Free Hanging by a Thread by Monica Ferris Page A

waiting for him.”
    “If I were Angela’s ghost, I certainly wouldn’t hang around hoping the ghost of my husband, who I doubt was going to heaven, would come and take me with him,” declared Alice.
    “Why wouldn’t he go to heaven?” asked Godwin.
    “Anyway, she certainly did,” declared Martha. “She was such a sweet and good woman. Maybe he hoped she would put in a good word for him.”
    “That doesn’t explain why she waited for him,” said Bershada. “How did she know he was coming so soon?”
    “We don’t know everything about the afterlife,” said Emily. “Maybe she did know.”
    That brought a little pause while they reflected on the mysteries of love and the afterlife.
    “He did love her very much,” said Godwin softly.
    “I don’t think he did,” said Alice. “I think it was more like an obsession.”
    “I’d like someone to be obsessed with me,” said Bershada. “Someone whose every thought is about my happiness.”
    “No, you don’t,” said Alice firmly. “It’s not about your happiness, and it isn’t nearly as pleasant as true love. And when someone dies, my understanding is that such things as human relationships are abandoned.”
    “Oh, I don’t believe that!” said Godwin. “Surely true love would last through eternity! There are all kinds of stories about a ghost coming to the bedside of a husband or wife.”
    “Yes, Alice, how can you doubt such serious things as love and ghosts and the afterlife?” said Bershada.
    “I’m not doubting the afterlife, which I believe in most firmly,” said Alice. “But ghosts are stuff and nonsense.”
    “But all those stories!” reiterated Godwin. “There are fictional ghost stories, I know that, but there are true ghost stories, too. And Comfort is only telling you what she actually saw!”
    “I think that when it’s late at night and you’re tired or hungry and already nervous because you’re out in a thunderstorm, or you are all alone in an old house and perhaps have been reading spooky stories, naturally you may conclude an unusual noise, or a dance of headlights on the ceiling, or even your own reflection is a ghost.”
    Martha said, “You’re right, of course, Alice. But how to explain what happened to me back when I was about eleven or twelve? It was the dead of winter and the middle of the night. My father used to turn the furnace down at night to save fuel, so it was very cold in the house. I had a thick quilt on the bed and was sound in a cozy sleep—until something bumped into the bed and woke me up. I thought it was the cat jumping up, and I waited for him to come up to the pillow purring like he usually did.” She smiled. “There’s nothing quite as friendly as a cat with cold feet. But it wasn’t the cat, or at least he didn’t come up to ask to be let under the covers. Then I heard a voice say, plain as day, ‘Her eyes are open.’ It was pitch dark in that room, there’s no way anyone could have seen whether my eyes were open or closed.”
    “Cool!” said Carol. “Then what happened?”
    “Nothing, I burrowed under the covers and didn’t come up till morning.”
    There was a reflective pause. “It was probably your mother,” said Alice, “checking to see if you were all right in the cold.”
    “No. It was a woman’s voice, but definitely not my mother’s. Anyway, like I said, no one could have seen if my eyes were open or not.”
    “Were they?” asked Emily.
    “Of course. I told you, I woke up when something bumped my bed.”
    “Who do you think it was?” asked Carol.
    “I have no idea. And I never heard them again.”
    “ ‘Them’?” said Betsy. “How do you know there was more than one?”
    “Well, she wasn’t talking to me, she was talking about me. So that meant at least one other ... person was present.”
    “Ooooooooh,” said Bershada, moving her shoulders to dislodge a delicious shiver.
    Godwin said maliciously, “How do you explain that, Alice?”
    Alice shrugged.