At some point, before Chief Roger arrived, Peter lifted Dickon up off the floor and carried him into the kitchen where he laid out the boy on the barn-red table. It seemed a long time since this afternoon, when they'd all been sitting in discussion, every one of them safe and sound, including the little tyke. The boy lay as if in a peaceful sleep. His eyes closed, his face tranquil. It made it seem like his last moments had not been as violent, and confusing, as they most certainly had been. Alyssa and Miranda-Julia stood there and watched as a bed sheet was pulled over the child. Alyssa had cried. Peter had tried to say something to Miranda-Julia, whose pout concealed as much as it projected, but she'd just spun away and left the room.
Later on, after the Chief was there, but occupied, Peter took Alyssa by the arm and they scrambled back in to the kitchen for a quick conference.
“Lyssie, what do we do about him?” Peter asked her, making a weak gesture at the body on the table. “What do we tell Gil's dad? We have to think of something. If we don’t…" Peter’s frustration was growing.
Alyssa had been overcome, once again, when she saw the bundle on the kitchen table. Still lost in dire thoughts, she pulled herself together as much as she could. "Peter, there's gonna be a lot to explain already. We should be straight with him," she said, wiping her moist eyes with her hand.
"We should tell him everything about Dickon? Everything? That he's a celestial being?"
Alyssa nodded. "Yes."
Peter seemed uncertain, and he was starting to feel overwhelmed. "We can't let them process him like he's some kind of John Doe. He's special, Lyssie. We can't just let them take him and..."
Alyssa put her hands on him. "Let's not start telling lies. We're gonna need Roger on our side. Maybe we'll come up with something else. Something better than turning him over to the county."
Peter was crestfallen. His arms crossed protectively. "I just..." he started to say, but stopped. He was far too confused to feel anything definite. Of one thing he was certain - there was no life in the boy’s body. He was as sure of it as he'd been sure that the Bunyine was near its own end. Dickon was vacant in a way nothing living felt to Peter. Something precious had been lost. Something that, if it could have been named, could never have been measured. Alyssa relented and put her arms entirely around him.
“I know what you're thinking, Peter. I know you," she said gently. "You're blaming yourself. Don't do that. Please, don't do that. Please. I need you. We all need you."
Peter frowned dimly. "Okay, but..."
She squeezed him, shaking her head. "No, Peter. No."
Peter was silent for a few seconds. "Okay." He didn't agree, though. As much as he wanted to, he didn't agree.
Peter made the initial call to Gil’s father, and just as he had done this morning in town, Chief Roger of the Sparkle Police Force took charge of the crime scene at the Huffy residence. Unlike this morning, however, there was little doubt as to what had been the cause of the event. Roger saw the culprit when he stepped through the hole that used to be the front door. Peter hadn’t prepared the Police Chief for what he was about to encounter, excepting the giant hole in the front wall. It had seemed pointless to even try when it came to the Bunyine. He caught himself holding his breath when the older man stepped through the front door. Peter had been terrified that the sight of the Bunyine would send him into Cardiac Arrest. At the age of sixty-one, after spending most of his life within the boundaries of the town, Roger got his first look at the true Sparkle.
There is a certain facial expression that rules a man’s face when all the mysteries he’s harbored his whole life, mysteries that evaded all explanations and added up to a fuzzy shape in his mind, suddenly form a clear picture that changes everything. The expression is not as readily recognizable as classics like Terrified, Confused, or Angry. It’s so rare that it doesn’t even have a name of its own. In fact, you might not even know what it is the first time you see it. You may try to explain it away as a mistake on your part. Rose Windward made the look for the first time on this very evening, so did the Chief’s son Gil. Two at once is an unusual amount for such a small population as Sparkle has. It is possibly a state record, without a doubt a county one.
Roger was, indeed, shocked dumb when he entered the Huffy household. He jerked to a stop mid-stride. His jaw froze, then dropped like an anchor. His legs seemed to weaken at the knees, but he did not stumble or fall. He merely felt the challenging fear one expects from encountering the unanticipated. Altogether, it lasted just a few moments, for the sight of his son immediately checked his panic. When his rare type of confusion passed, he raced over to Gil, finding his only child still alive. If you asked Roger Hallestrom what he felt at that very moment, he would tell you that, until right then, he'd never quite understood what the word 'Thankful' truly meant.
