Stiff Lips

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Afterwards, no one could remember what had got us started on ghosts. It wasn't the sort of thing we usually talked about. We all tolerated Daisy's tall stories, but it wasn't as though we egged her on. I'd never found any of that crap remotely interesting; I was aware that Susie always read her horoscope in the Standard, but she knew better than to read me mine.

Normally I might have pinned the blame on Ralph, who still retained a spotty adolescent appetite for the macabre. Ralph had seen all the horror movies ever made and could tell you within nanoseconds whether a picture of Christopher Lee with flashy dentures and red contact lenses had been lifted from Dracula, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, or Dracula Sucks, but he'd learned long ago not to inflict his puerile Gothic fantasies on the rest of us.

But Ralph was recovering from the flu, and on that particular evening fell some way short of being his usual obnoxious self. Not only was he uncharacteristically subdued, but he had sloped off home to an early sickbed long before the conversation took its morbid turn.

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