The Terms of Rebirth: A Pact with the Ghost Rider

The night hung over the New Orleans outskirts like a shroud stitched from cigarette smoke and regret. The graveyard I'd stumbled into wasn't one of those tourist traps with polished stones and weeping angels. It was a forgotten patch of earth where the dead didn't even rate a name. Tombstones jutted up like broken teeth, half-sunk in the muddy ground, and the air stank of wet rot and something sharper, something that stung the back of my throat.
Sulfur, perhaps. Or maybe that was just the cheap whiskey I'd been choking down. The last dregs sloshed in the bottle I gripped like a lifeline. My name's Jack Morrison. I'm thirty-four years old, or at least I was until three days ago when a semi turned me into roadkill on Highway 61. I'd been drunk then too. That figures. But that's not what got me here, standing in this godforsaken boneyard with a shovel and a prayer I didn't believe in.
No, that was a debt. It wasn't the kind you owe to a bookie or a loan shark, though I've had my share of those. This was a debt carved into my soul, the kind that doesn't let you rest, even when your heart stops beating.