Box Ghost Quotes

Oh, Claire," he said. "You think me a far better man than I am. That's kind, and flattering." "Are you saying that you -" "Doughnuts!" Myrnin interrupted her and darted away, to zip back in seconds with an open box.

After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts – like a Chinese nest of boxes – oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front – in our ancestors, back and back until...

Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner.

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

In this way, the Dream House was a haunted house. You were the sudden, inadvertent occupant of a place where bad things had happened. And then it occurs to you one day, standing in the living room, that you are this house's ghost: you are the one wandering from room to room with no purpose, gaping at the moving boxes that are never unpacked, never certain what you're supposed to do. After all, you don't need to die to leave a mark of psychic pain. If anyone is living in the Dream House now, he or she might be seeing the echo of you.

No,” she said. “You are not Patrick Swayze. I am not Demi Moore.” She touched a switch on the little box and it started ticking. “And this sure as hell isn't pottery class.

Don’t allow religion and tradition to keep women locked up in a box. God did not give women the Holy Ghost to sit down, be quiet, and be stopped and ignored.

The dead pull the living down.

Pandora's box had been opened and monsters had come out. But there had been something hidden at the bottom of Pandora's box. Something wonderful. Hope.

Nobody could see the ghost in his box, but everybody could hear him.

He understood that the ghost existed first and foremost within his own head. That maybe ghosts always haunted minds, not places. If he wanted to take a shot at it, he’d have to turn the barrel against his own temple.

He understood that the ghost existed first and foremost within his own head. That maybe ghosts always haunted minds, not places.

I still feel ghosts around me: the ghosts of the five Dalloway girls who defied the boxes and coffins the world tried to put them in. The ghosts of other women who attended or worked at this school, but whose legacies were forgotten instead of deified. The ghosts of every girl who came here and felt history beneath her feet. But I'm not haunted anymore. Maybe I never was.

Easy as cake." "Pie." "Yeah. I can't make pie. My cousin got all the baking genes, but if it comes out of a box and has very detailed instructions, I can make an edible cake. Cake is easy. Pie's a bitch.

I’d been put into a box long before, after all. Each of us has. Are you the “difficult” child or the “histrionic” lover, the “argumentative” sibling or the “long-suffering” spouse? Boxes make us easier to understand, but they also imprison us because people don’t see past them.

Some ghost of myself still lived back in the days when we'd shared a bed and talked of the future. But that love we'd had and those selves we'd been were gone, placed in a box like old photographs and letters you'd never read again.

And when you can no longer remember, just meaningless things here and there and you can't. But still try even then, as the twilight sets in, stand and look at the past, walk again along the corridors where your eyes used to wander, attentive ghosts, open the boxes, think of the other side of the wall. Sit at the side of the road and see yourself pass. See the web, see how the passages of the maze all lead again to the same point which does not exactly coincide with the exit.

When he says he doesn’t love you anymore, roll your shoulders back and look him in the eye even when it feels like your ribs are breaking inward; like spider legs. When he digs up old aches that he swore he forgave you for, smile and ask him why he didn’t leave you sooner. Ignore the way the words feel like sandpaper running all the way up your throat to your mouth. When he blames you for mistakes that wear his face, do not scream. Do not cry. Tell him that there are boys who would be proud to say they’d love you. Tell him that in two years you won’t even remember his name and don’t let him see the way you can taste your own lie. When he leaves, ignore the howling in your blood and do not get up after him. Not even to lock the door. Do not, do not, DO NOT. Smell his shirts when you box them up to give them back. Not one. Swear off dating when you realize you’re chasing ghosts that wear his smile. It’s okay to cry over him. It’s even okay to forgive him. But do not go back to him if he did not know how to love you the first time. He won’t know how to do it the next.

While guidebooks might tell you that time collapsed here, another theory says that in Latin America, all of history coexists at once.

Armageddon was a fire in the harbor, a box delivered on a cold day. It wasn't one great tragedy, but ten million tiny ones, and everyone faced theirs alone.

The Stadium Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators. At Wembley, shouts from the 1966 World Cup, which England won, still resound, and if you listen very closely you can hear groans from 1953 when England fell to the Hungarians. Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium sighs with nostalgia for the glory days of Uruguayan soccer. Maracanã is still crying over Brazil’s 1950 World Cup defeat. At Bombonera in Buenos Aires, drums boom from half a century ago. From the depths of Azteca Stadium, you can hear the ceremonial chants of the ancient Mexican ball game. The concrete terraces of Camp Nou in Barcelona speak Catalan, and the stands of San Mamés in Bilbao talk in Basque. In Milan, the ghosts of Giuseppe Meazza scores goals that shake the stadium bearing his name. The final match of the 1974 World Cup, won by Germany, is played day after day and night after night at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia has marble and gold boxes and carpeted stands, but it has no memory or much of anything to say.

He compared the intelligence task to solving a jigsaw puzzle, except that you didn’t get the box cover, so you didn’t know what the final picture was. And you got only a few pieces at a time, not all of them. And even worse, you always got a bunch of pieces from some other puzzle thrown in.

Boxes make us easier to understand, but they also imprison us because people don’t see past them.

Barefoot surefoot lightfoot, she sang under her breath. I am the ghost in Harrenhal.

Cuban eyes often look close to tears. Tears never seem far away because both their pain and their joy are always so close to the surface.

The problem with aging is not that it’s one damn thing after another—it’s every damn thing, all at once, all the time.

Die Todten reiten schnell. (For the dead travel fast.) —“LENORE,” GOTTFRIED BÜRGER

maybe ghosts always haunted minds, not places.

You should have seen her this morning,' he said, smiling. 'She's got into the pantry and tipped a box of Cheerios all over the kitchen floor. I walk in and she's crawling around eating them as fast as she can. Mum's standing there, watching her - she got this embarrassed look when she saw me - she does, 'I know, I know, but I can't bring myself to stop her. She thinks she's hit the jackpot.

People are like germs, only bigger. That bit of wisdom has proven true, for the most part. Humans are little more than highly evolved bacteria, leeches on a rotting ball of clay. It’s depressing, I know.

Moving had no season, was all seasons, crossed time like a train with no schedule. We moved so often our mail never caught up with us, moved sometimes before we'd even gotten properly unpacked or I'd learned the names of all the teachers at my new school. Moving gave me a sense of time passing and everything sliding, as if nothing could be held on to anyway. It made me feel ghostly, unreal and unimportant, like a box that goes missing and then turns up but then you realize you never needed anything in it anyway.

