No one spending an afternoon with Judy Kamp would remark on how smart she was, but how right she was. And Walter’s great intelligence never stepped over his mother’s great reason. It was their sense of humor that served as their clubhouse. The smarts barometer, she used to say. They ought to test IQ by how many funnies a kid can make. Yes, their secret hideout. The place where their exclusive versions of reality came together in a sort of celebration of two. Kamp treasured these moments most. From peals of sincere laughter at the kitchen table, to something she might have said, just to him, in an aisle at the grocery store. But Judy gave him much more than her jokes; she also gave him her spirit, her insatiable thirst for knowledge, and the energy it took to seek it out. Judy Kamp was not religious. Not righteous. Never stubborn nor severe.

Her death left quite a hole in Walter’s life.

Would she think to come to me now? he considered, the blanket held tight about his shoulders.

Oh, Mom. What if I don’t recognize you?

How he loved that woman!

Kamp flopped onto his back, his reddish-brown hair wet with sweat. He pushed his glasses up his nose.

All these thoughts of Mom. Of death. Of ghosts.

Even while recalling his mother, his best friend, Kamp couldn’t help but feel the horror that awaited him. Why wouldn’t he want to see his mother again? He missed her terribly. Could she see the precautions he took? What if Judy, floating about in the abyss of bodiless souls, caught for a moment a glimpse of her son…still living…cleaning his curtainless tub and (excitedly) decided to make contact? And what if (in the rush of this encounter) Kamp didn’t recognize her as his mother? Who could say for certain what face the dead wear? How different might she look? How thin? How awful! For Kamp to be frightened of the woman who taught him everything! Would her face have aged the ten years since dying? Aged without the beauty enhancements of such things as…blood? Would Kamp be able to sense in that leathery shape a kindred spirit…a like-minded soul…his mother…the same way she sensed it in him the day he poured forth, bloody, from her womb?

“I gotta think of someone else,” he said. He got up again, still clutching his blue blanket. “Anybody else.”

So, without him wanting them to, his thoughts turned to his father.

“Dad,” Kamp said, eyeing the tub. The sleeping spotlights up by the ceiling. The rat traps meant for ghosts.

Harrison Kamp was, by all measures, obsessive. But he adored Judy and that was enough for a young Walter. He openly flirted with her till the end. For a man as conservative (monetarily, politically) as Harrison was, nothing stopped him from kissing Judy full on the face upon coming home or taking hold of her hand on the couch.