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Vlad glared out the window of his office at the bright sunny day. The sky was that picture-perfect blue with the cute fluffy clouds to match. The first round of flowers were in bloom, and people were breaking out their sunglasses and shorts with more regularity. That only meant one thing.
Spring was here.
He didn’t use to hate springtime. It used to be his favorite time of year. He used to revel in the romance of the season.
Now it only made him irritable and reminded him of all that he had lost.
It was spring when he lost his chance with Maddie.
It was spring when Jack’s foolish antics had sent him to the hospital.
It was spring when he had his accident with the proto-portal.
And every spring since, his body reminded him.
Every spring, the same spring day, all the emotions he felt that day would come back. Each year compounding onto the next.
Sometimes he really wanted to just let go and forget the whole thing. He wanted to just enjoy his incredible wealth and the gift that his powers were.
But then it would be spring again and that all went out the window.
When he realized he wasn’t alone; when he found Daniel, he planned on warning him of the anniversary. He meant to tell the boy to be wary of what was to come.
But then they fought, and he really let his anger get the better of him.
He’d lost his chance to get the boy on his side and the warning slipped his mind.
Or it had until it was spring again and time for his annual reminder.
Time to relive that awful day but only the shadow of it. He would be skeptical of all the machinery around him. He would be filled with an untraceable and unending feeling of irritation of anyone and everyone.
Then at 4 pm, he had to make sure he was safely at home and secluded from anything sharp. He had to isolate himself because the phantom pains on his face made him want to peel his skin off.
And in the first couple of years in the hospital, he had attempted it.
The pain was unimaginable and, as far as those doctors were concerned, entirely in his head.
So once his yearly torture for not dying all those years ago had passed, he remembered young Daniel.
He wondered if the boy went through the same hell.
He never mentioned anything, but he wasn’t one to broadcast his pain. That boy was the grin and bear it type.
Whether that was a good or bad thing, Vlad had yet to determine.
He wasn’t sure how to bring up the conversation, certainly, the boy had his powers long enough to have passed his anniversary, right?
Unless he had passed it and nothing happened.
Maybe it was only Vlad who went through all that pain and misery. That would surely add insult to injury, wouldn’t it?
To find there is another like you only to realize that they aren’t like you at all. That they might even be better because they aren’t hindered by a terrible curse.
There was only one way to find out. He just had to be the proverbial fly on the wall. Obviously, he couldn’t actually be there himself, that would just be a waste of time and energy. He may be a reclusive billionaire, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a life.
He just needed to install a few cameras here and there and slip his way into the backdoors of other preexisting cameras.
Then he’d just check in every once in a while to see if the boy was like him after all. Maybe he could even monitor his progress remotely.
There was a surprising amount of footage to go through in just the first month alone that Vlad could not reasonably go through it all on his own.
So then he looked into how to get assistance, without hiring anyone. That’s when Vlad happened to overhear Daniel’s tech-obsessed friend mentioned virtual assistants.
What impeccable timing.
So learning enough code to program his own AI that was trained to focus on finding a piece of relevant information about the young half-ghost took more time than he would have liked, but he was nothing if not persistent.
As a little treat, he decided to model the AI after his beloved. Sure that took even more time, but if you’re going to design your own software you might as well have a little fun right? Put in your own flair.
Eventually, other plans came to the forefront of his mind and he had nearly forgotten about the program’s initial purpose.
That is until it pinged him one chilly fall morning.
It noted that Daniel’s behavior was straying a bit from his normal.
Vlad looked into the current live feed and noted that the boy was a tad more skittish and fidgety than usual. Vlad monitored the situation for a while, but just assumed that maybe the boy was nervous about school or something. It was a new year after all.
Vlad shrugged it off and went about his day as normal.
That was a mistake.
Vlad was relaxing at home after a long day at the office when the silence was broken by a loud shout from his front hall.
Daniel was calling his name and he sounded much too distraught for this to be a prank.
