Thoroughly Kissed

by Kristine Grayson

“I can’t move my arms,” Michael said.

  “Ooops,” the voice said. “Forgot.”

  Michael’s arms were suddenly under his own power. They collapsed around him, and it took all of his control to keep the bat from clunking him on the head. He set the bat behind him, close enough to pick it up again if he needed it.

  But he wasn’t sure how he would need it. This was the strangest nocturnal visit—in fact, the only nocturnal visit—he had ever had.

  The lights came up even farther revealing the figure in the center of the room. The spotlight went out and Michael realized that the man facing him was the size of a small child. Only he didn’t look like a child.

  He was perfectly proportioned, square with a pugnacious face. His chin curved outward, and his nose curved inward—or it once had. But it looked as if it had been broken several times. He had a long white beard that flowed to the ground, and he wore a wreath of holly around his head. His robe was green with fur trim.

  “I thought the Ghost of Christmas Present was tall,” Michael said.

  “Damn that Dickens,” the intruder said. “That was funny at first, but after one hundred fifty years, it’s beginning to annoy me.”

  “And,” Michael said as if the intruder hadn’t spoken, “it’s not Christmas Eve.”

  “So?”

  “It’s May.”

  “So?”

  “And”—this was the part that really offended him—“I’m not Scrooge.”

  The little man raised his eyebrows, making him look like Puck out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck dressed as Oberon.

  Michael shook his head. He’d been to American Player’s Theater one too many times.

  “Really?” the little man said. “Not Scrooge?”

  “No,” Michael said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  The little man shrugged. “I’m not disappointed. And I’m not confused. You share quite a few traits with him, you know.”

  “I’m not cheap. I give money to all kinds of charities and I believe in helping—”

  “Professors who are in dire need? Women who need a hero? People whose research doesn’t meet your exacting standards?”

  Michael took a step forward. He should have known that Emma was involved in this. “Who are you?”

  “Let’s just call me Ghost, shall we?”

  “No,” Michael said. “What’s your name?”

  “You mortals and your insistence on names. I don’t know you well enough to give you my name, and from what I’ve seen of you, I don’t think you’re trustworthy enough to know it. It’s Ghost to you,” the little man said.

  “I’ll be damned if I call anyone Ghost,” Michael said.

  “Be careful before you curse yourself.” The little man crossed his arms. “But since you don’t believe in literary characters—even if I was Dickens’s inspiration—I see no more point in being uncomfortable.”

  He bobbed his head forward and there was a puff of smoke around him. When it cleared, he was wearing jeans with cuffs, tennis shoes that predated Nike, and a T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled in the right sleeve. His beard had vanished too—making him look almost normal.

  “Okay,” he said. “So you won’t call me Ghost. How about Casper?”

  “That’s your name?” Michael asked, still feeling as if he were one step behind.

  “I didn’t say that.” The little man hadn’t moved.

  “Then why should I call you Casper?”

  “Well, I’m friendly…” the little man said.

  Michael rolled his eyes. “It’s the same as calling you Ghost.”

  “Not quite. Casper, at least, is a real name. In fact, some Biblical accounts say it was the name of one of the Three Wise Men.”

  “You’re not going to try to convince me that you’re one of the Three Wise Men?”

  “Heavens no,” the little man said. “I was conning the Norse at the time.”

  Michael shook his head. He felt as if the conversation had moved fifteen steps away from him without his permission. “What do you want?”

  “What does the Ghost of Christmas Present always want?” Casper said. “To show you what will be.”

  “I thought that’s the Ghost of Christmas Future.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t feel like hiding my face and wearing that smelly robe and sticking out a skeletal hand. Ever since they did that sequence in a Mr. Magoo cartoon, it hasn’t felt right.”

  Michael stifled a grin. He couldn’t imagine the little man in front of him being scary at all in a black-robed costume with only red eyes where the face would be. He would have looked more like a Jawa from Star Wars than the Ghost of Christmas Future.

  “You have a point,” Michael said, careful to keep all trace of the smile out of his voice. “So, how’re you going to get me to change my miserly ways?”

  “You know,” the little man said, “I don’t see what you have against her.”

  “Against Emma?”

  Casper—Michael had mentally given in and allowed the little man his made-up name—shook his head. “See? You knew who I meant without me having to say a word.”

  “Actually you said quite a few words, and I knew who you meant because she’s the only woman who has ever turned my world upside down.”

  “Ever?”

  Michael let out a sigh of exasperation. “In this way.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Michael said with a little too much force. “She’s the only one who used a spell to send me back to the tenth century.”

  “I’m sure others wanted to,” Casper said.

  Michael glared at him. Casper held his hands out, as if wordlessly protesting his innocence. “You have already proven a trial to me.”

  “I have?” Michael asked. “You’re the one who invaded my house, put a recording of Dickens on my phone, and glued my windows shut.”

