Paying Your Dues

Boggs lived in a graveyard, and had for a few centuries. This made him a fairly new Spectre. He had been killed by a passing bus whose driver failed to observe a scarlet streetlight. “Just as well,” Boggs often muttered to himself as he dusted out his grave, “c’est la vie,” to which his next-grave neighbour would respond with a dry chuckle, “c’est la morte.” Jennings thought he was funny.

There were a few rules to being dead, Boggs had quickly learned.

1. Never sleep in someone else’s grave.

2. Halloween is the only time one is absolutely REQUIRED to perform a haunting, so as to pay ones’ dues to the Keeper.

3. You are not to rely on the Keeper to maintain your cemetary. They are a landlord, not a nanny. You should not let rotting things pile up, even though you’ve grown to like them a lot.

On his first Halloween, Boggs had asked Jennings why they had to pay dues to the Keeper at all, and had learned that if you didn’t pay your dues, you didn’t get to keep on being dead. Not that you’d come back to life...you’d just entirely cease to be. Even though Boggs had been dead for seven hundred and fifty years, he was rather attached to his little grave and wasn’t quite ready to go. So, he went haunting to pay his annual fee.

He and Jennings were mild mannered Spectres, and generally did not like to impose their shroud of doom on passers-by. Just because they were dead, they didn’t feel they needed to wreck someone’s living by staying in their attic or slamming their doors.

“I think haunting’s got a pretty bad rap, dontcha think?” Jennings asked him as they floated through a dark neighbourhood on Halloween night trying to find a good target.

“Well, it’s...dead people scaring living people. How else could it be?” Boggs inquired curiously.

“Why do we always have to scare them? Does the Keeper require it?”

Boggs thought about this. There was no dusty “dues manual” about what hauntings had to consist of. “You’re right...maybe we could change that tonight.”

“Hold on!” Jennings gasped. “I was just making conversation! I don’t want to start some haunting-charity and Cease because I didn’t pay my dues. You do what you want, I’m gonna go find a basement.” Jennings quickly dispersed with the breeze, away from Boggs.

Boggs thought about what Jennings had said. He would do something charitable. He looked around at the smiling trick-or-treaters. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to interact with anyone living without scaring them though. I’ve got it! he thought suddenly, spotting a little old lady shepherding what had to be her granddaughter through the front door of what had to be their home. Boggs quickly materialized behind them and crept in, not daring to let his presence be felt yet. He softly wafted up the stairs to the grandmother’s bedroom. He turned down the covers of her bed. He made a hot water bottle to put under her feet. He locked the window so there wouldn’t be a draft. He lit a candle to give the room a more cheery, warm glow, chasing the darkness away for the sweet old woman. I wonder if she’ll be a grave-neighbour soon, he thought sadly to himself. He looked around him, wondering what else he could do to be helpful.

Thud...thud, came the soft, labourous footsteps up the stairs. Boggs prepared to flee the scene as normal but then thought to himself hang on; I’ve done something nice. I’d like to see if she likes it, deciding that a Spectre only had to flee a mean haunting.

She came into the room, and her jaw dropped as she took in her surroundings. Trying to be helpful, Boggs shut her door for her.

She screamed.

He’d paid his dues.