Friday, July 15, 1994

Friday, July 15, 1994

10:32 a.m.

Billy doesn't believe in monsters, but he does believe in ghosts.

Well, he wants to believe.

He mostly believes.

He knows almost everything there is to know about them, the bulk of it gleaned from his favorite book, the gloriously named The Giant Book of Ghosts, Spirits, and Other Spooks. Yet a single, persistent seed of doubt continues to exist. Because although the book is filled with illustrations and, yes, even actual photographs of ghosts, the only thing in Billy's mind that would prove their existence beyond a doubt is to see one himself.

Billy assumes most boys his age—and even those a lot older—would be scared by the idea of seeing a ghost. Not him. Billy's the opposite. He fears not seeing one, because then it means he'll always slightly doubt their existence.

And he wants so desperately for them to be real.

Because if they are, he thinks he'll feel less alone.

Other than Ethan, Billy doesn't have many other friends. He guesses Russ Chen counts, even though he's usually annoying. As does his brother, Andy. Also annoying. But that's about it. In the past, Billy had tried to expand his circle of friends, mostly by trying to fit in. He pretended to be into baseball and video games and even begged his mom to buy him the same kind of clothes cool kids at school wore. Billabong board shorts and GAP tees and G-Shock watches. The only thing she agreed to was a pair of Air Jordans just like Ethan's. But when Billy wore them to school, nothing changed. He was still seen as weird.

If he was noticed at all.

But then he found The Giant Book of Ghosts, Spirits, and Other Spooks. He stumbled upon it one day in the school library while searching for a book about sharks because he needed to write a paper about them for science class. The size of a phone book, it was indeed giant. On the cover was an illustration of a blue-white entity hovering over a cemetery.

Staring at it, Billy felt a shiver of…something. It wasn't fear, exactly. But it was close. Tremulous curiosity. Enough for him to want to put the book back on the shelf. Instead, he opened it, and in that moment his entire world opened as well. Flipping through the book, reading page after page of spirits with names like djinn and stafie, he realized he wasn't the only one who didn't feel seen. That the world was filled with entities who were here but invisible, present but ignored. In fact, there were enough of them to fill an entire book. A giant one.

Thus began his fascination with ghosts of all stripes. Eventually, he grew to love them. Even the scary ones that scream in the night or are rumored to steal souls. Billy understands that all they really want is to be seen, acknowledged, noticed.

Just like him.

He checked the book out of the library and took it home, careful to hide it from his mother, who wouldn't approve. When he had to return it, he checked it out again. Then again. Then multiple times after that until, on the last day of school, Mrs. Charbrier, the school librarian, told him he could keep it.

"You've earned it," she said, smiling as she pried the library sticker from the spine and slid the book across the checkout desk. "When someone shows a book this much love, they deserve a copy just for them."

That was more than a year ago, and Billy's parents still don't know about his copy of The Giant Book of Ghosts, Spirits, and Other Spooks. He'd like to keep it that way. His father doesn't mind his obsession with ghosts. He even encourages it, going so far as to help him dress up as one for Halloween last year. But his mother would absolutely freak out if she found the book, which is why Billy takes great care to hide it. He moves it around every few days, shuffling it from the back of his underwear drawer to his desk to under the bed.

He knows she's just concerned about him, but her concern can also be overbearing. She wouldn't understand that he sees ghosts as, no pun intended, kindred spirits. That when he opens The Giant Book and sees illustrations of all these scary, fantastical, misunderstood spirits, it feels like they could be the friends he lacks.

At least, some of them could be. Billy completely understands that not every ghost, spirit, and spook mentioned in the book exists in real life. About half of them are from myth, movies, or other books by authors he's still too young to read. Lovecraft and Poe and King.

Now Billy pages through his book, a pencil in hand, circling the ones he believes are real.

Poltergeists? Circled, because there've been about a thousand incidents involving them.

Banshees? Also circled, for the very same reasons.

The Headless Horseman doesn't get a circle because he's from a story, though Billy suspects that something similar to him is real.

If Ethan or Billy's brother or even his father were to ask him why he suspects ghosts exist, he'd probably tell them that there are so many listed in his giant book that it would be impossible for all of them to be made up. That's simply the law of probability, which he'd just started learning about before school let out for the summer.

Now all he needs to know for certain is to see one for himself.

And Billy knows just the place to make that happen.