On a distant, isolated island—the name of which Nikola would never attempt to pronounce to spare himself the hit to his dignity—there stood a museum dedicated to the lives and deed of its civilization’s great figures. It was renowned across the world, spoken of in many of the factoid publications he had read on sleepless nights throughout his formative years.


    He’d never visited it—likely never would have the privilege of doing so—and only heard of it nowadays in the sense people would hear of the ancient world’s wonders. People spoke of it in hushed whispers and loud lectures alike. The museum had existed for centuries untold, and its exhibitions were composed entirely of ghosts.


    Not this uncanny, seemingly true version of a person that stood before him, now, but what would normally be considered a ghost. Indeed an echo, a mindless remnant of a person who once existed and no longer did. Everything a ghost did or said, the scenes they repeated for eternity on whichever place they haunted, was true to life, but the manners in which ghosts could react to the living world were limited.


    Much like a music box could only play so many tunes, a ghost lacked any true capacity for thought, because it was nothing but an incomplete copy.


    They were predictable, but also implacable. Part of what made such efforts—as those by the museum—so impressive were that successfully relocating a ghost, getting it to change its tune in any way, took the types of skills that had only been perfected through countless generations.


    But Edmund was a person still, even if a dead one.


    People could be tricked, and Nikola had no qualms about attempting such a thing when he was already convinced it was Edmund who was trying to pull the wool over his eyes. The more information he could get out of the dead man, the better.


    “Tell me, Edmund—why should I trust you? I have heard of you, for all I did not meet you on life, and I know to be a force to be reckoned with—even your fellow occultists were leery of trifling with you.”


    “I helped you escape my own family, did I not?”


    Nikola forced a wry laugh out. Theatrics were not something he got to practice often. “For your own ends, by your admission. You deal with demons—you could just as easily be seeking to use me to renew whichever vow you made to it.”


    “Our vows long since depend on the fountain, not that which I swore anything to,” Edmund countered. “Though—for reasons that should be obvious—I did go to great lengths to keep Maria and the children from learning of… the other details.”


    “Has it occurred to you that they might have acted as they did because they were working on incomplete information?” Nikola would have preferred they not act at all, but what was done was done.


    “I’m not blind, just dead,” a shadow flitted through Edmund’s glowing eyes as if he had rolled them. “I know the responsibility lies in me—that is why it must be eye who fixes it. Not their flawed methods, but my tried-and-tested ones.”


    “Which you’ve yet to disclose. Pardon me for having reservations about this.”


    “As if you would know what any of it meant, or how it worked, if I wasted breath explaining it to you.”


    It was a peculiar turn of phrase to hear coming from a ghost.


    Nikola’s eyes narrowed as he thought of a retort for that. “Yet it is not as though you can achieve any of it without my cooperation, is it?”


    “What do you want?” Edmund snapped. “I shan’t touch you—because I cannot afford the risk of doing so—but you need not seek to take me for a fool. If you seek answers, ask questions to my face, and so long as it does not relate to exactly what I did to my family members, for their sake, I shall give them to you.”Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    This was it. He would get what he wanted. And a good tale for the column, straight from a dead man’s mouth. He was unreasonably thrilled by that latter part.


    “Very well,” Nikola nodded, crossing his legs to mimic the late patriarch’s earlier post. “Start from the beginning. How did you find yourself in a position to bargain with a demon for immortality? Which sins did you commit before you even got there?”


    The ghost seemed to consider this, looking to the side. “Perhaps it might be more pertinent to begin with something from your side, if you do not mind. How did you come to find yourself in this position?”


    “As you know, John Adianoeta is my boss. Your grandson. I was assigned to accompany and assist our photographer,” Nikola pondered whether to name the man in question, given how he was almost certainly dead. “Benjamin Best is, was, his name. We were told the Adianoeta’s wished for this moment to be caught on camera—I know not why they sought an excuse that complex, if this was what they planned to do. Upon our arrival, your wife tasked me with assisting your— her daughter Clarisse. I… attempted to flee from her, and in the struggle, I fell into the well.”


    “Curious. Before you ask, no, Clarisse is not my child, but that matters little. Maria stands in my place now. Did Clarisse not command you to simply let her do as she wished?”


    “She did,” Nikola acknowledged. “That is part of what you turned into, is it not?”


    “It is. In any case, you have provided me with the information I needed. I can tell you now that this was never about you. Chances are, she never accounted for a second person coming here. This tale, perhaps, should revolve around this Best, then.”


    Nikola nodded—in truth, he had always felt like an unfortunate bystander, because who in their right mind would go out of their way to target him specifically? He was as boring a person humanly possible, never having had the chance to do anything other than that which others demanded of him.


    “From what I understand of Maria’s modified ritual, while I could not interact wholly with the world, relied on the fact that they had been detecting my lingering presence nonetheless,” Edmund started. “That’s where Best fits in—my understanding of this nascent art, this ‘photography’ is that it can capture a moment as it was in reality. Freeze it in time, so to speak, even if not literally. Magic is, above all else, about symbolism.”


    It wasn’t too difficult to guess where this was going, but Nikola refrained from interrupting the ghost.


    “I would have pulled it off with an artist, had I been in her place—obviously, the setup for that would be different, the period of preparation would be longer there, but doable. What she did… even the ten dozens she had the family draw last blood on would not have been enough to unbind the both of us. But exploiting photography as she did enabled her to suspend the moment in time, to draw out and reuse the ritual’s power as long as possible, so to speak.”


    “So it was about the effectiveness of it.”


    “Indeed. I confess, days ago, I could not have told you what a ‘photographer’ was. Now I have to admit what my wife did was beyond ingenious. Make no mistake, had I been more forthcoming about just how I had done this, I do not doubt she could have fixed it, or even improved upon it. But I refuse to share that, even with her,” the ghost was examining its hands. “This Best—a friend of yours?”


    Nikola couldn’t help himself—he scoffed. “Anything but. His fate, however, I would not wish upon anyone. He was tedious to work with, but he did not deserve such a death.”


    “Then it might pacify you to learn he is not dead. His inclusion in the plan was such a success that my wife has decided to keep him around—he has been transferred to the dungeons already.”


    “Of course your estate has a dungeon,” Nikola tripped over that part of the sentence, despite the revelation that Benjamin was indeed alive. The relief he felt at that surprised him, but he had spoken true. His dislike for the older man did not translate into outright wishing death upon him.


    “Most occultists have one. If they tell you they don’t, they are liars.”


    “Forgive me, but I would gladly go the rest of my life without any others who dabble in the occult as you do,” Nikola shook his head. “And while I am not displeased to learn of all this, I would still quite like to have an answer to my original question—how did you end up striking a bargain with a demon on your own?”’


    Edmund let out a drawn-out sigh. “I hope you aren’t too fond of sleep, boy. This will take a while.”