Meet John Doe

[John Doe]

Try to imagine the most debilitating, terrifying situation you could ever find yourself in. I guess you're probably thinking about losing everyone you love or becoming bankrupt, something like that. Try a little harder. I bet you have days where there is something you're supposed to remember, something so important, but you can't for the life of you remember what it is. It's on the tip of your tongue, right? Maybe if you put it out of your mind, it'll come back to you. Now, imagine that it doesn't. It never does and it never will.

Now I want you to imagine that every single detail about your life, your identity, everything, all of it is like this – just on the tip of your tongue, but never quite there. You can't remember anything. You've had a life, obviously – you can't just come into this world at twenty-five a blank slate, but that's what it feels like. Try to get your head around this concept. You recognise the world you're in. You know that if you put your hand into some fire it's going to hurt or that if you go out in public naked you'll get called crazy, but you just don't remember any of the important things. It wouldn't be so bad, only no one else seems to remember you.

That's right. One day you just turned up on a roadside, all bent out of shape from some crash. You weren't carrying any ID, you didn't have any kind of kooky tattoo or scar, nothing distinguishing. You're nobody, but you're a nobody in bad shape, so the hospital takes you in anyway. Sure enough you lapse into that coma that they expect from you and come out of it three months later, still none the wiser. I'm sure you can imagine how frustrating that is, right?

For a while, you're hot stuff. All the journalists within a thousand mile radius want a bedside chat with you, the man with no name and no memory. The psychologists are still boggling over just what's going on in your head when a nice young woman from some company called Orpheus turns up. She tells you not to worry about the medical bills, that Orpheus has seen to those. She says they have a job for you.

Did you imagine all of this? I know, it's pretty difficult to visualize. You can't really comprehend it all unless you've gone through it yourself. Maybe you can get a basic understanding though, that's all you need. So, you've imagined all of this and where are you now? Lying in a hospital bed one evening, talking to an attractive young woman in a presentable suit, telling you that she has a job for you. What's your reaction? Paranoia? Justified. Why would anyone want to employ someone without an identity? Put that paranoia aside for a second and replace it with something else. Confusion.

Orpheus wants you to become a ghost hunter. The woman in the suit tells you this with a perfectly straight face. You wonder, briefly, if you're the victim of some sick fly-on-the-wall reality TV show. You start to wonder if you're going mad, because there is a voice in the back of your head shouting 'go for it'. What do you have to lose? It's been months and no one has come forward to identify you. You have no money, no home, no job, no family. Nothing. Right now, the world is about as crazy as it could get for you. Why should it be such a surprise that someone just asked you to play Scooby Doo?

What do you say? No? What else are you going to do with your life? You're starting again from nothing. Absolutely nothing, with no help. Do you still say no? Maybe for a while. Maybe you think you're the pinnacle of evolution, you will adapt, you will work through this. By all means, try it. It won't take long for you to see what a big mistake you've made.

Believe me, I know.

I don't have to imagine any of this.

But you, you can try. Let me help you.

[John Doe]

I can't feel my heart beat. This should be a terrifying realization, the awareness that the driving force – the engine, if you will – of my body has stopped. It's the kind of thing you don't pay attention to until something like this happens. You take it for granted. Sure, sometimes you feel a little nervous and you feel that fluttering in your chest. You feel it straining, beating harder, in fear – but you never think why it does that, or worry that one day you'll find yourself at the brink of an indescribable fear, yet feel none of that almost comforting pulse. It would be easy to think that you had no fear, that nothing drove your body to the point of fight or flight. It's unnerving.

Lingering in the hallway of some boarded-up suburban palace, I can no longer hear the thumping beat of my heart. I am as silent as the house itself, no breath filling my lungs – no lungs to fill. I flinch as I step forwards, fearful that my footsteps might betray me. It's an empty fear – the floorboard that might once have been my undoing takes my weight as if it was little more than a passing breath. I am weightless, and move like an uncertain breeze, conscious that I cannot be seen, felt or heard, yet still plagued by human fear, a fear I cannot overcome.

Months have passed now, months since I first was approached Orpheus, and I still can't feel comfortable in my own skin not knowing who I am or where I'm from. They say that's why I'm so 'good' at separating myself from it. They call me a 'Skimmer'. That's their code word for someone like me, someone who can separate their mind from their body. It wasn't an easy transition. There were no 'ghosts' for a long time, just a daily dose of drugs and lessons in meditation. I began to think that maybe this Orpheus group was a cult, that they were grooming me for some sick religious jihad. The truth is much worse.