Derek was sitting where his mother lay. Roger, remembering his civil obligations, reluctantly tore himself away from his son and hurried over, running around the Bunyine’s still body, forcing himself not to get distracted by it. When he reached the Windwards he fell to one knee. ”How’s she doin’, Derek? How’s your mother?”
Derek was pale and exhausted. “She got hit on her forehead,” the boy said. She was hurt bad, but not in imminent danger. Derek was certain of that, but he didn’t tell the Chief. He didn’t know how to tell something like that.
A few minutes later, Dr. Paulson showed up, his arms stuffed full of emergency supplies. The parties involved, culprit and the victims, alike, were still laid out on the floor of the dining room. The doctor rushed in and yelped when he saw the giant, dead beast sprawled out at the center of the mess. Everything the doctor carried spilled out of his arms on the floor. “My God! What is this! What the heck is…what am I…?” he cried.
Roger pushed himself to his feet and pointed at the carcass. “Don’t pay no mind to that, Dr. Just get working on everybody. All right? I’m gonna get more people here. Get goin’!” A short time later, Roger got on the phone and made several calls. It was apparent to Peter that simply calling for EMTs alone was out of the question. There were other considerations, as well. Roger first called for medical help, then dialed another number
“You need to get here, now!” Roger urged someone. “Don’t ask me nothing, just do what I asked. Pronto!” Whoever he’d called second would have to beat the racing ambulances getting here.
Just a few minutes later, a pickup truck pulled up in front of the house with a load of men in the back. As soon as the truck stopped, the men all leaped out of the bed carrying cinder-blocks and several large, blue tarps. They burst through the missing front entrance, lined up like ducks, only to find themselves facing a nightmare sprawled out on the floor before them. Their alarm was sudden, and intense. Men backed up a few feet, some backed all the way outside the house. Roger, as before, was forceful. He pointed at the dead beast. Their faces formed a skirmish line of rare facial expressions. The record books would remember this evening. “Pick up your jaws and cover this damn thing up!” Roger yelled.
Dickon's flute had been lying on the floor near his hand, as if he'd been reaching for it when he died. Gently, Peter had picked it up. About ten minutes later, Peter went back into the kitchen and found Miranda-Julia sitting at the table, her arms crossed, not looking at the shrouded body that lay there. The expression on her face would have had your average combat veteran feeling rather uneasy and taking note of the exit’s location. She seemed angry, which was a normal way for her to seem, but most of it was hiding beneath the surface where an obvious undercurrent was suggested. Peter sat down in the chair next to her and held out Dickon’s flute before her. “Why don’t you keep it?” he suggested.
Miranda-Julia didn’t even look at it. “What for? I don’t need a stupid flute.”
“We don't even know if he's really dead, Miranda. Or if he even can die. Or if he was even living.” Peter said. They were very hard words for him to say, but he thought he was helping.
Miranda-Julia shook her head savagely. ”Of course he’s dead! That’s what happens when you die, doofus! You get dead!”
Peter’s expression showed not just physical exhaustion, but an emotional one. As if he was tired of having life changing revelations every few minutes. “We don’t even know what he was, Miranda,” Peter said.
Miranda-Julia’s head flicked up, her eyes stabbing like samurai swords. “I know who he was,“ she said. She looked away, her face sour, reflecting the state of her heart. “He was good. He was a boy and he was perfect and good. That thing, Tibb, had better leave town. If it knows what’s good for it, it’ll get far away from me. Cuz if I find him, I’m gonna send him where his brother is.”
Peter nodded. “Look, I know that you…”
“What?” Miranda-Julia snorted, throwing up her hands. “Whatta you know?”
“I know what it’s like, I mean. You're not alone in this. It’s something everybody has to go through. It’s hard, but it’s normal. I’ve lost people, too, Miranda. People I loved. We all have. That doesn’t…”
“Cry me a river!” she yelled. She shot up from her seat, her chair hopped back a couple of feet, then tipped over. Then she was gone. When he heard the front door slam, he didn’t know what to do. He just stared at the door, as if there was something there to be seen. If I was responsible, I’d follow her and offer to drive her home. She would beat me with her Hello Kitty purse, but it would be the responsible thing to do. Miranda-Julia didn’t need him. She didn’t need anyone. Not yet. He knew she would deal with this on her own. Nevertheless, someday she would need help, and Peter swore to himself that he would be there for her. At the very least, he wouldn’t fail her like he’d failed poor Dickon.
