Page 45 of The Corruption of Hollis Brown

There was an ache in their chest and their head felt fuzzy like a slow drowning. Hollis had been depressed before, but this was different. This was worse.

Tell me something good about back then.

Walt huffed.

Fishing for facts, huh? You don’t have to try so hard; you could have just asked. I was killed in 1931.

Killed?

So you’re 109.

Walt shook his head.

It’s not the same. I never . . . grew or changed. If a ghost haunts a house . . . a child’s ghost haunts a house for one hundred years, that kid isn’t a man after that one hundred years. They’re still . . . running around its walls, asking for someone to play with them. Missing their mom.

But you’re not in a house, you’re in people.

Walt clenched his hands into tight fists, then let them go.

Playing pretend in other people’s lives isn’t living and aging. It’s acting in a shifting playhouse. Waking up to each day your own, making choices and having responsibilities, growing—truly growing old, getting tired and brittle and having your face reflect that in lines that are yours. Watching everyone you know grow beside you, die beside you. This is not the same. You’re just a house I’m haunting. You’re a house, Hollis.

And you’re a ghost, not a demon after all, huh.

Walt turned back over to face the wall.

There’s no such thing as demons and ghosts, there’s just me.

Walt closed their eyes, and a wave of anguish swept through them, so sharp and discordant that all Hollis could do was sit in awe of it. He had never felt like this, ever. Not once in his entire life. It was a pain that left him breathless, grand and wide as a cloudless summer sky.

Then Walt dampened it, and he received a burst of embarrassment before it faded away. Walt hadn’t meant to share that.

I don’t like Annie because she’s related to someone I knew, Walt said. She looks like him.

EXCUSE ME?

She’s the age we were when I last saw him. Being with her is . . . difficult. Thought you should know why.

You can’t just SAY THAT and not elaborate on it. What the fuck, Walt?

I can and I will. Just don’t think I don’t feel like she’s a swell gal. How I feel’s got nothing to do with her.

Hollis yelled, furious. But Walt refused to answer.

Just, leave me alone for a bit. I’m tired, Walt said, and even though it was already 11:00 a.m., Walt forced them both back to sleep.

Ring

If Walt knew someone who was related to Annie, then he had to be from here. Or near to here.

Annie’s family had been in this valley for as long as Hollis’s had. Her grandparents had lived in the area of abandoned properties and died when Annie and Hollis were in middle school. They hadn’t been super old either, so it wasn’t silly to think that her great-grandparents were the ones who settled in Michigan.

It would be quicker if he could just ask Annie about this, but he couldn’t.

He wasn’t even able to look up information about it himself yet.

It did make a few things about Walt clearer though. Like how he knew where the thermal springs were, why he seemed very comfortable getting around in general. Maybe even his skittishness about local cops.

He was making bread now, in a way Hollis never would. Quick and sloppy with just flour, yeast, and water.