\nThe ghost I\u2019ve come for waits beside the infinity pool of a sprawling hilltop villa, its back to me, a cigarette burning between its fingers. I see it as a flicker of the things it remembers itself as: a child in rags, a king in robes, a blood-soaked god of death and conquest, Kalashnikov across its shoulder, machete dangling from its hand.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe dead road I\u2019ll lead this ghost down snakes away through the hills like a streak of rainbow gasoline on a dark ocean, invisible to all but guides like me. Below us, the city glows in the stinking heat of a summer night\u2014ever-lit office towers, wavering streaks of police sirens, oil-drum fires in the crooked masses of homeless camps. Beyond the highway the hills are burning.\n<\/p>\n
\nI draw the snake-scaled guide\u2019s mask over my face, the feathered cloak around my shoulders. Crow feathers, for Crow is my guide name; I have another, ordinary name for ordinary life, but it\u2019s years since I\u2019ve had much use for it. Stepping into the courtyard, my old-woman\u2019s bones beg me to hunch and hobble, but I\u2019ll not abide such a show of weakness. First impressions count, and such ghosts as these respect nothing but strength. I draw myself up straight and march crunching steps across the jet-black gravel that rings the pool.\n<\/p>\n
\nFrom that dark water stare the shadow shapes of those this ghost has had killed in the years it\u2019s lingered. Tattooed members of rival cartels, soldiers, police and bystanders, throats slit, bullet-ridden, worse.\n<\/p>\n
\nThey are things from the ghost\u2019s own memories and thoughts, the voice of a conscience it has till now ignored. For a time, every ghost haunts itself this way. It\u2019s during these mid-afterlife crises they\u2019re at their most persuadable, most likely to take our deal.\n<\/p>\n
\nI announce myself with a shake of my head, setting the mask\u2019s scales rattling.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019d fuck off back to whatever rancid tenement you crawled out of,\u201d the ghost says without turning to look at me. Something about its voice makes my heart fumble its rhythm. It flicks its cigarette into the pool; another appears immediately between its fingers. \u201cThe last bruja tried to exorcise me\u2014buried in a dozen places in the hills there.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nIt wouldn\u2019t surprise me. Such ghosts as we\u2019re sent for are beyond the bumbling of wise women and priests\u2019 pompous theatrics. These ghosts were warlords and dictators. They don\u2019t haunt us because of injustices unabsolved or feelings left unspoken. They cling to this world because of the hellfire that awaits them in the next, because they cannot bear to relinquish the empires they\u2019ve spent their lives hacking from flesh and blood. There\u2019s no banishing nor destroying them. Without us, they\u2019d haunt their palaces forever, whispering secrets and threats in the ears of the living, manipulating them into doing their murderous bidding.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m no bruja, ghost,\u201d I say, the mouthpiece of my mask making a rattle of my voice. \u201cI serve neither this world, nor the Keepers of the Gates of Heaven, nor Those Below. Those I serve neither judge nor punish but offer you a way to leave this world for something better, something only they can give.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nIn truth I cannot say with any clarity who it is I serve; their instructions come only in dreams and visions. But we are lucky that something in the world beyond cares about us mortals. The Keepers of the Gates regard the brutalities we face as trivialities; their concern is the purity of the souls that come to live within their garden. They don\u2019t care that most lives are too hard for the saintliness they require as the price of admission.\n<\/p>\n
\nI pluck a feather from my robe and toss it into the air. It quivers, and the ghost shadow of the bird it once was flickers into being around it. It swoops low over the pool and alights on the ghost\u2019s shoulder, cocks its head as if listening, and then returns, its form evaporating half way between us, the feather spiraling down to touch on the dark water. The shiver of ripples transforms the dark figures in the pool into something else: a village of mean huts, palm-thatch roofs and lashed-pallet walls. It\u2019s the very definition of dirt poor, yet draped in a golden evening sunlight that gives it the majesty of some renaissance painting of Eden, the horizon a wavering brushstroke, grass and trees green from rain. And there, in a hammock, that boy in rags this ghost once was. A woman sits on the ground beside him, rocking the hammock gently.\n<\/p>\n