Before leaving, Peter and Alyssa rushed upstairs, ostensibly, to clean up, but more happened than a quick shower. Their clothes were torn and bloody, and when Alyssa peeled off her shirt Peter saw a disaster of cuts and punctures running up her back. His sharp intake of breath was all it took to take them both back, back to those dire moments when everything that mattered was almost lost. When they were both stripped down, the gouge running down Peter’s chest, the worst wound between them, made Alyssa burst out in tears. But a minute later, after much emotion, and thanks, their pain seemed a small price to pay for the joy they felt.
At a time for words, there were none. There was nothing words could say that gasps and sobs couldn't say infinitely better. So they left words out of this conversation. For what seemed far too short a time, they could do nothing but be there together. The sounds of the world were drowned out by the touch of the other, silenced by grateful, little whispers of thanks to providence for one more night they would have together. It was another victory. A glorious one.
Rose, Gil and Derek were all taken by ambulance to a hospital the next county over where they were all immediately admitted. Rose and Gil were prioritized by the triage staff. Having been struck by the Huffys’ large dining room table, Rose had a depressed skull fracture on her forehead three inches above her right eye that was only complicated by a concussion. They determined later that she would not require surgery, but she was unconscious and would not be going home any time soon.
Gil had numerous injuries, the worst being the large gouges across his chest and belly that, ultimately, required hundreds of staples and sutures. The most worrisome wound was the bottom-most. The Bunyine’s strike had been more of a smack than a swipe, which was possibly the only reason he’d even survived. His shattered ribs had pierced the large intestines. The top-most cut had nearly penetrated his liver, which might have meant the end. Roger hovered over him, every bit the concerned parent. It was the only thing keeping the local police at bay, who had developed an interest in their situation. They stood around, drinking coffee and tapping their feet, waiting for Roger’s vigil to end and for him to provide answers. So far, he’d said very little, and what he’d said was unconvincing.
Derek waited quietly through registration, and was seen about half an hour after he arrived, Triage putting him ahead of the elderly man complaining of constipation and three teenagers convinced they’d eaten a lethal amount of what they called ‘recreational brownies’. Derek’s stoic manner while his hands were being examined, before the local anesthetics were applied, impressed everyone. At one point, the charge nurse came into the room and watched for a couple of minutes. She remarked that the boy may have as many as twenty sharps embedded under his skin, and that it was possible that not all will be found after only one examination.
The tawny glass had been brittle, and didn’t break the way glass normally does. It didn’t shatter, exactly, as much as crumble into little flakes that felt like they were burning under his skin. Nothing about the glass seemed out of the ordinary to a physician doing a routine diagnostic workup. The young doctor did have questions, however. At one point he set his notepad down and cleared his throat. He sounded faintly nervous, as if afraid of what he was about to hear. It was obvious that something about Derek was unsettling him. It was not just the boy’s detached manner, but the strange range of injuries the boy had received. Being a compassionate man, the doctor prepared himself. “Do you feel safe at home, Derek?” It was a question taken right out of the manual, word for word.
Derek thought it over for a moment, then he reacted with a non-committal shrug. “I don’t feel safe anywhere, anymore.”
While Peter and Alyssa were stressing over their own registration forms, Peter had walked back-and-forth, checking in on the boy for a couple of minutes at a time, trying his best to be supportive. Derek seemed barely there, staring off into the distance as if nothing earthly mattered. Peter marveled at him. Wow, is that kid tough. He’s like one of those craggy, old action stars from back in the 1970s. Like Charles Bronson or Lee Marvin. I just hope I’m that tough when I grow up.
The Huffys had driven themselves to the ER and had arrived there expecting that after being patched up they would be spending the rest of the night sitting in the waiting room, watching television and eating junk from the vending machines. One thing they did not want to do was stay, but Roger urged them to admit themselves, which they reluctantly did. Long after the cycle of paperwork was finished, enough to make an evening seem more like a month, nearly all of the night’s survivors were occupying hospital beds at UPMC Northwest.
Miranda-Julia, however, was nowhere to be seen. She had simply walked out of the Huffys’ house and disappeared. Chief Roger had called her parents and alerted them of the situation(with some details left out). People were already out trying to locate her. Peter was fairly certain they would have no luck. Miranda-Julia had a way of getting what she wanted, he was coming to learn. If being alone for a while was what she desired, she would have it. All the while, Roger was busy dealing with the local constabulary, who were patient, but more than a little curious about what sort of cataclysm had produced all of these injured people. So far that night, all he’d given them was a Sparkle time-honored classic.
