. And as these ghosts finish their business and move on to where they move on to then new ghosts will come along.

But we still have a long way to go until we get to where we are going so now we must continue on through the Land of the Ghosts and see what is in store for you next."

to be continued... 

“So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.” ~ Stephen King