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"So I s'pose I can take it fer granted that y'all're interested in ghosts?" Eli faced away from the group. The flashlight in his paw illuminated nothing but the dust of what had once been the town of Bitter Sands.

"Who else," Ben said, "signs up for something called Midnight Ghost Town Tour?"

The bobcat and the roadrunner--Ruth and Gwen, from history class--gave that one an encouraging laugh.

The jackrabbit who'd arrived in the rusted old pickup--technically speaking late, had introduced himself as Elias, but call him Eli, even though they'd been expecting a guide named Joel--didn't seem to find it so witty. "Interested how? Like... you wanna understand what a ghost is? Or like you wanna have yerself a good fun scare messin around in the scraps of what use'ta be somebody's life?"

"Well, when you put it like that," Gwen muttered under her breath, then spoke up, "what can you tell us about what a ghost is, mister?"

"Oh, I've learned a thing'r two," Eli waved them forward, in between the sun-greyed wooden skeletons that had once been buildings--homes, shops, churches, saloons, who could say anymore? Like any skeleton, death had made them look very much the same.

"Odd for a tour guide, isn't he?" Ruth whispered to Ben. The skink had to agree.

Behind them there was nothing for miles but lightless night, pathless desert, and a bottomless silence of sky.

"The first thing you got to understand about ghosts," Eli leaned one leg up on the wreckage of what had once been a whitewashed steeple, "is it ain't as simple as just 'a ghost.' A dead soul, y'see, that's about as close to bein nothin at all as a person can get. In order to be enough-a somethin that you can trouble the livin again, you need yerself an anchor. And what kinda anchor you got, means what kinda ghost you're showin up as."

Ben did his best to think of something intelligent to say, but couldn't do better than "I'm not sure I follow."

"Well, think about it." Eli cautiously tested the chapel doorframe, judged it as stable as could be expected, and waved them in. "A soul by itself, without a body, that's just a spirit. And a spirit ain't in time, it's in eternity, and that's a fearful thing."

"Shouldn't," Ben rubbed the smooth scales at the back of his neck, "eternity be good?"

"Say," Ruth had sidestepped the ruin of the collapsed chapel roof, was playing her flashlight under the empty window arches, "you suppose there's any chance of finding bits of stained glass?"

"No taking souvenirs!" Gwen said sharply, "even if it weren't super disrespectful, that's just begging to get cursed!"

"They wouldn't-a been able to afford more'n plain windows here, anyway," Eli assured them, then turned back to the skink. "Sure, the soul'll last forever. But the mortal mind ain't built for inhabitin just the spirit world and not the material. In its pure state a ghost can't tell time's passin, can't change or learn anythin, can't tell the difference 'tween things as'r happening now and things it remembers. Plus, it's got no senses no more, just knows by what you'd call 'direct epi-stay-may,' stead-a seein or hearin: mortal mind aint really built for that neither."

Ben found himself standing at what would have been the pulpit. Through the space where the roof ought to have been came moonlight--would have been too faint to perceive, ordinarily, but apparently they'd spent long enough in this lightless place that his eyes were adjusting--like a waterfall high and thin enough that nothing but mist reached the bottom.

"Not to mention how the livin can't really interact none with a ghost what's a pure an eternal spirit." Eli's voice drifted in from outside. "So even if they didn't need no anchor to think and tell what's goin on, we wouldn't be able to contact the ones as ain't using one kinda anchor or another. Would be like tryin to have a talk with a fella standin on the ground while you're ridin a ferris wheel."

"What kind of ghosts, then," Gwen apparently saw an opportunity to shift back to the conversation they'd paid to have, "have been seen here?"

"Here? No sightin's been reported here. Mebbe counts as consecrated ground'n all, still." Eli remained outside the front door. "Nothin here but history: some missionary heard tell a minin boom town didn't have no church yet, thought it'd be worth tryin to get a foothold in, finished buildin the church just in time for the claim to bust and the whole place to dry up and blow away. But don't fret, we'll get the proper hauntin soon 'nuff."