\nThis is the paradise this ghost harbors in its heart, not Lamborghinis, caviar and supermodels on their knees, but some long-lost moment of tenderness. It\u2019s not unusual; I\u2019ve guided many wretched ghosts to such quaint resting places. Nor does this shade of decency make me revile them any less, nor think they deserve this deal. But this world of ours has no use for words like \u2018deserve\u2019.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThis is what I offer you then, ghost. I know you\u2019re tired of this world, and we both know the Keepers of the Gates will see you punished should you try to leave it. But this\u2026\u201d I gesture towards the pool, \u201cthis asylum I can offer you. A bespoke heaven just for you, hidden between this world and the next. Leave this place in peace and peace will be your reward. Or stay here and see that all earthly dreams and empires end in dust. Stay here and haunt their ruins.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nThe ghost laughs, scornful and sharp, waves its cigarette and speaks in a mocking imitation of my voice. \u201cDreams and empires end in dust.<\/em> Jesus. This fucking\u2026 whatever it is, poetry-slam bullshit doesn\u2019t do it for me, so save it. I used to be one of you, a guide, long, long time ago, so take it as read; we both know what you\u2019re doing is more marshal\u2019s service than fucking\u2026 Dante, or whatever you\u2019re imagining.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe words send a shiver through me. A guide. I\u2019ve known many who\u2019ve vanished in the decades I\u2019ve plied this trade, lost in the desert or killed by forces worldly or otherwise. I try to imagine if there was one I\u2019d known who could have become this\u2014 a ghost so vile it must be offered the deal we bring.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnyway,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in your deal.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThis is expected. They always want you to plead and bargain, but it\u2019s just another way for them to cling to the world. I\u2019ve played this game before.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLook into the water. You know it\u2019s where you want to be. Peace, for eternity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe ghost spits into the pool. \u201cSure. Real fucking nirvana. You know I shot my dad right behind that house there when I was seven years old? He used to beat my mother to an inch of her fucking life, and no one did a thing because he was district sheriff. Shot him with his own gun and buried it by the river. But, fuck do you care about that, huh?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe way his voice breaks and then steadies has an unsettling familiarity. But maybe it\u2019s only the familiarity of the story, for it\u2019s woefully close to mine, except I never killed, just ran. Ran and ran through all the cruelty of this world, until this life found me and gave me a way to change things.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m not interested in your deal,\u201d the ghost goes on. \u201cI got you here because of what I<\/em> have to offer you.<\/em> I need to know if you have the stomach for it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe ghost turns, and as it does, its form becomes the shape it died in, an old man, full of hate and stab wounds. Old, but still, I know that face. The shock hits like a bullet. Rook. At least, that was the name he had when I knew him, decades ago in the wild years of youth. His code name, just as mine is Crow. The name he gave me when he found me \u2014homeless and half-mad\u2014 and taught me this trade.\n<\/p>\n \nTrue names are too dangerous to speak for they would bring the Keepers upon us, furious that we would dare impinge on their moral monopoly. Even code names are too dangerous to speak when we are working, despite the concealment the mask and robe and the dead road provide. Yet I have his name in the faded smear of a homemade tattoo around my wrist. A name I once called out in passion and, later, through fits of weeping after he vanished with neither word nor trace.\n<\/p>\n \nI think of the last time I saw him, driving a stolen car through dunes and mangroves. A night on the beach, fucking in firelight and starlight, and the light that burned in him, anger and passion and joy. And then our parting in the morning, watching him rowing a boat out towards a waiting ship that would take him to another job in some distant place he never came back from. That young man\u2019s face I knew then, wry and wild around the eyes, now aged and hardened into spite. I remember his hands on me, and think of the violence those hands have done since. My stomach churns.\n<\/p>\n \nIf he recognizes the shape of me beneath the mask and cloak, he shows no sign of it. I feel the urge to pull them free, reveal myself, demand he tell me what happened to him, where he went, how he became this\u2026 But to do so would invite the eye of the Keepers upon me, and they\u2019ve a special place in hell for us guides. To do so would be to forget my duty, and I am a guide. I have a job to do. Whatever history we had is long-passed, the man this ghost once was long dead. Whatever \u2018deal\u2019 he\u2019s offering is just another game ghosts play, another way to cling to the world.