But why? It was far too late for Bill to change, even if that were possible, which it was not. The worm had eaten into his heart, the evil flowed in his veins, circulated in his breath. No, it wasn’t a warning Waldo had shared in his last coherent moments but a curse. You’re next.

“Billy,” Nick said quietly, “people are starting to get seasick.”

“Yeah, okay.”

He walked the few steps to the stern, turned to the shivering mourners and shouted above the clanking engine, “Does anyone want to say anything?”

When no one responded, he turned to the water, unscrewed the top of the urn and poured the contents into the chop. For a moment, they made a glittery, lavender trail before they were submerged into the gray sea.

Bill whispered, “Goodbye.”

The nightmares started the day after he had scattered Waldo’s ashes in the sea. In one, he was walking down the hall of Ward 5B toward the room where Waldo had died and everyone he passed, patients, nurses, orderlies, bore the stigmata of AIDS; lesions and wasting and the slow death shuffle of the terminally ill. He paused at the door and his reluctance to enter was primal because he knew what he would find there. At last, he broke through his terror and plodded into the room where, as he had expected, it was he in the bed, not Waldo. The skeletal creature in the bed raised blind eyes toward Bill and whispered, “You did this to me.”

“Bill!”

He woke with a gasp, Nick shaking him.

“You were shouting in your sleep.”

Bill caught his breath. “Sorry, bad dream.”

“Again?” Nick asked, worried. “Was it about Waldo?”

“Yeah.” He felt the damp beneath him. Sweat. “Listen, I’m sorry, baby. You go back to sleep. I’m just going to get a glass of water.”

As he closed the bedroom door behind him, he heard Nick said, “Bill, you need to talk to someone.”