I didn’t even want him to.

‘They said they would try to come over. But it can’t be done here. You’re here as guards. To stop them from crossing. Killing them.’

‘We’re not killing anybody. The crops are not alive!’ I snapped.

‘Calm down. It’s good that they can’t come over. They wouldn’t be themselves. During the transition they would lose what makes them them. That’s why I have to cross.’

‘You?’

‘Yes, me.’

‘How?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? I have to die.’

Very few people commit suicide in the village. Nobody has any real reason to. Sometimes somebody does something that they can’t live with afterwards. For instance, Tibi Kovács ran over his own son in his truck. It was an accident, the child was standing in his blind spot. Still, Tibi still couldn’t forgive himself. I can understand, I couldn’t have forgiven myself either. Tibi hanged himself in the basement of his house. We buried him, just like everyone else. Or sometimes someone has a mental illness. You can sense a sort of melancholy in them, it lingers around them like a scent. They often end their lives out in the fields.

One thing about suicide victims, though, is they always turn out to be revenants. They always come back.

We didn’t talk about it for several days. I didn’t want to, it all seemed crazy to me. It still does. But you can only avoid an issue for so long before the silence become unbearable. He cornered me one afternoon. We were leaning against the wall of a house, watching as the light of the setting sun painted the land red.

‘I wouldn’t actually die,’ Karcsi broke a long silence. ‘I would continue living, but in a different way.’

‘I won’t help you,’ I declared, hoping that I sounded cold enough.

‘I can’t do it without you. It can’t be done alone.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Then I have to try the other way.’

I looked at him.

‘Other way?’

‘The usual way. Jump off a roof, or hang myself.’

‘Go ahead!’

‘Maybe it would work. But Mom and Dad said that the earth would reject me if I did that. That I would return. I don’t mind, I’m curious to know what that’s like . . .’

‘Stop it.’

‘. . . but then I wouldn’t get across. Those who return from the grave don’t get across. That’s what Mom and Dad told me.’

‘Shut up.’

He didn’t shut up. Later we fought too, not as a game, but for real. Our faces bled, our arms were covered with bruises. At home, my mom and dad also beat me up for fighting and tearing my clothes. They wouldn’t let me out of the house for days.

In the end I wound up helping him. I didn’t want to see him returned.