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and son had left the area
not long after they’d buried him, relocating to New Zealand. Their absence must
have driven Tom’s wraith insane, and all he could do to be near them was ram
fistfuls of the earth they’d loved into his maw.
    The dead have boundaries, lines and
borders that cannot be crossed. We are tied to places, not people; and
sometimes those we leave behind move on to destinations where we are unable to
follow.
    I averted my eyes and moved on. I
had no desire to attract Tom’s attention, or to disturb what must be his
nightly ordeal. Unstable spectral images of livestock that had been culled
during the last B.S.E scare flickered in and out of focus around him, like a
weird strobe effect. Tom reached out for them with mud-spattered hands, but the
cows vanished before he could make any kind of contact, only to reappear
elsewhere in the field, as if teasing him, or playing some kind of ghostly game
of tag.
    My clothes refused to dry as I
walked, and my skin remained grey-white and sodden, the colour and texture of
damp tripe. A consequence of my return, I thought. I didn’t even pause to
wonder why I’d been allowed back into the land of the living, just accepted
that I was there. To paraphrase a classic, there are far stranger things in
heaven and earth than my limited philosophy can comprehend.
    I passed not a single car as I trod
the narrow and winding road to the cottage; nor did I see any other pedestrians
braving the chill night air. Whether anyone would have been able to see me is a
question that I cannot answer. Perhaps, I thought then, only those dear to me
might perceive my presence. Or perhaps were I to enter a building, I’d register
only as a faint wind in the room despite closed doors and windows, a sudden
chill in the air, a partially glimpsed movement in an otherwise empty chamber…
    The little rose garden I’d tended in
life was overgrown and stricken with weeds, the plants and flowers all gone
brown and rotten. Things had been left to die, just like I’d done. I guessed
that Molly must still be deep in mourning to allow things to slide in this way.
    The lights were on in the cottage,
and I could see dim figures bobbing behind the dirty windows. The front door
was chipped, the paint peeling like scabs from damaged flesh; even the bricks
were flaking away, shedding in great patches like dry, reddened epidermis.
    This was the house we’d bought
together three months after the wedding, the place where Molly had given birth
to our children, and where we’d begun to raise them. And here it was falling
apart at the seams, sinking deeper and deeper into a mess of disrepair and
neglect.
    The state of the house seemed to
reflect the condition of my wasted mortal remains when they were put in the
ground, and of the three broken hearts that it held within its crumbling walls.
    I glided right through the battered
wooden door, passing into the house on a current of stale air that rushed to
aid my transition from one place to the next.
    My young son, Gary, was in the
process of climbing the stairs, a moth-eaten old teddy bear in one hand, and a
glass of water gripped tightly in the other. As if sensing his daddy’s spirit,
the boy stopped, turned. Gazed down into the dark hallway.
    I screamed but no sound came. Only
dark water leaking from the sides of my mouth.
    Gary’s face was prematurely aged,
his eyes sunken into a haggard midget’s skull. His pretty blonde hair was thin
and wispy, falling out in dry clumps. He’d become an old, old man looking out
from the body of a four-year-old boy.
    I went through into the lounge when
my son resumed his steady ascent to the first floor, and saw my three-year-old
daughter sitting before a flickering television screen. There was a framed
photograph of me on the low table beside her – a portrait taken long ago, when
she was just a babe-in-arms.
    One of Katie’s arms was dangling
slack at the shoulder, the joint having jumped, or been pulled, from