Page 66 of Marked By His Hunger

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I learned then that truth could be punished.

Later, I learned to categorize.

Clear ghosts were newly dead or emotionally anchored.

Blurry ones were fading.

Angry ones were dangerous.

Children were the hardest.

They followed.

They clung.

They didn’t understand that they were gone.

At nine, a little boy followed me home from the park.

He had drowned in the lake thirty years earlier.

He thought I was his sister.

He stood at the foot of my bed every night, asking why she wouldn’t answer him.

I tried to ignore him.

But ignoring made him louder.

I begged him to leave.

He didn’t know how.

That was the year I’d stopped sleeping.

That was also the year I’d demanded a television.

The noise drowned them out.

Sometimes.

But never completely.

By twelve, I could see them in classrooms.

In grocery stores.

On the subway.

Hospitals were impossible.

So many of them lingered in hallways outside ICU rooms.

Waiting for someone to notice.

I stopped making eye contact.

Stopped reacting.

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