The Professional Unbeliever

by A. G. Muhs

Adrian’s cell phone rang, and he knew before he turned to look at the clock on his nightstand that it would be 03:29 in the morning. Not because he was prescient. The calls always came at 03:29. Every damn time. 

He rolled over and pulled the chain on his lamp, illuminating his small room in a soft amber light that he liked, noting that it was 03:28 (see? not prescient), and then he picked up his cell phone and answered the call. 

“Adrian,” he said. 

“Oh, thank God. Adrian. We need you. Right now.” 

“Relax, Cheryl. Where is it at?”

“Somewhere in the fucking boondocks in Oklahoma.”

“All right. I’m getting up.”

“Oh, thank you. We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes to drive you to the airport. Shit, Adrian, this crap is getting out of control.”

“Relax, Cheryl,” he said again. Adrian felt like he spent a lot of time saying that. “I’m getting up.”

“Okay. Okay. Fucking people. Thank you. Sorry to wake you.”

He swung his feet over the side of the bed and said, “Just doing my job, boss. See you in a few.”

***

Adrian had grey eyes to go with his grey soul (if he believed in souls), and he dressed all in grey. Grey suit, grey tie, lighter grey shirt, darker grey shoes, and the Emblem of Unbelief clipped to him over his heart. It was a part of the uniform, all the grey, and Adrian had heard once that all Unbelievers had grey eyes. It was a coincidence, of course, or a result of the system and tactics used to find them. Adrian was sure that there were those like him who had different shades coloring their irises; it was statistically likely. He suspected that the Believers assumed that an Unbeliever had to have grey eyes for some reason, and they only hired those who did, and that’s why all Unbelievers had grey eyes. The color grey had become synonymous with his guild, and he had become increasingly more noticed when he went out in public in his uniform.

He stood in line at the airport behind Cheryl who was clicking her heel against the floor and tersely cursing someone at the other end of her phone call about “how in the fuck do you expect me to get him there quickly when you can’t get me through customs,” and Adrian was looking at a blank wall with blank eyes and quite a blank mind when someone tapped him on the shoulder. 

He turned. A young man in a retro-ripped jean jacket and a backwards baseball cap was giving him “the look”. Behind him, an old woman with a crocheted sweater on was giving him “the other look”. The first look stemmed from curiosity, he thought. The second, disgust. 

“You’re… one of them… aren’t you?”

Adrian stared at him for a moment, and then he turned back around.

The kid didn’t take the hint.

“How do you do it? How do you go to all those places, see all those things you see, and still do it?”

“It’s an abomination what you do,” the woman with the disgusted face said. She had an Irish accent, which sounded fake. Who from Ireland is visiting Oklahoma during their time in the States? It’s not very plausible. Perhaps they were big basketball fans, and they wanted to see the new team’s lineup. Are they called lineups when it’s basketball? Adrian wondered.

“I don’t think so,” the kid said. “I don’t really believe myself, you know? In anything after. I always thought it sounded far-fetched.”

“Maybe you should apply,” Adrian said without turning.

“Stop corrupting people,” the woman said. “What you do is awful. Those people, people mind you, are just trying to find their way to Jesus.”

“Oh, shut up, lady,” the kid said. “You buy that crap?”

“You need God, son. This man, and other men and women like him, are agents of the Devil.”

Adrian grinned.

On the plane, the kid ended up next to him. They passed some of the time in silence, but soon the kid couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“So, how do you make them go away?” he said.

Adrian sighed.

“I don’t make them do anything.”

“Then how?”

Adrian contemplated that question, like he’d contemplated it a hundred times before.

“You say you don’t believe either? But that isn’t true, probably. It isn’t for most people, even people who call themselves atheists. Most people keep a little kernel of hope inside, no matter how hard they try to be rational.”

“Okay…” the kid said.

Adrian sighed again, and with the sigh, the sentence tumbled out. The same one that always tumbled out when he answered this question.

“When they meet me, they just know. They get it. And then… they’re gone.”

***

Adrian hoped it wasn’t another fluke when he stepped out of the car in front of the modern-looking house. His last three calls had been false alarms, and he didn’t get paid as much when he didn’t actually have to do his job. It was about six in the morning, and the distant horizon was starting to light with the color blue, but that didn’t matter. Most people assumed Adrian had to do his job under the cover of darkness, but that was just superstition and folklore. Ghosts were ghosts were ghosts, anytime of the day. 

Most people’s explanation for ghosts was that they had too strong an attachment to the world to move on, but Adrian thought it was the opposite. They had too strong an attachment to the idea that there was something to move on to, and when they found that there wasn’t someone waiting to accept them into an afterlife, the energies of their mind clung on to existence, and could not settle into peace. 

The vestibule inside the house had a feeling about it that most places get when they’re being inhabited by a ghost. Though it was clearly lived in, the house felt abandoned, as if it were mimicking its new resident’s emotions. 

Adrian paused. In front of him was a staircase. To the left is an opening into the kitchen. To the right is an opening to the living room. Further behind the staircase, a hallway leads to the back door. He went to the left. The living room.

He walked towards the coffee pot. Now, where did the old dude keep his grounds? Ah. Really? That’s sweet. He had a nice little pot with a lid, and it said coffee on the front in swirly, picturesque letters. Adrian wouldn’t have taken him for the Michaels type. He found the filters in the cabinet above the brewer next to the mugs, and as he waited for the pot to finish, he whistled an old tune. 

With his mug in hand, he took a tour of the house. It was really quite tidy. Good for you, bumpkin. 