What frightens you? What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged? Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire? Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside? If you will listen I will tell you a story-one whose ghost cannot be banished by the comfort of a roaring fire, I will tell you the story of how we found ourselves in a realm where dreams are formed, destiny is chosen, and magic is as real as your handprint in the snow. I will tell you how we unlocked the Pandora's box of ourselves, tasted freedom, stained our souls with blood and choice, and unleashed a horror on the world that destroyed its dearest Order. These pages are a confession of all that has led to this cold, gray dawn. What will be now, I cannot say. Is your heart beating faster? Do the clouds seem to be gathering on the horizons? Does the skin on your neck feel stretched tight, waiting for a kiss you both fear and need? Will you be scared? Will you know the truth? Mary Dowd, April 7, 1871

I dreamed you a field of running horses, Selah. For you, Bianca, a balloon the size of the sky, my body a kite you can throw into the air. Pull me by string and horse. Tell me everything won't end in death. That everything doesn't end with February. Dead wildflowers wrapped around a crying baby's throat. I've slowed my heartbeat to three beats a minute. I've redrawn the clouds into birds, a fox chasing them into the mountains. I'm going to move my hand today. I vomit ice cubes. There's a ghost next to me. Get up, Dad. (Light Boxes)

You are quarter ghost on your mother’s side. Your heart is a flayed peach in a bone box. Your hair comes away in clumps like cheap fabric wet. A reflecting pool gathers around your altar of plywood sub flooring and split wooden slats. You are rag doll prone. You are contort, angle and arc. Here you rot. Here you are a greening abdomen, slipping skin, flesh fly, carrion beetles. This is where bullets take shelter, where scythes find their function, breath loses its place on the page. This is where the page is torn out of every book before chapter’s close, this is slippage, this is a shroud of neglect pulled over the body, this is your chance to escape. Little wraith, bend light around your skin until it colors you clear, disappear like silica in a kiln, become glass and glass beads, become the staggered whir of an exhaust fan: something only noticed when gone. Become an origami swan. Fold yourself smaller than ever before. Become less. More in some ways but less in the way a famine is less. They will forgive you for not being satisfied with fitting in their hands. They will forgive you for dying to be a bird diminutive enough to fit in a mouth and not be crushed.

Bwahahahahaha! Happy Halloweeeeen!” I turn away from the closet—where I was just in the process of trying to find a Halloween-esque outfit that’s not a costume because I fucking hate dressing up—and gawk at the creature gracing my doorway. I can’t make heads or tails of what Allie is wearing. All I see is a skintight blue bodysuit, lots of feathers, and…are those cat ears? I steal Allie’s trademark phrase by demanding, “What on God’s green planet are you supposed to be?” “I’m a cat-bird.” Then she gives me a look that says, uh-doy. “A cat bird? What is…okay…why?” “Because I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be a cat or a bird, so Sean was like, just be both, and I was like, you know what? Brilliant idea, boyfriend.” She grins at me. “I’m pretty sure he was being a smartass, but I decided to treat the suggestion as gospel.” I have to laugh. “He’s going to wish he suggested something less ridiculous, like sexy nurse, or sexy witch, or—” “Sexy ghost, sexy tree, sexy box of Kleenex.” Allie sighs. “Gee, let’s just throw the word sexy in front of any mundane noun and look! A costume! Because here’s the thing, if you want to dress like a ho-bag, why not just go as a ho-bag? You know what? I hate Halloween.

When he says He doesn’t love you anymore, Roll your shoulders back And look him in the eye Even when it feels like your ribs Are breaking inward, like spider legs. When he digs up old aches That he swore he forgave you for, Smile And ask him why he didn’t leave you sooner. Ignore the way the words feel like sandpaper Running all the way up your throat to your mouth. When he blames you For mistakes that wear his face, Do not scream. Do not cry. Tell him that there are boys Who would be proud to say they’d loved you. Tell him that in two years You won’t even remember his name And don’t let him see the way you can taste your own lie. When he leaves Ignore the howling in your blood And do not get up after him. Not even to lock the door. Do not, do not Do not. Smell his shirts when you box them up To give them back. Not one. Swear off dating when you realize You’re chasing ghosts that wear his smile. It’s okay to cry over him. It’s even okay to forgive him. But do not go back to him. If he did not know how to love you the first time, He won’t know how to do it the next.

The patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hayfield; but to the left an overgrown box-garden full of dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled a ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white, surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim.

Or a ghost is a knot in the otherwise smooth flow of time, an electrical storm in a jewelry box, grief perfectly aligned. And sometimes a ghost is a shared thing; sometimes the entire population of a city or country will just happen to look in the mirror at the same time, and from then on there was a city in the sky, as all cities are if we consider that the sky reaches to the ground, and this city, too, thought it was alive, and the candles walked off by themselves.

Teófilo Stevenson

When you had a set of wheels that could take you anywhere, you didn’t walk away from it.

Remember, Christmas is always best when you take it out of the box.

We also had a spirit box running, which is a modified radio that amplifies paranormal voices.

Monsieur, you must be mad! Box Five can never be had For money, love or the world ...

Be careful,” Aunt Blythe said. “The floor’s riddled with dry rot.” Forgetting her own warning, she plunged ahead, opening trunks and boxes, poking and pawing through things, reminiscing.

Dating from a place of co-dependency, like a lot of us do, is immediately feeling as though the guy you went on a few dates with (who keeps ghosting you) is suddenly the one - just because he ticks a few of your boxes, texts you back sometimes and happens to be cute. But no, he's not being mysterious for intermittently disappearing on you. He's actually keeping you at a distance and playing on your need for validation, so that when he's done with his other options, he can return to you with minimal effort, knowing that you've been waiting for him all this time.

Arms wrapped around me, I looked over the past boxed up and piled haphazardly about, like memories in a person’s brain. It was only a matter of knowing where a thought was and dusting it off.

What do you like to read?” she asked. “Everything,” I answered, a vague reply but true. I loved thrillers, ghost stories, and stories set in different cultures. I liked reading about anyone who had an interesting life, from women who dressed up as men to fight in the Civil War, to the guy who invented Q-tips. If nothing else was available, I read junk mail and the backs of cereal boxes.

Mum was right, he didn't need these relics of mundanity, but I understood his inclination to hold on to them. I too had shoe boxes of cinema tickets from first dates with Joe and utility bills from flats I no longer lived in. I'd never known why they were important, but they were - they felt like proof of life lived, in case a time came when it was needed, like a driving license or a passport.

Shadow inserted his coin. The drunk in the graveyard raised his bottle to his lips. One of the gravestones flipped over, revealing a grasping corpse; a headstone turned around, flowers replaced by a grinning skull. A wraith appeared on the right of the church, while on the left of the church something with a half-glimpsed, pointed, unsettlingly birdlike face, a pale, Boschian nightmare, glided smoothly from a headstone into the shadows and was gone. Then the church door opened, a priest came out, and the ghosts, haunts, and corpses vanished, and only the priest and the drunk were left alone in the graveyard. The priest looked down at the drunk disdainfully, and backed through the open door, which closed behind him, leaving the drunk on his own. The clockwork story was deeply unsettling. Much more unsettling, thought Shadow, than clockwork has any right to be. “You know why I show that to you?” asked Czernobog. “No.” “That is the world as it is. That is the real world. It is there, in that box.

