The horseman - part 6

How do you describe the ghost of a ghost? She was a death that hadn’t happened yet – nothing more than a shimmering possibility. We were sitting on the kerb together, watching the girl who might bring her into being as she stood trembling, high up on the hotel roof opposite. A crowd had gathered and some police officer was trying to talk her down.

There was little I could say to help my companion or the terrible emptiness she described. But she seemed comforted by my presence, so I stayed until the officer succeeded, the crowd cheered, the girl came down and her ghost’s ghost dissolved into a sunbeam.

That dismal mining town was full to bursting with disgruntled spirits and I was finding them hard to cope with. A few days later, I was drinking myself into oblivion in some bar a few blocks away when the girl herself came up and asked whether she knew me. I was so lonely and, having sat with her death, I knew her better than she knew herself. But it wouldn’t have been fair to drag her into my life, the way it was. I just smiled sadly and carried on drinking.