"He was a bad Indian.
When he was a boy, not much older than me, he killed a man to take his horse and wallet.
It made him not able to do the things he should have been able to do.
He couldn't tell me what to do." The malice freed me from the distracting pity I'd been feeling.
And I saw what I'd missed the first time I'd looked him in the eye.
And I knew the reason that this ghost was different from any I'd seen before.
Ghosts are remnants of people who have died, what's left after the soul goes on.
They are mostly collections of memories given form.
If they can interact, respond to outside stimuli, they tend to be fragments of the people they had been: obsessive fragments--like the ghosts of dogs who guard their masters' old graves or the ghost I'd once seen who was looking for her puppy.
Immediately after they die, though, sometimes they are different.
I've seen it a couple of times at funerals, or in the house of someone who's just passed away.
Sometimes the newly dead keep watch over the living, as if to make sure that all is well with them.
Those are more than remnants of the people they'd been--I can see the difference.
I've always thought those are their souls.
That was what I'd seen in Amber's dead eyes.
My stomach clenched.
When you die, it should be a release.
It wasn't fair, wasn't right, that Blackwood had somehow discovered a way to hold them past death.
"Did Blackwood tell you to kill Chad?" I asked.
His fists clenched.
"He has everything.
Everything.
Books and toys." His voice rose as he spoke.
"He has a yellow car.
Look at me.
Look at me!" He was on his feet.
He stared at me with wild eyes, but when he spoke again, he whispered.
"He has everything, and I'm dead.
Dead.
Dead." He disappeared abruptly, but the buckets scattered.