A strange thing happened to me as I walked away from Jane's house--I was finally thinking clearly. I could see what Charlotte meant. Jane knew how to fix people. Now that I'd talked through some of my issues, I'd blown out the dust and garbage out of my brain and I could think for once. I could smell the rain, heavy with iron. The cold woke me, but it didn't sting. My breath puffed out in front of me in a great white plume, and I laughed. It was like I was breathing ghosts. I wasn't in the land of long highways and big box stores and humid, endless summers. I was in London, a city of stone and rain and magic. I understood, for instance, why they liked red so much. The red buses, telephone booths, and postboxes were a violent shock against the grays of the sky and stone. Red was blood and beating hearts. And I was strong.

President Clinton, weakened by impeachment proceedings and boxed in by a hostile Republican majority in Congress, proved unwilling or unable to force the astonishingly passive Pentagon to pursue military options.

Well, let me go and wake Soap." "Oh, no need to disturb him." "Course there's need. Why do you think I was set to watch the hatch? Waiting on the ghost of boilers past? He'll box my ears if I don't tell him you came.

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade. When

I have the cedar box safely tucked away in my bedroom closet, but its ghosts follow me about the house, distracting me from my work, interrupting my train of thought, pulling at my limbs and hair, whispering gossip in my ear.

I smelt him, smelt Johnny; for a second I thought - what? That he was there, was with me, that he wasn't...But I realised it was his perfume, the one I'd had made specially for him by an artisan perfumer in New York, his own custom-made one-off blend. It had been hideously expensive but I hadn't cared as long as it had pleased him. It was all intense essential oils, layer upon layer of labdanum, patchouli, vanilla, vetiver, ambrette, frankincense, myrrh, amber, Bulgarian rose absolute, Oud wood - the list was endless and beautiful, like a scented prayer. The woman had said some of the ingredients would keep their fragrance for a hundred years, would never die. Like me, he'd said, like us. I'd put some drops of the heavy dark oil on a couple of cotton wool pads and put them in the box when we got it, now the fragrance - strange, narcotic, archaic - filled the room like his ghost, embracing me in memories.

1.Ghost hunting 2.Target practice: rifles and handguns 3.Rock collecting 4.Photography-south Carolina wildlife 5.Soap making 6.Fencing 7.Belly dancing 8.Tie dying 9.Dog agility course training 10.Crawdad racing 11.Bull riding 12.Worm collecting

You go back,” Jack said. “And you catch the scum who did you.” “Back?” I said. “Back to …” “Earth, yeah,” Jack said. “Chicago.” He closed the folder and dropped it into his out-box. “You gotta find out who killed you.” I arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re kidding.

People are different, Reagan. They have different experiences. They see things. Know things. Things happen that you can’t always explain. I just… I don’t understand how someone can go through life dismissing everything. Forcing everything into a box. The world’s too darned big.

She dampened her lips. “I . . . I have defenses you don’t know of, and”—she gestured to the half wall revealing the kitchen beyond—“I have pepper spray in the kitchen.” “Pepper spray in the kitchen,” he said tonelessly. “All right, all right!” She dropped the bag with the box on a coffee table that held a few large picture books on the Old West and hurried into the kitchen, coming back with the pepper spray, which she stuck on a bookcase shelf next to the door. He took it down and checked the expiration date. “You should have tossed this two years ago.

I go anyway, walking in silent sock feet, so as not to awaken the ghosts. In the study, where I had my tea with President Snow, I find a box with my father’s hunting jacket, our plant book, my parents’ wedding photo, the spile Haymitch sent in, and the locket Peeta gave me in the clock arena.

Funnel The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost-new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died. The children honored their separate arts; two became moderately famous, three married and fattened their delicate share of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was a concert pianist. She had a notable career and wore cropped hair and walked like a man, or so I heard when prying a childhood car into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan. One died a pinafore child, she stays her five years forever. And here is one that wrote- I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive words and scratch out my short marginal notes and finger my accounts. back from that great-grandfather I have come to tidy a country graveyard for his sake, to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake. I like best to think of that Bunyan man slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan of culture to do it big. On this same scale he built seven arking houses and they still stand. One, five stories up, straight up like a square box, still dominates its coastal edge of land. It is rented cheap in the summer musted air to sneaker-footed families who pad through its rooms and sometimes finger the yellow keys of an old piano that wheezes bells of mildew. Like a shoe factory amid the spruce trees it squats; flat roof and rows of windows spying through the mist. Where those eight children danced their starfished summers, the thirty-six pines sighing, that bearded man walked giant steps and chanced his gifts in numbers. Back from that great-grandfather I have come to puzzle a bending gravestone for his sake, to question this diminishing and feed a minimum of children their careful slice of suburban cake.

She reached into one of the cabinets and got out an old box filled with amber vials of isopropyl alcohol. Expensive. Hard to find. She emptied them out one by one over herself, even over her shorn hair, until she smelled like medicine. Until she was a sterile thing no more sexual than a pair of sanitized scissors. That sharp too.

When she opened her eyes they were confronted by a musical box against the opposite wall - one of those early Bavarian toys where mechanical figures perform to the tune. 'How odd,' she thought. The little stage showed a group of fiddlers, two couples in costumes like those of the ball she had just quitted, and in a doorway at the side, a gypsy or beggar man. Very faintly the distant waltz came to her ears, but no footsteps ringing in the abandoned halls. With her hand pressed to her unsteady heart, acting under a sudden compulsion, she pushed down the lever. Delicate plucked music started up; the fiddlers sawed with their clumsy arms in time to an ethereal waltz. The couples moved jerkily out and each raised an arm to clasp its partner. To various clicks and rumbles from under the floor they began to revolve with each other and to orbit round the room. Their movements were sinister because of being both reluctant and predestined. Here they were and this is was what they must do. ("Many Coloured Glass")

THE main thing to remember in autobiography, I have always thought, is not to let any damned modesty creep in to spoil the story. This adventure is mine, Albert Campion's, and I am fairly certain that I was pretty nearly brilliant in it in spite of the fact that I so nearly got myself and old Lugg killed that I hear a harp quintet whenever I consider it.

He became so gloomy that she asked him, at last, if he was worried about anything. He assured her, instantly, that he was the happiest man in the world. And he was. At times he was almost bewildered by his own bliss in being there, with Tony, so terribly dear, beside him; really his own for the rest of his life. It was not her fault if the insatiable sorrows of an unequal love tormented him, the hungry demand for more, for a fuller return, for a feeling which it was not in her nature to give. As she leaned forward, absorbed in the passions staged beneath her, he felt suddenly that their box contained just himself and a wraith, a ghost; as if the real Antonia, whom he loved, was an imagined woman living only in his sad fancy.

Boxes make us easier to understand, but they also imprison us because people don’t see past them. We all have fixed ideas of each other even though the truth can be far removed from what we think we see. That is why no one asked what it might mean when I started to improve enough to answer simple questions like “Would you like tea?” with a turn of my head or a smile.

Josh Thomas was sitting in Egan’s study, reading a chemical analysis journal, when he froze in fright. The rug in the center of the room suddenly rose from the floor as if a ghost were inside and then flew aside. A trapdoor beneath swung open and Pitt’s head popped up like a jack-in-the-box. “Sorry to intrude,” said Pitt with a cheery smile. “But I just happened to be passing by.

