me good night. She moved through the house for months, and I found it comforting. When she finally left, I was ready to let her go. I never told my father. I was only eight, but even then I knew that he couldn't hear her. Maybe he heard other things. I don't know. My father and I never talked much about my mother's death. It made him cry.
I'd been able to sense ghosts long before I could raise the dead. What I was about to do was just an extension of that, or maybe a combination of both skills. I don't know. But it was like trying to explain that there was a soul hovering over Aunt Katerine's coffin. Either you knew the soul was there or you didn't. Words didn't quite cover it.
"Can you see ghosts?"
"You mean right now?"
I smiled and shook my head. "No, just in general."
"Well, I knew the Calvin house wasn't haunted, no matter how many stories people made up. But there was a little cave near town that had something in it. Something not nice."
"Was it a ghost?"
He shrugged. "I never tried to find out, but nobody else seemed able to feel it."
"Do you know when the soul leaves the body? I mean, can you tell it?"
"Sure." He said it like, Couldn't everybody do that?
I had to smile. "Good enough. I'm just going to do it. I don't know what you'll see, if anything. I know that Raymond is going to be disappointed because he won't see anything, unless he's a lot more talented than he looks."
"What are you going to do, Anita? They never talked about 'walking a cemetery' in college."
"It's not like a magic spell, a few words or gestures and it works. It isn't anything like that." I struggled to put into words something that we had no vocabulary for. "It's closer to psychic ability than magic. It's not physical. It's not a muscle to move, or even a thought. It's... I just do it. Let me get started; then if I can, I'll bring you in or try and talk to you while I do it. Okay?"
He shrugged. "I guess so. I still don't understand what the heck you're doing, but that's okay. I usually don't know what's going on."
"But you always figure it out," I said.
He grinned. "I do, don't I?"
"You bet."
I stood in nearly the dead center of the raw earth. Not so long ago I was afraid of what I was about to do. It wasn't really frightening in and of itself. I was scared of the fact that I could do it at all. It wasn't a very human thing to be able to do.
But then, lately I'd been rethinking exactly what made you human, and what made you one of the monsters. Once I'd been very sure of myself, and everyone else. I wasn't so sure anymore. Besides, I'd been practicing.
Of course, I'd been practicing in empty graveyards where there was nothing but me and the dead. Okay, night insects, but arthropods never bothered my concentration. People did.
Even with my back turned, I could feel Larry like a warm presence behind me. It bugged me. "Can you move back farther?"
"Sure; how far?"
I shook my head. "As far as you can get and still be in sight."
He raised his eyebrows. "Do you want me to go over and wait with Mr. Stirling?"
"If you can stand it."
"I can stand it. I schmooze clients better than you do."
That was the God's honest truth. "Great. When I call you over, come slowly. I've never tried to talk to someone while I do this."
"Whatever you say." He gave a laugh that was almost nervous. "I can't wait to see this."
I let that go, and turned away. I walked away from him. When I glanced back, he was walking to the others. I hoped Larry wouldn't be disappointed. I still wasn't sure if he'd be able to even sense anything. I turned my back on all of them. Seeing them huddled there would distract me, that much I was sure of.
The top of the mountain had been stripped. It was like standing on the edge of the world looking down. The moonlight bathed everything in a soft glow. It was so bright up here near the sky without any trees to hide it that the air itself glowed with diffused light. A gentle wind traced just about head-high. It smelled green and fresh, almost as if the rain had actually fallen. I