It had been another long day in the Department of Engagement with Risk-enhanced Persons. Special Agent Peter A. Hawkins hadn’t spent it in the field, working an assignment, perhaps battling one of the villains alongside Captain Happily Married or one of the others; no, today he’d caught up on paperwork. He’d had a surprising amount to do, even for the government; after-action reports, personnel evaluations, reviews of the after-action reports, verifications of the reviews of the after-action reports, affidavits indicating that his initialization of the verification of the reviews of the after-action reports were in fact his own true and authentic initializations… not to mention, the memo that his superiors had sent out regarding the Pinball. It’d been a standard To Whom It May Concern thing noting that the Pinball was now an official D.E.R.P.-licensed hero under the new Congressionally authorized pilot program and therefore all files pertaining thereto were reclassified as top-secret until further notice pending further updates etc etc etc,. Hawkins had only skimmed the thing until he’d caught the language about the pilot program, which threw him for a loop since he hadn’t heard anything about that whatever. After the John Cute fiasco he figured any idea of folding the capes into the government would be permanently on ice, so to speak.
He’d been making calls, checking news sources, running down government publications, trying to figure out what was going on, and he’d been so busy that he hadn’t even noticed the ghost standing at attention in the corner.
Hawkins didn’t see him at all, in fact, until he was ready to pack it in for the day, frustrated at having found out nothing at all. He’d made yet another fruitless phone call and now he clicked off and slammed his headset down on his desk, swearing.
“I know the feeling, sir,” a timid voice said sympathetically. “Leastways, I don’t know what all this is, but I know what it’s like waiting on news and not hearing anything.”
“Yeah,” Hawkins said, “And the worst of it is I almost feel as though there’s something else, something I’m miss-GAH!” He had just registered that a ghost was standing in his office corner.
The ghost held up its hands. “Sorry, sir. Begging your pardon, sir. Didn’t mean to startle you, sir.”
“Oh, no, no, you’re fine,” Hawkins said, trying to calm himself down. He lived in a superhero town. He should be used to this. “What, er, what are you doing here?”
There was a short pause as the ghost seemed to be searching for an answer, which gave Hawkins an opportunity to collect himself and get a handle on who he was dealing with. The apparition, whoever it was, wore a dark blue uniform with a high collar and white trousers, like something out of a Revolutionary War movie. It didn’t seem right to Hawkins, somehow, besides being a ghost; he wasn’t a military fashion history expert but he knew just enough to wonder exactly which war his visitor hailed from, or which side. Before he could figure it out, the ghost spoke again.
“Well, sir, you see, I’m away from my company, sir. We were supposed to join up with Colonel Jackson, sir, but our boat was caught in an eddy or side stream or something, sir, and somehow, well, I don’t rightly know, but I can’t find the river, and I can’t find the Colonel, sir. I didn’t want to miss the battle, sir, but I’m rightly lost, is what I am, sir.”
The soldier had a plaintive tone in his voice, and Hawkins wondered exactly how old he’d been when he’d joined up. Had the early American military set an age limit? He didn’t think Hamilton had addressed that point, but if this was the war he thought it was, Hamilton wasn’t really relevant anyway. “Well, son,” he said, unable to stop himself adding that last, “I have bad news and good news. The bad news is unfortunately you did miss the battle, and strictly speaking if I remember right it was fought after they’d signed the treaty that ended the whole war, it’s just you hadn’t heard about it yet. Good news, though, is that you won. The battle, anyway.”
“Oh,” the ghost said. Hawkins thought maybe it was smiling, or perhaps it wasn’t sure whether to smile or not. “Well, uh, sir, what happens now? I mean, where do I go?”
What the special agent wanted to say was “How the hell do I know?” but it occurred to him that would be a terribly inappropriate thing to say to a ghost, not to mention discouraging. What he actually said was, “Let me see if I can find that out for you.” Hawkins wasn’t sure who exactly he’d call about finding out the final destination of a misplaced soldier’s spirit from the War of 1812, but it beat trying and failing to get answers about a secret government pilot program about capes, anyway.
This story based on
’s prompt from Flash Fiction Friday: