Haint Blue Salt

A Ghost Story

Here’s a little treat for my paid subscribers on Halloween, dedicated to

Yakubian Ape

and

Alexandru Constantin

. I hope you enjoy.

It would be nice if I could say I knew her car was haunted the very second I got in, but that's just pride. Fear, too, maybe, of getting old.

Used to be, I could spot a ghost from three blocks away. Didn't even need to see its haunt, but there's that pride again. I hear you, boy. Lie back down.

It was a long time since I was in the profession. I was glad of it. I came to Bulgaria for love, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider the other thing. "Escape" would be too dramatic a way of putting it, but let's just say I was ready to quit eating the dead.

Because Bulgaria doesn't have ghosts. The Communists figured out how to destroy them. Turns out that was their whole thing. Nowadays, Sofia's full of places and things that you'd think would be haunted all to hell, but you'd be wrong.

Walk past an abandoned house and peer past the rusted barbed wire into a garden tangled with sumac and wild clematis. There's paint peeling from the molded stucco, breaking the shape of the graffiti, and a stray dog is passed out against the door. A machine of some sort has collapsed in the shade of the pergola. All that, and there's nothing that looks back at you. Look at it, and nothing comes to your mind except maybe a plan to spend your next weekend in your family's village. Breathe some fresh air and pick the tomatoes.

Anyway, I was off my game when I got into Sarah's car. Rusty as hell. Think of a retired plumber who looks up at the ceiling and wonders, "what just dripped on my head?"