  “I didn’t use glue,” Casper said. “I’ve never used glue in my life. I would never stoop to glue.”

  “‘Stoop to glue’?”

  “Yes, stoop. Glue is something mortals use because they lack the talent to bind things themselves. It’s primitive, pernicious, and slightly gross, actually.”

  Michael shook his head. He couldn’t believe this conversation. “I’m going to get myself a beer. You want one?”

  “I can’t drink on the job, and you shouldn’t either,” Casper said.

  “I’m not working.” Michael started for the kitchen, but as he stepped forward, the bedroom door slammed shut.

  “Can’t let you do that,” Casper said. “You might blame all of this on alcohol.”

  “What am I supposed to blame it on, a bit of bad beef?”

  “You know,” Casper said, “for a history professor, you know your literature.”

  “It’s kind of hard to miss considering some big-voiced, middle-aged actor has to play Scrooge in some TV movie every Christmas.”

  “You have something against Scrooge?”

  “No, but you’d think—”

  “See? I knew you had a lot in common.”

  Michael caught his breath. “I wasn’t saying that.”

  “You said you have nothing against Scrooge. Anyone sane has something against Scrooge.”

  “I meant A Christmas Carol. I have nothing against A Christmas Carol, but just once I’d like to see Great Expectations revived every summer, or Oliver Twist whenever there’s a cold snap or how about a Tale of Two Cities?”

  “What, you couldn’t find a weather connection for that one?” Casper asked.

  Michael walked back to bed and sat down. Maybe if he put his head on the pillows and closed his eyes, this whole nightmare would go away.

  “And you know,” the little man said,
“they redid Great Expectations a few years ago. Modernized it, with Anne Bancroft and Gwyneth Paltrow. Stunk. And I’m sure that the musical Oliver! is being revived somewhere as we speak—”

  “All right!” Michael said. “If a man can drown in words, I’m going down fast. What is it that you want?”

  “Actually,” the little man said, sitting down next to him, “I wanted to meet you.”

  “Why?” Michael asked.

  “Because you resisted Emma. You know, you’re one of the few men on the planet who could. The other one’s married, rather happily, and had always been slightly miscast as Prince Charming.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Casper said.

  “I thought you were going to show me the future.”

  “Only a small portion of it.” Casper lay back on the bed and tucked his hands under his head. He kicked the bed frame with his sneakers. The rhythm was irregular, and even more irritating because of it. “The part you created when you said no to Emma today.”

  “I said no to Emma today because I have a job, and besides, she’s really not—”

  “You said no to Emma because you’re scared.” The little man propped himself up on one elbow.

  “I am not.”

  “Yes, you are. Beautiful women scare you. You wonder if you can even see their personalities or figure out if they have minds. That’s why you’ve dated dogs all these years.”

  “I haven’t dated a single dog.”

  “All right,” the little man said. “Mice.”

  “They’re not mousy. They were all brilliant, funny women—”

  “Who never really interested you. Stimulated you, yes. You loved talking to them, but bedding them was a real chore, wasn’t it?”

  Michael pushed himself off the bed. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?”

  “Well, you didn’t like Casper and you didn’t like the Ghost of Christmas Present, so how about I say that I’m your guardian angel.”

  “You don’t look like an angel.”

  “I’m not, really. I’m more of a yenta.”

  “You don’t look like a yenta either.”

  “I don’t look like the Ghost of Christmas Present, I don’t look like an angel, I don’t look like a yenta.” The little man put his hands on his hips. “Who, then, do I look like?”

  Michael swallowed. “Well,” he said, wishing he hadn’t been asked this question, “you look a little like Grumpy.”

  “Grumpy. Grumpy? Who’s Grumpy?”

  “Me, actually. I would like some sleep.”

  “No, you compared me to someone named Grumpy…” The little man’s voice trailed off. “You mean from the Disney cartoon. That awful Snow White? ‘Whistle While You Work’ and all that?”

  “Yes,” Michael said.

  “I don’t look like Grumpy.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t look like Sneezy.”

  “Thank heaven for small miracles,” the little man said.

  “So, you better get on with this haunting before I say you look like Dopey.”

  “You’d be lying.”

  Michael shrugged. “If that’s what it takes to get you out of my bedroom, yes, I’d be lying.”

  Casper shot him a nasty glare, then clapped his hands together.

  Suddenly the air got unbearably hot and dry. Michael felt sweat break out all over his body. Sunlight so brilliant that it hurt his eyes reflected off sand and desert plants that he couldn’t identify. There were heat devils dancing off the pavement around him. Something wailed in the distance.

  “What the—?”

  Casper put a finger over Michael’s mouth, silencing him. Then, with his other hand, Casper pointed.

  Michael let his gaze follow the point. Down the road, he saw a silver BMW, its tires flat, its hood open. The windows were open as well, and a black cat leaned its head out of the driver’s side. The cat was yowling at the top of its lungs, a mournful, horrible sound.

