When the End of the Year Arrived...
…they were relieved.
Their lives had been placed, somehow, on the dashboard of a small car, his and hers, side-by-side, tossed on the dash like a pack of smokes.
The car was paused at a train crossing in the middle of the night. The black & white bar had begun to drop as the car first approached — even though no train was yet in sight — and the red lights had flashed and clanged.
For a long time, nothing came down the track, and if the driver had been bold, he could have swerved into the other lane and made it around the gate and across.
The first ghosts came singly, walking down the track. They looked like actors, wearing heavy clothes covered in white powder. Or ash, perhaps. It gave their faces a heavy-browed countenance and created the impression that the eyes, if they had eyes, were staring out of dark caverns, like a candles from the recesses of a cave.
Soon there were hundreds of them, trudging. They walked slowly and looked tired. Their gaits were heavy. Those aren’t ghosts at all, she said, finally. Those are simply the dead.
All of them? he asked.
No, she said. Just yours. Just the dead that belong to you.
He nodded.
After about an hour, the procession began to thin, and then finally, a girl came walking, wearing a pair of high-heeled shoes that were far too big, that had perhaps belonged to her mother.
There’s the last one, she said.
He nodded silently, and after a moment, the gate lifted, and they began to cross, at last.