There's an Invisible Man Sleeping in My Bed

Chapter 4

             A full night’s sleep and dreams filled with nothing more frightening than talking jewellery left Thalia feeling a bit more receptive. And a bit more suspicious. When she walked into the kitchen, the first thing she noticed was a plate that was piled with muffins. She stopped and frowned. She was certain that last night she’d put them on two plates.

Realizing where the rest had gone, she jerked around, scanning the kitchen for him. Then she remembered he was invisible. She looked again at the muffins, their disappearance the first evidence that his explanation of why she couldn’t see him was true. Though she had to wonder how and why he was eating when, if his story was true, he had no body.

With more questions popping into her head as she thought about it, she gave in to the inevitable. She glanced around again, then cleared her throat. “Colt,” she said quietly. “Are you there?”

She waited a full minute for a response for trying it a bit louder. “Colt.”

When she still got no reply, she called out “Colt!”

Thalia’s mouth was open to bellow his name again when one of the kitchen chairs swung around to face her. “I thought this would be easier for both of us. Keeping up a proper form exhausts me,” said the same light voice from the day before.

The first question that occurred to her after her shock came out of her mouth before she could stop it. “Where were you?”

“Your parents’ room. Their bed is by far the most comfortable. ”

“So you were…sleeping?”

He shrugged shoulders that weren’t there. “I use the term resting. It’s basically the same. While I don’t technically need to rest, the longer I’m awake, the less energy I have. If I stay awake longer than a week I can barely move and that’s if I haven’t been interacting with the physical world. Any time I move things or focus on being corporeal I exhaust myself more. It’s why I try to rest most days.”

She blinked a few times then filed the information away to consider later. Obsessing over it now wouldn’t get her answers to the questions she really wanted to ask. First was of course, “You said God took your body. Why?”

“It wasn’t the Christian god. It was one who’s been around far longer. And no, I’m not telling you his name. The last time I said it, and thus drew his attention, he took away my body so I’m not too keen on saying it again. As for why…It wasn’t really my fault. He took a comment I made completely out of context and decided to punish me for it.”

“So this god basically killed you? Which means you are a ghost.”

“No I’m not!  If I can get my body back I’ll be alive, therefore, I’m not a ghost.”

She frowned again, her mind finally processing everything he’d just told her. “Okay, so you’re saying gods are real and you pissed off a really old one?”

He nodded then remembered himself. “Yes. I don’t see how you could think they’d be otherwise. Mind you,” Colt said, remembering all he’d seen the last few years. “The behaviour I’ve seen some people exhibit makes me think that some of the deities today are not nearly so strict with their worshippers as they were when I still had a body.”

“That’s because not everyone believes that there are such things as gods.”

“What? People…how can they not? I mean, they’re everywhere! Gods control…everything! Or, almost everything.”

“If they’re so powerful, then why didn’t you ask whatever god you worship to give you your body back?” she asked, suspicion edging her voice.

He snorted. “Because I don’t worship any god. I was never comfortable with anyone having that much control over my life. As bad as it is to get sealed into something every couple of decades, I’d still choose this over serving some immortal with more power than brains.”

Thalia stared, suddenly understanding how a god would take offense to something he said. Then a thought occurred to her and her frown returned. “Wait, if you were sealed away and then got out when a kid knocked the bottle over, how did you end up in our house? There aren’t any kids here besides me.”

She heard him wince. “Well, see, when I got out I found my friend and his family had long since moved away and were, of course, dead to boot. So I wandered for a while. I spent some time in a library, then a school, then another library, then a different school. I was between places when I first heard you. I thought you were her, so I followed you to find out if it were true or not. You weren’t but I decided to stay anyway.”

“Her? Who is her? And how did you know I wasn’t her?”

“I don’t want talk about it. That woman is in my past and I intend to keep her there. As for how I knew you were different, well to start with, you look nothing alike. Your hair’s obsidian and your eyes are like the warning clouds before a storm. She had hair that always reminded me of late afternoon sunlight and her eyes had the colour of the moss you only find in the heart of a forest.”

Thalia stared at the chair, never before having heard herself described in terms like that. “Are you always so poetic?”

“Women are living poetry and should be described as such.”

She shook her head. “You sound like a playboy.”

“A what?”

“A playboy. Someone who has a lot of women at one time.”

The chair jerked and she assumed he had as well. The disgruntled tone of his voice made her thinks he was right. “I like women, it’s true. But any pairing is just that. A pairing. I only devote myself to one woman at any given time. To do otherwise is to act as a baser creature. Unfaithfulness is one thing I will not forgive.”

For the first time, Thalia shivered at the sound of Colt’s voice. He sounded dangerous, anger evident even though she couldn’t see his face. She had to wonder if she was putting herself at risk. After all, most ghost stories she’d heard hadn’t ended pleasantly.