Flute music is playing from somewhere. A lullaby replacing the memories in my brain. That conversation with Sawyer was barely comprehensible. I don’t remember what he said, because he seemed to be talking over me. I can’t trust that it really happened, or that there is any reason to be here.

What has Sawyer really done to me?

Desecrated the book. Creepy, but that could have been ignored, and if I had ignored it, maybe the ecto-mist wouldn’t have pushed me toward the scene of the crime. The mist eavesdrops on that part of my brain I try to tune out—the one that wants to know more about Sawyer. Who was he before he shot up his school? What drove him to do it? What was the motive? And why is he so interested in me?

“It told you what, Jake?” Ms. Josette says.

I forgot I’d started a sentence. “I don’t know. He goes wherever he does. He does whatever he wants. He’s not looping, not in the regular way, and not in the extended way either. He’s not trapped in the moment he died. He’s not trapped with the gun that killed him or in the confines of the building. He’s not doomed at all. He has free rein.”

Her expression is grave. “It’s possible. Ghosts who haven’t crossed realms by way of freak accident may arrive in dead world completely free of a loop at all.”

“What if they crossed by suicide? Does that count as accidental?”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head slowly. “Suicide interrupts the whole scheme.” She grabs a Newton’s cradle off a side table—a pendulum with five balls. Each time the ball at one end swings down, it triggers the one on the other side. “The ball on one end is the Here—the real world—and the ball on the other is the After. The balls in between are dead world—the Divide. Ghosts may be closer to living humans, like us, if they weren’t kicked as far toward the After as this ball over here. They remain stuck, but at different levels of awareness. Based on their individual circumstances.”

The clicking balls remind me of that ticking I heard in my house that night. “What makes the difference?” I ask. “I mean, how could a ghost stay close to life if they’re dead? Why?”

“Various reasons. Any reason. The universe is supposed to have a fixed relationship with human life. Our life spans are meant to be programmed, predetermined from the day we’re born. So, when a freak accident happens, it upsets the schema. The universe can’t process it, and it stores that person’s life as a glitch.”