This time, he definitely had chills. The nudity, for some reason, lent credence to the idea that the figure was Carole’s ghost. That was one of the problems he’d always had with spirits. People who saw them always claimed they were clothed. Sometimes they were even supposed to be wearing hats. But that made no logical sense. Did the clothes die with the person? Were these the ghosts of their clothes that had accompanied them to the great beyond? Did ghosts somehow conjure up the appearance of clothing so as to not embarrass their earthly counterparts? It had always made more sense to him to assume that if there were such things as ghosts, they would be merely an unformed energy source with no definite shape. The idea that a human soul retained the physical appearance of the body housing it had seemed to him to be a ludicrously illogical idea.

But Carole’s ghost looked just like her.

The ghost, again, was standing before the sink, this time the kitchen sink. It was facing him across the length of the room, and it smiled as he entered. He was still clinging to the thought that this was a trick of his mind, but there seemed to be a measurable decrease in temperature as he walked into the kitchen, and he did not think he was imagining that. From behind him came the familiar purr-meow of Hermie begging for his morning Friskies, and the cat jogged between his legs toward the plastic dish next to the stove.

Halfway across the linoleum, Hermie stopped. He stared at the ghost, arched his back, hissed and ran away.

Norton backed up slowly.

Hermie saw her too!

It was not a figment of his imagination, not stress or a hallucination. It was an honest-to-God apparition. He believed that now, and it scared the hell out of him. Outside the window, a bird flew by. He could see it through Carole’s head, her insubstantial form obscuring not even the slightest detail of the scene outdoors. In books, it was only evil spirits that were frightening. People claimed to be comforted by the ghosts of relatives and loved ones, as though they felt they were being watched over by a guardian angel.

Norton felt no such thing.