The Pilgrims

2

Eric did not believe in ghosts, and was therefore quite surprised to wake from a vivid nightmare — people were in a pit, being killed by he wasn’t sure what — to find one standing in the middle of his bedroom. It seemed to be a man draped in white silk, to Eric’s eye not unlike a Roman emperor. It flickered like an image cast by an old projector. A white glow filled the room about it.

For a few long seconds Eric and this stranger eyed each other. Then the ghost’s arms rose as though to embrace him, its mouth opened, and words came out despite the lips not moving to form them. ‘Last sight, last sound, last sight, last sound …’ it sang in a voice thin and high-pitched: just about the most frightening sound Eric had ever heard.

He sat up, part of him as fascinated as the other part was afraid. ‘What does that mean?’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

‘Shadow, you are called,’ the ghost said.

Eric rubbed his eyes and then the ghost wasn’t there. There was only the shard of street light spearing through the window to fall on the Captain America comic book he’d spent three-quarters of an hour desperately trying to find earlier that night.

He flipped on the bedside lamp, grabbed the comic and had trouble reading it at first for the shaking of his hands. By morning, he’d actually managed to convince himself it was a dream. And just maybe it was.