The Apparition || Bad Omens || Noah Sebastian

Chapter three

Noah had been staring at Ruby's ghostly figure for an indefinite amount of time. The apparition had just asked him to help her discover why she hadn’t been able to move on, why she was still tethered to this world. A flood of questions swirled in his mind, already weary from the sleepless nights this whole ordeal had caused him.

“How am I supposed to help you with this? I’m just a singer.”

“I wouldn’t ask you if I weren’t desperate, Noah,” Ruby said, locking eyes with him. “In death, I’ve been bound to you. That has to mean something.”

Noah averted his gaze. He couldn’t bear to look into those deep, penetrating eyes, asking something for him that was impossible—something far beyond his reach. He wanted to help her. He really did, if only he knew how. But all the power he felt when standing on stage was just a fleeting illusion. He wasn’t strong. He wasn’t a god. He was just a man.

“I can’t do this.”

Ruby’s gaze sharpened, turning angry. Every light in his room began to flicker wildly before his eyes. Noah turned to look at her again, shocked.

“Ruby, stop.” But in her eyes, he saw a sadness barely concealed by her anger, as if Noah had just shattered her heart into a thousand pieces.

The lights kept flickering on and off, and Noah’s heartbeat began to sync with the unsettling, relentless spectacle.

“Ruby, please,” he begged.

The ghost gave him one last glance before vanishing from his sight.

The lights went out, letting the afternoon sunlight reclaim the room.

Noah realized what he had done. He had angered someone from another world, someone who still had much to learn about her newfound powers. And perhaps Ruby would practice them on him.

Noah collapsed onto his bed, fully aware that he had just ruined his entire existence.

Ruby’s revenge didn’t take long. Noah figured the girl must have gotten the hang of being a ghost by now because she was driving him mad wherever he went.

In the days that followed, Ruby would turn on all the lights in the house at night, preventing Noah from sleeping. If by some stroke of luck he managed to fall asleep, Ruby turned every dream into a nightmare.

She often dragged him back to the night of the concert, but this time Noah wasn’t Noah Sebastian, the lead singer of Bad Omens, who had watched the scene unfold from a distance. No, now he was in the shoes of the paramedic who had performed CPR on her, and Ruby had become skilled at manipulating emotions and sensations in dreams.

As he watched her lying lifeless on the ground, Noah could feel Ruby’s life slipping away from her body. He was forced to continue the chest compressions, even though he knew perfectly well how it would end.

A security guard asked if there was anything that could be done. Noah found himself shaking his head, just as he’d seen the real paramedic do that night.

The guard glanced at the watch on his wrist.

Time of death: 11:30 p.m.

The Noah in the dream turned towards the stage and saw himself. The Noah who was the singer of a metal band was drenched in sweat, but none of the adrenaline he usually felt during performances remained. His face was devastated, eyes fixed on the poor girl whose name he now knew.

Ruby was an excellent ghost. She was tormenting him psychologically, better than anything he’d seen in horror movies.

When he woke up in the morning, he felt even more exhausted, as if the brief sleep—riddled with nightmares—hadn’t provided any rest at all.

During the day, the ghost girl entertained herself by slamming doors, knocking over guitars. Once, she even spilled the coffee he had just brought home all over one of the consoles he used for writing music.

"Damn, Ruby. Stop acting like a baby girl"

And then, at night, the same routine began again.

He would turn off the lights, get into bed, and as soon as he closed his eyes, he could see through his eyelids that the lights had been turned on again.

“Ruby, I swear, you’re paying the electricity bill this month,” he yelled into the void.

He saw the girl appear at the foot of his bed, and Noah jumped in fear, making her smile.

“It’s not my fault it’s the easiest thing to do. Do you have any idea how hard it is to interact with the world without a sense of touch?”

“And do you know how much the new equipment you broke will cost me?” he said, tossing the blankets off. “Could you, I don’t know, stop haunting me?”

“Could you, I don’t know, help me move on?”

Noah wearily ran a hand over his face. “Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Neither do I, but we can figure it out together. I refuse to believe the universe bound me to you for no reason.”

Noah sighed and got out of bed. He was wearing only pajama pants, his tattooed torso exposed. Ruby let out a low whistle of appreciation, knowing it would irritate him more than the light show she put on every night.

Noah walked over to the desk and grabbed his laptop, under the ghost’s watchful gaze.

He sat back down on the bed as the screen flickered to life in front of his tired eyes.

“What are you doing?” the ethereal girl asked.

“I’m doing what you asked. Let’s find a way to help you move on.”