“It was bears,” Roger soberly told the hospital staff and Clarion Police Department. “Lots of bears. Called a sleuth, I'm told.”
In the middle of the night, lying in opposite beds, the Huffys chatted across the dark space between them.
“There’s no going back to normal, is there?” said Alyssa. “The world isn’t the way we thought it was. There are really unbelievable things out there. Demons and angels. I mean, who knows what else?” A long, thorough yawn undermined a little of the sincere wonder in her voice.
“Yeah. I was very comfortable with those kinds of things not being real,” replied Peter. “I wouldn’t call the Bunyine a demon, though. He wasn’t from hell, or anything like that.”
“And Dickon? He was a celestial being, Peter. Your words.”
Peter shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about Dickon, Lyssie. I don’t even want to think about him. Not yet.”
“Okay.” Alyssa nodded. She could hear the sorrow in his voice, ready to break like a wave. It would have been hard to mask, if he’d even tried to hide it. It ran too deep.
“I know what you mean, though,” said Peter. “How everything is different. I don’t know. I’m getting used to it, I guess. I’ve been at this a few days, already. I got used to it really quick, actually.”
“Who knows what’s out there? Anything you can imagine can be real. Anything is possible. Nightmares can be real. Freddy Krueger can be real, Peter.”
Peter snorted out a laugh, but he didn’t find the suggestion as funny as he was making out. “There’s no Freddy Krueger, okay? I have to put my foot down on that one. I don’t think the world is that different. It’s not carte blanche for slashers and monsters to make themselves exist willy-nilly.”
“How do you know, though? There was a Bunyine. It was real and it was worse than any of those slasher villains. The Bunyine was real, and it was worse than any of them.”
“You’re right. It was worse. Was. It’s dead and we’re alive. We won. Yay us.”
“God, I hope so.”
“Me, too.”
“How come you’re not having a philosophical crisis, too?”
“’Cuz I don’t have those.”
“Come here with me. I don’t care what the hospital rules are.”
“Okay.”
Peter slipped out of bed and padded across the cold floor barefoot. When they were tucked in together, the hole in the conversation was filled in with the crinkling sound of bandages. It was the close of a very long day.
“Lyssie?” Peter said.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think God’s a boy or a girl?”
Alyssa thought this over for a moment. “It’s pretty obvious, Peter.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then which is it?”
Alyssa squeezed her husband, and got comfortable. “God’s a woman, not a girl.”
Peter was the first to fall asleep, so Alyssa lay there for a few minutes in the quiet. After such a day, the fullest she’d ever lived, she nodded off slowly, and with a grateful ease. The night, however, was not yet done with her. Something reached out to her from across the hospital. Tiny motes of a tawny glass buried at the bottom of a biomedical waste container awaiting their inevitable disposal alongside heaps of needles, razors and bandages. Nobody could have known what they were throwing away. Nobody would have believed it if they had known. It is destiny, in a sense, when love walks by you on the street, never giving you a second look. Fortune finds us, but falters, and we are none-the-wiser. With destiny, you see, it is not a question of where to look, but when.
In a dark hospital bathroom, Derek stood over the sink gazing at his reflection. The hospital staff was at it for hours, picking the brownish glass, or whatever you might wish to call it, out of his right palm. There were possibly some still in there. It was just as the nurse had said, even an x-ray might not catch some of the smaller debris. He knew it was possible that his right hand might never work the same, which was already a fact of life for the left one. However, his injuries didn’t matter to him, right then
He looked deep into the eyes of his reflection in the bathroom mirror. There he stood with his gown around his feet, exposing bandages all over his body that concealed bruises and cuts marching in a crazed parade across this chest and shoulders. But he was more concerned with his face, which, at first glance, didn’t seem any worse off than anyone else’s who had been at the Huffys’ house this evening. He stared because he wasn’t certain of what he began to see a few moments later. Something had changed. Something that scared him. He didn’t see Derek staring back at him but the terrible thing he could become if he lived eight-thousand years.
He saw the Bunyine.
Alyssa found herself in an odd dream. She wasn’t entirely sure what, but something was different about it. At first, it wasn’t obvious. Everything around her was bathed in a strange light. She walked a little, and as she grew accustomed to it, the colors started to look very strange. She’d never had a dream like this before. She was in a cartoon. She was standing in Sparkle, the town part, somewhere just off of Appoline. It seemed impossibly empty, like not just the town was vacant, but this whole world.
