The Promise

by Damon Galgut

How would you know she is a ghost? Many of the living are vague and adrift too, it’s not a failing unique to the departed.

You come back after long vanishment and the surface closes as if you were never gone. Family quicksand.

The dead are so much more predictable than the living, with their moods and humours.

The sober world, with all its ailments and injuries, is hazily amusing to him in recent times and he finds himself laughing a lot, especially at night.