  Michael took a step closer. The tires weren’t flat. They had melted. Bits of rubber stuck to the pavement. Tires didn’t melt—at least, not at regular temperatures, and as hot as this desert was, the temperature was regular for the desert. There was a faint acrid odor of burnt rubber.

  Smoke wisped out of the open hood. The cat’s yowls seemed to get louder. Casper put his hand on Michael’s arm and pointed again.

  Michael looked down. He saw feet sticking out into the middle of the road. Small feet wearing delicate female shoes. He held his breath and approached the car.

  The cat saw him and began to scream at him in cat-language, as if he were somehow responsible. He’d never heard such fury from an animal before. As he passed in front of the creature, it actually hissed at him, and that made him think twice about rescuing it.

  Then he forgot all about it as he reached the front of the car.

  Emma lay on her back, her eyes closed, her skin so sunburned it looked as if she had been tossed in an oven and crisped. Her palms were facing skyward, her mouth open, her lips cracked.

  He knelt beside her. “Emma?” he said, reaching for her.

  Casper yanked him back. “Don’t touch.”

  “But she needs help.”

  “She’s beyond help.”

  Michael looked up at the little man. “She’s dead?”

  “She will be soon,” he said.

  “Then we should do something.”

  “You forget,” the little man said. “This is your future. Her future.”

  The cat yowled.

  “And his future.”

  “He’ll die here, too.”

  “Of course he will,” Casper said. “No one will come along for hours. By then it’ll be too late. For both of them.”

  Michael’s hands hovered over her. “What happened?”

  “Obviously, she worried about the heat. And that triggered the wrong kind of magic in her mind. It either made things even hotter, or melted her tires, or hurt her in some way. All that really matters is that there was no one else here to help her.”

  The cat spit and growled.

  “At least,” Casper said, “not in any meaningful way.”

  The cat’s growl got lower.

  “If you can speak,” Casper said, pointed at the cat, “then you made a serious mistake.”

  The cat disappeared into the car.

  Casper shook his head. “She shouldn’t have trusted a cat. Cats generally don’t consider all the consequences before taking action. Or failing to take action, as the case may be.”

  “It’s not my fault,” said a small deep voice.

  The hair rose on the back of Michael’s neck. That wasn’t the cat was it? “Come on,” he said to Casper. “You can help her. Wave your hands or something. Bring her back.”

  “I am helping her, you idiot.” Casper shook his head. “Do I have to write it in smoke? If you’d been traveling with her like she asked, she’d be fine now.”

  “So you travel with her.”

  “I can’t. No one magical can.”

  “That’s a stupid rule,” Michael said.

  “Well, so are blue laws, but a number of your communities still have those.”

  “So break the law,” Michael said. “Challenge it, just like we would do with a blue law.”

  “You think that’s so easy. Here you’d get fined or arrested. In my world, loss of magical powers, banishment, imprisonment for centuries. Doing stupid little tasks for other people so that you can learn a lesson. It’s not worth the hassle, believe me.”

  “Even at the cost of Emma’s life?”

  The little man’s face was getting red. Sweat dripped down one cheek. “I’m not costing Emma’s life. I’m trying to save i
t.”

  “You want me to travel with her?”

  “The light dawns,” Casper said sarcastically.

  “Why can’t one of her other friends?”

  “They have jobs,” Casper said.

  “That’s not any different from my excuse.”

  “Excuse?” Casper asked.

  Michael grimaced. He was feeling hot too. “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t,” Casper said. “She came to you, and you turned her down.”

  “It sounds like a lot of other people did too.”

  “But you weren’t supposed to!”

  Michael froze. “Says who?”

  Casper hit his forehead with the heel of one hand. “Forget I mentioned it.”

  “No,” Michael said. “Who says I wasn’t supposed to say no?”

  “The prophecies,” Casper muttered.

  “Prophecies?”

  “That’s all you’re getting out of me,” Casper said.

  “What prophecies?”

  “We all have prophecies,” Casper said. “At least us magical beings.”

  “I see. And what are they about?”

  “You know,” Casper said. “The important stuff.”

  “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then what?”

  The little man looked at Michael as if he were crazy. “If I have to tell you, you’re even denser than I thought.”

  “Consider me dense.”

  “Love, you mortal moron.” He yanked Michael upwards. “Now come on, we have to get out of here before I ruin this T-shirt.”

  “What about me?” a small voice asked. The cat peeked his head out of the car. “Take me with you?”

  “Sorry, Darnell. Against the rules.”

  “I’ll die,” he said plaintively.

  “Should have thought of that when you decided not to say the reverse spell.”

  “How was I supposed to know how bad it would get?”

  “How indeed,” Casper said.

  “How about a little common sense,” Michael said.

  The cat glared at him. “You I don’t need, pal.”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to be choosy,” Michael said.

  “I coulda said the reverse spell,” the cat said. “In fact, I did say the reverse spell. It didn’t work.”