"You said ghosts need anchors," Ben tried to think of a way to ask what those were without sounding like he didn't know what those were. "What are those, exactly?"

Eli looked at him like he was supposed to already know what those were. "An anchor's jes whatever a ghost's focusin on to keep in touch with the layer-a the universe where there's things like 'place' an 'time.' S'like... you ever done any meditatin?"

"You mean an anchor is like focusing on your breathing," Gwen sounded skeptical, "or a mantra?"

"Somethin like that, yeah. Cept when there ain't nothin to ya but a soul, turns out you can focus a lot harder, fer a lot longer, than when you got a body always comin up with distractions."

"Speaking of focusing," Ruth prodded the free-stranding building facade with her flashlight beam, "could you tell us about this place? And whether there's a ghost here?"

"Oh there surely is a ghost here, ma'am." Eli carefully stepped over the remnant edge of a porch toward the empty doorway, beyond which was nothing but dust and ruin. "Place had a few names, none of em lasted long. The Evenin Primrose, the Thunder Queen, Salty Katy's at the end. All in all it was open less'n twenty years, still technically a little longer'n the town officially existed."

There was no floor left, beyond the doorway. There were only other walls in the most technical sense. Thistle, tumbleweed, and scotch broom crowded where once the miners would have gathered for the saloon, the gambling, the brothel, or some combination of the above depending on how abandoned the town had become.

"They say sometimes you'll see a woman behind a bar that aint there no more. She takes a couple bottles, walks around that way, and then disappears. Guess where there used to be a door. Now there's a classic example of an anchor: a ghost focusin on a specific memory from life so hard they keep repeatin it."

"And that's how you get a haunted house?"

"Well, yes an no. A memory as anchor will get you a ghost that stays in one place cause that's where whatever it's rememberin happened. A haunted house, or a haunted anythin, is when the location itself is the anchor. Difference bein, a memory gets you a ghost that just does the same thing forever, repeats the same action, the same way, and if anythin is in the way it'll walk right through, never notice. A haunting--and it aint just houses, dolls, pictures, people, anythin can be haunted--gets you a ghost as is present in the location. Can tell what's goin on. Can react."

Eli held firm, serious eye contact till Ben started to feel uncomfortable. But before he could ask what the jackrabbit meant, Eli turned to lead them to the next spot on the tour.

"This useta be one a the most active spots on the townsite. Encounters was bein reported even before the place was abandoned."

The building would have been squat and compact even when usable. Now the roof was buckling in the center and the entire structure was listing to the left, brittle planks skewed into a parallelogram by the weight of cumulative seasons.

"What kind of encounters?" Ruth had expended all her impatience for anything but ghost stories.

"Loud bangin," Eli gave the corner of the building an experimental touch, judged it firm enough to lean on, "thrown books or chalk. This was the schoolhouse, y'see, though there was never enough population to have many students. Sposedly the schoolmarm would hear desks rocking back and forth when there weren't nobody in em, and after would always come a shelf collapsin or a lunch pail thrown through a window. Got so she'd evacuate the buildin at first sound a desk rockin. Students'd do it on purpose, to get outa lessons, so much that the school shut down even while the town were still alive."

"And what kind of ghost does that?"

"That's a poltergeist ma'am."

The bobcat, roadrunner, and skink exchanged glances over which would ask what kind of anchor that meant.

"S'what happens when the anchor's an emotion, y'see," Eli proceeded regardless. "If a ghost can manage to hold on to an emotion from life, then that can just carry on indefinitely. A livin person can't stay angry forever, eventually you gotta sleep or eat or take a piss. A poltergeist don't." The jackrabbit shook his head gravely. "Bad business, poltergeists, and not just on account a they's one'a the only sorts'a ghosts as'll get violent. Also cause you gotta wonder, what happened to em, that they died this angry?"