The past had already been dealt with, to one end or another, it was certain, fixed, the horror of it was already over. For the living at least. They grieved, yes, but they were not trapped in the terror of the moment. Not so for my poor, elegant wraiths. They were like the old-fashioned zoetropes you find at the seaside: a tiny slice of a world in a box, brief yet somehow also eternal.

Aunt Blythe went inside to check on Great-grandfather, but I sat on the front steps and watched the sun sink behind the trees across the highway. A little chill crept across my skin. Summer was almost over. Soon my parents would return and I’d go back to Chicago. There would be no more midnight meetings in the attic. No croquet games with Hannah, no boxing lessons from John, no fights with Edward.

The Social Contract became the Bible of most of the leaders in the French Revolution, but no doubt, as is the fate of Bibles, it was not carefully read and was still less understood by many of its disciples. It reintroduced the habit of metaphysical abstractions among the theorists of democracy, and by its doctrine of the general will it made possible the mystic identification of a leader with his people, which has no need of confirmation by so mundane an apparatus as the ballot-box. Much of its philosophy could be appropriated by Hegel5 in his defence of the Prussian autocracy. Its first-fruits in practice were the reign of Robespierre; the dictatorships of Russia and Germany (especially the latter) are in part an outcome of Rousseau's teaching. What further triumphs the future has to offer to his ghost I do not venture to predict.

Mary.” Turning at the soft sound of her name, she glanced behind herself. Then frowned. “Lassiter?” “I’m over here.” “Where?” She looked all around. “Why is your voice echoing?” “Chimney.” “What?” “I’m stuck in the fucking chimney.” She raced over to the fireplace and got on her hands and knees. Looking up into the dark flue, she shook her head. “Lass? What the hell are you doing up there?” His voice emanated from somewhere above her. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” “What are you—” An arm came down. A very sooty arm that was encased in a red sleeve that had white trim. Or what had been white trim and which was now smudged with ash. “You’re stuck!” she exclaimed. “And thank God no one lit this fire!” “You’re telling me,” he muttered in his disembodied voice. “I had to blow out Fritz’s match like a hundred times before he gave up. Fuck, that sounds dirty. Anyway, just remind me never to try to be Santa for your kid, okay? I’m not doing this again, even for her.” Mary stretched a little farther in, but the logs on the hearth stopped her. “Lassiter. Why can’t you free yourself by dematerializing—” “I’m impaled on a hook that’s iron. I can’t go ghost. And will you just take this?” “What?” “This.” He turned his hand toward her and there was…a box…in it? A small navy blue box. “Open it. And before you ask, I already cleared it with your pinheaded hellren. He’s not jel or anything.” Mary sat back and shook her head. “I’m more worried about you—” “Justopenthefuckingthingalready.” Taking off the top, she found a slightly smaller box inside. That was velvet. “What is this?” As she lifted the lid, she…gasped. It was a pair of diamond earrings. A pair of perfectly matched, sparkly, diamond… “A mother’s tears,” Lassiter’s slightly echo-y voice said softly. “So hard, so beautiful. I told you everything was going to be all right. And those are to remind you of how strong you are, how strong your love for your daughter is…how, even in the worst of times, things have a way of working out as they should.” Blinking away tears, she thought of her crying in the foyer in front of the angel, crying because all had been lost. “They’re just beautiful,” she said hoarsely. -Lassiter & Mary

Am I dreaming?” Bing asked. “I told you,” Manx said. “The road to Christmasland is paved in dreams. This old car can slip right out of the everyday world and onto the secret roads of thought. Sleep is just the exit ramp. When a passenger dozes off, my Wraith leaves whatever road it was on and slides onto the St. Nick Parkway. We are sharing this dream together. It is your dream, Bing. But it is still my ride. Come. I want to show you something.

The individual consciousness also has toxins. The hells, hungry ghost, and animal realms are in us. If we want them to appear, they can appear right away. We only need to press a button and Pandora's box will open. If we sit there and allow the negative thinking connected to past experiences to come up, we are eating the toxic matter of consciousness. Many of us sit and think, and the more we think, the more angry, upset and in despair we become.

GORDON WAY DRIFTED miserably along the dark road, or rather, tried to drift. He felt that as a ghost—which is what he had to admit to himself he had become—he should be able to drift. He knew little enough about ghosts, but he felt that if you were going to be one then there ought to be certain compensations for not having a physical body to lug around, and that among them ought to be the ability simply to drift. But no, it seemed he was going to have to walk every step of the way.

She sat on the end of the dock, shoes and socks off, feet trailing in the water, to wrestle with the knot. When she was on coke—yeah, she had done that, too—she could’ve struggled with the knot for a happy hour, enjoying it as much as sex. She would’ve played that knot like Slash hammering out a guitar solo. But after five minutes she quit. No point. There would be a knife in the tackle box. You had to know when it made sense to try to untangle something and when to just cut the motherfucker loose.

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head There's devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands You need one more drop of poison and you'll dream of foreign lands When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone Frank Ryan brought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the Devil's in the chair And in the Euston tavern you screamed it was your shout But they wouldn't give you service so you kicked the windows out They took you out into the street and kicked you in the brains So you walked back in through a bolted door and did it all again At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the Devil's in the chair You remember that foul evening when you heard the banshees howl There was lousy drunken bastards singing Billy in the Bowl They took you up to midnight mass and left you in the lurch So you dropped a button in the plate and spewed up in the church Now you'll sing a song of liberty for blacks and Paks and Jocks And they'll take you from this dump you're in and stick you in a box Then they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground But you'll stick your head back out and shout "We'll have another round" At the gravesite of Cuchulainn we'll kneel around and pray And God is in his heaven, and Billy's down by the bay "The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn

I began to think that you wouldn’t play someone you couldn’t beat,” said Arin. Kestrel looked up from her piano to see him standing by the doors she had left open, then glanced at the Bite and Sting set lying on a table by the garden windows. “Not at all,” said Kestrel. “I have been busy.” His gaze flicked to the piano. “So I’ve heard.” Kestrel moved to sit at the table and said, “I’m intrigued by your choice of room.” He hesitated, and she thought he was ready to deny any responsibility of choice, to pretend that a ghost had left that tile on the piano. Then he shut the doors behind him. The room, though large, felt suddenly small. Arin crossed the room to join her at the table. He said, “I didn’t like playing in your suite.” She decided not to take offense. She had asked him to be honest. Kestrel mixed the tiles, but when she set a box of matches on the table, he said, “Let’s play for something else.” Kestrel didn’t move her hand from the box’s lid. Again she wondered what he could offer her, what he could gamble, and she could think of nothing. Arin said, “If I win, I will ask a question, and you will answer.” She felt a nervous flutter. “I could lie. People lie.” “I’m willing to risk it.” “If those are your stakes, then I assume my prize would be the same.” “If you win.” She still could not quite agree. “Questions and answers are highly irregular stakes in Bite and Sting,” she said irritably. “Whereas matches make the perfect ante, and are so exciting to win and lose.” “Fine.” Kestrel tossed the box to the carpet, where it landed with a muffled sound. Arin didn’t look satisfied or amused or anything at all. He simply drew his hand. She did the same. They played in intent concentration, and Kestrel was determined to win. She didn’t.

