I don’t know why I keep coming back to the cemetery. After almost two hundred years in Ketterbridge, you’d think I’d have given up by now. I tell myself that I have given up, that I don’t come here out of foolish hope, but rather because I have nothing but time on my hands. Ceaseless time. An endless black ocean of time, upon which I can make no wave, not even a ripple. It marches forward relentlessly, dragging me with it, and I leave inch-deep fingernail marks in my wake. I have begged to every god I’ve ever heard of to release me, but as always, no one hears me. No one ever hears me.

I am at the cemetery, and I am not at the cemetery, because technically speaking, I am nowhere.

It’s late. A gibbous moon in the sky. I drift up and down the rows of headstones. Each one has been a crushing disappointment to me. The first death after mine was a man named Clint. He worked at the finishing mill and we’d crossed paths a few times. Didn’t know each other well, but that didn’t matter. I did not see the accident, but I heard of it, and I came to the funeral. I waited until the last of the mourners cleared away, the last bit of dirt was patted down. I waited as the sun set and the night folded over both of our graves, and I waited until it withdrew at dawn. Clint did not emerge. The next one, then, I thought.

I have attended every funeral in Ketterbridge for almost two hundred years, and never has anyone joined me. Eventually, I realized: if no one could detect me in this form, why would I be able to see or hear them? There’s nothing to see of me. I am invisible even to myself. It could be that Clint and everyone who died after him are here with me right now, silently waiting along with the rest of us.

Yes, I gave up hope a long time ago. But here I am, in the cemetery.

There is a fresh grave here. A girl who died in a car accident a few days ago. I waited at her funeral, as I waited at all the others. She must have been loved in life: her funeral was well-attended, and people cried. A poem was read. There were a lot of flowers. I think of going to check her grave again, but this feels too much like hoping. I will leave, instead.

I drift down towards the edge of the cemetery, and suddenly I feel something.

I have not felt anything close to a physical sensation since I’ve died. And yet somehow, something turns within me and spreads over me. What does the feeling compare to? I hardly remember what anything ever felt like, so I have nothing analogous to weigh it against. Is it - warmth? I take a tiny step forward, terrified to lose the sensation, and then back up quickly when it begins to fade. It stabilizes again, a steady heat. What is causing this? Something in the cemetery?

I turn, and I see her.

She is almost blindingly bright, popping and sparking and beaming: a sun on two legs. A force of energy radiates around her, a riot of warm colors - ochre, crimson, orange, gold. All to match the floor-length red pants she wears. Black hair in a chop above her shoulders. Her jacket and shoes are on the ground, but she is on the rickety cemetery fence, balancing with her arms out, wobbling a little on the thin metal. Bare feet. The fence is barely stable, but it does not even falter under her weight.

As I draw closer, this feeling - let’s call it warmth, I think that’s what it is - pushes out and expands around me. Transfixed, I can do nothing but let the current of the world tip me towards her until I can see her face. It’s screwed up in concentration, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth.

“Okay, then,” she says, startling me. I take an invisible step back. “So I guess I can still walk on different kinds of surfaces. Good to know.”

She is not talking to me. Of course she isn’t. She’s talking to herself. It doesn’t matter, because I feel warm. I feel. 

Where do I know her face from? It’s familiar, the dimples and the very straight black eyebrows and…She leaps down from the fence with less care than the living usually take with their bodies. Rolls onto her back and looks up at the sky, and I know her. She had a closed-casket funeral, but there were pictures of her.

Could it be possible? Do I dare let myself hope…?

“Good evening,” I try. The first two words I have attempted to speak in a very long time. I hear the words; will she? “Hullo, ma’am.”

She doesn’t say anything, only stares up at the shattered ceiling of stars above. I hesitate, then quickly dart to her grave. What was her name? The warmth recedes the farther I get from her, and I am scared to lose it forever, so I rush back to her like a child afraid of the dark rushes back to their room at night-

“Miss Lavoe?”

Nothing. Though even I cannot see my arms, I wave them frantically.

“Can’t you see me, I’m right here!” She does not move, her gaze does not break. “Please, say something if you can hear me.”

When I first died, and I didn’t understand what had happened, I had walked around screaming in people’s faces, begging them to just see me. I threw spectacular fits in the middle of the street. I tried to knock things over, break things, sound bells, do anything to get people to realize that I am still here. It never once worked, and eventually I quit trying. But this is different. She is different. She’s something like me, if not quite the exact same.

“Miss Lavoe! Hey!” I wave my hands in front of her face. “HEY!”

She sits up, stretches, and gets to her feet. She gathers up her jacket and shoes, humming an unfamiliar tune. She begins heading down the hill towards the cemetery’s front gate. I trail behind her with no plan, desperate not to lose her warmth. She breaks out into quiet, murmured words as we walk:

“Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick, I wanna take a ride on your disco stick…”

She’s at the gate, and I’m going to lose her, she’s off to do something with disco sticks, whatever those are, and what if I never find her again?

“Miss Lavoe! Please, please hear me, I’m right here…”

She jumps the little gate; I go straight through it. To my amazement, a blue car is idling down the road, and a young man with copper hair is leaning against it.

“Kasey!” he calls, and she turns. He waves a hand in the air. She sets off towards him down the path, leaving me stunned. I watch as she coasts up to him, touches his face affectionately. “Do you feel better?” he asks.

“I don’t feel different hanging out around my grave. We can now officially add that to the experiment log. Thanks for waiting while I tried it out, though. Also I’m DJing for the ride home, I have a jam in mind.”

I watch from further up the hill as she gets in the car and they drive off. I have lost her, and while I don’t feel cold, I don’t feel warmth, either. I am back to nothing. Less than nothing, it feels like now, after her.

But I burst out laughing. Joyful, ringing laughter that no one in the world but me could hear. She is a spirit, yet someone saw her. She is a spirit, and I saw her. And I felt something. I had thought it was impossible. This means it isn’t. She didn’t hear me, but maybe she could. Maybe someone could.

And so I laugh, because for the first time in centuries, eternity seems a little bit less daunting.