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it’s sticky and smells like a milk pail left out in the rain . . . t he horses smell it and they are stamping and kicking the stalls and i want to run run run run far far away but i have to be quiet ssshh ssshh ssshh . . .
    then the ghosts cluster round and they stab, they sting, they take my mouth, don’t take my mouth please don’t take my mouth, i need to scream, i need to scream Papa Papa Papa don’t . . .

III

    When I woke up after one in the morning, it was to the taste of dust in my mouth and the sour smell of my sweat and images that made no sense.
    And, oh yeah—I was still alive.

    It was Thursday, a cereal day, and so when I stumbled downstairs after nine, Uncle Hank was in the kitchen, with a mug of coffee cupped in his hands. He looked up as I dragged in. “Christian. How’d you sleep?”
    “Not too good.” There was a bowl of Cocoa Puffs at my place. I usually had Wheaties or corn flakes. Cocoa Puffs used to be my favorite, only Aunt Jean said I didn’t need the sugar. I hadn’t had Cocoa Puffs since I was ten, but Uncle Hank had gone out and bought me Cocoa Puffs. I stared at the cereal and felt this big lump push into the back of my throat, and tears itched the backs of my eyes.
    “Not surprised.” Uncle Hank pushed the milk toward me. “Sit down and have something to eat.”
    “Okay.” I ate my Cocoa Puffs. I didn’t think I would be able to choke them down, but I did it for Uncle Hank. They tasted terrible and made me queasy. But I ate every last one. I even drank the milk just like when I was a kid.
    Uncle Hank cleared his throat. “You’re supposed to appear in juvenile court on Friday.”
    “Tomorrow? Isn’t that kind of fast?” I licked off a chocolate milk moustache. Maybe they didn’t need a lot of time when they had your sorry ass.
    “A little.” He’d missed a patch shaving, and there was dried blood on his neck. His eyes looked raw. “But it’s probably best. Sooner you get this out of the way, sooner you get back to your life. Now, there are a couple of things going to happen today....” He went over them: lawyer, social worker, psychological tests.
    When he was done, I said, “What do you want to have happen?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Do you want me to go away?”
    He looked genuinely shocked. “No. Of course not, Christian. How could you think such a thing?”
    My lips started trembling again. “But I’ve screwed everything up. Everyone hates me and no college will ever take me and—”
    “Quiet.” Uncle Hank’s voice was all clogged, like he had a cold. He put his hand out to touch my arm. “That’s enough of that. You haven’t done anything gonna jeopardize college, I promise.”
    “You can’t know that. Mr. Eisenmann . . .”
    “Is pissed off and used to getting his own way, but it’s not like you burned the factory down. We’re talking about a barn, and a derelict at that. Anyway, you’re going to juvenile court. Records are sealed. No college need ever know. In a couple years you can leave this and Winter behind—and that’s okay, Christian. This is my life, but it doesn’t have to be yours.”
    That made me feel a little better. Then I thought of something. “What did you mean yesterday when you talked about the barn seeing trouble?”
    “Oh.” Uncle Hank looked uncomfortable. “Well, there was a bad business happened there back before I was born. This was 1945, sometime in September, October. This would’ve been when your great-grandfather Jasper was sheriff. A man was murdered, that’s all. Farmhand. Never did catch his killer, though everyone knew who’d done it because he ran off. Worker at the foundry, some immigrant. Abandoned his wife and two children.”
    “And they never caught him?”
    “There was too much going on. That fire I told you about, the one that killed your great-grandfather and all those union boys and half the nonunion workers at the foundry, that happened maybe a week later. After that, well . . . I