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat isn\u2019t how this works, R\u2014\u201dI nearly slip and say his name, stutter the first syllable to a stop \u201c\u2014ghost. And this deal I\u2019m offering doesn\u2019t stand for long.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI gesture, and the feather floating in the pool twitches. The ghost bird reforms, flutters to my hand and unforms once more. I take the feather between my finger and thumb, rubbing it and feeling in the residue of Rook\u2019s\u2026 of the ghost\u2019s thoughts for something I can use to persuade it. Truthfully, shamefully, a part of me hoped to see something deeper, something from the time I knew him. Something that would explain that village there in the pool, for he\u2019d always said he came from money, a country club, private school upbringing he had nothing but disdain for. But instead, I sense something more recent, and altogether more useful.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou meant to leave this empire to your sons,\u201d I say. \u201cBut they don\u2019t want it, do they? They want legitimacy, hospital wings named after them, private schools for their children, business lunches with the other parents. What\u2019ll you do then? Hang around the house, helping the grandkids with their algebra homework?\n<\/p>\n \nRook shrugs. \u201cTrue. That was the plan, but they don\u2019t want a part of it? Fuck \u2018em.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAlways was a favorite phrase of his. I remember then a moment: Back when we first met and he was teaching me the trade, I asked him why he did this work with all its thankless danger. I wanted to reach beneath the fiery, seething shell of this person I was falling in\u2026 something with, hear if he, like I, had something in his past that made him burn to change this world. The very thing he\u2019s just told me, his village, his father, all of it a lifetime too late. Back then he shared nothing, just looked up into the sky, his body hardening with anger, said: \u201cKeepers ain\u2019t earned the right to set the rules, so\u2026 fuck \u2018em.\u201d That was Rook, or part of him at least, a thick sump of pain right down in the foundations, too deep to reach with words, an anger that couldn\u2019t be satisfied by sticking a middle finger up at this world, so he had to find a way of doing it to the next world, too.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFuck \u2018em,\u201d he says again. \u201cSaw my sons weren\u2019t interested, realized a guide would be a better partner anyway. Made a plan: let the one who sends the dreams think I was ready to take their deal, have them send one of you, offer you my deal: partnership. Think of it, a ghost to whisper in the ears of the living, a guide to whisper in the minds of ghosts. Team like that could take the world on.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nA spasm of anger makes me forget myself. \u201cWhy would I want this? Lamborghinis, big house, being feared? Didn\u2019t being a guide show you how worthless all this is?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis?\u201d he sneers. \u201cThis is just means to an end. You\u2019re thinking too small– reason you guides will never make a difference. How many ghosts you walked down a dead road, thinking you\u2019d put an end to their terror, then find whatever cartel, warband, statelet they\u2019d had their grip on just fell into the hands of the next murdering fuck with an appetite for it? How many times you left a power vacuum behind, seen it suck in more lives than whatever the ghosts we chaperoned ever did. This? Money, status, this is power. Peace needs power.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis is peace?\u201d I stab my finger at the pool where the shadows of the murdered have reformed, anger simmering in my breath.\n<\/p>\n \nHe shrugs. \u201cKnow how many cartels and mob families ran this city before I came? And everyone one of them fighting and killing each other, squeezing every penny they could out of the innocent people in their territory to pay for their endless little turf wars. Know how many there are now? Just me. Order. Takes ruthlessness to take power from ruthless people. But I chose not to just walk away once I\u2019d got rid of them; I replaced them with something better. I hadn\u2019t killed those people, someone else would have, and more, and more and more. I made peace. And this is only the beginning. Think what we could be, what we could make. Think of all the ghosts out there, their little fiefdoms. That could all be part of this. Our lieutenants.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI shiver\u2014 the delusion of it, the megalomania, the possibility of such a project being realized. Yet\u2026the temptation is there; I can\u2019t deny it. He\u2019s not wrong about the power vacuums we\u2019ve left behind, the turf wars and failed states our deals have created. Not a perfect solution, but what choice is there?