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up, the front door of the house was open, and two figures stood in it, staring down at him. All the brothers were staring at him now. He climbed out of the car and started walking swiftly down the driveway. He didn't start to run until he heard one of them shout.
    At the bottom of the driveway, he did not turn to follow the road, but went straight across it and crashed through the brush, into the trees. Whip-thin branches lashed at his face. He tripped and tore the knee of his pants, got up, kept going.
    The night was clear and cloudless, the sky filled to its limitless depth with stars. He paused, on the side of a steep slope, crouching among rocks, to catch his breath, a stitch in one side. He heard voices up the hill from him, branches breaking. He heard someone pull the ripcord on a small engine, once, twice, then the noisy unmuffled scream-and-roar of a chain saw coming to life.
    He got up and ran on, pitching himself down the hill, flying through the branches of the firs, leaping roots and rocks without seeing them. As he went, the hill got steeper and steeper, until it was really like falling. He was going too fast and he knew when he came to a stop, it would involve crashing into something, and shattering pain.
    Only as he went on, picking up speed all the time, until with each leap he seemed to sail through yards of darkness, he felt a giddy surge of emotion, a sensation that might have been panic but felt strangely like exhilaration. He felt as if at any moment his feet might leave the ground and never come back down. He knew this forest, this darkness, this night. He knew his chances: not good. He knew what was after him. It had been after him all his life. He knew where he was—in a story about to unfold an ending. He knew better than anyone how these stories went, and if anyone could find their way out of these woods, it was him.

    * * *

    20th Century Ghost
    The best time to see her is when the place is almost full. There is the well-known story of the man who wanders in for a late show and finds the vast six-hundred-seat theater almost deserted. Halfway through the movie, he glances around and discovers her sitting next to him, in a chair that only moments before had been empty. Her witness stares at her. She turns her head and stares back. She has a nosebleed. Her eyes are wide, stricken. My head hurts , she whispers. I have to step out for a moment. Will you tell me what I miss? It is in this instant that the person looking at her realizes she is as insubstantial as the shifting blue ray of light cast by the projector. It is possible to see the next seat over through her body. As she rises from her chair, she fades away.
    Then there is the story about the group of friends who go into the Rosebud together on a Thursday night. One of the bunch sits down next to a woman by herself, a woman in blue. When the movie doesn't start right away, the person who sat down beside her decides to make conversation. What's playing tomorrow? he asks her. The theater is dark tomorrow , she whispers. This is the last show. Shortly after the movie begins she vanishes. On the drive home, the man who spoke to her is killed in a car accident.
    These, and many of the other best-known legends of the Rosebud, are false ... the ghost stories of people who have seen too many horror movies and who think they know exactly how a ghost story should be.
    Alec Sheldon, who was one of the first to see Imogene Gilchrist, owns the Rosebud, and at seventy-three still operates the projector most nights. He can always tell, after talking to someone for just a few moments, whether or not they really saw her, but what he knows he keeps to himself, and he never publicly discredits anyone's story ... that would be bad for business.
    He knows, though, that anyone who says they could see right through her didn't see her at all. Some of the put-on artists talk about blood pouring from her nose, her ears, her eyes; they say she gave them a pleading look, and