Vlad rushed to the boy and found he was a trembling mess. His clothes were rumbled and his hair was even more disheveled than he normally kept it. He ran a nervous hand through his already tousled hair and it only made it worse.
“Vlad you’ve gotta help.”
“With what?” What could have possibly gotten into the boy? Had his parents found out about his ghostly nature and not taken the news well?
If so, seeing that the teen came here, was either very flattering or a dire warning.
“It’s coming. I gotta get out of here. I don’t know where else to go. It’s coming.”
The boy’s eyes darted about the room as if he were a caged animal and Vlad was suddenly suspicious that maybe the child wasn’t in his right mind. Could he be drugged? He was much too much of a goody-two-shoes to partake in anything recreationally.
“What’s coming?” Vlad said as he tried to herd the boy into the sitting room. “I can’t help if I don’t know what I’m up against.”
“I don’t know. It’s big. It’s close.” Daniel suddenly jerked his head to look behind him as if he had heard a sudden noise.
Only there was no sound. It was just the two of them in the large manor.
“Daniel?” Vlad asked cautiously as he considered that maybe he should knock the boy out for his own safety.
He turned at the sound of his name and looked at Vlad as if he wasn’t expecting to find the man there. As if he hadn’t just walked into his house and started a conversation with him.
“Vlad! It’s coming! What do I do?” he reached out to the older man but his grip was too loose to actually hold on. He simply pressed his left hand against Vlad’s chest.
Before Vlad could answer Daniel froze and stared off into the distance just past Vlad’s shoulder. Vlad turned to follow the gaze but found nothing out of the ordinary.
He turned back to the boy and realized that his gaze was unfocused, whatever he was seeing, it wasn’t something Vlad would be able to find.
Daniel’s voice was barely a whisper as he breathed out a simple and yet chillingly ominous phrase, “It’s here.”
Then his body jolted violently erect as if he had been shot. His face shifted from fear to agony as he screamed the most blood-curdling scream Vlad had ever heard outside of a horror movie.
That was when he realized what was happening.
Vlad took a step back to give the boy some room mostly because he didn’t know what else there was to do.
The boys’ scream died out just as abruptly as it had started before he collapsed onto the carpet. His small frame twitching and spasming without any discernible pattern.
Vlad took another step back and pushed the nearby chair further into the room. He knew a seizure when he saw one.
He just never expected to see one tonight.
It didn’t take long for Daniel’s body to still. He lost consciousness immediately and Vlad carefully carried him to the nearest guest room and stood vigil until the boy woke up again.
Vlad considered calling Jasmine, just to make sure Daniel didn’t have a history of seizures, but he decided to wait until the boy woke up instead.
In the meantime, he’d make a duplicate and have a cup of water ready.
Daniel woke up with a groan and blinked blearily as he tried to take in his surroundings.
Vlad wasn’t sure how much he was actually able to process with how out of it he looked, but the next place his eyes tracked was to his own body. Mainly his wrists and ankles.
It took Vlad a second to realize that the boy was checking to make sure he wasn’t being tied down.
Vlad tried not to wince too hard at that implication. Clearly, that happened more times than it should have if it was a habit to check.
Daniel blinked the drowsiness out of his eyes and finally found Vlad.
“Are you feeling better, Little Badger?”
“Yeah I think so.” he rubbed his arm and looked anywhere but Vlad, “sorry about just walking in and,” he hesitated, “doing whatever it was that I did.”
Vlad sighed and sat in the desk chair near the window, “It’s quite alright.” he paused and figured they may as well get this conversation on with already. “Do you know what that was?”
Daniel looked up, his face easily read how clueless and desperate for answers he was. Then he looked away and Vlad could practically hear the gears in that boy’s head turning.
“Because I believe I know. But I must ask you something first.”
The boy pressed his lips together and searched Vlad’s eyes for an ulterior motive. Vlad didn’t have one today. He honestly just wanted to talk.
He sighed and relented, “what’s your question?”
“How long have you had your powers?”
The curious tilt of the boy’s head showed just how little he knew about his own biology.