\n<\/p>\n \nTempted, but then I look into the pool at the shadows of the killed. I\u2019ve imagined many lives and deaths Rook might have had in those years after he vanished, but never this. Something shifts deep down inside me\u2014a dark, tectonic tremor of sorrow. I push it down. That was long ago, and this is business. I\u2019m a guide, we have a code, we don\u2019t take sides.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey make a wasteland, and they call it peace,\u201d I mutter, a quotation I read once in some library basement, sheltering from the winter in those years of homeless drifting between the group home and Rook finding me, cleaning me up, teaching me that the visions weren\u2019t madness, but a gift.\n<\/p>\n \nI remember I quoted that line once before to him, and how he\u2019d laughed at my pretentiousness, because he\u2019d grown up rich enough to afford a disdain for education. Or at least, that\u2019s what I\u2019d always thought. His laughter hurt me then, back when I couldn\u2019t bear for him to think less of me, even for a moment. It seems that hurt is still down there somewhere because I look up at him, afraid to see if he overheard me. And he has, and I can see by the look on his face that he\u2019s remembered that moment too.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCro\u2026.?\u201d He doesn\u2019t quite let my name slip, but it\u2019s enough. We both sense it. The shadows in the water blur and converge into a vast, dark eye that stares up into the night then begins to slowly turn in our direction. The Keepers have heard us; they won\u2019t be far behind. There\u2019s only one place to hide \u2013 I sprint across the landscaped grounds onto the shimmering path of the dead road. Rook must follow me, for the road is visible only to guides.\n<\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n \nWe\u2019re safe, I think, so long as we keep moving, safe in the familiar routine of leading ghosts somewhere we can forget about them. The dead road doesn\u2019t follow the languorous turns of the street. It winds through the undergrowth at the backs of oligarchs\u2019 gated citadels and movie producers\u2019 mansions, all posing above the city in a million-dollar glow of designer uplighting.\n<\/p>\n \nI struggle between branches in the dark of the canyon, Rook drifting behind me. Beyond the compounds\u2019 walls comes the bickering of loveless marriages and the dirty work-pleasure amalgam of society parties. I tut. They should turf these people out and turn their fucking ballrooms into rehab wards\u2014 God knows the city could use it. But why should we expect any better from this world, when the worlds beyond are much the same. The Keepers turning souls away from their garden, sending them Below for having stolen to feed themselves, when every chance at decency has been robbed from them before they left the womb.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cStill as angry at all of this as you\u2019ve ever been.\u201d Rook says. I realize I\u2019ve been muttering under my breath.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShut up.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThen why not join me? Change this?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWhy not? The question tightens in my gut.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShut up. You\u2019re going to your sanctuary and that\u2019s it, over. Just another ghost with an underserved reprieve. This pax cartel delusion of yours is done.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe stops, eyes me with something like suspicion. \u201cOh, this is personal? You\u2019re angry at me? Because I vanished? Come on, that\u2019s a lifetime ago\u2026 And anyway, you think if I\u2019d stayed you and me would still be\u2026? Think I\u2019d even still be alive?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI turn from him, struggling for the words. \u201cYour fucking vanity. This isn\u2019t some jilted-on-prom-night tantrum. I hate you for what you\u2019ve become, no more and no less than all the other deluded murderers I\u2019ve taken down these roads.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt had to be done\u2014\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat\u2019s what they all say, now shut the fuck up, or I\u2019ll leave you in the desert and you can haunt a stretch of sand forever.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI\u2019ve been tempted to leave ghosts behind like that before, but our work relies on our reputation. If these ghosts should hear that they might not actually get the paradise we offer, why would they take our deal? Still, the threat is enough to make him shut his mouth.\n<\/p>\n \nA dumped TV set flickers to life in the weeds, an eye filling its screen in a hiss of static and scanning slowly from left to right. We shrink down into the dead road\u2019s cover and hurry past, hoping its concealment is enough.