What Ghosts Are

The ghost looked at Dingbo with a new interest, as though a mouse had opened its mouth and proposed terms. You do not seem afraid, it said. Dingbo shrugged. Why should I be? he said. You told me yourself what you are. A thing that walks above the leaves and tells a man his own name before he has given it.

And yet, Dingbo went on, I have always wondered about your kind. Are you older than the living, or younger? Do you remember being a man, or are you a thing that was never a man at all? The ghost was pleased to be asked. It had not had anyone to talk to in a long time.

We are the dead, it said, simply. We die, and we do not lie down, and so we walk. It is not a choice. It is the price of not having been good enough to rest. It does not sound like much, after all these years. It is less than you think.

Dingbo listened. He was learning, and learning was the thing he was good at. And what can you do? he said. I mean, between us, honestly. Can you truly kill me where I stand? The ghost took this for arrogance and was offended. Can I not? it said. I have a hundred times.

Then why have you not? Dingbo said. The ghost hesitated. It was not used to being asked. We must be asked in, it said, at last, as though the words were hard. We cannot take a living man unless he is careless of us, or afraid of us, or fool enough to speak to us on the road. You have spoken to me. That is how this begins.

Dingbo nodded. He had the shape of it now. The ghost could not simply snatch him; it needed his fear, or his carelessness, or his curiosity. He had given it the third. He would now see that the third ran out before the first ran in.

And what are you afraid of? he said, pressing on. Every creature has something. The ghost looked away. There is not much, it said, but there is one: the spittle of the living. If a living man spits at us, we lose what we have made. We cannot hold our shape. It is the only thing.

Dingbo noted this, and did not show that he had noted it. He was now a man walking beside a ghost who had told him its one weakness, and the ghost had not understood that it had told him. This, Dingbo thought, is what they mean by stupid.

And can you change your shape? he said. I have heard that the dead can take the shapes of beasts. The ghost was flattered. It is true, it said, though it costs us. A ghost who changes shape spends itself, and must rest long afterward. But we can, if we choose.

Show me, Dingbo said. The ghost hesitated. It had already told too much, and it knew it, but it was vain, and the vanity of ghosts is the vanity of actors. They must be seen. Now that it had an audience, it could not refuse. Choose what you would see, it said, and Dingbo, who had chosen long since, smiled and said: A sheep. I have always wanted to see a ghost as a sheep.

The ghost did not see the trap. It stood in the middle of the road, and it gathered itself, and it changed. It was an ugly thing to watch; the human shape seemed to fold the way a wet cloth folds, and out of it came, not a man at all, but a small sheep, the color of rain, standing on the road and bleating in a thin, surprised way.