Perfect Circle: Chapter 1

Ghosts are all different, like demons, not all the same, like zombies. They all want something. If you've got the sense God gave a cockroach, you stay away from them.

Editor's note: Salon is proud to present the first in a series of excerpts from "Perfect Circle," the new supernatural novel by Sean Stewart, author of "Mockingbird" and "Resurrection Man" and lead author of the interactive Web game "The Beast" (inspired by the film "A.I."). "Perfect Circle" has just been published by Small Beer Press. Reprinted by permission; all rights reserved.

July 2, 2004 | I woke up sweaty and shaking. Tense. I had been dreaming about ghost roads again. This one was leaving an apartment complex swimming pool, and there was a little girl walking down it. She was looking back over her shoulder at me, eyes solemn behind a cheap kid's snorkeling mask, and wearing pool flippers; slow dreamy duck-steps, a trail of wet inhuman footprints disappearing into the dim black and white houses, the humming silence.

I looked at the clock display on my VCR, but the glowing blue numbers just flashed
00:00
00:00
00:00

Time unstuck and drifting. That lost feeling, like when you're a kid with a fever and the night breaks around you forever.

I lay on my dingy mattress in my tiny living room, body humming with the premonition of something terrible about to happen. That copper taste in my mouth. Eyes wide in the darkness. Waiting.

The phone rang and I grabbed for it. "Hello?"

"DK?"

"Who the hell is this?" Nobody had called me DK in 10 years, not since my cousin AJ died. DK had been her nickname for me.

"It's your cousin, Tom. Tom Hanlon. My dad married your Aunt Dot's half-sister."

I dredged up a vague memory of a strident woman in puffball hair lecturing my Uncle Waylon on the evils of drink while he sipped Coors Lite from a paper cup. "OK. I think I got it."

"Now we're talking," Tom Hanlon said. "Do you remember me at all?"

"Not at all."

"We talked at that one family reunion. I asked you what ghosts were like."

"What did I say?"

"'Dead.'"

That sounded like me. There are other things to say about ghosts, of course. They're all different, like demons, not all the same, like zombies. Some can touch you and some can't, some are sad and some are mad as hell. The main thing is, they all want something, and they want it way worse than you want anything. If you've got the sense God gave a cockroach, you stay the hell away from dead people.

Just to be polite I said, "Tom, are you aware that it's the fucking middle of the night?"

"There's a dead girl in my garage."

"Call the cops."

"No, not dead like that. I mean, more dead."

Oh. "Shit, man. Can't help you. I don't do that anymore. Good ni--"

"I'll give you a thousand bucks," he said. "Think about it."

I thought about it.

"A thousand dollars, just to get rid of one ghost. That's a lot of money."

One thousand dollars. Six thousand packages of Ichi-Ban noodle soup. Lunch at my current lifestyle for about ... 14 years. Ten good trips to Six Flags for me and Megan, Dr Peppers included and all the Frito Pie we could eat.

"I notice you aren't hanging up," Hanlon said with a tired laugh. "You know what they say, every man has his price--"

I hung up.

Next page: I never told my daughter Megan about me and ghosts. No kid wants to think her daddy is a freak