[John Doe]

Ghosts. That's why I'm here. Or in this case, just one ghost in particular. That company I told you about, the Orpheus Group? They're in the business of dealing with the dead. You tell people this and they think Ghost Busters, but it's much more than that. I could sleep easier if I thought that they were righting the worlds wrongs, settling 'bad spirits' to rest, but it's much more complicated. No one seems to know the full extent of what we do, at least no one I speak to. There's miles and miles of red-tape to wade through, and oceans full of red herrings to find. But that's beside the point. In time, we'll get to what's going on there. Before I start to worry about the big picture, there's the more immediate smaller picture to worry about.

This house that I'm in, it's been boarded up for a reason. A month or so ago, the two girls who used to live here go missing. Maybe they were in some big debt or something, I don't know, but they just vanish one day without a trace – but that's not the weird part. The bit that is going to boggle your mind is the fact that there is absolutely no press coverage of this. No one seems to notice. The neighbors nearby don't even remember anyone living there, or if they do the details are sketchy as hell, some story about an old man dying in his sleep. The house goes up for sale and within a fortnight a two-point-four family are shipped in.

At first, everything seems fine, but then one night the son starts seeing things. Like, say he comes down into the kitchen in the middle of the night for some milk, and out of the corner of his eye he sees something. Every time he turns his back, it feels like someone is watching him. At first the parents shrug it off, think it's just the usual juvenile stuff, but it starts to get more severe. They get reports home from school that little Timmy has been scrawling some pretty crazy stuff in coloring class. Most people, they write this off as ADHD, and maybe in most cases they are right, but there is always that one-percent of the time when they're wrong. Kids are perceptive about these these kinds of things, and when little Timmy said that he was seeing writhing bleeding naked banshee on the kitchen table, he was – unfortunately – right. The family moved out pretty quick, as you can imagine, and no one else has taken kindly to the place since then.

[John Doe]

You might remember, I was creeping along a hallway, not making a sound. I didn't really need to make any, though, because the woman in the kitchen was making enough for half the neighborhood. Before I stepped in literally through the front door, I drove by earlier to scope the place out. I couldn't hear anything then, but as soon as I shook off that mortal coil the wailing started.

People at Orpheus, they joke about these kinds of things, saying that spooks like this are just desperate for the attention. They get stuck into the same routine, repeating the same actions until someone – i.e. us – breaks the loop. More often than not, anyway, that's the case. They tell me that the dead usually want to achieve something and once they've made their peace, they vanish into some ether beyond. Given what I've seen I'm not sure how much of that I believe, but for the time being I'm willing to buy it, if only to try and give this woman some of the peace she wants.

You might be wondering why it is that I'm scared. The thing is, this is my first real case. I've made contact with ghosts before, but not like this, not in the field. Frozen outside the kitchen door, I'm facing the unknown. The case file says that the Spirit is potentially hostile, though the word potentially seems a little redundant. As a whole, the dead are pretty damn hostile. Can you imagine being stuck in the same place, in the same routine, where no one could see or hear you? Like the world just packed you into a little box and tucked you away in the attic. It's got to be frustrating, so I can forgive the screeching – but that doesn't make me any less spooked. Can't stall forever though. I take a breath, close my eyes and stride through the wood of the door.

In a way, having no heart, lungs or stomach has its upsides. I might have vomited, if that weren't the case. Instead, I just stare at whats in front of me, weighing up how to proceed. There's a woman lying on the table, the scrawl from Timmy's cartoon. She spots me, straight away, and howls like the wind. Wide-eyed, I hold up my hands, as if to say I come in peace.

“I can see you... I'm here to help.”

[Emilie]

She was lying on the table again, mimicking the pose in which she'd been left when someone entered the flat. The lights wouldn't come on - no one was renting the place and the power had been cut off weeks ago - so he switched on a flashlight.

The table was visible underneath her, and she sat up, listening to the creaks of the floor as the man walked into the living room. She opened her mouth to wail, to drive the man away with feelings of terror. No audible sounds were heard as she did, but he stopped, then started up again until he was in the kitchen.

She shrieked, throwing herself backwards, crying and moaning as the person said he was there to help.

[John Doe]

The kitchen looks like your average abandoned kitchen, with the exception of the translucent body sitting in the center. My mind reels back to Orpheus and all the training they'd given me – so many lessons and lectures on how to deal with situations far more complex than this – but somehow I'm still frozen. Faced with the real thing, I felt out of place, as if I was intruding on something. This was her house and I had broken in. She had every right to be shouting at me.