He went into the living room and sat on the couch, propped his feet up on the coffee table, then thought better of it (it really was tidy) and put his feet back on the floor. The remote was on the coffee table, lined up against the edge, and there were coasters. He set his mug on the top of the stack of coasters and began to flip through the channels. 

***

“Oh, wait. Go back. I like that one. The old man never watches anything good. Can you believe he spends most of his time reading? Wouldn’t have guessed it, right?”

“How’d you end up here?” Adrian said, flipping back the channel. It was old reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“I don’t really know, to be honest. I’ve never been here in my life. Not that I can remember anyway.”

“Hmm.”

“Is that weird?”

“It’s not that unheard of,” Adrian said.

They were quiet for a while, watching the show. Adrian felt faintly voyeuristic watching Buffy. He’d had a massive crush on her in his teens, and now that he was older and the crush hadn’t subsided, it made him feel a little dirty. 

Adrian asked, “What’s your name?”

“Monica. You?”

“Adrian. Do you remember how it happened?”

“Car crash.”

“When?”

“A couple of years ago.”

“Yeesh,” Adrian said. “Been here all that time, have you?”

“Yeah.”

Pause.

“Waiting?” Adrian said.

“Yeah.”

Pause.

“Have you…?”

“Figured out that no one is coming for me. Yes. About a month after I died.”

“Why are you still here, then, Monica?”

Pause.

“Why do you think it took the old man so long to notice me?” Monica asked.

“I guess once you believe something, you start to notice it.”

“And you’re the Unbeliever, right?”

Adrian chuckled.

“I feel as if that nickname lends to the idea that I have some kind of supernatural powers. I don’t. I’m just here to help you go to sleep.”

“Not to move on?” Monica said. She said it like a joke, but the laugh in her voice sounded like a camouflaged sob. 

“There is nothing to move on to, Monica.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

Pause. 

“It’s okay, Monica,” he said. “Everyone struggles with it. But if you stay here, bad things will start to happen to you. I’m surprised they haven’t already. You see, there is no afterlife. But there are things in this world that can hurt you in the state you’re in. If they don’t find you, then you’ll do bad things to yourself. You will start to lose your identity, the thing that made you a person, and you could hurt someone.”

“What could something do to me that is worse than not existing?”

“Going to sleep isn’t that bad,” Adrian said.

“You keep saying that!” she snapped, and the lights in the house flickered, and the air became cold. “But when people go to sleep, they wake up! They fucking wake up! I’m never going to wake up!”

He looked at her then. He always gave them time before he looked at them. It was a little trick he’d picked up. Ghosts get used to not being looked at, so the first time they’re noticed, it can have a range of effects on their attitudes. Some are happy, some get violent, others obsess over it so much that there’s little anyone can do to convince them to give it up, and they never sleep. 

She was young. Fifteen? Black, with gorgeous curly hair that bounced on top of her shoulders, and cute, thick-rimmed glasses. She would have been the kind of girl who stole his heart in high school.

“You will not wake up,” he said, gently. “But, that doesn’t mean you won’t exist.”

She stared at him, eyes welling.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“I don’t know what will happen to you. Sure, there are no angels here to lead you to a garden where all of your relatives are waiting. There’s no light to indicate a God. You’re not floating through the universe cognizant of yourself in the vast dark. You’re not being planted as a tree. Whatever you believed that would happen, it’s not going to happen. But why does that mean you won’t exist?”

She started crying.

“I want to know what’s going to happen. Why don’t you want to know?”

He shrugged.

“That’s why they call me the Unbeliever. The title should really be, the who-gives-a-fuck man.”

She laughed at that, snotty laughs, and she lifted the rims of her glasses to wipe at her eyes.

“Could you do something for me?” she said.

“Of course.”

When she had collected herself, he led her to the back door, where no people were waiting. The sun was just about to peek over the horizon. 

“Am I going to… turn to dust?” 

He chuckled. 

“Whatever you want to happen is going to happen.”

She turned to face him, and he turned his body towards hers.

“Thank you, Adrian,” she said. He nodded.

Sunlight breached into the world, and Monica faded, slowly, until there was nothing but empty space. 

He wiped a hand across his eyes on his way back to the car. Cheryl looked up at him. 

“Everything good?” she said. 

“Have to make one stop.”

***

Monica’s mother cried when Adrian passed along her message. She squashed him against her in a hug and assured him, “I don’t care what they say, God is smiling on you, son.”

He didn’t have a reply, but he felt nice to know he’d put two people to rest that day. And it wasn’t even ten yet. 

Cheryl smacked her gum back in the car. “You and your fucking humanitarian acts. It doesn’t fit the job description, you know? You’re supposed to be cold and austere and spooky.” 

He didn’t have a reply to that either.

He made it back to his part of the world late that evening. It was drizzling and the sky was slate grey. He stopped by for Thai takeout on his walk home.

After he ate, he showered and dressed in comfortable clothes and went to sit at his desk.

He kept a journal there where he recorded all of his cases. This one was a good one, but they didn’t always turn out that way. He still remembered Greg Wilson in Utah and the house that had to be condemned. Who knows where Greg was, or what he was doing? Or if he had hurt anyone besides little Mallory. Poor girl. 

But this one, this one, had been good, and it was always nice to write down a good case. He flipped to a fresh page of his journal and…

There was something written there. It was in a script that wasn’t his, and he got an odd, warm feeling as he looked at it. It said: 

You’re wrong. 

END