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“I’ll stand.”

He waited for the boy to leave and was surprised when the boy instead slipped on the silky throw, which wasn’t a throw at

all but a long robe with tassels along its edges. The boy sat, and John glanced back at the door, waiting for someone else

to enter. The actual psychic, perhaps.

The boy said, “I’ll be doing your reading today.”

“Should I return tomorrow?”

“My mom usually works out of here, but she left earlier this year for the Dominican Republic. To stay with her mom for a while.

Abuelita’s sick. I’m, well...”

Without a single cryptic bone. The boy didn’t sound like a psychic at all.

“I’ve taken over the family business. It runs in the family. The gift.”

Being psychic didn’t seem to be the kind of thing that ran in families, like handing down the launderette or corner shop.

Why hadn’t he said anything about John being a ghost? At the front door, John had been standing in the shade, and the house

was dim, so the boy could be forgiven for not having noticed the unearthly thing about his latest visitor, but shouldn’t the

boy have at least sensed something? If he were really psychic.

“If you just want to talk,” added the boy, “that’s cool. Usually we charge for just talking, but I’ll cut you a break. Sound

good?” John, only half listening, didn’t answer, and the boy added, “I mean, you’ve come a long way, right?”

This got John’s attention.

a nothing without absence

a nothing without absence.

A darkness which is peace.

Not peace ful , not like , but is .

And then a sound...

a great, smooth vibration that is the sound of creation...

My name...

Every thing’s name...

And then a brilliant flash and propulsion!

Hurtling

to some unknown destination.

Little distinction exists between Me

and All

and Creation.

So I rest in the darkness and wait to emerge

Only to realize, once I do, that

I skipped a step.

I see creatures born and die,

born and die,

And wonder if I fell off track

Or was forgotten

Or was never intended

and still I wait

to see if I’ll be

dropped

into the timeline.

8

The boy shuffled a deck of cards, placed them down, and closed his eyes. “You’re looking for something.” He held his hands

above the deck. “You’re afraid to find it, actually.”

Conveniently vague.

“You’re afraid of a lot.” The boy frowned. “It’s like, you’re afraid to exist.”

Only if it meant existing here.

“And you need answers. I know.” The boy said this breezily, and again it occurred to John how not like a psychic the teenager looked, with his ripped jeans and punk hair and tattoos and undramatic delivery. But John had

been promised three free minutes and probably they were a minute in. The boy flipped a card. “You were just... hmm...

fired from your job? No. Something like it, though. OK... There’s a woman. Really smart. She knows a whooole lot.” He added

with a theatrical shiver, “Kind of scary. OK... you’ll want to be avoiding driving if you can. Hmm.”

It was as if John were being read a horoscope from the daily paper. Yes, he remembered those: newspapers. How good they felt,

the soft slip of the page, the unmistakable scent of it. “There is,” John said, “something in particular I want to know.”

The boy prompted him with a nod before shooting up a hand. “Disclaimer—my policy is I don’t do death dates. You know, When am I going to die, when is my husband going to die, stuff like that. Cool?”

Now it was clear the boy didn’t realize what John was, but John didn’t want the path to the House to grow cold, after which

it might be gone forever. “I’m looking for a way back to a very special house.”

“Yeah, OK. But I can’t do anything about restraining orders, dude. Or is it a real estate thing? Can’t do anything about that,

either. I mean, aside from a pep talk. You sure you don’t want to sit?”

“Positive.”

Waiting for the boy to figure out the truth was beginning to feel like a waiting game, and Dead John, who suspected Living John had despised games, didn’t want to bother with it anymore.

He took a step forward and walked through the table.

A discomforting buzzing sensation shot through him, followed by rippling waves of nausea.

But John remained focused on the boy, who, balanced on two of the chair’s legs, toppled over.

“Jesus Mary and Joseph!”

John stepped shakily back until he no longer stood in the table, his final step wavering.

But the boy, who hadn’t noticed, leapt to his feet. “Do you come in peace?”

“What?”

“Do. You. Come. In. Peace? If there was something Mamá got wrong in a reading—was it Mrs. Ivanova? You know she couldn’t mourn

forever, right, dude? She had to move on! You should move on, too. Cross over. Walk into the light!”

“That’s just it. I’m trying to get back to the light. To get to the House.”

