He’d gone from shelving books at the library to teaching high school history in what now felt like a matter of minutes. Then he’d quit. For no real reason he could point to. The kids loved him. He was making a difference, one he could see, and yet…quit. Just like he had the courthouse, the medical examiner, the library, the chamber of commerce. Mister Municipality. He’d even worked a stint at Carroll Hospital. He’d run into his former boss there, Principal Donner. Donner, with a Velcro cuff around his arm, asked Kamp if he’d like to return to Goblin High. Teach history. Coach the debate team again. He told Donner he’d think about it.

But you didn’t, Kamp thought. You didn’t think about it at all.

He got up out of bed and went to the window. The rain was positively forbidding.

He put his hand to the glass. Part of him wished it would open. He’d put his head outside and let the amorphous Goblin landmark drench him to his soul.

Or maybe he’d jump, and make it so nothing could ever scare him again.

Kamp remembered something his sister, Carol, had told him. She was getting ready for a night out when she saw her ghost. She’d closed her eyes and opened them to find a man sitting next to her before her vanity doing the same thing. Putting his own face on. She’d screamed and leapt from the seat. But when she looked to the bench again, he was gone. She told Kamp she was positive the experience actually happened because she and the man made eye contact.

It wasn’t a peripheral encounter, she’d said. We…connected.

From that day forward Kamp couldn’t walk past Carol’s room without thinking he’d see a man sitting at her vanity, applying eye shadow. This gave him nightmares and he’d wake Judy up. Judy always answered him that what Carol saw was her own reflection.

What do you expect from someone who throws up at the sight of a spider, Walter?

Mom had a way of calming him down that he hadn’t found a replacement for yet.

Everyone in Kamp’s immediate family had seen a ghost. Even his practical father had a story of his own. He said that, before Judy and he were married, he came home to his apartment and, stepping toward the television, saw a figure leap out from behind it, arms up, warning him of something. Judy told Walter that this story was bogus.

Your father drank more in those days.