"What then?"

"I can't see what it is, it's too bright."

"Oh so you have looked."

"Yes of course I've looked," he said, very softly. "Shit, this always happens. It's like they're its chorus."

He was referring to the coyotes, which had begun a steady round of almost panicked yelpings from the other side of the Canyon. "Whenever the light appears, the damn coyotes start up."

He had begun to shudder. Not from the cold, Tammy thought, but from fear. It crossed her mind that this was very far from the conventional image of ghost-hunting. The phantom naked and afraid; her proffering a pair of jeans to cover him up.

"It's come here for me," Todd said, very quietly. "You know that."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I can feel it. In my chest. And in my balls. The first time it came here it actually got into the house. I was asleep, and I woke up with this terrible ache in my balls. And that -- " he pointed down between his legs "-was so hard it hurt. I was terrified. But I yelled at it to go away, and off it went. I think I must have startled it."

"How many times has it been back since that first time?"

"Six or seven. No, more. Nine, ten times. Sometimes it just waits in the garden. Sometimes it sits on the roof, like it is now. And then once it was in the pool."

"There's no water in the pool."

"No, I know. It was lying at the bottom, not moving."

"And you couldn't see any shape in it?"

"No, no shape. I mean, do angels even have shapes?"

"An angel? That's what you think it is?"

"I'm pretty sure. I mean, it came to get me. And I am dead. So that's why it's hanging around. And it almost had me once -- "

"What happened?"

"I looked at it. And my head started to fill up with all these memories. Things I hadn't thought about for years and years, literally. Me and Donnie as kids. Cincinnati. Nothing important. Just things you might think of in a daydream. And it said to me -- "

"Wait. It speaks? This thing speaks?"

"Yes. It speaks."

"What sex is it?"

"I don't know. Sometimes it sounds more like a guy ... " He shrugged. "I don't know."

"I'm sorry. I interrupted you. What did it say?"

"Oh. It said: all this is waiting for you."

"'All this,' meaning what?"

"All the memories, I suppose. My past. People. Places. Smells. You know how sometimes you wake up from a dream and it's been so real, so strong, everything in the real world seems a bit unconvincing for the first half-hour? Well, it was like that after I saw the memories. Nothing was quite real."

"So why the hell are you fighting it? It doesn't want to hurt you."

"I'll tell you why I'm fighting. Because it's a one-way street, Tammy. I go with the light, there's no way back."

"And is being here so wonderful?"

"Now don't -- "

"I mean it."

"Don't argue with me," he said. "I've thought about this a lot. Believe me. It's all I've thought about."

"So what do you want to do?"

"I want you to stay right here with me until the damn thing goes away. It won't try any tricks if you're here."

"You mean giving you the memories?"

"It's got others. Once it appeared on the lawn looking like Patricia, my mother. I knew it wasn't really her, but it's crafty that way. You know, she was telling me to come with her, and for just a few seconds -- "

"It had you fooled?"

"Yeah. Not for long, but ... yeah."

At this juncture there was a rapping sound on the door. Todd jumped. "It's only Maxine," Tammy said, getting up, and turning from Todd. He caught hold of the jeans she was carrying, not because he wanted to wear them but to stop her escaping him.

"Don't answer it," he said. "Please stay here with me. I'm begging you, stay: please."

She held her breath for a moment, listening for the presence on the roof. It was no longer audible. Had the creature-whatever it was-simply departed, or was it still squatting up there, biding its time? Or-a third possibility, just as plausible as the other two-was she falling for some fictional fear that Todd, in his confused, post-mortem state, had simply created out of thin air? Was she just hearing birds on the roof, skittering around, and letting his imagination work her up into a frenzy about it? "Put your jeans on," she said to him, letting go of them. "Tammy. Listen to me -- "

"I am listening," she said, crossing to the door of the bedroom. "Put your jeans on."

She heard the rapping sound again. This time she thought perhaps she'd been wrong. It wasn't Maxine at all. It was somebody outside the house beating on the front door.

She went to the bedroom door and cautiously opened it. She was in time to see Maxine retreating across the hallway from the front door.

"What is it?" she whispered. Maxine looked up at her; by the expression on her face something had unsettled her. "I heard this knocking. Went to the door. And, Tammy, there was a light out there, shining in through the cracks in the door."

"So he's not having delusions," Tammy said.

She headed downstairs to comfort Maxine. As she did so she reported what she'd just heard Todd tell her. "Todd said there was something out there waiting for him. That's his turn of phrase: waiting for him. Apparently it sits on the roof a lot." She put her hand on Maxine's trembling shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"I am now. It just freaked me out."

"So you didn't open the door?"

"Well you can't open it, can you? It's cracked. But it's not much protection."

"Stay here."

So saying, Tammy crossed the hallway, gingerly slid through the broken door and stepped out onto the doorstep.

"Oh Jesus, be careful," Maxine murmured.

"There's nothing," she said.

"Are you sure?"

Maxine stepped out through the cracked door and they stood together on the step.

The last light of the afternoon had by now died away; but the moon had risen and was shedding its brightness through the trees to the right of the front door.

"Well, at least it's a beautiful evening," Maxine remarked, staring up at the light coming between the branches.

Tammy's thoughts were elsewhere. She stepped out of the house and onto the pathway. Then she turned around, running her gaze back and forth along the roof, looking for some sign, any sign whatsoever, of the creature that had made the noise up there. As far as she could see the roof was completely deserted.

"Nothing," she said to herself.

She glanced back at Maxine, who was still staring up at the moon. She was alarmed to see that the sight of the moonlight seemed to have brought Maxine to tears.

"What's wrong?" she said.

Maxine didn't reply. She simply stared slackly up at the tree. A few leaves fluttered down from the branches where the moonlight was sourced, and to Tammy's amazement the light began to slowly descend.

"Oh fuck," Tammy said very softly, realizing that this was not the moon.

Todd had been right. There was some entity here, its outer form consisting of raw light, its core unreadable. Whatever it looked like, it apparently had eyes, because it could see them clearly; Tammy had no doubt of that. She felt its scrutiny upon her. Not just upon her, in fact, in her. She was entirely transparent to it; or so she felt.

And as its study pierced her, she felt it ignite other images in her mind's eye. The house on Monarch Street where she was born appeared in front of her, its presence not insistent enough to blot out the world in which she was standing, but co-existing with it, neither sight seeming to sit uncomfortably beside the other. The door of the Monarch Street house opened, and her Aunt Jessica, her father's sister, came out onto the stoop. Aunt Jessica, of all people, whom she hadn't thought about in a very long time. Jessica the spinster aunt, smiling in the sunshine, and beckoning to her out of the past.