There were noises coming from the spare bedroom. It sounded like ripping cardboard. There was low muttering. Maddy walked forwards quietly, hearing every footstep against the carpet. She stopped in the doorway and looked into the room. There was a pale, gaunt man sitting cross-legged on the floor, rifling through the boxes. His clothes and skin were wet and dripping. There was sand everywhere. His skin looked waxy, almost blue in places, and she knew immediately that he was a ghost by the strange restlessness he'd brought with him into the room, a restlessness and a clamouring, as if he had just disturbed a colony of nesting seabirds.

Martin Silenus had been writing notes on a pad but now he stood and paced the length of the room. “Jesus Christ, people. Look at us. We’re not six fucking pilgrims, we’re a mob. Hoyt there with his cruciform carrying the ghost of Paul Duré. Our ‘semisentient’ erg in the box there. Colonel Kassad with his memory of Moneta. M. Brawne there, if we are to believe her tale, carrying not only an unborn child but a dead Romantic poet. Our scholar with the child his daughter used to be. Me with my muse. The Consul with whatever fucking baggage he’s brought to this insane trek. My God, people, we should have received a fucking group rate for this trip.

Who was the Ghost?" "Her cousin Freddy, He'd hung himself in the summer. He was fifteen. They were really close Freddy & Sheryll." "What did he want?" 'He said there was pictures in his family's barn of guys in their underwear. He told us right where to find them, hidden under a floorboard. He said he didn't want his parents to know he was gay and be anymore upset than they were. He said that's why he killed himself, because he didn't want to be gay anymore. Then he said, 'souls aren't boys and aren't girls. They're only souls. He said there is no gay and he had made is mama sorrowful for nothin'. I remember that exactly. That he used the word sorrowful.

Those days and nights at the motel, I thought I was afraid of his ghost, but I wasn’t. I was afraid of my loneliness. And how I’d been tricked. And the way I’d convinced myself of so much: that I wasn’t sad, that I wasn’t alone. I was afraid of the man who I’d loved, and how he had been a stranger. I was afraid of how I hated him. How I wanted him back. Of what was in those boxes and what I might someday discover and the chance I may have lost by leaving them behind. I was afraid of the way we’d lived without opening doors. I was afraid we had never been at home with each other. I was afraid of the lies I’d told myself. The lies he’d told me. I was afraid that our legs under the table had meant nothing. The folding of laundry had meant nothing. The tea and the cakes and the songs—all of it—had meant nothing.

We all have skeletons in our closets, they say. My family included. But ours hid in the attic, not the closet. They hid among the journals, photos, shoe boxes, wedding dress, and board games. Ours were tumbling out. I had to clean up the mess alone—hide the evidence. If this is what new beginnings looked like, I didn’t want one. If starting over meant facing the ghosts that haunt the past, I wanted to keep the past. But there was no going back. I knew too much. I’d seen the bones. I’d met the monsters. My parents wore masks to make them look happy, to hide secrets, to tell us they loved us. Even I wore a mask to hide my own monster. But now the masks had fallen off, and sliding them back on wouldn’t hide the truth anymore. What was seen could not be unseen. The new beginning was here to be faced, like it or hate it.

[...]a man and a boy, side by side on a yellow Swedish sofa from the 1950s that the man had bought because it somehow reminded him of a zoot suit, watching the A’s play Baltimore, Rich Harden on the mound working that devious ghost pitch, two pairs of stocking feet, size 11 and size 15, rising from the deck of the coffee table at either end like towers of the Bay Bridge, between the feet the remains in an open pizza box of a bad, cheap, and formerly enormous XL meat lover’s special, sausage, pepperoni, bacon, ground beef, and ham, all of it gone but crumbs and parentheses of crusts left by the boy, brackets for the blankness of his conversation and, for all the man knew, of his thoughts, Titus having said nothing to Archy since Gwen’s departure apart from monosyllables doled out in response to direct yes-or-nos, Do you like baseball? you like pizza? eat meat? pork?, the boy limiting himself whenever possible to a tight little nod, guarding himself at his end of the sofa as if riding on a crowded train with something breakable on his lap, nobody saying anything in the room, the city, or the world except Bill King and Ken Korach calling the plays, the game eventless and yet blessedly slow, player substitutions and deep pitch counts eating up swaths of time during which no one was required to say or to decide anything, to feel what might conceivably be felt, to dread what might be dreaded, the game standing tied at 1 and in theory capable of going on that way forever, or at least until there was not a live arm left in the bullpen, the third-string catcher sent in to pitch the thirty-second inning, batters catnapping slumped against one another on the bench, dead on their feet in the on-deck circle, the stands emptied and echoing, hot dog wrappers rolling like tumbleweeds past the diehards asleep in their seats, inning giving way to inning as the dawn sky glowed blue as the burner on a stove, and busloads of farmhands were brought in under emergency rules to fill out the weary roster, from Sacramento and Stockton and Norfolk, Virginia, entire villages in the Dominican ransacked for the flower of their youth who were loaded into the bellies of C-130s and flown to Oakland to feed the unassuageable appetite of this one game for batsmen and fielders and set-up men, threat after threat giving way to the third out, weak pop flies, called third strikes, inning after inning, week after week, beards growing long, Christmas coming, summer looping back around on itself, wars ending, babies graduating from college, and there’s ball four to load the bases for the 3,211th time, followed by a routine can of corn to left, the commissioner calling in varsity teams and the stars of girls’ softball squads and Little Leaguers, Archy and Titus sustained all that time in their equally infinite silence, nothing between them at all but three feet of sofa;

In 1963, Skinner’s Harvard colleagues Charles Catania and David Cutts put humans through the pigeon paces by instructing each of twenty-six undergraduate subjects to press one of two different buttons on a box whenever a yellow light flashed and to try to accumulate as many points as possible on a counter. Whenever the subject gained a point a green light flashed. A red light indicated that the session was over, which was when the subject reached one hundred points. Unbeknownst to the subjects, only the right button could generate points, and those points were delivered on a VI schedule of reinforcement, with an average time between point delivery of thirty seconds. The results were revealing in that human brains are no less superstitious than bird brains: most of the subjects quickly developed superstitious button-pushing patterns between the left and right buttons, because if they pressed the left button just before the right button happened to deliver a point, that particular pattern was reinforced. Once subjects established a superstitious button-pushing pattern, they stuck with that pattern throughout the session because they continued to be reinforced for it.