The boy frowned. “You were in the light... and turned back?”

“It wasn’t quite like that.”

The boy lowered into one of the chairs and motioned for John to do the same.

John remained standing. “There’s a house,” he began, and proceeded to tell the boy his story, leaving out only how much the

Grey House meant to him.

“So you can’t get to the Other Side at all,” the boy mused. “But if anything”—the boy seemed to be talking to himself now—“it

seems like that house... no... unless it was a haunting situation...” The boy looked up. “Maybe you died there. If

you did, that might be your crossover point.” He added, matter-of-factly, “That’s how these things work. Also there could

be some unfinished business you’ve got here on this side.”

“No. No business here.”

“Family stuff? Vengeance?” The boy sounded suspiciously enthusiastic.

“No.”

“Friends to enemies. Double-cross! Pointing out your murderer?” The boy was positively delirious now. He whispered, “Hidden grave?”

“What?”

“Never mind. It would’ve rung a bell.”

“I told you, I was forced out. Can you get me back?”

“I... think I can, yeah. It’ll take a minute to get the logistics together, but yes. Yes, I can.”

A chime like a hundred tinkling bells sounded.

“My three o’clock. My bad. Totally forgot. But hey, why don’t you hang out? I can reschedule.”

“No, that’s all right.” The last thing John wanted to do was risk bumping into the kind of person who’d come to a psychic

seeking life advice.

And yet you came. Seeking. He hated to admit it, but there was something desperate, desolate, about the boy that made a nanoscopic part of John want

to... well, if not help him—John didn’t think it was that, couldn’t be that—at least see why he could even sense...

some question within the boy in the first place.

“Two hours,” the boy said.

Right. Transactional. John would have an opportunity to learn something useful for the price of allowing the boy the paranormal

equivalent of a skydive.

And so John took hold of that minuscule, remarkably sappy part of himself and allowed his greater, sensible portion to shove

it back from whence it came. And stood taller for it. “Two hours,” he agreed.

9

The overcast haze had burned away and the sky was blue and cloudless.

John walked along a secluded canal bracketed by verdant foliage and quaint, handsome homes.

His House was out there, somewhere. Also somewhere, someone knew him, at the very least a cashier who might’ve seen his face a number of times at the grocer’s.

And at most... John felt a firm resistance, and he understood on some level that it wasn’t the way most would feel.

Perhaps many would detect a yearning for whomever they’d lost in their past. But John, unaccustomed to handling his emotions, wasn’t sure he wanted to get close to the wiring.

He didn’t want to figure if this one or that one went here or there.

That was the thing about being in his House, which was his only memory of being at all: there was only existence, a calm, dependable peace.

Why would he want anything more? And before he could even begin to feel guilty, also he understood that if he’d a wife or child out here in this world, he would feel it.

He couldn’t be so far removed as to not know that.

No wife, no child. And what a relief. Because for whatever reason,

he sensed his general sentiment regarding people was that they were best avoided. Without a wife or child, disregarding everyone

would be an easy mental task.

“Sir! Excuse me! Sir!”

John, alarmed and irritated, turned to see a blue-suited young man, mahogany-complected and round-faced, jogging down the

sidewalk toward him.

A glimpse: this afternoon the young man spent ten minutes in a restroom, trying to clean wasabi soy sauce from his yellow

blue-dotted bow tie. Miraculously, it did not stain.

For a moment, they stared at one another. The young man took a step back, but he didn’t run away. “I’m sorry—I saw you, but

seeing you up close—I thought...” He stuck out a black business card. “I’m William Williams.”

John stared down at the card and realized he found relief in this penumbral aspect of his new beingness, or lack thereof,

that though he was back in the living world his circumstances forced a comforting distance from it, from them . “Nice name,” he said. “But I can’t take that.” How often he must’ve wished he’d had such an excuse in his flesh-and-blood

life.

William dropped his arm. He glanced around them, at the colorful houses and trees and the water and the empty walkway. “I

don’t know how you’re doing it, but... wow.” He swallowed. “I work for Hannah J?ger. Of HJPR. And I think we could help

you—we could bring value.”

“Bring value to what?”

“This. Your act? But how are you even...” William took a step closer. “How...”

John retreated farther into the shade. He considered stepping through an ivy-covered wall but recalled how he felt when he’d

stepped through a mere table and thought better of it.