She was behind the stores. She didn’t, actually, know what this street was called. All the alleys have names, labeled with charming little brass plaques at the brick corners. She was not a full Sparklian, yet. Someday she would know where everything was. She’d be one of them. Until then, she would be happy to experience the discovery of Sparkle.
She turned down an alley, walking towards Appoline, mother of all streets in town. Something about this Sparkle made her nervous. It was more than just the strange colors. When she heard some voices at the other end, she stopped. She crept forward and peeked around the corner. Peter was there, standing on the sidewalk and talking to some younger man. The men were dressed in strange, old clothes. They looked like they were shooting a Western, or at least practicing their lines. Peter wasn’t usually in her dreams. Her dreams tended to be nonsense, and she seldom ran into familiar things. So this was, pretty much, the oddest dream she’d ever had. Because of how real it felt, more than anything else. She almost stepped out and said hello, but she decided just to listen. It was her dream, she could snoop if she wanted, right? It ran in the family. Snooping was her heritage.
“Heaven? Even if heaven were on the other side of that gate, what does that tell you? Who can say what heaven is?” the young man said to Peter.
“Well, heaven’s heaven. Paradise,” Peter replied.
“What is paradise, Peter? We’ve never had one on Earth, nothing even near it, so how could we define it? What paradise is, and what it ought to be, may be a concept on which no two people can agree.”
“Does that Onk thing know?”
The young man shrugged. “In these hundred years, I’ve learned very little about that. Nothing that is definite. We are friends, in a sense, the Onk and I, but our connection is limited by our vast differences. I have some influence on him, true, but there are restrictions he simply cannot, or will not, flout.”
“So you don’t know anything.”
Douglas crossed his arms and sighed. “I’ve long pondered the gate, and I believe I’ve come to know a little about it. It is perhaps owing to the advantage of affinity I’ve enjoyed in life, and more so in death. I’ve snatched things from it. Imagery that I held onto for mere moments, but lost. It is too powerful to contain, entirely. In time, however, I’ve created the faintest of portraits, if an equivocal one, of something astounding and unique. I could not sketch it, I could not describe it, even, but I comprehend it on some level. I can tell you this…” He looked up into the sky as if distracted by something there. “It is not a place like this one. It is not Sparkle-Wacko. It is a real world - living, magical, and mineral. What it is like is something we may have to wait to discover, for we cannot know. Perhaps, we cannot even imagine. And it has a name. A century of prying yielded one moment of unguardedness on the part of the Onk. One single word.”
“What’s the word?”
The young man briefly became coy and he almost held his tongue. It was as if he were afraid to speak the word. “Gandoone,” he said, then nodded, pleased.
Peter looked mystified. “Gandoone?”
“Yes. And the colors, Peter. The colors there are astonishing. Blues and greens and...” The young man became flushed, overwhelmed at the mere thought of this unknown that lay there beyond their reach. ”Alarmingly beautiful. What is there, I cannot say.”
Peter nodded, suddenly pensive. A moment later, his expression changed and he began to look injured. He held back, though, not allowing it to overwhelm him. “Why are these rules so important? I can’t figure that out. I know the Onk must have a reason, but…Dickon died. His body is in my kitchen, right now. I don’t understand. I know he wasn’t a real boy, but we’ll miss him, you know. He was innocent, and he needed to be protected. I couldn’t give him that. I just wish I knew what to do. I just...”
Douglas waved a hand. The gesture was dismissive, yet polite. “Don’t blame yourself, Peter. We are all caught up in this thing. If it was within our power to stop it, we’d do so. Any one of us would.”
Peter let out a long breath. “It’s just wrong. I seldom know what’s right in this world, but it’s easy to know what’s wrong. What happened to him was wrong.”
A look of sorrow passed over Douglas’ face, as well. Just like Peter, he held back. “I regret that I could not meet the child. I have some idea why, but I doubt we’ll ever know for certain.”
