1

I walk through walls. I whisper at the window when I watch her leave our home. I flicker at the edges of my own memory.

She sleeps now, her breath ruffling the edge of her pillowcase. I don’t know if it is my presence at the foot of her bed that causes her to roll over. Her arm, suddenly free of her comforter cocoon, stretches back over her head, and her pretty face, framed by long auburn hair, turns toward the ceiling.

She looks so much like Mary, I feel the familiar ache that is like death but deeper. I reach toward her, intending only to stroke her cheek, but she whimpers and I wonder what walks through her dreams.

Her alarm sounds, playing a song recorded many years after my death, a song I like. I fall through the floor as her eyes begin to flutter.

Her mother is already in the kitchen, rattling pans, brewing coffee, pouring orange juice. She pauses every three heartbeats to look back at the kitchen table, where the rest of her family will soon sit, her face wrung and lined with worry, as though she feels there is never enough time. And she is right, of course. There never is. She doesn’t see me standing in the archway, as it takes effort by me to be seen. For all I know, it may take effort to see also. She lifts her eyes toward the ceiling through which I just fell, hearing the padding of her daughter’s feet as she rises to shut off the alarm. I wait until I hear the screech and groan of plumbing above as she runs hot water for her shower.

I pass through the kitchen wall. Inside the cavity there is an ancient bottle cap and the skeleton of a mouse, its tiny spirit long fled. There are wires, and when I pass through them I tingle and hum and the light in the kitchen dims and then flares.

I enter the living room, so different now than when I was alive. Two recliners, a long sun-blanched sofa, and a huge television with a dusty screen. I peer into the dark mirror of the television, but I’m not reflected at all, not until I lean forward and brush my “hand” across the dull surface, where lingering static renders it visible briefly as a white blur that waves and recedes. I look down and see that I have disrupted the clock on the DVR again; a quartet of zeroes blinks on and off at me.

Her energy guides me upstairs to her like a beacon, and I can see puffs of steam curling out from under the bathroom door. I pass through the unlocked door; I’m pulled to the place of my death as though drawn by a magnet. I pass through steam and shower curtain, and she is there, and I would blush if I still had the ability to do so.

Averting my eyes, I look in the tub, where water swirls down the drain. As I watch, the water turns to blood, and then the swirling blood overwhelms the drain and rises to her ankles and continues to fill and oh no I remember I remember. . . .

I remember. What a strange thing for one such as me to think. Strange because I am no more than a memory myself. A memory that no one other than myself holds any longer.

There are others like me but not like me. Others who appear and fade, but for them consciousness has not returned, they exist as memory alone. Or do they? The wall between the worlds of life and afterlife was always permeable, even before the holes began to appear in its foundation.

The blood recedes and turns to water yet again. She’s noticed none of this. She has her eyes closed against the possibility of trickling shampoo, and I watch her flesh stipple as I stand there, my invisible spirit bisected by the plastic curtain. My presence brings a subtle chill. I can still have an effect on the tangible universe.

I step back from the shower and wait by the sink. I prepare. What is easiest is to find a moment in time gone by and hold on to that moment. With effort and energy, the memory of a memory may become visible again. Time is not entirely linear. She shuts the water off, and the towel slung over the curtain rod slips.

I make the effort. The curtain draws back, and she sees me.