I stood in the swamp and searched for the ring. I'd left it there years ago and now he wanted it back.

I wasn't sure what he'd do with it, being dead and all, but I guess he had his reasons.

I quit looking after an hour or so, strode back to the house with swamp sludge in my shoes. "Couldn't find it," I said, walking past him on the porch. "Won't, either. Not in that mud."

He turned to watch me enter the house, but otherwise didn't move. He didn't speak. His mouth hung slightly open, formed almost an O, and I kept waiting for a Boo! to emerge. He wasn't scary, but rather sad.

"It wouldn't have worked," I told him the next day as I dusted, moving my library book safely out of the way. "Really, that was a good idea, getting yourself killed. Saved us both a lot of heartbreak."

He still couldn't talk, but that didn't keep him from trying to communicate. He looked disgruntled when I mentioned his being dead--but I suppose that wasn't the sort of thing I'd want to be reminded of, if I was in his shoes. Not that I was sure he had any shoes; his body dissolved into mist a bit below the knees.

"But that always was the trouble with you: you never did know what you wanted, or how to get it. If you wanted the ring back, all you had to do was ask, and before now."

He shrugged, and faded through a wall.

I shrugged, and went back to my dusting.

The next day he arrived at lunch, as I was pouring the iced tea. He wandered in from the living room--"Very funny," I said--with the bluetick at his heels. The hound looked perplexed and I didn't much blame him.

"Leave Beau alone," I said, stern, as I poured another glass. "You know full well he's useless."

The hound whined, no doubt hopeful that someone would sort this out so he could go back to napping in the shade beneath the porch. "Lucy," my nearest neighbor ventured, "who are you talking to?"

"Richard," I said, still looking at him, and added, "If you won't go, you might as well sit down for lunch. I can't go searching now."

Meekly, he sat, and Beau lay down by his side.

"Oh," my nearest neighbor said, and returned to her potato salad.

"I'm sure to end up dead," I told him, slogging through the sludge. "Mucking about in the swamp like this. Probably put a foot in a sinkhole and that'll be the end of me. And Beau," I added as an afterthought, whistling the hound back from a likely-looking spot.

"Is that what you want?" I asked him. "Me dead?"

He shook his head and floated alongside me.

"Must be lonely over there, though. Is it?"

He blinked at me, mournful, and shrugged as if he didn't know.

"What'd you wait so long for, anyway? Maybe if you'd showed up soon as you were dead we'd have been able to find it. Now..." I waved a muddy hand at the swamp in general. "I guess we could drain it, and break out some metal detectors. But that seems like an awful lot of work for one little ring. Can't you go without it?"

He blinked again, still mournful.

"Do you even really want it?"

Nothing, not even a change of expression. Then, very slowly and carefully, he pointed a finger at me: Do you?

"Never mind," I said, and stomped back towards the house.

"It was a nice funeral."

"Mmm," my nearest neighbor said, examining the buffet table. "I suppose so. As far as those things go."

"No," I said, impatient. "Richard's. You weren't there."

"Do you suppose," she ventured, "that it's bad form to talk about a funeral other than the one you're at?"

We pondered that for a moment. She shrugged and forged ahead regardless "I'm sure it was, but they've always seemed a little silly to me. Closure and all that, but it's not as if the deceased much cares, or even knows."

"I wouldn't be so sure," I said. "I'd never hear the end of it now, if Richard's hadn't been nice." Not that I heard much of anything from him, but even so.

My nearest neighbor was looking at me very, very oddly. "I'm being haunted," I said, matter of fact.

"Oh," she said.

"By Richard."

"Oh," she said again. "What does he want?"

"His ring. The one I threw in the swamp."

"How do you know?" she asked.

"Um," I said, and thought for a moment. "I know," I said.

"How do I know it's the ring you want?" I asked him that night, as we sat on opposite sides of a checkerboard. I moved the dark pieces as I spoke, the red as I waited for his reply. "What if it's the house, or the hound? What if it's me?"

He shook his head, slow and steady, denying it all.

"If I'd known you'd be this much trouble, I'd just have said yes in the first place. Or at least not such a violent no."

He shrugged and frowned at the checkers as if he didn't like my latest move.

Tires squealed in my memory and a truck door slammed. Taillights vanished down the road, followed by my angry words. Tires again, louder this time, twofold. Metal met metal.

"Anyway," I said, "I don't remember where I left it."

Fifty paces due east from the edge, my memory said, dropped from your hand under the lightning-struck tree.

"Summoning a Ghost," my nearest neighbor read, picking my library book up from the coffee table.

"And Banishing," I added. "Read the whole thing. Summoning and Banishing a Ghost."

"Summoning," she said again. "Don't you think you ought to leave Richard alone?"

"More coffee cake?" I asked.

"Why did you do it, anyway?"

We sat on the porch now, on the swing, Beau dozing by the stairs, exhausted from chasing the riot of lightning bugs that dazzled the yard.

"Did you mean to? To die, I mean?"

He shook his head and seemed lost in thought, though it was hard to tell; he wasn't as well-defined this evening as he'd been the last.

I hesitated before asking the next: "Was it my fault?"

He looked right at me then, soft and sad. He didn't nod. He didn't shake his head.

I snapped to my feet and away, narrowly avoiding Beau's tail as I stomped across the porch. "Just like you! I never made you get in the car, leave the house! If you'd stayed--"

He didn't seem to believe me, though his expression remained sympathetic. I remembered the weight of the broom in my hand, of the words I'd yelled.

"Don't you feel sorry for me," I said, but he was already gone.

"I don't feel sorry for you," I said to the open air. "I don't."

I whistled for Beau then, and clattered down the porch stairs. Fifty paces due east from the edge...

"Here," I said, holding out the ring. "I found it."

He looked at me, quizzical.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Still he stood, still he looked, questioning, waiting.

"It wasn't anyone's fault, was it? But I'm still sorry. I just wanted to say that."

He smiled. Waited. Took the ring from my hand. I drew a deep breath.

"I'm sorry," I said again. "About the fight. You can go now."

Bio

Hannah Wolf Bowen is a junior Philosophy major at Knox College. She has far too many dreams for anyone's good and tries to spend her free time backpacking, on a horse, or playing pool very badly. She has one sale (to Ideomancer) to her credit and still happy dances on all appropriate occasions.