“It was good,” she said. “Better this time. We shouldn’t wait so long next time.”

“We need to be careful,” the man said without looking up.

“Why? No one can catch us. We’re invincible. This…” She shivered again and waved at the body. “It makes us invincible. It makes us special.”

The man looked up at her with a small smile. He nodded, then reached out of the hole and grabbed the wrapped body. As he dragged it, the other end flapped open in the breeze. A young boy’s dead eyes stared up at the night sky.

The scene disintegrated into darkness.

I’ve seen dead bodies before. Sent many into the ghost world myself. You screw with dark forces, you have to accept that an early grave may be your reward. But by “early grave” I mean dying before you’re old and gray. The murder of anyone too young to defend himself is the only act that is unforgivable under any circumstances.

So this woman was the murderous spirit the Fates wanted me to find? Consider it done. The only reward I wanted was to be there when they cast her back into her hell dimension. The darkness lightened, and I looked up, expecting to see the throne room. Instead, I stood in front of a frost-covered window. I touched my fingers to the glass. Cold and slick, but my fingers left no marks on the pane. When I peered through a clear corner, I could see sunlight shimmering through falling snow. Strange. Like seeing sunbeams through the rain.

A woman’s laugh made me jump and my mind jumped with it, right back to the grassy plain and the laugh I’d first heard out there.

“Oh, wait!” a woman said. “This is the best part. Slow it down.”

I turned from the window. On the other side of the room, a young couple was curled up on the couch, watching television. The man had a remote in his hand, pointed at the VCR.

Did they have VCRs in the sixties? No, wait. It was a different man. So I was someplace else. Or was I? My gaze snagged on the young woman. A blonde, early twenties, round face, marginally pretty. Same woman. Or was it? The hairstyle was still overdone, but in a style I remembered from high school. And her skirt was still mini but, again, a modern mini. I tried to zoom in on her face, but it was turned to the television, giving me only a quarter-profile.

“Okay, here it comes.”

The woman leaned toward the television. Her eyes glowed. Another jolt as I recognized the same rapturous expression I’d seen on the woman at the grave-site.

“Come on, turn it up,” she said, socking the man in the arm.