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings and some are treasured for their markings-- they cause the eyes to melt or the body to shriek without pain. I have never seen one fly, but sometimes they perch on the hand. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight and rests its soft machine on the ground: then the world is dim and bookish like engravings under tissue paper. Rain is when the earth is television. It has the properites of making colours darker. Model T is a room with the lock inside -- a key is turned to free the world for movement, so quick there is a film to watch for anything missed. But time is tied to the wrist or kept in a box, ticking with impatience. In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps, that snores when you pick it up. If the ghost cries, they carry it to their lips and soothe it to sleep with sounds. And yet, they wake it up deliberately, by tickling with a finger. Only the young are allowed to suffer openly. Adults go to a punishment room with water but nothing to eat. They lock the door and suffer the noises alone. No one is exempt and everyone's pain has a different smell. At night, when all the colours die, they hide in pairs and read about themselves -- in colour, with their eyelids shut.

I jumped then. It seemed I heard a child laugh. My imagination, of course. And then, when I should have known better, I headed for the closet and the high and narrow door at the very back end and the steep and narrow dark stairs. A million times I’d ascended these stairs. A million times in the dark, without a candle, or a flashlight. Up into the dark, eerie, gigantic attic, and only when I was there did I feel around for the place where Chris and I had hidden our candles and matches. Still there. Time did stand still in this place. We’d had several candle holders, all of pewter with small handles to grasp. Holders we’d found in an old trunk along with boxes and boxes of short, stubby, clumsily made candles. We’d always presumed them to be homemade candles, for they had smelled so rank and old when they burned. My breath caught! Oh! It was the same! The paper flowers still dangled down, mobiles to sway in the drafts, and the giant flowers were still on the walls. Only all the colors had faded to indistinct gray—ghost flowers. The sparkling gem centers we’d glued on had loosened, and now only a few daisies had sequins, or gleaming stones, for centers. Carrie’s purple worm was there only now he too was a nothing color. Cory’s epileptic snail didn’t appear a bright, lopsided beach ball now, it was more a tepid, half-rotten squashy orange. The BEWARE signs Chris and I had painted in red were still on the walls, and the swings still dangled down from the attic rafters. Over near the record player was the barre Chris had fashioned, then nailed to the wall so I could practice my ballet positions. Even my outgrown costumes hung limply from nails, dozens of them with matching leotards and worn out pointe shoes, all faded and dusty, rotten smelling. As in an unhappy dream I was committed to, I drifted aimlessly toward the distant schoolroom, with the candelight flickering. Ghosts were unsettled, memories and specters followed me as things began to wake up, yawn and whisper. No, I told myself, it was only the floating panels of my long chiffon wings . . . that was all. The spotted rocking-horse loomed up, scary and threatening, and my hand rose to my throat as I held back a scream. The rusty red wagon seemed to move by unseen hands pushing it, so my eyes took flight to the blackboard where I’d printed my enigmatic farewell message to those who came in the future. How was I to know it would be me? We lived in the attic, Christopher, Cory, Carrie and me— Now there are only three. Behind the small desk that had been Cory’s I scrunched down, and tried to fit my legs under. I wanted to put myself into a deep reverie that would call up Cory’s spirit that would tell me where he lay.

Jackaby,” said Marlowe. “Marlowe,” said Jackaby. “Good morning, Mayor Spade.” Spade had doffed his jacket. It was draped over the back of his chair, and a coffee brown bow tie hung undone over his beige waistcoat. He had a full beard and a perfectly bald dome, and he wore a thick pair of spectacles. Spade was not an intimidating figure at his best, and today he looked like he was several rounds into a boxing match he had no aspirations of winning. He had seemed more vibrant the first time we met, and that had been at a funeral. “I haven’t been up here in years,” continued Jackaby. “You’ve done something with the front garden, haven’t you?” “Yes,” said Spade. “We’ve let it grow back. Mary still hasn’t forgiven you.” “Is that why she’s been avoiding me? Your eyebrows have filled in nicely, by the way, and you can tell your wife the roses look healthier than ever. I’m sure being rid of that nest of pesky brownies did wonders for the roots. I understand a little ash is good for the soil, too.” “I never saw any brownies, but there was certainly plenty of ash to go around,” Spade mumbled. “That fire spread so quickly we’re lucky we managed to snuff it out at all.” “You should try blowing up a dragon some time,” I said. “No, scratch that. That went terribly. I don’t recommend it.” “Impressive blast radius, though,” Jackaby confirmed. Mayor Spade looked from me to my employer and rubbed the bridge of his nose with one hand. “Good lord, one of you was quite enough. You had to recruit?

Madison turns to me. “Do you wanna play?” “Of course,” I say, following her to her bedroom, figuring it best to give her mother some space, lest I push her too far and she punch me in the face. I’m secure in my manhood. I have no qualms playing with dolls. So when Madison shoves a Barbie at me, I don’t even balk. I’ll give her the best goddamn Barbie performance she ever saw, if that’s what she wants. I stare at the Barbie, though, as Madison digs through a toy box. It looks different than the ones my sister played with growing up. This Barbie looks more like a scientist than a stripper, fully clothed, her hair still intact. “Found it!” Madison says, holding up another doll. I freeze when I look at it, seeing the familiar white and blue suit and the head of blond hair. You’ve gotta be kidding me. They made me into a doll. Or him, rather. Breezeo. Not an action figure, no—a straight up collector’s edition Barbie doll. “I’ll be Breezeo and Barbie can be Maryanne for you,” she says, sitting down on the floor and patting the wood beside her. “Wait, shouldn’t I be Breezeo?” “You’re him all the time, so it’s my turn now.” Well, can’t argue with that logic. “Barbie’s got the wrong color hair,” I say. “Don’t you have a Maryanne doll?” “No, ‘cuz it costs too many dollars, but you can pretend, right?” “Right,” I say, although she suddenly looks skeptical, like she doubts my abilities. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” She starts things off. I don’t know what’s happening, and she doesn’t give me any direction, so I’m improvising. She switches things up on me, throwing in plot twists. We’re on the run from some bad guys before suddenly we’re in school. I graduate, we both become veterinarians to her stuffed animals, and next thing I know, I’m running for president of the world.

Roll call. What’s this week’s all scatter word?” “Lowdown,” said Camilla. “And the all clear?” “Deadweight,” said Nona. “Perfect. What are your stations if that thing in the sky even looks like it’s about to start periscoping?” “The underground tunnels by the fish market,” said Camilla. “The big underpass bridge dugout,” said Nona. “Ten points to you both. And what do you do once you’re there?” “Hide until you come,” said Nona, and then added, truthfully: “And rescue any nearby animals so long as they don’t exceed the size of a box, and are wooly rather than hairy.” “Half points. No animals, hairy or wooly, I don’t care. Cam?” Camilla had finished with her hat, and now she was easing the big dark glasses onto her face— the ones she kept specially, despite the fact that they were a little unbalanced on her nose and her ears. They made both Palamedes and Camilla look chilly and clinical, but as Palamedes said, they solved the problem of the ghost limb. Without them he was everlastingly pushing something up his nose that wasn’t there. And Nona thought Camilla privately rather liked them. She settled them on, considered the question, and said: “Fight.” “No points. Camilla if you engage with a Herald, you’re not coming home.” “That’s your theory,” said Camilla. “There’s data behind it. Hect—” “If Camilla gets to fight, I should get to keep adjacent dogs,” said Nona decidedly. “Even if they’re hairy.” Pyrrha turned her eyes up to the ceiling in mute appeal. Her exhalation rasped loudly against the vent in her mask. “I used to run the whole Bureau,” she said, and now she didn’t sound like she was addressing either of them. “Now I’m up against wannabe heroes and hairy dogs. This is the punishment she would’ve wanted for me. God, she must be pissing herself laughing… let’s go kids. Like hell am I walking in this heat.

