Supervision. Alison Stine

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      “I am buried somewhere. Clara and I are next to each other. But no, I don’t know why I’m a ghost. I don’t know why I’m still here. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. None of us do. I’ve been trying to figure that out for over a hundred years.”

      “Who hit you?” I asked, staring at his eye, where the bruise had been. The skin there looked normal now. How could it heal so fast? How could the dead heal?

      “Come with me,” Tom said.

      Beyond the pond, hills rose above the cow pasture. On top of the first hill grew a few bent trees. The hill had a large amount of jagged stones, the overgrown grass brushing up to my knees.

      “What are we looking at?” I asked.

      “Look down.”

      “So?” I said. “Rocks. No one mows here.”

      “Look closer.”

      I humored him, bending down to brush the weeds away from one of the stones. There were letters engraved on its surface. I shot up.

      “It’s not mine!” Tom said quickly. “It’s the family plot.”

      “Could use a bit of tending,” a mournful voice said and I looked behind me to see Mr. Black perched on a tilting gravestone, swinging his legs. “Your grandmother has almost forgotten the plot is here,” he said. “Perhaps she doesn’t want to remember. Upkeep really isn’t her specialty, anyway, is it?”

      “Aren’t you supposed to be in the hayloft?” I asked.

      He held up a flat green bottle, which sloshed when he shook it. “I had some hidden about here.”

      “Wait,” I said. “I thought ghosts couldn’t drink or eat?”

      “We can,” Tom said. “It just doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t taste like anything. It doesn’t make us feel full or less thirsty or satisfied. We’re never satisfied.”

      “And yet,” Mr. Black said, swigging from the bottle, “we do what we know, what’s familiar to us, what feels comforting. What we were doing when … well, you know.”

      “You were drunk when you died?”

      “I was,” Mr. Black said.

      “So you’re drunk forever. You’re drunk as a ghost.” I wrinkled my nose. “That’s disgusting.”

      Mr. Black lifted the bottle and drank.

      “His grave is over there,” Tom said, pointing.

      “You were family?”

      “No,” Mr. Black said. “But the family was a kind one, and arranged for some of their favorite servants to be buried here. I was the gardener.”

      “Martha’s buried here, too,” Tom said. “Beneath this tree.”

      I found her small stone, the letters caked with black moss. “Martha Mary Moore,” I read. “Devoted and Faithful. November 14, 1881—January 1, 1900. She was just nineteen. And she died on New Year’s Day.”

      “New Year’s Eve, actually,” Mr. Black corrected. “But they didn’t find her until the next morning.”

      “How do you know?”

      “Why do you think I started drinking?” He took another sip, grimacing at the harsh taste. He got no pleasure from it, I saw. He drank like it was medicine.

      I walked in a circle around the graveyard. It was like wading through deep water, the grass was so thick. “Who are all these people?” I said. “The others buried here? Why haven’t I met them? Why aren’t they ghosts? Why isn’t the house full of ghosts?”

      “I don’t know,” Tom said. “It’s just me and Clara and Mr. Black.”

      “And Martha,” Mr. Black said.

      “And the Builder,” Tom said.

      “And—”

      Tom looked at him sharply, and he drank.

      “Why haven’t I met the Builder?” I asked. “Where is he?”

      “Building, I imagine,” Mr. Black said. “Putting in some cupola, or a stairway that leads to nowhere.”

      “He keeps busy,” Tom said. “He does what he knows. He built this house. And he keeps on building it.”

      I gazed down at the house at the bottom of the field: the stained-glass fanlight above the doors, the boxy addition on the back. The house had been added onto over the years, and some pieces matched more than others. “Where are you buried?” I asked Tom.

      He opened his mouth to speak, but his words were drowned out by a sound: a horn, blaring and close.

      “The train,” Mr. Black said when the blast had ended.

      “I came into town on that train,” I said.

      Tom said, “Me too.” And then he began to run.

      “Stop him!” Mr. Black said. He leapt from the headstone, the bottle crashing to the ground and breaking. Mr. Black didn’t even glance at it. “Go after him!”

      But Tom was gone, halfway past the house already.

      “What’s the matter with you?” I said. “Where’s he going?”

      Mr. Black bounded through the weeds and extended his hand to me. Without even thinking, I took it and we ran down the hill, past the house, over the driveway and across the road. It was the first time I had run with a ghost. We didn’t fly, not exactly, but we seemed to reach the train station in the time it took me to blink, to breathe in and out. I think my feet touched the ground only twice, like a send-off, a moon-bounce. I felt Mr. Black’s hand, hard and strong, in my own. His black scarf flapped in the wind. Then we were on the platform outside the train station, Mr. Black resting with his arm against the wall; running with me appeared to have exhausted him.

      “Where’s Tom?” I asked.

      Mr. Black just pointed at the tracks. He seemed breathless, though he had no breath.

      I crept to the edge of the platform, and saw Tom down below, stepping over the rails. Silver flashed in his hands. It was a wrench. “Tom, what are you doing?” I said.

      He looked up at me briefly, then bent back to his work. He was twisting at something, trying to turn a lever on the ground. He didn’t seem to see me. No, he didn’t seem to know me.

      A light sped toward the tracks, blinding even in daytime. The train, the Keystone. The Keystone was coming. I glanced back at Mr. Black, then hopped down from the platform. I landed on my feet, shaky but standing. “Tom, what are you doing?” I repeated. I reached him and tried to touch him, grabbing for the wrench, but he yanked it back.

      “Stopping СКАЧАТЬ