New Book Excerpt

ANOTHER GHOST-KILLING

in the pines and cedars we give chase. there is only one soldier left after the ghost-killings, and he’s sobbing—his gun jams when he tried to fire on us, so he drops it and runs. ahead—we hear him crunching and crying through the forest, and in a clearing, he spins around and shouts, “what do you want?” we want to know why he’s setting fires. “orders,” he says, then asks us why we killed his platoon, and why we want to kill him. we tell him it wasn’t us. “who was it?” we tell him ghosts don’t like fires. he faces goes still and wind pushes against him. the tops of the weeds slap his thighs and he collapses. the wind retreats and ghost hair floats between us and the body. there’s no need to check his body. we know what this means.