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe city thins. We climb down into the scrub and dust of the hills at the desert\u2019s edge, the heat of the night sticky with eucalyptus and wisps of oozed exhausts. Cicada song shivers in the dark. The low moan of a distant siren stretches and bends as it nears and retreats from us along an unseen switchback road. The coyotes make their own howling roll call. Those servants of the Keepers can smell the presence of a misplaced spirit.\n<\/p>\n \nWe march on, the bones of my knees scraping on one another, worn through by a lifetime of walking ghosts across these bleak lands. It\u2019s all I\u2019ve done, all I\u2019ve been all these years since Rook vanished, granting mercy to ghosts that deserved none for the sake of a world that never seems to get any better.\n<\/p>\n \nWe move through oil fields of moaning pumpjacks and beyond into the cold of the desert. There\u2019s something I don\u2019t want to see here. The ghost of a guide the Keepers caught. Hawk, bound and ravaged by the beaks of ghost birds until the end of time. A warning to us, a monument to the Keepers\u2019 power and cruelty and our helplessness before it. She\u2019s not the only one of us who\u2019s ended this way.\n<\/p>\n \nWe pass without a word.\n<\/p>\n \n \n\u201cYou think we\u2019re heading for the border?\u201d I say, after hours of silence. It\u2019s something to consider. Would be disappointing to dodge the wrath of the Keepers only to be shot by some minimum-wage border patrol agent at the end of a double shift.\n<\/p>\n \nHe shrugs. \u201cSeems likely. Road is made of my dreams, and my taste in symbolism never was very subtle.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat village then, your sanctuary we\u2019re heading to? That\u2019s a symbol for something too? That story about\u2026 about what happened there, all a metaphor?\u201d I meant not to ask, but the question has been gnawing at me for hours. That he never said anything about that in the years we were together\u2026 even though he knew my story, must have known it would be some consolation to hear his was so similar.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, it\u2019s a real place, or was at least. Had to run away after what I did. Got picked up crossing the border. Incarceration, group home, adopted by Ted and Jill, and then\u2026 well the rest you know.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe rest I know. Ahead of us the red white glow of the highway hisses with the rushing of trucks. The border.\n<\/p>\n \nThe dead road leads us down the hillside to a dried-out riverbed and a culvert that runs beneath the highway, the grill across it crowbarred open. But instead of darkness at its end, there is daylight, a bullet hole in the night, the end of the road.\n<\/p>\n \nWe stumble in the dark through the detritus left by vanished water and out into the basin of a dried-out lake. The ghost of water ripples at our knees. We climb the bank and find the sanctuary standing there in a blaze of sunshine, shimmering like a heat haze over the earthly darkness. A huddle of huts, no more than pallets and corrugated iron, trees and lush grasses floating over the dark earth of the living world. A woman in a makeshift rocking chair looks up from the shade of a house and smiles.\n<\/p>\n \nBut something is strange. Among the shadows are the ruins of the village that was. The concrete ring of the well lies in broken slabs beneath its own, intact ghost form. The ghosts of saplings at the riverbank stand beneath the trunks of trees long grown and died. This is a first: A sanctuary superimposed upon the real place it\u2019s made to resemble. Well, Rook always was full of surprises. It doesn\u2019t matter now. Here, hidden in the sanctuary\u2019s depths, it\u2019s safe for me to remove my mask and cloak, fold the first inside the second and hide them deep in my pack so that I might walk out of this place and go back to my life, such as it is, without revealing my identity to the Keepers.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCrow\u2026\u201d he looks at me, some feeling on his face that he quickly shakes. \u201cYou got old,\u201d he says, burying whatever had surfaced under his mocking tone.\n<\/p>\n \nI shrug. \u201cYou got dead, and murderous.\u201d I turn to leave.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWait. You don\u2019t understand. Getting you here was just part of the plan. I couldn\u2019t tell you before, in case the Keepers heard and found a way to stop me, but we\u2019re safe here. Come, come.\u201d He walks away towards a stand of trees beside the river\u2019s ghost.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI don\u2019t care about your plans, Rook. Enjoy eternity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cPlease. Just one last thing. I need you to dig here. Please, for old times\u2019 sake?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nOld times. What a thing to evoke.\n<\/p>\n \n \nI dig with a broken piece of fence post, eighteen inches into the dirt till the wood scrapes against metal. I brush the dust away and find a steel case that shimmers with the sheen of the ghost world, ghost form and real woven into each other. I lay my hand against it. Some darkness moves inside, a vicious witchcraft that chills the bones.