Them poor sick creatures going up the street at two in the morning, dancing with bells on their shoes, wailing and baring their broken teeth at the moon, just throwing them heads back and shaking them devil sticks. It’s a racket, I can’t say it isn’t, but I wouldn’t go so far as some of the others and say there’s anything terrifying about the spectacle. Doris, the woman across the street –so dramatic– tells the man from the television news, “It makes the hair stand up on my arms.”
No, them ghosts or whatever they is don’t scare me. Pitiful, is all it is. They’re all so skinny and bat-shit loony that I can’t imagine they could hurt a fly. I wish they’d keep more reasonable hours if they’re intent on making a public fuss every other week, but that’s not the nature of their business, I guess. They’re late-nighters. Always was.
They say drugs took most of them, or guns in the hands of wicked imbeciles broke-down-crazy on drugs. We see a lot of that around here. We’ve been seeing a lot of that for quite some time. First they turn themselves into poor, helpless children or animals, then savages, and then, finally, ghosts.
Up at Our Lady they do the best they can. They bury the poor creatures in the cemetery for folks without money, but trouble is the sisters can’t keep ’em buried. They crawl their way back out of them holes and go jingling’ and devil-stickin’ up and down all the old streets where they was children once upon a time.
Just last week I seen one of ’em out in my backyard, flopped on his back and giggling like a wild boy. He was making an angel in the snow.
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