The Ghost of Terrace

We now present to you a quote from in the story, because this is too amusing not to share.

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The others went to bed and Kay took Lily with him outside. He looked around the street and found a good spot right opposite the entrance to their house where they would have a good view of the street but still were fairly concealed themselves. Kay checked the gun Rain had given him for the night, checking how many bullets he had and that the gun was still in working order. All seemed good. He grabbed hold of a ledge and hauled himself up on the top of a collapsed bus shelter leaning against a wall, then turned to Lily.

  "Come here!" he told her and held out a hand. When she took it, he hauled her up beside him and settled on a windowsill. "This'll be a good spot I think." Lily seemed a bit confused and he smiled at her. "I'm sure Vel wandered around most of the time when you held watch. She does that a lot. Rain is quite the opposite, he sits still most of the time and only moves to a new spot a few times during the shift. I'm kind of a mix, I sit still at first, then I move around towards the end of my shift. The best form both sides, eh?" He winked and gave her a quick hug. "Now is it something you want to know that Velvet hasn't already told you?"

The shift was silent, almost nothing happened for a long time. Kay and Lily talked quietly to each other, pausing every now and then to listen. Suddenly Lily went stiff and perked her head to listen for some sound. Kay was a bit surprised at first, but then he realized that she had heard the clonking of a shipping being reloaded of in the distance. He had already dismissed the faint sound.

"What was that?" she asked.

Kay shrugged.

"Probably just the ghost of crazy-man Terrace. It's best not to investigate if it is him, or he might steal your eyes."

  "What is a ghost?" Lily asked. "And why would he take my eyes?"

"Oh, a ghost is the spirit of someone who died. Sometimes if someone dies with unfinished business in this world, their thoughts and feelings and the very essence of what was them remains in this world and they wander restlessly until they can find peace and move on to wherever we all go after death. So this man, called Terrace, have been wandering the streets around here for ages, attacking the living and trying to take their eyes. He was a gang-leader for a small gang, much like ours, when he was caught by the system during a raid. He sacrificed himself for the others to make sure that they had a safe escape you know, a very brave thing to do when faced with robots. No one knows how he managed it, but he escaped it and came back down here. But the robots had burned his eyes out during his fight for the escape and there was nothing but bleeding holes where they were supposed to have been. Still in chains, he stumbled around down here for days, looking for his gang, and when he finally found them again they were so appalled by his appearance that they refused him and drove him away. Terrace swore that he would destroy them all for their disloyalty, and crept away. He managed to get to the house where we are now before he collapsed of hunger and fatigue and suffered a horrible and slow death of starvation. Now his ghost roams these streets, looking for new eyes that he can take so he can find his old gang and kill them all. Don't worry though, he's quite invisible and you can only hear his footsteps and the dull clanking of the chain. Oh, and he's known to appear as a reflection in the street-side window in the kitchen, standing behind the one who sees him and lifting his hands as if about to gauge their eyes out."

Once Kay had stopped telling his story, Lily just stared at him for a few long seconds, then opened her mouth, shut it again and then crept even closer to Kay than she already was. "That is a dreadful story!" She finally managed, shuddering with uneasiness. "Why would they leave him like that? And why would he harm someone else when he experienced such a terrible death himself? I wouldn't want anyone else to suffer that way if I was Terrace," Lily said, now throwing glances in random directions as if Terrace would appear any second now.

"I guess you have weird kind of priorities when you're a ghost. See, all he can think of is his need to get his long awaited revenge. You are a caring human being, and he obviously used to be like just that, but when you become a ghost you leave your sense of humanity behind, Lily flower. In fact, maybe you are a lot like Terrace used to be. I wonder…." Kay said, thoughtfully tapping a finger against his lips.

"What?" Lily asked. "What do you wonder?"

Kay shot her a grave look and then slowly shook his head.

"Maybe you should be extra careful, Lily flower. He might come after you. Actually, if makes perfect sense".

"What?" Lily squealed as she grabbed his arm and squeezed it slightly. "Why would he come after me? I haven't done anything wrong!"

"No you haven't. But if you indeed are much alike him, then he might prefer you over the rest of us. And you do have really pretty eyes, you know," he said and winked at her.

Lily squealed again, covering her eyes with her hands and leaning against Kay's shoulder. "You wouldn't let him take my eyes, would you? How could be possibly do that if he is dead?"

"Aw." Kay threw his arms around her and gave her a tight hug. "I won't let anyone harm my little foundling tweener, not even a silly ghost. It's just an old story, Lily flower, there are no ghosts here. I promise." He got up from the windowsill and pulled her up to, squeezing her hand in his. "Let's walk for a while, Lily flower." He said. "We've been sitting here for too long, it's almost time for Velvet's shift already."