\n<\/p>\n \nI slide the box from the earth, snap back its clasps. A revolver wrapped in rags. Boxes of shells. The gun growls like a dog\u2019s last warning before it lunges. It flickers with the muzzle-flash memory of every time it\u2019s been fired in anger. I snap open the cylinder and spin it. One cartridge spent\u2014the bullet Rook shot through his father\u2019s chest.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRare thing you have there,\u201d he says. \u201cOverlaps the living world and the dead, so it kills in both, men and ghosts alike. And then they\u2019re dead the way this world has come to think death works. Just nothing. Gone. You understand what that means? What you could do with it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI feel a spark of something in my chest, that thrill Rook lit in me when we first met, the feeling of worlds unknown revealing themselves. I look up, expecting his form to have become the one I remember from those old times, wild and wry around the eyes. But he\u2019s only that old ghost, head bowed, blood pouring from the wounds that killed him. \u201cYou understand then, why I had to do all this? To get us here, get the attention of whoever sends us guides, make my case worth their while. Had to shape my dreams and desires just so, so they\u2019d build this sanctuary right on top of the real place it imitates. Something only someone who\u2019s been a guide could know how to do.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI coil my fingers around the grip. \u201cAll the ghosts we gave sanctuary to\u2026\u201d I whisper.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd all those to come. Even the Keepers aren\u2019t safe from this. You got leverage now, like you always wanted. Make them let ordinary people through those fucking gates of theirs.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis was really your plan? And all that about us building your empire? Being a team?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBest test I could think of. Had to be sure I could trust whoever it was they sent, be sure they were someone who would do the right thing with this. Glad it turned out to be you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat happens to you in this plan? Asking me to go force a way into heaven for you at gun point?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe shakes his head. \u201cNah, I haven\u2019t earned that. When I was alive\u2026 yeah, I believed all that shit I told you at the villa. Thought I could do what the powers that be are too soft and corrupt to manage. Make peace at any cost. Ends justify the means. But\u2026 Nothing justifies what I did to those people. I still have to pay. That\u2019s the world you have to make now. Everyone pays.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, not heaven, but not Below, not for ever. There should be some allowance\u2026\u201d I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m intending to say. I don\u2019t even know if I believe him, or if this plan is just an impulse he had somewhere along the dead road.\n<\/p>\n \nHe nods towards the gun. \u201cI doubt I deserve such mercy, but would you? For old time\u2019s sake?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI doubt he deserves such mercy either, the nothingness the gun offers, the final wiping of the slate, but the gun will change world, and God knows the world could do with more mercy in it. This is who I am now, not a guide, for there will be no more walking ghosts down dead roads, but still a servant of sorts, still a bringer of endings to stories that have dragged on too long.\n<\/p>\n \nHe turns his back to me, looking across the clearing to the woman in the rocking chair. She waves at him and smiles. He raises his hand, lowers it and bows his head. The gunshot rings across the desert and echoes ghostly in the hills. I feel spirits hush and turn their heads to hear it: the sound of new world beginning.\n<\/p>\n Will is physiotherapy student living in Vienna, Austria. His fiction has appeared in Analog, Metaphorosis and the very fine publication, The Colored Lens. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ghost I\u2019ve come for waits beside the infinity pool of a sprawling hilltop villa, its back to me, a cigarette burning between its fingers. I see it as a flicker of the things it remembers itself as: a child in rags, a king in robes, a blood-soaked god of death and conquest, Kalashnikov across …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21892,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14,20220],"tags":[20222,20221],"class_list":["post-142391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-publications","category-tcl-56-summer-2025","tag-the-colored","tag-the-colored-lens-56-summer-2025","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21892"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142393,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142391\/revisions\/142393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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