The phrase 'especially in a schoolhouse' remained unsaid.

Ben decided against entering. Not because of ghosts, he prepared to explain, it's just that it'd be so dark in there the only way to find the inevitable fallen rafters and missing floorboards would be to stumble into them. But nobody asked.

"So a poltergeist is using anger as an anchor?" Ruth sounded skeptical.

"Well, not necessarily anger," Eli answered without taking his eyes off the listing schoolhouse door. "Can be any emotion'f it's strong enough, just mostly anger's the one that'll make a ghost do things anybody livin'll notice. You do sometimes hear tell of a ghost as do nothin but cry, so that's mebbe a differnt sorta poltergeist."

"How likely are we to actually encounter this thing here?" Gwen asked.

"Difficult to say," Eli admitted, "a poltergeist don't tend to stick around. If the anger'r whatever else subsides, it's pretty rare to be able to get it back. Difficult to muster up emotions without no neurotransmitters or hormones no more. S'why you hear about poltergeists just suddenly leavin and never being heard from again. But ain't nothin stoppin the same ghost from comin back with-"

Something clattered, somewhere in the schoolhouse. They all froze. The jackrabbit fixed his flashlight beam on the doorway, but illuminated nothing within.

After a few moments of silence, Eli continued, "-from coming back with another kinda anchor. One they actually mean to use."

"Mean to?" Ben crept around the corner, but things looked no more certain from the side.

"A ghost don't necessarily mean to have the anchor it's got." Eli said darkly. "I'd bet most poltergeists aint intentional, they just died angry and kept on that way. And I'd bet most haunts is attached to somethin they knew from their life--their house, their belongins, or where they died--jes cause that was the first thing as occurred to em."

"That makes sense," Gwen mused, "otherwise you couldn't explain ghosts that don't know they're dead."

Eli turned to her, eyes wide, brows low, expression as unreadable as the interior of the ruined schoolhouse. But after a long moment he said only "we should move on. Aint likely to see nothin here if we aint already."

"Did I offend him somehow?" Gwen whispered, under the crunch of underfoot gravel. Neither Ben nor Ruth had an answer.

"This used to be," Eli had finally brought them to a building he was apparently willing to enter, "the stagecoach stop. Was meant to be a telegraph office too but the town died afore they could finish puttin up the poles. And this, I'd wager, is where you'll find the anchor for one'a the only ghosts round here that's active enough, an consistent enough, so's you can put a name to him: Bloody Hernando."

The roof of the building was gone. The two-story facade still stood, as did the walls--indeed, it looked as if someone had repurposed rafters as props to hold what was left of the structure close to upright. It felt like a well, beyond the walls of which Ben couldn't be sure whether anything of the world still existed.

"They say," Eli continued, "that if you're drivin south on highway 89, or west on route 17, and it's after midnight, and you're alone in the car, then sometimes you'll see him on the side of the road, trying to hitch a lift. Big puma, dusty clothes, hat pulled down over his eyes."

In her excitement Ruth had pulled her flashlight to her chest, unconsciously positioned to shine up under her chin as if she were the one telling this.

"He won't say nothin if you stop to pick him up, at first. And there won't seem to be nothin wrong with him, expect for his being a big quiet unfreindly-lookin fucker that you probably shouldn't-a let inta your car. But if you look at him in the rearview mirror, they say, you gonn' see blood pourin down his chest from his throat."

Finally getting what they paid for, Ben supposed.

"Only time he speaks," Eli's voice remained stubbornly neutral, "will be to ask you to turn off on the unpaved connecter--y'all woulda hafta've taken it one way'r the other to get here--to take him to Bitter Sands. If you don't, he gets outa the car and walks into the darkness. But if you do... then by the time you pull up here, he ain't there no more."

