Worlds War One

x [Ji]

Ji was ten. His buddies were cruel. Growing up where it was whiter than most other places—the winters long and snowy, the people pale-skinned and intolerant—being Asian was like a brown rabbit in an early autumn blizzard. He was prey to anything and everything.

"We dare you, Sing-Song," taunted Eric Redman. Their pet name for him instead of Ji-Sung.

"We double-dog dare you," chimed in Anton Anderson.

They stood in front of the old Olafson place, abandoned long before Ji's father had been transferred to Minot Air Force Base, even before Eric and Anton's fathers had been the boys' age. Someone had busted the windows out years ago, and the front door hung askew on rusted hinges. Age and neglect had bowed the roof's spine like an old cow's. The siding might have once been a color but now was mottled and mildewed. The porch had collapsed like a mouth fallen shut in the last throes of death.

"Stay in there for ten minutes, and we will let you be our friend," Eric teased. "Otherwise, you can sit with Marshawn the Martian on Monday."

Marshawn was a Black kid from Chicago. Being Black was worse than being not quite white in that place at that time. Or maybe it was like that most places at most times.

They boosted Ji through a side window that hadn't protected the house from the elements in decades. They gave him a great shove when he hesitated, sending him sprawling across a floor carpeted in filth. He sneezed a dozen times, creating a cloud of grime that might have made Pig Pen from Charlie Brown jealous. He stood up, eyes adjusting to the gloom.

Floorboards curved like bows without arrows. The smell of death and decay promised many things had died there, and maybe not all the things had been wild animals. Something skittered across the second-story floor overhead, shaking a thin drizzle of dust from above that caught in the bands of sunshine beaming through holes in the walls.

Ji moved forward, somehow, fighting fear. He tried not to examine his surroundings. Maybe an attacker, whether transient or transcendent, would leave him alone if unacknowledged. Something tickled at his neck, and he told himself it was the dust. Or a spider. A spider would be better than... Ji shuddered and waved away whatever tickled. On through another room as empty and ominous.

He had never been so scared.

Yet he moved on. Maybe it had been ten seconds, or already ten minutes. Time didn't mean anything at that moment. He went from that room to yet another. Drapes rotted into gauze hung over the rare windows retaining their glass, too dirty to let in even a little light. The only illumination came from the glow of the smartphone screen hooked on his hip. Ji stood in the middle of the room, still, so still. He made like he was a part of the place, indiscernible from the setting. Maybe a ghoul wouldn't see him if he remained quiet enough.

Then something whispered his name in his ear.

Ji didn't remember what happened next. What he knew for sure, thinking back, after he'd gotten home, was that it had already gotten dark by the time he'd run out of that house. It had been noon when he went in. Eric and Anton had been long gone. He'd arrived back home after curfew, his parents hollering loudly enough to wake his perfect sisters who never did anything wrong. But Ji had never accounted for that missing time. And what had whispered his name.

Now he knew.

Seaman Ji-Sung Choi stared at a real, honest-to-God Ghost.

The entity flickered in and out of view, like someone turning the channel back and forth between a still image of a background and a changing picture of a figure moving in front of that background. The Ghost paced in front of an elegant table cut from the same stone as the walls and floor and ceiling. Ji could feel waves of anger emanating from the entity.

"This is the Mongwi of the A'aninin," Saanvi introduced. "A Ghost."

The Mongwi glowed a soft, dark blue, so subtle the figure blended with the shadows and made it difficult to delineate details even when not flickering out of view. Like a storm cloud passing across a night sky, Ji could only determine location when the Ghost passed in front of a random spark of light. Maybe the Ghosts had lived in this grand home for a thousand years, but it seemed more like they haunted it.

Ghosts.

Real.

Ji-Sung wasn't as bright as his sisters. Being an Asian of average intellect had been even worse than being ethnic in Minot, North Dakota. The latter had ostracized him from friends, but the former had alienated him from even his parents. His father, in particular, had considered Ji a disappointment. Unable to impress him academically, Ji joined the Navy to prove dedication can make up for being dumb. Still, it had never been enough to atone for a steady string of high school 'C's.

But did his father know Ghosts existed?

Did he realize you could go from South America to Colorado in one step?

Could he fathom the undead walking the Earth and threatening Armageddon?

Intelligence didn't necessarily equate to understanding. And Ji-Sung Choi had learned more about the Way Things Really Are in the last twenty-four hours than his father had managed to discover in his fifty-five years on Earth.

"I should have you obliterated for entering my home uninvited, Princess Saanvi," the Mongwi growled. "If you were anyone other than royalty, I would have already sent you to the Beyond."

"We pursued a zombie that could have been a threat to you and your loved ones, Mongwi," Saanvi explained. "I didn't think protocol trumped the safety of you and your loved ones."

"Do you think my immortality is at risk by some trespassing culprit? I am an eternal Ghost of the A'aninin."

"We all think we're immortal 'til we die, Mongwi," Ji quipped.

The Royal Ghost stared at the Seaman. If looks could kill... Ji shrunk under the phantom's gaze. Maybe looks could kill.

Saanvi was a little more diplomatic. Not deferential, but deft. Whatever her royal stature, she acted as an equal to the Mongwi but never superior.

"Mot has returned," Saanvi informed the Ghost.

The Ghost stared, gaze flickering in and out of existence like some existential blink. "Impossible. The Illuminati would know if the Skeleton Man has resurfaced."

"Some are aware. My sister sent me on this mission," Saanvi said. "Some of the Illuminati still live in the world, Mongwi, and realize when the world changes. Others flit in and out of this existence as if life has become a bother."

The Ghost gained full substance, glaring at Princess Saanvi through the gloom. Was Saanvi insulting the Mongwi to the Ghost's face?

"The intruder has come and gone," the Mongwi said. "He has fled through the doorway to the Great Nothing."

"Then we shall pursue. Beware, Mongwi," Saanvi warned. "The Skeleton Man can kill your kind."

"Impossible."

"Is it?" Saanvi asked. "Ask your sister—the Ghost who calls herself Autumn Loloma. Mot inhabits the physical form of one of your kind, Mongwi. Another sister is named Spring Loloma. She's dead. The Skeleton Man can kill Ghosts."