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I would have been tempted to call killing children something more dire than a misunderstanding, but I wasn’t in a position to be too judgmental, so I let it lie. The elephant in the room remained unmentioned.
“These days, I try to tune it all out,” she continued. “I thought it’d get better once I came here. I thought maybe if they closed me away, I wouldn’t hear anything at all, and then it wouldn’t matter who was talking because the walls are very thick. They don’t want to let me out, so I thought it’d be okay if they kept me in. But I didn’t know they’d put me here. ”
“What’s so bad about—oh. Never mind. Not the ideal location for someone who’s sensitive, I don’t guess. Indian burial ground, and all that. ”
She nodded. “There’s a lot of negative energy here, that’s for sure. It’s very…draining, sometimes. But in time, I got used to it. I can ignore almost anything, these days. But I couldn’t ignore him…”
She didn’t put a period after the pronoun. We each waited for the other to go ahead and say his name. I caved first. “Green Eyes, you mean. ”
Kitty went ahead and laughed. “There you go. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“I don’t suppose it was. ” I shook my head. “Not hard, but weird. ”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“Yeah, actually I’ve got a couple of friends who are pretty open-minded. We’re doing some investigation on our own—”
“Not with those people on TV?”
“The Marshalls?” I rolled my eyes. “Oh hell no. We ran into them today, downtown. It was awkward. I think they know what we’re up to, and that’s unfortunate. Discretion being the better part of valor, and all. ”
Kitty rolled her head back and forth, like she was trying to crack her neck the way she’d popped her toes. “But your friends, do they believe you?”
“I think they do, yes. ”
“It’s like faith, though. They believe without knowing. ”
“Something like that, but I don’t think there’s anything but good intention behind it. They want to believe, at least, and knowing me gives them a little bit of an excuse. We got some evidence the other night, at the battlefield. ”
“Evidence? You going to go to the newspapers?”
I shook my head and waved my hand at her. “Oh no. Not that kind of evidence—not empirical evidence or anything. Nothing that would stand up to scrutiny. ”
She offered me a thin-lipped smirk. “Not much in the way of evidence, then, is it?”
“Not to anyone who wasn’t there, no. We took a tape recorder out to the battlefield and asked the ghosts there if they’d talk to us and tell us what’s going on out there. We picked up some voices. But I couldn’t prove to someone who wasn’t there that the voices we got were really spirits. You’ll have to take my word for it, is all. ”
“What’s going on out there—you mean, with all the pointing? I saw that on the news the other day, how they point and disappear into nothing. ”
I knew they’d been pointing, yes, but I hadn’t thought of it as a theme until Kitty put it that way. “What do you think they’re pointing at?”
“Some place. Some thing. I don’t know. ”
“Dyer’s field, maybe,” I said, mostly to myself. “We think there might be something fishy going on at Dyer’s field. ”
“You never know. Could be. You’re right for sure about the Green Eyes thing, though. I saw him. I didn’t know at first it was him, because, well, you know. You don’t think ‘Green Eyes’ except for when you think of the battlefield. Someplace else it takes you a while to figure him out. Jesus, but he’s scary. ”
I rocked my rear back and forth, sliding away from an uncomfortable spring. “I don’t think I’d call him scary, except that he’s different. Really, really different. He’s not like the ghosts I’m used to seeing here and there. He’s something more solid. More real. ”
She agreed, but in a way that disagreed with my assessment. “And more able to hurt you if he wants to. ”
“What makes you think he wants to hurt you?”
“I don’t know if he does or not, but if a ghost wanted to hurt me, there wouldn’t be much it could do about it, except scare me. But the thing out there”—she wagged her shoulder towards the window—“if he wanted to do something bad, he could. ”
“You’re right, I guess. But so long as he’s uninterested in molesting the rest of us, I’d prefer to think of him as ‘mysterious’ and not ‘sinister,’ if I can help it. ”
“Think of him however you want. He’s dangerous, and horrible, and I want as much thick sanitarium wall and floor and tight metal bars between me and him as I can get. ”