"Oh!" Gwen squeaked and Ben jumped. "I know this one! That's the Spectral Hitchhiker! Repeated motif in ghost stories, from horsedrawn carts in Europe to traveling salesmen in the suburbs. They give someone a lift but find they've vanished before reaching their destination. Let's see, it's often a young woman dressed like she's been to a party, implying she was killed at one, bit patriarchal. So I guess... the destination is the 'anchor?'"

"Yer on the right track there," Eli looked impressed, "A spectral hitchhiker's whatcha call a sub-type," and the impressed look shifted into something else, "of a revenant."

A thought flashed into Ben's mind unbidden that if anyone, or anything, were creeping closer to this hollow husk of building, then they wouldn't be able to spot it from inside.

"This is what them 'paranormal experts,'" Eli scoffed, "is actually talkin about when they go on bout 'unfinished business.' A revenant is usin some kinda task as their anchor: maybe that's gettin revenge, or seein a crime brought to justice, or makin sure their kin is ok. But some of em is more deliberate-like. Take yer spectral hitchhikers, Bloody Hernando fer instance. If the thing they're hangin on to is gettin some place, then they can just vanish afore they get there. Then the task never gets completed an they can keep usin that anchor, hell, long as wherever they're tryin to get still exists."

Someone would have had to move these rafters, turn them into props for the walls. And it wouldn't have been Hernando.

"So revenants," Ruth's voice was all hushed excitement, "are staying ghosts on purpose?"

"Well, not all of em. Them as don't know they're dead, an get stuck jes trying to do, hell, whatever it was they were workin at when they died? Those'd count. Then there's ones as is determined to get somethin finished. And the ones that don't wanna pass on, too scared or too sad or too... well nevermind, but they might very well hold onta some task they know ain't got no endin."

The jackrabbit slumped a little, stared at the ground. The only sound was a hoarse exhale of windblown sand against the flimsy walls that had once been a stagecoach stop.

Before Ben could summon the courage to ask, though, their guide had regathered himself to his task. "Anyway, next stop's the graveyard."

Something about the darkness was more complete here, more vehement, at the edge of the small graveyard. Ben tried to tell himself it was just that there was nothing for the flashlights to find.

He only partly believed himself.

"So. What kind of ghost," it sounded like Gwen had resigned herself to the kind of tour Eli was determined to give, "do you find here?"

"I ain't seen much here, specific," Eli said, "But there's a reason fer that."

You would have had to take Eli's word for it that this was a graveyard at all. Ben guessed that making headstones hadn't been a priority, back in the day. It was just the fact that he knew it to be a graveyard that was making the scales up the back of his neck itch. Surely.

"Afore I started givin this tour," the jackrabbit's voice had gone sour and bitter, "kids used to drive up here an mess around. Oh, I don't begrudge em their curiosity, but they'd get into things as weren't safe. Mess with things they oughtn't. And this graveyard was one-a their favorite things to mess with. Fuckin say-onses and the like."

"If you're about to bring up Satan..." Gwen said, darkly.

"Say-onses aint of the devil, ma'am, they's just stupid." Eli clicked his tongue, "Anyway, there's one kinda ghost whose anchor aint somethin the ghost's doing, and that's whatcha call a wraith. S'when the anchor's some kinda curse or psychic contact or spell, anythin that somethin in the living world is doin to the ghost."

"And seances count?" Ben hoped he sounded puzzled enough to not sound scared.

"They surely do." Eli shook his head. "Damn shame, draggin up a ghost who don't want no anchor, jes to satisfy yer curiosity. Sometimes they wind up anchored to somethin else after, as haunts or revenants, just outa bein disturbed."

"I guess we should be glad not to see a wraith, then?" Ruth sighed.

"If you say so, ma'am."

"Afore we hit the last stop, we're gettin one thing straight. We are absolutely, one-hunnerd percent, not goin inside."

Ben was tempted to remark that wouldn't make much of a change, but the guide sounded in deadly earnest.

