Page:Weird Tales Volume 2 Number 2 (1923-09).djvu/66

Rh Tuffley, and that hazy blue outline, which didn't much matter.

I considered: "Well, identity is all we are, anyway, unless one has personality, and that is just a little more of the same stuff as identity, only more troublesome so. As long as I have my identity what's the difference about my shape. It would be unpleasant to have just shape and no identity, like a stout, unconscious lady, or a balloon."

I sat down on a gravestone to grow a bit, for I was but a few minutes old.

"Confound Ben!" I meditated. "Why couldn't he have waited and introduced me in decent ghostly society? Perhaps he didn't know of any and was ashamed to introduce me to his ghost friends. He never reformed while alive as a man, why should he have reformed after he was dead and a ghost?

"Chong ching! chong lo!"

"Chuck! Muck a chuck!"

"Hi!"

I looked about me in some alarm, then my blue outline began to creep with a ghostly fear. For seven yellow ghosts came up from the grave where I was seated and squatted about me in a circle. These were not mere outline ghosts, either, like myself, but must have been older ghosts that had taken on substance and solidity with the ghostly years. But what substance! A kind of thick flaccid, yellow quivering gelatin that made me want to yell every time they moved and shook themselves, like soft custards or semi-liquefied frogs.

"What do want with me?" I asked.

"All same we wash your laundry when we were live Chinamen," replied the fattest ghost.

"Oh!" I exclaimed, "So you are some of my old Chinese laundrymen who did up my shirts. Well, boys, I'm glad to see you. I was just coming around to pay you, when I dropped dead."

"Hi! we glad to see you too," said the same fat custard. "Now we cut your blame ghost throat!"

"How did you get that way!" I gasped. "I never harmed you!"

"All same you kill all of us," replied the leanest ghost. "You make us seven blame stiffs!"

"Oh, come on boys," I protested. "You've got the wrong Tuffley. I'm Bob Tuffley—Bob J. You remember me now! How's your copperasity segasigating?" I assumed a cheerfulness that I scarcely felt, for I could see that they proposed to do me out of my young, innocent ghostly life.

"All same we know you," nodded the fattest Chinaman. "All same we wash your blame shirts, and every time one of us wash one of your blame shirts one of us die and go damned!"

"What you die from, boys?" I asked.

"All same your shirts!" they cried. "And now you dead! Did you wash one of your blame shirts, too?"

"No, I never washed one of my shirts," I replied.

"But you wear them," said the leanest ghost.

"Sure!"

"Then that's why you dead and damned too," nodded the spokes-spook.

This seemed to settle in their minds that the washing of my shirts had caused their deaths, and they held an argument as to which one should cut my innocent young throat.

"If it's too difficult for you to decide which one must be the unfortunate party to do the deed, I'll do it myself," I suggested. I had concluded, since I could stick my finger through myself with little unpleasant effect, that I could cut my own throat and not greatly mind.

"We no need help," said one of the yellow custards. "Each of us just crazy to cut your blame throat."

"Say, what was the matter with those shirts of of mine that you washed?" I demanded

"We don't know," they replied unanimously. "We just die in convulsions few minutes after we wash them."

At last a ghost was selected to cut my throat, and he did the job neatly and with dispatch, with a ghostly hatchet that he drew from his ghostly sleeve. But the act scarcely disturbed my bluish outline, and that only for a moment, then the severed parts closed a little fuzzily but securely. My identity was as good as ever, for nothing seemed to trouble my identity.

I was just as sure of myself as I had always been, boy, man or ghost. Without boatingboasting [sic], I may say that I have the most fixed, concentrated identity that I have ever met. Positively rigid.

I now seemed properly initiated into the world of ghosts, for the seven yellow gelatin Chinese ghosts sank back into their grave. I immediately rose and hurried from the cemetery, as a locality unsuited for a young ghost with all ghostland before him, and with an ambition to be a whale of a ghost, with no ghost Jonah inside of him.

I had scarcely left the cemetery when I came on Ben's ghost seated on a rock, swearing at his bicycle. The rear tire had received another puncture.

"Just my blame blue luck!" growled Ben, "It it was raining roof tacks I'd be out on my bike with new racing tires, and the other fellow would be out on a steam roller."

I laughed. "Come, chuck the bike and let's go somewhere that’s more exciting."

"Go to hell!"

"Is it exciting?" I asked.

"No, it's deadly tiresome. That's why it's hell."

"Not for me, then! I want something as different from the tedious as rheumatism is from 'rithmetic. What do you say we go to a world where their present is our future, then we'll see what's coming to us."

"I don't want to see what's coming to me," growled Ben. "I've trouble enough now.”

"Maybe there's good coming to you," I suggested

"Then somebody will change the address on the way to me," retorted Ben's ghost. "Or somebody's goat will eat the tag off. But if it's trouble, it's got my address blown in it, and I'd have to pay the freight besides."

"What's that!" I exclaimed, as I heard a voice singing Annie Laurie not a rod away, yet could not see so much as a ghost.

"That's Calloway's ghost," Ben informed me. "Calloway lived so pure a life that there was nothing of him to resurrect but song."

"Why is he hanging so closely around the cemetery?" I asked.

"He doesn't seem quite satisfied with being so pure," replied Ben. "He thinks that perhaps he can resurrect a little more of himself than song. Just enough for the lady ghosts to see, for he's very fond of lady ghosts, particularly the athletic; but they want something more definite than song in a gent ghost."

I looked myself over and saw little to take out a patent, copyright, or trade mark on. "What's the difference between a male and female ghost?" I demanded. "I'm nothing but outline and identity anyway."

"Just identity," replied Ben. "That is, with blue ghosts. With green or pink ghosts, or any other color of ghosts than blue, there is a greater distinction than mere outline and identity between the feminine and masculine, but with blue ghosts the distinction lies wholly in the identity. Blue ghosts are the lowest form of ghosts, and it's just my blame blue luck to be compelled to be a blame blue ghost, and have no distinction between myself and an old woman ghost but just my blame blue identity."

"How big is ghostland?" I inquired.

"To hell and back," replied Ben. "There's no limit to the ghost worlds, but there's a limit of a million miles an hour to blue ghosts."