“Hmmph.” Peter pouted, but he wasn’t angry, exactly. He didn’t know who to be angry with. He knew, someday, he would mourn Dickon, whatever he was. Now, though, there was good reason to be content. It was a time for counting blessings. Peter forced a smile, one that became real with little effort. “Gotta get back. People waiting. Derek, too. He’s a good kid, you know. You’d like him. He’s my friend. I mean that. I owe him, but I like him. A lot. You will like him, too, when you meet. Whenever that may be.” Peter’s eyes lit up, the light of recollection. “Oh! That was pretty smart of you, by the way, getting me and Walt together. Touché. I wondered what all of that was about, but it actually helped. He called me. It’s hard to believe that worked. Hard to believe. Still, it couldn’t be more than the sixth, maybe seventh, strangest thing that happened today.”
The younger man beamed. “I believed in you, Peter Huffy. And I always shall.” He grabbed Peter’s hand. “I am glad to know you. Glad and proud.”
Peter was dazzled. Alyssa thought he looked a little embarrassed, even. “Same to you.”
The young man slapped Peter on the back. “Go be with your wife, my boy. Linger over every moment. Be greedy as the devil, for your love is the envy of the world. It is something more profound than belief.” But then something changed. A heaviness on his face showed something he couldn’t entirely conceal, though he tried to hide it behind a smile, one that kept slipping and resuming. For the sake of Peter, he was trying. Alyssa, even from a ways back, could see that about him instantly. He was lonely. More lonely than anyone should ever be. More than most could stand. She could see, though, even from afar, that he wasn’t just anybody. Even if she didn’t exactly know how, it was as clear as the full moon. “And make a home of that old house, again," he said, his charm returning to him. “A real home. Of all the things I’ve lost in death, one of the things I miss most is the sound of voices. Voices talking somewhere in the house. Knowing there are people there waiting for me when I return. In the hall, in the kitchen, in the yard. Friends and Family. Young ones and old ones. Silly, isn’t it? Such a simple thing, but I miss it almost more than anything. Fill your house, Peter. Fill your house. Because there is nothing like it. Nothing. Don’t waste time.”
Peter nodded, more than a little moved. Alyssa thought she could read his mind, too, now. It was like the features of his face seemed to tell her just a little bit more than they usually did. She knew that he was wishing he didn’t have to leave the younger man here, all alone. “I’ll remember that. I promise. I’ll be seeing you still, won’t I?”
Peter’s friend livened up, giving Peter a wink. “Rest assured, you will.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “God, I don’t even want to hear it! Save the world yourself, next time.”
“Ha! I will try, but don’t be surprised if I darken your front step, again, Peter. I only hope you answer the door, if I do. Because you don’t have to. You never did.”
Peter paused, thinking. Not certain what to say. But then his short debate seemed to draw a conclusion. He bowed a little to the younger man. “Who am I to say no to D. D. Windward?”
Peter went suddenly still, like he’d been shot with a freeze ray. For a moment, Alyssa was worried about him. Then she wasn’t. She didn’t have to worry about her husband in this place. He was back on Earth, asleep right next to her. He’d be there when she woke up, ready to be her whole world again. Maybe he’d been dreaming of her? It didn’t matter. Dreams didn’t matter.
She heard steps coming her way. Suddenly, that young man walked around the corner and was standing there, smiling at her. She returned the smile, even though it was tinted a little with embarrassment.
“You must have found that conversation to be quite confusing,” he said with sympathy.
She came out from the alley. “Didn’t want to interrupt.”
“That’s quite all right. Quite all right.”
“I’m…”
“Alyssa Huffy! Who else could you be?” The young man beamed and got closer. “Pretty as a picture. You’re the lady of the house. Of course, I know you. D. D. Windward, at your service.”
Alyssa shrugged, a little bashful. Strangely enough, she felt a little flattered that he knew who she was. “You’re Douglas?”
“How do you do?” he greeted her.
He was just so charming, the way he spoke. The words were like hot syrup. Alyssa blushed. Boy, is he handsome. Like an actor. It immediately occurred to her that it didn’t matter what he looked like, he just stirred something in her. Something proud. She wanted to salute him like the flag. Feels like I’m meeting the President, or the Pope, or Dave Gilmour. Someone who's beyond a celebrity.
“Fine, I guess,” Alyssa answered, somewhat bashful now. “Kind of weirded out. This is pretty wild. It doesn't feel like a dream, but I don't know what else to call it.”
The old ghost nodded, sympathizing. “Ah, yes. I’m afraid we all make that mistake, at first, Alyssa,” he said, tapping the bowl of his quaint, old pipe on the palm of his hand, then popping it back in his mouth. “But this is not a dream. Here…you are the dream.”