And when I wrote my play, how wrong I went. Was I such an emulator and fool that I needed a third party to tell us about the fate of two people who were making life difficult for each other? How easily I fell into that trap. And I surely ought to have known that this third party, who appears in all lives and literatures, this ghost of a third person, has no meaning at all, that he ought to be disavowed. He is one of Nature’s pretexts, for she is always at pains to distract humanity from her deepest secrets. He is the screen behind which a drama unfolds. He is the noise at the entrance to the voiceless quiet of a genuine conflict. I’m tempted to think that everyone has hitherto found it too difficult to speak about the two people at the heart of it; the third one, precisely because he is so unreal, is the easiest part of the task, anyone could write him. Right from the beginning of these dramas you notice their impatience to get to the third party, they can hardly wait for him to appear. Once he’s there, everything is fine. But how boring it is if he’s late, absolutely nothing can happen without him, everything comes to a standstill, pauses, waits. Yes, and what if they didn’t get past this pile-up, this logjam? What if, Mr Playwright, and you, the Public, who know about life, what if he were lost without trace, this well-liked man-about-town or this bumptious young person who fits into every marriage like a master-key? What if, for instance, he has been whisked off by the Devil? Let’s assume he has. You suddenly notice the artificial emptiness of theatres, they’re walled up like dangerous holes, and only the moths from the cushioned edges of the boxes tumble down through the hollow space with nothing to hold on to. Playwrights no longer enjoy the exclusive areas of town. All the prying public is looking on their behalf in the far corners of the world for the irreplaceable person who was the very embodiment of the action. And at the same time they’re living amongst the people, not these ‘third parties’, but the two people about whom an incredible amount could be said, but about whom nothing has ever yet been said, although they suffer and get on with things and don’t know how to manage.

I told you before--you mustn’t let Edward scare you. He’s a bully and a coward. What would Frank Merriwell do if he were you?” Frank Merriwell--I was thoroughly sick of hearing that name. “I don’t care what some dumb guy in a story would do. I’m not going to fight Edward.” “Fight me then.” Hannah raised her fists and danced around on her bare feet, bouncing, ducking, and swinging at the air around my head. “Pretend I’m Edward!” I ducked a punch, and she swung again. “Put up your dukes,” she ordered, “defend yourself, sir.” This time Hannah clipped my chin hard enough to knock me down. Her shirtwaist was completely untucked, her face was smudged, her hair was tumbling down her back and hanging in her eyes. “On your feet, sir,” she shouted. “Let’s see your fighting spirit!” Hannah was making so much noise she didn’t hear John Larkin push aside the branches and enter the grove. When he saw her take another swing at me, he started laughing. Hannah whirled around, her face scarlet, and stared at John. “What do you mean by sneaking up on us like a common Peeping Tom?” “With the noise you’ve been making, you wouldn’t have noticed a herd of rampaging elephants.” John was still laughing, but Hannah was furious. Putting her fists on her hips, she scowled at him. “Well, now you know the truth about me. I’m no lady and I never claimed to be one. I suppose you’ll start taking Amelia Carter for rides in your precious tin lizzie and treating her to sodas at your father’s drugstore. I’m sure she’d never brawl with her brothers.” Theo and I looked at each other. We were both hoping Hannah would make John leave. Before he came along and ruined everything, we’d been having fun. To my disappointment, John didn’t seem to realize he was unwanted. Leaning against a tree, he watched Hannah run her hands through her hair. “I don’t know what you’re so fired up about,” he said. “Why should I want to take Amelia anywhere? I’ve never met a more boring girl. As for her brothers--a little brawling wouldn’t hurt them. Or Amelia either.” Hannah turned away, her face flushed, and John winked at me. “Your sister’s first rate,” he said, “but I wager I know a sight more about boxing than she does. Why not let me show you a thing or two?” Happy again, Hannah smiled at John. “What a grand idea! But go slow, Andrew’s still weak.” When John took off his jacket, I edged closer to Hannah. “I like your lessons,” I said to her, scowling at John. He was rolling up his sleeves, probably to show off his muscles. Next to him, I was nothing but a skinny little baby. He’d knock me flat and everyone would laugh at me.

So, uh, where should I…?” I told up the pizza boxes as I trail off. “Oh, right. Kitchen table’s fine.” “I’ll show you!” Madison announces, as if I don’t know where it is, but I let her lead me there anyway. Kennedy shuts the door and follows behind us. I set the boxes on the table, and Madison doesn’t hesitate, popping the top one open. She makes a face, looking horrified. “Gross!” “What in the world are you—?” Kennedy laughs as she glances at the pizza. “Ham and pineapple.” “Why is that fruit on the pizza?” Madison asks. “Because it’s good,” Kennedy says, snatching the top box away before opening the other one. “There, that one’s for you.” Madison shrugs it off, grabbing a slice of cheese pizza, eating straight from the box. I’m gathering this is normal, since Kennedy sits down beside her to do the same. “You remembered,” she says plucking a piece of pineapple off a slice of pizza and popping it in her mouth. “Of course,” I say, grabbing a slice of cheese from the box Madison is hoarding. “Pretty sure I’m scarred for life because of it. Not something I can forget.” She laughs, the sound soft, as she gives me one of the most genuine smiles I’ve seen in a while. It fades as she averts her gaze, but goddamn it, it happened. “You shoulda gots the breads,” Madison says, standing on her chair as she leans closer, vying for my attention like she’s afraid I might not see her. “And the chickens!” “Ah, didn’t know you liked those,” I tell her, “or I would’ve gotten them.” “Next time,” she says, just like that, no question about it. “Next time,” I say. “And soda, too,” she says. “No soda,” Kennedy chimes in. Madison glances at her mother before leaning even closer, damn near right up on me, whisper-shouting, “Soda.” “I’m not so sure your mom will like that,” I say. “It’s okay,” Madison says. “She tells Grandpa no soda, too, but he lets me have it.” “That’s because you emotionally blackmail him,” Kennedy says. “Nuh-uh!” Madison says, looking at her mother. “I don’t blackmail him!” Kennedy scoffs. “How do you know? You don’t even know what that means.” “So?” Madison says. “I don’t mail him nothing!” ... “You give him those sad puppy-dog eyes,” Kennedy says, grabbing Madison by the chin, squeezing her chubby cheeks. “And you tell him you’ll love him ‘the mostest’ if he gives you some Coca-Cola to drink.” “ ‘Cuz I will,” Madison says. “That’s emotional blackmail.” “Oh.” Madison makes a face, turning to me when her mother lets go of her. “How ‘bout root beer?” “I’m afraid not,” I tell her. “Sorry.” Madison scowls, hopping down from the table to grab a juice box from the refrigerator.

