Page 42 of Middle of the Night

Now Billy pages through his book, a pencil in hand, circling the ones he believes are real.

Poltergeists? Circled, because there’ve been about a thousand incidents involving them.

Banshees? Also circled, for the very same reasons.

The Headless Horseman doesn’t get a circle because he’s from a story, though Billy suspects that something similar to him is real.

If Ethan or Billy’s brother or even his father were to ask him whyhe suspects ghosts exist, he’d probably tell them that there are so many listed in his giant book that it would be impossible for all of them to be made up. That’s simply the law of probability, which he’d just started learning about before school let out for the summer.

Now all he needs to know for certain is to see one for himself.

And Billy knows just the place to make that happen.

ELEVEN

By nine p.m., I’m sprawled across the couch, half dozing through an episode ofTed LassoI’ve watched at least a dozen times before. On the floor, an empty beer bottle sits next to a paper plate with uneaten crust from the pizza I ordered for dinner. Friends had warned me there’d be a phase in which I let myself go, ignoring all healthy habits and basic hygiene. I didn’t believe them at the time. But now, after a week of eating takeout dinners and performing the bare minimum of dressing and bathing, I know it to be true. I’ve now hit a point somewhere beyond letting go. Abandonment.

Even though I could use a shower, a shave, and a vegetable, I remain where I am, letting my eyelids flicker and close. Maybe I’ll sleep through the entire night this way. That would be a welcome change of pace.

I’m on the cusp of sleep when my phone chirps out a noise.

Ping!

Startled, I reach for the phone sitting a few feet from the beer bottle. Activity from the trail cam died down once dusk descended, with the birds retreating into the trees and the squirrels going to wherever squirrels go. Opening the app now, I’m greeted with a picture ofmoonlit lawn and, at the edge of the woods, an opossum with its glowing eyes unnervingly aimed straight at the camera.

The view from the trail cam is different at night. More ominous. Deep pockets of shadow border the frame, tinted a sickly green by the night vision. The grass itself is rendered gray, like dirty snow. Beyond the lawn, barely visible in the darkness, is the forest, the trees there tall and blurry.

I set my phone face down on the floor and check the bottle for any remaining drops of beer.

Ping!

I eye the phone as the alert from the trail cam shoots a thin glow across the living room carpet. I ignore it, telling myself it’s just the opossum again. Or something similar. A deer. A raccoon. A fox.

And ghosts.

I’m struck by a memory of Mrs. Barringer coming to our door one summer, right before I returned to school for the fall semester. By then, I knew they were moving out of the neighborhood. I’d heard my parents whispering about it one night. It was too hard on them, my mother had said. Especially Mrs. Barringer. Hemlock Circle now held too many bad memories. Where they were going—and when—I had no idea. All I knew was that it felt like I was partly to blame. That my inaction that night in the tent meant the Barringers didn’t just lose a son, but that they were also losing their home.

So I was surprised when Mrs. Barringer showed up holding something rectangular wrapped in tissue paper.

“I thought you should have it,” she said as she handed it to me. “Billy would have wanted you to.”

I tore off the tissue paper, revealing a book. The front cover was an illustration of a translucent figure floating over a cemetery. Above it, written out in bold purple lettering, was the title.

The Giant Book of Ghosts, Spirits, and Other Spooks.

I turned the book over in my hands, uncertain if I wanted it.Taking something that belonged to Billy felt wrong for a hundred different reasons. I didn’t want to see this book every day and be reminded that he was gone, that it was my fault.

“That’s so thoughtful, Mary Ellen,” my mother said, deciding for me that the unwanted gift was something I had to accept. “What do you say, Ethan?”

“Thank you,” I dutifully replied.

I went upstairs and put the book on the top shelf of my bookcase, its spine facing the wall so I couldn’t see the title. I never touched it after that. Not once. It might still be in my room, buried under decades of dust.

Thinking about it now brings forth another memory, jarring in its suddenness. Like a movie that’s been spliced together wrong, jump-cutting from one scene to another.

My last Halloween with Billy, trick-or-treating in our respective costumes. I’d dressed as Sam Neill’s character fromJurassic Park, braving the crisp October night in khaki shorts, denim work shirt, red neckerchief. Billy had gone as a ghost, complete with gray face paint, powdered hair, and plastic chains dripping from his limbs.

Afterward, we sat in my kitchen eating candy. Although Billy had washed his face, traces of his makeup remained. Pale rings surrounded his eyes, and a streak of gray ran down his cheek. Munching on a fun-sized Snickers, he said, “What would you do if you ever met a ghost?”

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