“Hi... hello. My name is John.” John is the identity that they gave me, in place of whatever name I used to have. I would have chosen something more unusual, but by the time I was coherent enough to contest the point, everyone had gotten used to it.

“Are you alright? Can you hear me?”

The police, the ambulance crews, they know how to deal with these sorts of people. Trauma victims. They have to be lured out of their shells carefully, slowly. I know, because I was one of those victims. Now it's my turn to do the luring.

[Emilie]

Slowly her screams ceased, and she lay quietly. On closer inspection the intruder could see hideous wounds on her body - cuts and mutilations that had taken place before and after her death.

He stepped closer to see, and then stepped back just as quickly. Her eyes opened to look at him, as though expecting him to do something.

[John Doe]

It's no wonder the kid went crazy. Whoever killed this woman – and there is no doubt in my mind that wasn't something self-inflicted – didn't do it by halves. In this state I don't even have skin, but I can still feel it crawling.

“Every thing's going to be alright,” I say, hoping that I sound more convincing than I feel, as I move forwards again. Slowly, I extend a hand, to coax her down from the table.

[Emilie]

Her eyes tracked the hand, and the jagged hole in the side of her neck seemed to close up and disappear, along with the rest of the wounds. She slowly sat up, almost a re-creation of Frankenstein's monster rising into new life with her hands held stiffly in front of her.

She looked at him, the intruder, and said, "Does it look like everything is going to be alright?" She had a distinct French accent.

[John Doe]

“Ah... um...” She had a point. I feel even more as if I shouldn't be there.

“It might not look that way now, but believe me... it gets better.”

After all, I think – it couldn't get much worse.

“Do you... remember where you are, what happened?”

[Emilie]

Her hands fell down to her sides as though the invisible strings holding them out had been severed abruptly. Remember... remember... the fifth of November... No, that didn't make any sense.

She shook her head, golden curls tumbling about her face. "No." Then she threw herself backwards again, appearing naked and bound once more. "No!" She shrieked and wailed, sobbing without tears.

[John Doe]

I feel myself turning, wanting to bolt out of the door. I'm not ready for this, I know that I'm not. I don't even know who I am, how am I supposed to console this woman? But I've got no choice. Who knows how long she's been here, trapped. She might not know it yet, but she is depending on me now, depending on me to get her out of this place.

I survey the situation again and try to remember the details from the case file. The two girls who had lived here, before the family moved in. What were their names? It has to be one of them who is haunting the place. Sandra and Amanda? No, something with an E. I wrack my brain, trying to think over the sound of her screams. Elizabeth, Emma, Emily. Emily? That rings a bell.

“Sandra? Emily?” I blurt them out, feeling pulled towards the table, like I want to grab her and shake her out of her fit.

[Emilie]

Her screams turned into quiet sobs, and then into nothing. She turned abruptly to her side, still seemingly naked, and looked at him intently. "Where is Sansa!? Mon Dieu, they have her still!"

[John Doe]

I make a mental note - Sansa, not Sandra. I've hit the nail on the head, though. The facts match up. Two girls, and apparently one of them has been taken by a mysterious 'they', probably the same 'they' who played Doctor with the blond woman.

“I'm sorry, I don't know where your friend is... but I might be able to help you find her, if you can... just, please, calm down. For your friends sake.”

This is what we're trained to identify. Spirits like these, they don't hang around just because they enjoy the scenery. They have an MO, and it seems like this one wants to find her lost room-mate.

[Emilie]

She seemed to be considering that for a few long minutes. She sat up, legs dangling off the side of the shadowy table. "Help. Yess... help us."

The banshee seemed to want to leave the table, but at the same time appeared to be stuck. She put both hands on the sides of her head, clutching at her hair as though beset by unspeakable anguish.

[John Doe]

“I'm going tell you something now, something that might confuse and scare you... but you don't need to worry, alright?” This is arguably the hardest point. It all depends on how she reacts. I edge a few steps forwards, so that I'm within arms reach of the table. It's like a cell for her, surrounded by invisible walls.

“You... you're... and please don't panic but,” I feel my throat choking. I imagine that this is how doctors must feel, delivering the news of a family death to the unknowing relatives. Only this is ten times worse. “You're... a ghost.”

[Emilie]

The clenching of teeth and and face squinching stops, and she stares at him. Then...

"A ghost?" She almost laughs. "No such thing as ghosts, lad."

Then her back arches and she screeches as if to rattle Heaven, wailing and carrying on. She is bound on the table again, pulling against non-existent bonds.

