Later

52

Kenneth Therriault disappeared from the news, replaced by other monsters. And because he had stopped haunting me, he also disappeared from the forefront of my mind. As that fall chilled into winter, I still had a tendency to step back from the elevator doors when they opened, but by the time I turned fourteen, that little tic had disappeared.

I saw other dead people from time to time (and there were probably some I missed, since they looked like normal people unless they died of injuries or you got right up close). I’ll tell you about one, although it has nothing to do with my main story. He was a little boy no older than I had been on the day I saw Mrs. Burkett. He was standing on the divider that runs down the middle of Park Avenue, dressed in red shorts and a Star Wars tee-shirt. He was paper pale. His lips were blue. And I think he was trying to cry, although there were no tears. Because he looked vaguely familiar, I crossed the downtown side of Park and asked him what was wrong. You know, besides being dead.

“I can’t find my way home!”

“Do you know your address?”

“I live at 490 Second Avenue Apartment 16B.” He ran it off like a recording.

“Okay,” I said, “that’s pretty close. Come on, kid. I’ll take you there.”

It was a building called Kips Bay Court. When we got there, he just sat down on the curb. He wasn’t crying anymore, and he was starting to get that drifting-away look they all get. I didn’t like to leave him there, but I didn’t know what else to do. Before I left, I asked him his name and he said it was Richard Scarlatti. Then I knew where I’d seen him. His picture was on NY1. Some big boys drowned him in Swan Lake, which is in Central Park. Those boys all cried like blue fuck and said they had only been goofing around. Maybe that was true. Maybe I’ll understand all that stuff later, but actually I don’t think so.