I leave him there and head for the kitchen, sighing when I see a chair shoved over to the counter, Maddie standing on it, digging through the cabinets. “What do you think you’re doing, little girl?” “Looking for the Lucky Charms,” she says as I pull her down and set her on her feet. “I’m afraid we’re all out.” I grab a box of Cheerios. “How about these?” She makes a face of disgust. “Raisin Bran?” Another face. “How about some cottage cheese?” She pretends to gag. “Uh, well, how about—?” “How about I take you out for breakfast?” Jonathan suggests, stepping into the kitchen. “Pancakes, sausage, eggs…” “Bacon!” Maddie declares. “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, you know, with the whole you being you thing.” “Me being me,” he says. “Yeah, chances are you’ll get recognized and then have to explain this whole thing and well, you know, I’m not sure it’s worth it for some breakfast.” “But it might be bacon,” Maddie whines. Jonathan hesitates, thinking it over, glancing between us before he says, “I know somewhere we can go.” Mrs. McKleski’s place. Landing Inn. That’s where he takes us. Maddie and I stand in the woman’s foyer in our pajamas, while Jonathan wears just the leather pants from the Knightmare costume. Mrs. McKleski looks at us like we’ve gone crazy, and I instantly want to be anywhere else in the world, but it’s too late, because Maddie’s been promised some bacon. “You want breakfast,” Mrs. McKleski says. “That’s what you’re telling me?” He nods. “Yes, ma'am.” She stares at him. Hard. I expect a denial, because this whole idea is absurd, but after a moment, she lets out a resigned sigh. “Fine, but go put on some clothes,” she says. “This is an inn, Mr. Cunningham, not Chippendales. I won’t have you at my breakfast table looking like a gigolo.” He cocks an eyebrow at the woman. “Wasn’t aware you knew what a gigolo was.” “Go,” she says pointedly, “before I change my mind.” “Yes, ma’am,” he says, flashing her a smile before turning to me and nodding toward the stairs. “Join me?” I stare at him, not moving. He steps closer. “Please?” “Fine,” I mumble, glancing at Maddie, not wanting to cause a scene. “Hey, sweetheart, why don’t you have a seat in the living room?” “Nonsense,” Mrs. McKleski says. “She can come help me cook. Teach her some responsibility. Not sure her father ever learned any.” Jonathan scowls before again motioning for me to follow him. “And no hanky-panky,” Mrs. McKleski calls to us as we start upstairs. “What’s the hanky-panky?” Maddie asks, following the woman to the kitchen. “She means the hokey-pokey,” I yell down before Mrs. McKleski can answer, because there’s no telling how that woman would explain it. “Oh, I like the hokey-pokey!” Maddie looks at the woman with confusion. “Why don’t you wanna play it?” “Too messy,” Mrs. McKleski grumbles. “All that turning yourself around.” Shaking my head, I go upstairs, stalling right inside the room as Jonathan sorts through his belongings to find some clothes.

Someone—Tony or Warner Bros.?—had decided that the grueling schedule and the added tension in the band might be alleviated somewhat by the relative comfort of bus touring versus Old Blue. It was a nice idea. It might have even been a gambit to see if the camaraderie of sharing a luxurious living situation might heal the band’s broken bonds. So we loaded all of our gear into the parking lot behind our apartment and waited for our new accommodations to arrive. Everyone, I think even Jay, was excited about the prospect of spending at least some small part of our lives seeing what it was like to tour in style. That was until he laid eyes on the Ghost Rider. What we were picturing was sleek and non-ostentatious like the buses we had seen parked in front of theaters at sold-out shows by the likes of R.E.M. or the Replacements. Instead, what we got was one of Kiss’s old touring coaches—a seventies-era Silver Eagle decked out with an airbrushed mural in a style I can only describe as “black-light poster–esque,” depicting a pirate ship buffeted by a stormy sea with a screaming skeleton standing in the crow’s nest holding a Gibson Les Paul aloft and being struck by lightning. The look on Jay’s face was tragic. I felt bad for him. This was not a serious vehicle. I’m not sure how we talked him into climbing aboard, and once we did, I have no idea how we got him to stay, because the interior was even worse. White leather, mirrored ceilings, and a purple neon sign in the back lounge informing everyone, in cursive, that they were aboard the “Ghost Rider” lest they forget. So we embarked upon Uncle Tupelo’s last tour learning how to sleep while being shot at eighty miles per hour down the highway inside a metal box that looked like the VIP room at a strip club and made us all feel like we were living inside a cocaine straw. Ghost Rider indeed.

Clara gathered up her courage and climbed out of bed. Moonlight illuminated her room, scattered with cardboard boxes, the lids peeled open. From one she hefted out her Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which she figured suitable weapon for doing battle with ghosts trying to take up residence under the stairwell. She held the substantial bulk of the alphabet in her hands, a word for every reality. Madness was for when words failed.

FORTUNE COOKIE THE BLACK WIDOW SPIDER MYSTERY THE RADIO MYSTERY THE MYSTERY OF THE RUNAWAY GHOST THE FINDERS KEEPERS MYSTERY THE MYSTERY OF THE HAUNTED BOXCAR THE CLUE IN THE CORN MAZE THE GHOST OF THE CHATTERING BONES THE SWORD OF THE SILVER KNIGHT THE GAME STORE MYSTERY THE MYSTERY OF THE ORPHAN TRAIN THE VANISHING PASSENGER THE GIANT YO-YO MYSTERY THE CREATURE IN OGOPOGO LAKE THE ROCK ’N’ ROLL MYSTERY THE SECRET OF THE MASK THE SEATTLE PUZZLE THE GHOST IN THE FIRST ROW THE BOX THAT WATCH FOUND A HORSE NAMED DRAGON THE GREAT DETECTIVE RACE T

So many questions. So much pain. I felt like someone had ripped open my chest only to discover a dark, rotting cavity. Nevertheless, my silence was my surrender. Klammer motioned to Blondie, who stepped to the

and now he was in America’s only haunted supermarket being stalked by Maria Cooper. This isn’t right, he thought. Ghosts are supposed to hang out at houses. It’s a rule. They’re not allowed to chase you around the supermarket.

You get up, eat, sleep, use the litter box, eat, sleep, chase ghosts and laser pointers, and eat again. Is that the secret to happiness? Don’t think about anything, just live in the present?

I crash into an invisible wall as Deke walks through the doorway. I watch as he continues to the elevator and hops on. Meanwhile, I'm banging against the invisible wall. I probably look like a mime pretending to be stuck in a box. Hey, have we ever stopped to think, maybe they are actually stuck in a box and they're ghosts trying to escape? Well, there's some food for thought. "Well, that's an interesting development, guess you're stuck with me, Casper." Well, crap-sticks.