I stuck my head in, just for a quick look. And that was when someone grabbed me by the hair.

I barely had time to gasp. My head was tugged forward so hard, my feet left the ground. I flew across the room, my hands stretched out Superman style, and landed in a thudding belly flop.

The air left my lungs with a whoosh. I tried to roll over, but he assumed it was a he was already on top of me. His legs straddled my back. An arm snaked around my throat. I tried to struggle, but his grip was impossibly strong. He pulled back and I gagged.

I couldn't move. Totally at his mercy, he lowered his head toward mine. I could feel his breath in my ear. He did something with his other arm, got a better angle or counterweight, and squeezed. My windpipe was being crushed.

My eyes bulged. I pawed at my throat. Useless. My fingernails tried to dig into his forearm, but it was like trying to penetrate mahogany. The pressure in my head was building, growing unbearable. I flailed. My attacker did not budge. My skull felt like it was about to explode. And then I heard the voice:

"Hey'Willieboy."

That voice.

I placed it instantly. I had not heard it in Christ, I tried to remember ten, fifteen years maybe? Since Julie's death anyway. But there are certain sounds, voices mostly, that get stored in a special section of the cortex, on the survival shelf if you will, and as soon as you hear them, your every fiber tenses, sensing danger.

He let go of my neck suddenly and completely. I collapsed to the floor, thrashing, gagging, trying to dislodge something imaginary from my throat. He rolled off me and laughed. "You've gone soft on me, Willie boy."

I flipped over and scooted away in a back crawl. My eyes confirmed what my ears had already told me. I could not believe it. He had changed, but there was no mistake.

"John?" I said. "John Asselta?"

He smiled that smile that touched nothing. I felt myself drop back in time. The fear the fear I hadn't experienced since adolescence surfaced. The Ghost that was what everyone called him, though no one had the courage to say it to his face had always had that effect on me. I don't think I was alone in that. He terrified pretty much everyone, though I had always been protected. I was Ken Klein's little brother. For the Ghost, that was enough.

I have always been a wimp. I have shied away from physical confrontations all my life. Some claim that makes me prudent and mature. But that was not it. The truth is, I am a coward. I am deathly afraid of violence. That might be normal survival instinct and all but it still shames me. My brother, who was, strangely enough, the Ghost's closest friend, had the enviable aggression that separated the wannabes from the greats. His tennis, for example, reminded some of a young John McEnroe in that take-on-the-world, pit-bull, won't-lose, borderline going-too-far competitiveness. Even as a child, he'd battle you to the death and then stomp on the remains after you fell. I was never like that.

I scrambled to my feet. Asselta rose straight up, like a spirit from the grave. He spread his arms. "No hug for an old friend, Willie boy?"

He approached, and before I could react, he embraced me. He was pretty short, what with that strange long-torso, short-arms build. His cheek pressed my chest. "Been a long time," he said.

I was not sure what to say, where to start. "How did you get in?"

"What?" He released me. "Oh, the door was open. I'm sorry about sneaking up on you like that but…" He smiled, shrugged it away. "You haven't changed a bit, Willie boy. You look good."

"You shouldn't have just…"

He tilted his head, and I remembered the way he would simply lash out. John Asselta had been a classmate of Ken's, two years ahead of me at Livingston High School. He captained the wrestling team and was the Essex County lightweight champ two years running. He probably would have won the states, but he got disqualified for purposely dislocating a rival's shoulder. His third violation. I still remember the way his opponent screamed in pain. I remembered how some of the spectators got violently ill at the sight of the dangling appendage. I remembered Asselta's small smile as they carted his opponent away.

My father claimed that the Ghost had a Napoleon complex. That explanation seemed too simplistic to me. I don't know what it was, if the Ghost needed to prove himself or if he had an extra Y chromosome or if he was just the meanest son of a bitch in existence.

Whatever, he was definitely a psycho.

No way around it. He enjoyed hurting people. An aura of destruction surrounded his every step. Even the big jocks steered clear of him. You never met his eye, never got in his path, because you never knew what could provoke him. He would strike with no hesitation. He'd break your nose. He'd knee you in the balls. He'd gouge your eyes. He would hit you when your back was turned.

He gave Milt Saperstein a concussion during my sophomore year. Saperstein, a nerdy freshman complete with pocket protector against polyester print, had made the mistake of leaning up against the Ghost's locker. The Ghost smiled and let him go with a pat on the back. Later that day, Saperstein was walking between classes when, barn, the Ghost ran up behind him and smashed his forearm into Milt's head. Saperstein never saw him coming. He crumbled to the ground, and with a laugh, the Ghost stomped on his skull. Milt had to be taken to the emergency room at St. Barnabas.

No one saw a thing.

When he was fourteen if legend was true the Ghost killed a neighbor's dog by sticking firecrackers up his rectum. But worse than that, worse than pretty much anything, were the rumors that the Ghost, at the tender age of ten, stabbed a kid named Daniel Skinner with a kitchen knife. Supposedly Skinner, who was a couple of years older, picked on the Ghost, and the Ghost had responded with a knife strike straight to the heart. Rumor also had it that he spent some time in both juvie and therapy and that neither one had stuck. Ken claimed ignorance on the subject. I asked my father about it once, but he would neither confirm nor deny.

I tried to push the past away. "What do you want, John?"

I never understood my brother's friendship with him. My parents had not been happy about it either, though the Ghost could be charming with adults. His almost albino complexion ergo the nickname belied gentle features. He was almost pretty, with long lashes and a Dudley Do-Right cleft in the chin. I had heard that after graduation he had gone into the military. Supposedly he'd been enlisted in something clandestine involving Special Ops or Green Berets, something like that, but nobody could confirm that with any certainty.

The Ghost did the head-tilt again. "Where's Ken?" he asked in that silky, pre-strike voice.

I did not respond.

"I've been gone a long time, Willie boy. Overseas."

"Doing what?" I asked.

He flashed me the teeth again. "Now that I'm back, I thought I'd look up my old best bud."

I did not know what to say to that. But I suddenly flashed to when I stood on the veranda last night. The man staring at me from the end of the street. It had been the Ghost.

"So, Willie boy, where can I find him?"

"I don't know."

He put his hand up to his ear. "Excuse me?"

"I don't know where he is."

"But how can that be? You're his brother. He loved you so."

"What do you want here, John?"

"Say," he said, and he showed the teeth yet again, "whatever happened to your high school hot tie Julie Miller? You two get hitched?"

I stared at him. He held the smile. He was putting me on, I knew that. He and Julie had, strangely enough, been close. I never understood that. Julie had claimed to see something there, something under the lashing-out psychosis. I once joked that she must have pulled a thorn from his paw. I wondered now how to play it. I actually considered running, but I knew that I would never make it. I also knew that I was no match for him.