When they reached the abandoned mine, the skink admitted the jackrabbit had a point. This didn't look like a place anyone should go inside.

"So far's I unnerstand it, the handful-a claims scattered around the site'd mostly either dried up or turned out t'be duds within a year or two. The only one as had any real amount'a ore turned into," Eli nodded toward the dark hole in the end of the box canyon, "this."

The walk up to the old mine site had been longer than Ben had expected, but he couldn't have said how long. Perhaps because it was several hours past midnight, perhaps because he was disoriented with peering into the darkness, possibly because he'd spent so long in this abandoned town that his mind was just exhausted, but he almost felt he'd been here years rather than hours.

"They say they got less'n less ore every year," Eli concluded, "till the place shut down, and then the town weren't far behind."

The mine entrance was just near enough that Ben could feel a slight breeze from the hole into an even more impenetrable darkness. It did NOT feel like it was breathing, Ben told himself firmly. "It does that," he swallowed, "cause temperature drops faster outside, at night."

"What?" Ruth said.

"The wind."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know what, nevermind."

"Are there kinds of ghosts," Gwen ignored them both, "that are more dangerous?"

"Oh, surely so." Eli kept his eyes fixed on the mine. "For example: nothin makes a better anchor than life stolen from the livin. Usually in the form'a blood. Except it don't last. You got keep stealin more to stay anchored."

"Wait," Ruth hissed, "are you saying vampires are ghosts?"

"You can call em whatever you like, ma'am. I ain't never run up on one myself, thank god, and I don't never hope to. I'm jes explainin how I been told it works."

"If there were a," no, Ben thought, he couldn't say 'vampire' it was too silly "-that kind of ghost in there, it wouldn't be safe to go in, then?"

For the first time, Eli turned his back to the entrance. The jackrabbit's eyes were wide, baffled and frustrated. He swept a look over each of them, like a charades player who's tried every clue more than once and still the guesses grow no closer. But "people've died in there," was all he said.

He stepped to one side of the path, not quite daring them to go closer to the mine, but not exactly blocking their path either.

Ruth and Gwen looked at eachother. Then the bobcat and roadrunner turned to him.

Ben stared into the mine's abyss. If anything stared back it was too dark to see it.

"I mean, it'd be dangerous. It's dark, and unmaintained," he was assailed by a deja-vu-like vertigo, and a feeling as if unseen schoolyard bullies dared him, called him a chicken, for not going in. "And there's like... heavy gasses," the skink kept his voice firm by sheer force of will. "Going in is just a bad idea."

When he turned to Eli, the jackrabbit looked thoughtfully surprised. But he only said "Well, sunrise's gonna be soon. Best get on our way."

"There is one kinda ghost," Eli answered, "as doesn't have an anchor. Or more like, doesn't need one no more."

They'd returned to the abandoned railroad crossing where the tour had first convened. The access road, from here, wound out into the foothills that they'd driven around when they'd arrived. The railroad was abandoned and overgrown, but the eye still wanted to follow it beyond the implied horizon.

Ruth, in apparent attempt to salvage something out of the night, had fully bought in to the guide's stubbornness and was asking all the questions about anchors and hauntings she could think of. The jackrabbit had answered in noncommittal monosyllables until she'd asked what would happen if a ghost let go of all their anchors.

"Some folks call em Pilgrims. Some call em Seekers. Some folks say they's goin through purgatory, some say 'transcending' instead. Some people call it Nirvana but that there's cultural appropriation." Eli stood on the tracks. Behind him the eastern horizon had begun to lighten, jagged mountains and gap-toothed mesas outlined by false dawn in the color of corroded copper. "But if a poltergeist's calmed down, or a revenant's got no more unfinished business, or any ghost really and fully realizes what they are and what they're doin to themselves, then they hopefully let go a their anchor and start movin on."

"To where?" Ben asked. The weariness of the night was weighing on him like a blanket, and he felt a calm like that which comes after hours of weeping.

