Ele me afogou na água verde debaixo da ponte. Fizeram um violino do meu esterno. Fizeram cravelhas dos meus dedos. No inverno, eu me deito sob o gelo… - Caitlín R. Kiernan

He swallows a soothing mouthful of Jim Beam and rubs at his face, trying to rub away the familiar regret, that he can’t take back words that are already history, that have found their mark and already done their damage.

Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways. A book, a poem, a song, a bedtime story, a grandmother's suicide, the choreography of a dance, a few frames of film, a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a deadly tumble from a horse, a faded photograph, or a story you tell your daughter.

I am a dead woman. Dead and insane.