[John Doe]

I don't want to do this, but sometimes the only way to get someone to understand or believe something is to show them it. Fearful that I might lose any courage that I have, I jerk forwards quickly and dart one hand through her body. It enters where he heart should be, buried almost up to the elbow. My eyes are wide, somehow still shocked at the sight. Neither of us are solid, and merge like two over-lapping shadows.

“Hey... Hey! Look!” I shout, waggling the arm back and forth.

[Emilie]

She scrambles upright, pushing and trying to move his arm out of her. He withdraws it and she stares at him, wide-eyed and speechless.

For the first time in over a month, she is starting to remember more than just her final moments and the indignities her body suffered after death. With little to no sense of time, she has no way of knowing how long it has been since she died.

"I... I am dead." She sat crosslegged on the table head in her hands.

[John Doe]

It seems like she is taking it relatively well, though it's probably just the shock. That's always the case though. You never really feel the gravity of something big like this until weeks later – and when it comes to big things, there isn't much bigger than your own death. It's not as if there are manuals on how to cope with this – well, at least not ones that are readily available to the public. Without the intervention of Orpheus, or another group like them, people just get stuck in the limbo, in this never ending spiral of confusion. They just revert to this baby-like state, curled up all fetal, wailing and crying.

“I'm sorry. I know, it's hard to come to terms with...”

Why was I apologizing? As apologies like that ever made anyone feel better.

“You've still got a chance to make things right though...”

[Emilie]

She screwed up her face in misery as he talked, and shook her head. "I can't make things right! I can't!"

She looked around her, at the Shadowlands, and slumped her ghostly shoulders. "...Am I in hell?"

[John Doe]

“Not exactly. I mean...” I suppose some people would call it that. Earth, that is. It can be pretty hellish at times. I feel like Saint Peter, only my keys don't unlock Heaven – they just unlock some slightly more bizarre version of the real world.

“How can I explain this,” I run my fingers through my hair, frustrated. “You're still on Earth... just a different part of Earth, I guess. A layer of reality.” I think of science fiction and alternate realities, but she doesn't look the type for that kind of thing.

“You're minds still here, but your body... not so much. Does that make sense?”

[Emilie]

"Sort of." She dangled her legs off the table, and then carefully slipped off, fee touching the floor. "Ainsi je suis un fantôme? Et je ne suis pas dans l'enfer, mais la sorte de? Mon Dieu! Ce qui continue, c'est plus fou que quand j'ai laissé tomber l'acide."

She cocked her head to the side, golden curls cascading over her shoulders. "You, however, are very cute. Perhaps this isn't so bad."

[John Doe]

I squint at the barrage of French and the sudden mood swing throws me a little. That's banshee's for you. I look away, glancing around the empty kitchen. There are still half-used packets and boxes of food around. The last owners didn't stick around to clean-up.

“So, uh, I'm alive,” I carry on regardless. “But I can still see you. Obviously. I work with this company- kind of like Ghostbusters, without as much busting. Mostly just solving the unsolved, righting wrongs. Can you, uh, remember much about your life?”

[Emilie]

She shook her head, pouting a little. "Not much, I am afraid. Only Sansa, I remember Sansa." She frowned, "I think she was my roommate."

She moved about the room, studiously not looking at the table. "So you are alive, and you bust ghosts for a mystery company?"

[John Doe]

“The Orpheus Group,” I correct her. “We, uh...” I fumble about for the company slogan. Do they even have one? I imagine it's something about saving lost souls, or perhaps some mention of no questions being asked.

“Nevermind,” I dismiss the train of thought, like swatting a fly.

“What do you remember about Sansa?”

[Emilie]

Her face twisted mournfully, "She is in trouble." A few moments of silent thought followed, and she added, "We were taken together, yesterday. We were... shopping."

[John Doe]

Taken- bingo. Orpheus, they don't deal with every ghost, you see? There's no way they could handle everyone who dies, that'd take... well, forever. They're only interested in the kind with unfinished business, and someone being taken with just the kind of thing that was liable to trap a spirit in limbo.

“Taken, huh. Did you see who took her?”

It was a stupidly simple question, but it had to be asked.

[Emilie]

She shook her head slowly. "I don't... I don't know." Her distress mounted as she tried her hardest to remember. "I remember... I remember dying."

The banshee's 'body' trembled as though a wind had struck it, the gaping wound appearing on her neck though she remained clothed. "Everything was confusing! I... he... he's coming for me!" She threw up her hands as though fighting off an assailant, and shrieked, a wave of terror sweeping through the room.