"To the other side. To deeper regions'a the afterlife. Couldn't tell yah more'n that, myself. Not yet, anyway." Eli shrugged, "How's the bit go agin: the undiscovered country from whence no traveler returns? Sumthin like that. Only ones as could tell you more is them as has gone there."

Gwen and Ruth looked uncomfortable. Ben couldn't help but be a little moved.

"Till then, I'll hafta keep givin this tour, I reckon. You all travel safe, now, y'hear?" Eli turned and was swallowed into the darkness. The only sign he'd ever been there was the sound of footsteps on gravel, fading with distance.

It was a short walk from the railroad crossing to the parking area.

"He all but told us he was, though!" Ruth was insisting.

"Hon," Gwen sighed at the bobcat's naivete, "even if he had claimed to be a ghost, which he didn't! That wouldn't mean he was one. It was just, you know, showmanship. Like that accent he was doing."

"I dunno," Ben blinked. Weariness was beginning to assert itself, as the dawn approached. "He was awfully insistent about explaining how ghosts worked, instead of actually giving the tour. So maybe..." he scratched the blue scales under his chin, "he wanted us to work it out? Like, if he was a," what had the word been? "a revenant, and maybe giving ghost tours of the town is his anchor?"

"Shouldn't he be better at them, then?" Gwen yawned.

"Maybe he wants to stop, so he can move on," Ben really just wanted some rest at this point, "but he needs people to stop coming on these tours to do that? Or he needs someone to figure it out and say so?"

"Or maybe it was just a disappointing evening's entertainment." Gwen said.

"Hey, I had fun," Ruth piped up.

Gwen smiled, gave her a grateful kiss on the cheek.

"Well," Ben had to fight to keep his eyes open, maybe he ought to just nap in his car before he tried driving. "I'll see you in class, Monday."

"Take care," they waved to him.

When the sun finally rose, it found the town that had once been Bitter Sands as empty as it had been for over a century.

It took Davis a moment to realize where he was and what had woken him. He'd dozed off waiting on the front porch, apparently. And the sound had been a car door. "How'd it go?" the skunk got to his feet and stretched.

"No better'n last year."

"They's still there?"

"They's still there," Eli sighed as he dragged his tired feet up the porch steps. "Couple times I thought they were close to realizin... but no."

Davis knelt to help his husband struggle out of his hiking boots. "Even when you showed em the mine?"

"They didn't go in, this time."

"Well that's progress!"

"I coulda sworn they were about to get it, I could feel it." Eli hissed with frustration. "Christ, but I could use a drink."

"Figgered you would," Davis reached into the cooler beneath the porch swing he'd fallen asleep in, produced a bottle of honey bourbon.

After a swig Eli smiled and said "I do love you."

"Good t'hear it," Davis regained his seat beside Eli, put an arm around his shoulders.

They sat like that for some time. They watched the sky turn pink, then yellow, then steel blue, and listened to the birdsong and cicadas in the sagebrush as the high desert woke to life around their cabin.

They moved only to pass the bottle back and forth.

"You sure the whole ghost explanation routine is the best idea?" Davis finally asked.

"I tried everythin else, haven't I? Nothin else's come close to workin, for years."

"Fair nuff, I spose."

"Jes feel sorry for em, is all."

"I know."

"Jes some kids as wandered into a condemned mine..."

"I know."

"It's a shame is all."

"I know." Davis lifted the bottle from Eli's unresisting paw and pulled him toward the cabin door. "Well, I expect you'll try again next year. C'mon, we both need some rest."

Eli and Davis turned to go indoors. The rising daylight illuminated and awakened the patchily verdant hills, the rusted old pickup out front, and all the scraps that, put together, added up to their lives. Around them there was everything, despite their home's isolation: the smell of fireweed and desert buttercup, the sound of cool breeze through the scrub pines, and the topless mountains of sun-saturated cumulus in the sky.