Free Giving Up the Ghost by Max McCoy

night; the theory was that miasma emanating from the swamps and the graveyards and the night soil in the necessary houses would waft into your bedroom and make you sick. When I was thirteen or fourteen, I guessed that it might have more to do with wealth, because rich folks like my parents could afford houses where the doors and windows were shut tight, while poor folk—the kind most likely to get sick because of diet, unsanitary conditions, or lack of general medical care—rarely could afford houses that shuttered tight. And even though the British surgeon Joseph Lister had debunked the miasma theory of disease in favor of germ theory, many people across America still continued the habit of sleeping in stifling bedrooms for fear of breathing bad air.
    After opening the window, I parted the curtains to look at the sky. Even looking to the south, across Front Street, I could still see wisps of red and green in the night sky, and an occasional blue arc on the telegraph wire. The freight was still sided at the station, the inside of the station was brightly lit, and someone—I presumed it to be Mackie—was sitting in the shadows on a bench on the station platform. Then I looked closer and realized it wasn’t Mackie at all, but Calder. He was watching my window, because he gave me a curt wave.
    I waved back, then closed the curtains.
    Climbing into bed, I closed my eyes. I had been sleepy just five minutes before, but now I was wide awake. I opened my eyes and stared up into the darkness, watching the protean shapes and dark amorphous blobs, which are merely artifacts of human vision, which float before us in such conditions. After a few minutes, I got up, went back to the window, and parted the curtains.
    Calder was still there.
    I raised the sash.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” I shouted.
    â€œTaking a rest,” he said.
    â€œYou are watching my window.”
    â€œWhy would I do that?”
    â€œShut up!” somebody called from the hotel next door. “Won’t you let us sleep?”
    â€œGo home,” I told Calder.
    I closed the window and turned my back. I was oddly and unreasonably furious at his behavior. He had no right to spy on me, and yet he claimed some proprietary interest in my nocturnal affairs. Then I turned back and glanced through the panes, and saw that he was still sitting and watching.
    â€œOutrageous,” I said.
    I fumbled on the clothes pegs behind the door and found my dark hooded knee-length cape that I wear when it is occasionally necessary to leave the room at night. I slipped on the cape and tied it in front, jammed my feet into my boots without lacing them, then felt my way down the dark stairs to the agency.
    â€œ Nevermore ,” Eddie cried from the newel post.
    â€œYou said it, bird.”

6
    I crossed to the door, lifted the latch, and was out on the street in an instant, making my way down and across to the depot. Only, Calder wasn’t sitting there anymore. I stood in the street a moment, feeling foolish in my nightclothes and cape, and hoping no one would see me. Then I turned back and made for the shadows beneath the porches and false fronts on the north side of the street.
    As I passed the dark windows of the Occident Saloon, two doors down from the agency, I was startled by a man who struck a match on his belt buckle and lit a cigar with it. He was leaning lazily against a red hooped water barrel, the kind that dotted every block in the case of fire, and from the glow of the match I could see that his face was hard and stubbled and that he wore a bowler hat tilted forward over his brow.
    â€œGood evening,” he said.
    I smiled, but said nothing, and tried to walk past.
    He stuck out his boot.
    â€œWhere you off to in such a hurry?”
    I sidestepped the offending piece of footwear.
    â€œStay and we can talk.”
    His voice was rough and confident and sounded like he belonged east of the Mississippi, but not too far east.