Nobody else is acknowledging the old man coughing up blood on the subway stairs, they all just step around him and fix their gazes elsewhere until they are out of his sight. He is a memory from the turn of the century - a pauper who wasn't fully dead when they buried him, still coughing up blood in the mass grave where all the other victims of Tuberculosis in the town.
It's an old place, an odd place full of memories that refuse to die. Some are as harmless as a child playing with a ball in a market that used to be a field. Others, like the old man, hate how they died and aim to being that pain to any living being that dares to look them in the eye.
Even my own home has a memory - a firefighter who couldn't save the house that used to be here and is mostly just perplexed by everything that now surrounds him. He wanders around, carrying a sharp warmth and burnt scent with him that I can never wash out of my clothes, body or hair. Luckily he died how he wanted - as a hero - meaning he has no malice, just confusion.
Even the roads leading to and from our town have memories wandering them, trying to lure vehicles off the road to where their own were found in smouldering, crumpled piles. The woods nearby are the worst for memories, all ancient and deadly things that utterly despise humans - even the dead. They are the only beings I know who are capable of killing a ghost.
When the body's decayed to nothing and the soul is brutalised beyond any hope of survival - what is left?
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