Although, thinking back, it took Vlad a few years before he saw the pattern himself.
“About a year now.”
“About? Or exactly?”
The boy might not do well academically, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t brilliant. It only took him a few seconds to figure it out.
“It’s my death day?”
Although, that certainly was a morbid way to think about it.
“I suppose you could call it that.” Vlad had been referring to it as his rebirth day. Privately of course.
“Well what do you call it?” he asked immediately.
“It doesn't matter.” He was not going to tell him now. The boy would probably find some way to poke fun at it or something. He already called him a knock-off Dracula, he didn’t need to be teased anymore.
“So was I reliving what happened?” he put a finger to his lip as he thought, “But not exactly. It was mostly just the feeling of it.”
“Yes, I believe that’s it.”
“Do you think this happens to all ghosts? Or is it a Halfa thing?”
“Please don’t use that word in my house.”
“What, Halfa?”
“Yes!”
“Why not?”
Vlad sighed and realized that he honestly didn’t know any better, “It’s derogatory.”
The boy thought for a second then gasped, “It’s a slur?!”
“Yes. where did you learn it anyway?”
“Sydney.”
“Who?”
“Poindexter. He haunts the school. Or he used to until I broke his mirror. He’s from like, the fifties, or whatever.” he nodded to himself before adding, “which, you know, that tracks.”
Vlad wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but he figured as long as the boy stopped using the word, it didn’t matter.
“You never answered my question.”
It was Vlad’s turn to be confused as he had completely forgotten the boy had asked anything of him.
“Is this thing for all ghosts or just us?”
“I don’t know. I doubt any ghost would be willing to admit to being that vulnerable and I tend to seclude myself on my anniversary.”
The boy just nodded thoughtfully before asking his next question, “So all I remember was being super paranoid all day and then,” the boy gripped the sheets and his voice shook on the last word “pain.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“Not really? It’s all kind of a blur. I was just so sure something terrible was coming. Something big and dangerous, but inescapable.”
Vlad leaned back in his chair.
That sounded terrible.
The next question slipped out before Vlad had a chance to fully process it, “How close were you?”
Daniel’s face was uncharacteristically stoic as he gave his answer, “if you had a front-row seat, I was center stage.”
Vlad lost all sense of composure and let the utter horror show on his face.
The boy looked down to his hands, then his gaze shifted to favor his left, “I wonder if that means anything.”
Vlad couldn’t help but wonder the same thing. Vlad had been hurt, and terribly so, but what Daniel was alluding to…
“My friends don’t really like to talk about it. Well, I don’t either, but it’s not for the same reason.” he gently rubbed his right thumb in the palm of his left hand. Vlad wasn’t too sure what it meant, he assumed it had something to do with his accident. “I don’t like to talk about it, because it’s,” he paused, all the way down to his movements, then he blinked and continued, “it’s like a nightmare.”
He finally looked back up to Vlad again, “They don’t like talking about it, because it just reminds them about how unhuman I am. It just shows that I’m not fully alive.”
“What are you talking about? Of course, you’re alive!”
He had to be.
“Vlad, you can’t get ghost powers without dying.” Then he left out a single laugh, more of huff of air than anything, “Or maybe you can. Maybe you were able to cheat the system. Maybe you just got a high enough dose of contaminated ectoplasm to do what you do. But me?” he shook his head, “Maybe I’m only as dead as the people who get near-death experiences, but that still involves at least a little time being a corpse.”
“Do you have to word it like that?”
The boy shrugged and gave a little smirk, “No, but it’s fun to make you uncomfortable.” he hopped off the bed and transformed into his ghost form.
“Anyway, thanks for letting me crash, but I’m gonna head home now.” he gave a quick two-finger salute and then disappeared. The sound of the curtains billowing in the breeze he created on his exit was the only sign that he was truly gone.
Vlad just sighed and stared at the bed and watched the impression the boy had left slowly erase itself.
He couldn’t help but notice how much brighter his aura was tonight.