The Last Handful of Clover - Book 2: Gifts Both Light and Dark

2.22 Ghost Town

"Billy..." he said, his voice choked with emotion. "I don't know if I can be here. My mother died here. What if I see her? I don't know if I can take that."

Billy walked back to Richard and took his hand. It was a gentle and kind gesture, but it did little to break the stone that had lodged in Richard's chest. But looking into the boy's eyes let him at least control his breathing. Three dead children stared at their joined hands in wonder.

"Don't worry, Richard. She's not here. If she was, you would have known it as soon as you entered the door."

Unaccountably, that news only made Richard's heart heavier. He had dreaded seeing his mother. But for just a second, he had hoped.

"She never said my name before she died. Never recognized me. I actually thought..."

"Come with me, Richard. Your mother isn't here. But there are some other ghosts you should see."

Richard walked with Billy, hand in hand, down the corridors of the Cancer Center. Slowly, Richard gained control of his racing heart and stopped looking for his mother around ever corner.

The ghosts they passed did not follow, but surprisingly often their eyes were on Billy from the moment he came into their sight, and did not leave him until they were gone.

"Some of them seem to know you," Richard said.

"It is mostly my age they respect. But yes, I have known many of them since they returned. Like the other haunts of the dead, I come here often. I can't speak to or touch any of them, but I think they find my presence comforting. And that does my heart good."

They walked slowly down one of the main corridors, past the treatment rooms, and past open doors where the dying or the recovering could be seen, old and tired in their beds. Most of the dead that sat with the living were also very old, their naked, withered, and disfigured bodies often so horrifying to Richard that he had to turn away. But sometimes there were also the ghosts of the young—and sometimes, the shockingly young. Despite their withered and haggard appearances, the young ghosts often had smiles and faces that seemed less weary and more hopeful.

"The young ghosts don't seem so sad," Richard said.

"You'll notice that, everywhere you go in the Hereafter. The young can often cope with their deaths, far better than the old. Many of the very young almost don't seem to realize that anything has changed. They just go on with their lives, playing and taking each day as it comes, just as they did when they were alive. The old are much more burdened with loss, pain, and regret."

"Like me," Richard said, feeling the weight of every year he had lived, and every loss he had suffered.

Billy just squeezed Richard's hand, but did not look at him as they walked.

Some of the old, wrapped in their sheets, looked so much like stereotypical ghosts that Richard couldn't help but smirk at them.

"Boo!" he said to one old ghost, as it came around a corner. Her sheet was draped over her head like a veil, and only her eyes peered out.

He felt Billy's eyes on him. "Does she amuse you?"

"Kind of. It's just so stereotypical. Ghosts in sheets. And the moaning. It's all around us. It just feels like an awful movie from the 50s. I keep expecting to see Vincent Price walking around here with a cross or something."

"Just remember, Richard. Their suffering is no laughing matter. Neither is your suffering. Or mine."

Richard took that in silently. Billy was right. It was easy to dismiss these figures. But every one of them was someone who had lived a life and had it torn away from them. Every one was, as Billy had called them, a bundle of loss and regret.