Johnny Henzel’s body back in America is not a skeleton yet: it has not been dead long enough to have decomposed fully in its grave. In a coffin, an embalmed body takes many months to break down enough to expose bones. The decay depends on the temperature, the process speeding up in hot summer months. Johnny’s eyes, being softer tissue, would rot first. Of course, if his body were mummified, decomposition would stretch over hundreds of years, and if he were buried in Alaska’s frozen tundra, scientists could dig him up in three centuries, thaw him out, and then flip through our school yearbook and easily pick out which student lay before them.

Had I died of a holey heart on an Arctic fact-finding mission and been buried in the ice, I would not mind scientists digging me up centuries later and putting me in a museum showcase as an educational exhibit. To me, spending day after day in a science museum is paradise.

At Uncle Seymour’s funeral, Mother and Father, you said you favored cremation, so I suppose you had my body cremated. Did you put my ashes in a ceramic urn and shelf it next to the Encyclopedia Americana? I hope my ashes soothe your pain. I worry about you. Mother, you are easily distracted and often forget to look both ways as you cross the highway to Clippers. And, Father, you must not start smoking Camels again. Remember Uncle Seymour’s lung cancer.

I wonder if you would be happier now if you were Christian, Buddhist, Mormon, or of any other religious persuasion that puts faith in an afterlife. Would my death be easier on you if you knew that on this Halloween, I am seated in an auditorium at the Sophie and watching a variety show put on by angels?

It is Johnny’s birthday today, but alas, birthdays are not celebrated in heaven because we are not getting any older. Here we celebrate only rebirthdays, the date we passed into Town.

Can you guess what costume I am wearing for Halloween?

Here is a hint: think of my nickname.

Yes, I am a ghost. I have a white sheet over my head with two large eyeholes cut out by Johnny. His own costume is simply a black domino mask like that worn by bank robbers or Zorro. He said our goal tonight was to disguise ourselves. He also had me clip his hair even shorter. I do not like touching people’s skin, but I can touch their hair because hair, which consists mostly of keratin protein, as you know, is dead. Barbering must be intuitive for me, because I did a crackerjack job.

We are far from the only townies in costume tonight. However, Johnny and I are disguised not only for Halloween but also because Johnny fears we might run into Gunboy. On Halloween, townies travel far and wide.

“If he is here, he won’t want us ratting him out,” Johnny said back at the Frank and Joe. “If he sees us, he could attack again. We got to get him, before he gets us.”

So now in the Sophie’s auditorium, Johnny twists his head around and scans the crowd for a brown-haired boy with ears that stick out—the boy he still sees in his nightmares in Town. (Since becoming my roommate two and a half weeks ago, he has screamed in his sleep several times. Needless to say, my insomnia is acting up again.)

“There are dozens of brown-haired boys with ears that stick out,” I tell him.

We are sitting in aisle seats so we can easily move closer to Gunboy if Johnny spots him. Our killer will be disguised as well, Johnny says. Maybe as a pirate with an eye patch, Frankenstein’s monster with fake bolts in his neck, or the Grim Reaper with a scythe (the reaper I see is carrying a toilet plunger). As you can imagine, zombies are a popular costume since we are the living dead (ha-ha). Zombies wear white face paint with their eyes circled in dusky charcoal makeup. They rub white glue (polyvinyl acetate) into their hair so it stands on end. They wear shabby jeans with tattered legs that descend to mid-calf.

The costumes are homemade because Zig does not deliver the kind of premade Halloween costumes and rubber masks sold in American department stores. Instead, he delivers rolls of fabric and sewing machines so townies can make costumes for their theater productions and Halloween parties.

Halloween is a big holiday here, on a par with New Year’s Eve. Fake blood is everywhere tonight. It is made of acrylic paint or ketchup. It drips from head wounds and runs down cheeks. It spots chests. It does not make me queasy, and even if it were real, I would not balk. Remember in sixth grade when my classmates all pricked their fingers and tested their blood type for their ABO and rhesus factor? Some students went white from queasiness. Some felt faint. I did not go white—at least not any whiter. I expected to have a rare blood type, so I was not surprised to discover I was AB+.

I spot Esther Haglund standing in the center aisle, looking for a seat before the Halloween program begins. Her hair is styled elaborately with fancy waves hanging over her big forehead. The blouse she wears is covered in sequins. She squeezes into our row and sits in the empty seat beside me.

“Hello, Esther,” I say. “How are you doing this fine evening?”

She stares into the eyeholes in my sheet. “Is that you, Oliver?”

“Yes, I am a ghost. What are you dressed as?”

“A newbie in my dorm gave me this ghastly hairdo,” she says. “I’m an actress who plays an angel private eye on TV. I don’t remember her name. I passed back in sixty-nine, so I don’t know modern TV.”

I tell her we watched mostly PBS television at home because my mother and father claimed that the commercial stations rotted the soul. Apparently, you two can be agnostics and still use words like “soul” (I jest).

I introduce Johnny and Esther and ask Johnny if he knows the actress to whom Esther is referring.

“For f*ck sake, Boo, it’s that stupid b*tch Farrah Fawcett. Did you live under a rock, man?”

Unlike you, Father and Mother, I am not bothered by cursing. Words like “assh*le,” “sh*t,” and “c*nt” are just different rearrangements of the same twenty-six letters found in all English words. For me, “c*cksucker” is no more offensive an expression than “weed wacker” or “bumper sticker.” I do tell Johnny, however, that if people must swear, they should at least be grammatical. He should say “for f*ck’s sake” with an apostrophe and an s.

“People speak appallingly in Town,” I add. “They have no adults to serve as grammar role models.”

He looks as though he wants to shoot me in the head. “Why you always such a d*ckhead, Boo?”

“Perhaps I possess the d*ckhead gene.”

Johnny does not laugh at my joke.

I turn to Esther. “Thelma is one of the performers tonight, but she would not tell me what she will be doing. She wants it to be a surprise.”

“She’s doing a reenactment,” Esther says, rolling her big eyes under her shaggy hairdo. “So get ready for loads of pain and suffering.”

“What’s a reenactment?” Johnny asks.

“Thelma’s a gommer,” Esther says. “She’s reenacting her murder.”