19

The key, you guess, is not seeking this woman, but rather making your presence known if she chooses to look for you. And so, as each night falls, you climb to a spot where the light shining from your own form might easily be seen. Most nights, you stand atop one of the Harbor Towers. When you grow bored of waiting there, you seek out high ground elsewhere.

For now, she does not come to you. But perhaps she will. Or, if the two of you are not the only such spirit beings in this world, perhaps somebody else will.

Two weeks pass after you see the phantom woman atop the tower. And you do not see her again.

But then the red storm returns.

It sweeps down from the north this time, as the people of this city pack the streets, returning to their homes during the evening rush hour. And while it missed the city the first time you saw it, now the storm's epicenter approaches downtown Boston. Once again, a burst of scarlet lightning rips across the darkening early-winter sky. Once again, that shrill shout of thunder reaches you, edged with a sound like a saw cutting through sheet metal.

Once again, the living people of Boston cannot see or hear this storm. And when its blood-red rain begins to fall among them, they cannot feel it.

The rainfall is light at first. Each time a drop of blood-rain falls upon somebody, that person coughs, or moves to wipe watery snot from their nose. The rain brings illness among the living, and they cannot detect its cause.

And then a drop of the blood-red rain strikes your shoulder. And it burns you.

It is the first physical sensation you have felt since you became this ghostly creature. And you would welcome it, if not for the intense pain it creates. An alarming realization comes to you: This rain can harm you. Perhaps it can even destroy you.

You run for shelter, halting in the lobby of a nearby hotel. But there is no shelter to be found here—the rain belongs to the realm of the dead, just as you do. It passes through the roof of the hotel and through all of its floors, until it touches you and burns you once more.

You cannot hide from this red rain. The rainfall is still quite light, but it's steadily growing stronger. Another whining peal of thunder sounds from the sky above.