Sincerely yours,

Prof. Martin F. Burkett (Emeritus)

“He’s old school,” I said to Mom as we ate our breakfast: grapefruit and yogurt for her, Cheerios for me.

She nodded. “He is, and there aren’t many of his kind left. To rush to the bedside of a dying friend at his age…” She shook her head. “Remarkable. Admirable. And that email!”

“Professor Burkett doesn’t write emails,” I said. “He writes letters.”

“True, but not what I was thinking of. Really, how many appointments and scheduled visitors do you think he has at his age?”

Well, there was one, I thought, but didn’t say.

48

I don’t know if the professor’s old friend died or not. I only know that the professor did. He had a heart attack on the flight and was dead in his seat when the plane landed. He had another old friend who was his lawyer—he was one of the recipients of the professor’s final email—and he was the one who got the call. He took charge of getting the body shipped back, but it was my mom who stepped up after that. She closed the office and made the funeral arrangements. I was proud of her for that. She cried and was sad because she had lost a friend. I was just as sad because I’d made her friend my own. With Liz gone, he’d been my only grown-up friend.

The funeral was at the Presbyterian church on Park Avenue, same as Mona Burkett’s had been seven years before. My mother was outraged that the daughter—the one on the west coast—didn’t attend. Later, just out of curiosity, I called up that last email from Professor Burkett and saw she hadn’t been one of the recipients. The only three women who’d gotten it were my mother, Mrs. Richards (an old lady he was friendly with on the fourth floor of the Palace on Park), and Dolores Magowan, the woman Mrs. Burkett had mistakenly predicted her widower husband would soon be asking out to lunch.

I looked for the professor at the church service, thinking that if his wife had attended hers, he might attend his. He wasn’t there, but this time we went to the cemetery service as well and I saw him sitting on a gravestone twenty or thirty feet away from the mourners but close enough to hear what was being said. During the prayer, I raised my hand and gave him a discreet wave. Not much more than a twiddle of the fingers, but he saw it, and smiled, and waved back. He was a regular dead person, not a monster like Kenneth Therriault, and I started to cry.

My mother put her arm around me.

49

That was on a Monday, so I never did get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with my class. I got the day off school to go to the funeral, and when we got back, I told my mother I wanted to go for a walk. That I needed to think.

“That’s fine…if you’re okay. Are you okay, Jamie?”

“Yes,” I said, and gave her a smile to prove it.

“Be back by five or I’ll worry.”

“I will be.”

I got as far as the door before she asked me the question I’d been waiting for. “Was he there?”

I had thought about lying, like maybe that would spare her feelings, but maybe it would make her feel better, instead. “Yes. Not at the church but at the cemetery.”

“How…how did he look?”

I told her he looked okay, and that was the truth. They’re always wearing the clothes they had on when they died, which in Professor Burkett’s case was a brown suit that was a little too big for him but still looked quite cool, in my humble opinion. I liked that he’d put on a suit for the plane ride, because it was another part of being old school. And he didn’t have his cane, possibly because he wasn’t holding it when he died or because he dropped it when the heart attack struck.

“Jamie? Could your old mom have a hug before you go out on your walk?”

I hugged her a long time.

50

I walked to the Palace on Park, much older and taller than the little boy who’d come from his school one fall day holding his mother’s hand on one side and his green turkey on the other. Older, taller, and maybe even wiser, but still that same person. We change, and we don’t. I can’t explain it. It’s a mystery.

I couldn’t go inside the building, I had no key, but I didn’t need to, because Professor Burkett was sitting on the steps in his brown traveling suit. I sat down beside him. An old lady walked by with a little fluffy dog. The dog looked at the professor. The old lady didn’t.

“Hello, Professor.”

“Hello, Jamie.”

It had been five days since he died on the airplane, and his voice was doing that fade-out thing they do. As if he was talking to me from far away and getting farther all the time. And while he seemed as kind as ever, he also seemed sort of, I don’t know, disconnected. Most of them do. Even Mrs. Burkett was that way, although she was chattier than most (and some don’t talk at all, unless you ask them a question). Because they are watching the parade instead of marching in it? That’s close, but still not quite right. It’s as if they’ve got other, more important things on their minds, and for the first time I realized that my voice must be fading for him, as well. The whole world must be fading.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Did it hurt? The heart attack?”

“Yes, but it was over soon.” He was looking out at the street, not at me. As if storing it up.

“Is there anything you need me to do?”

“Only one thing. Never call for Therriault. Because Therriault is gone. What would come is the thing that possessed him. I believe that in the literature, that sort of entity is called a walk-in.”

“I won’t, I promise. Professor, why could it even possess him in the first place? Because Therriault was evil to start with? Is that why?”

“I don’t know, but it seems likely.”

“Do you still want to hear what happened when I grabbed him?” I thought of his email. “The details?”

“No.” This disappointed me but didn’t surprise me. Dead people lose interest in the lives of the living. “Just remember what I’ve told you.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

A faint shadow of irritation came into his voice. “I wonder. You were incredibly brave, but you were also incredibly lucky. You don’t understand because you’re just a child, but take my word for it. That thing is from outside the universe. There are horrors there that no man can conceive of. If you truck with it you risk death, or madness, or the destruction of your very soul.”

I had never heard anyone talk about trucking with something—I suppose it was another of the professor’s old-school words, like icebox for refrigerator, but I got the gist. And if he meant to scare me, he had succeeded. The destruction of my soul? Jesus!

“I won’t,” I said. “I really won’t.”

He didn’t reply. Just looked out at the street with his hands on his knees.

“I’ll miss you, professor.”

“All right.” His voice was growing fainter all the time. Pretty soon I wouldn’t be able to hear him at all, I’d only be able to see his lips moving.

“Can I ask you one more thing?” Stupid question. When you ask, they have to answer, although you might not always like what you hear.