Thinking of her as a shadow made me feel less insane. My shadow stood before me, appearing so alive I expected to see her breathe. I dropped my monogrammed satchel on a bench and gathered courage to search the faces on the platform for Sadie. Long enough to think I might have a normal life. That respite lasted almost two and a half years. Going to New York was an attempt to escape spirits and find respite, however brief. Others were so close to solid looking I might have thought them made of warm flesh if not for the old style of their clothes and ability to walk through objects. I’d no way of knowing for certain, but I thought them the oldest or with the fewest ties to loved ones. Some ghosts were translucent with no more substance than the fog, barely in the world of the living. After the earthquake and subsequent fire nine years ago, I began to see them everywhere. My mother was seldom wrong, but growing up didn’t cure me of seeing spirits.

She thought the ghosts I saw an overabundance of childhood fancy, something I’d outgrow in time. Each time she’d stopped whatever she was doing and taken my hand, walking me from room to room so I could see no one was there. More than once I’d run to my mother frightened and certain that some stranger had crept into our house. Others walked purposely through train cars and walls, following paths they’d walked before or stopping to cross streets that no longer existed.Įver since I was a small child I’d caught glimpses of people my parents couldn’t see, or faces peering at me from corners in an otherwise empty room. Each restless soul clung to someone they’d loved in life, unwilling to let go. Long-dead children trailed after sad and worn-looking women, and young mothers carrying newborn babes followed proper-looking gentlemen with new wives on an arm. I tipped Sam a dollar and moved away from the tracks, facing my fear head on and confronting the reason I’d left home three years ago. “I’ll be fine.” I shook out my skirts and took my bag. “Will you be all right on your own, Miss Delia? I can wait until your friend comes if you’d feel better.” Sam, the elderly porter who’d looked after me all the way from New York, took my satchel and offered his hand as I came down the rickety train-car steps. Foggy, late-spring nights in San Francisco were cold, something I’d conveniently forgotten. Warm air ruffled my hair and vanished before I became sure I’d felt it. The locomotive engine belched billowing clouds of steam, a black-iron dragon chained to the tracks.

Delia's Shadow by Jaime Lee Moyer