Stephen and his sugar-rush: it's not that you forget the fact of it, but the sheer manic power of the thing, the achieve of it, oh yes. You could never keep it fresh.
It used to madden me, back when Quin first brought him home with that look-what-I-found grin of his, someone new to add to the menagerie. Half acolyte, half performing monkey: hardly the first in either camp, but a kind of distillation, both parts raised to a higher power. I could take the wide-eyed wonder, I was used to that in others - hell, I'd been through it myself, seen it in Quin's shaving-mirror in the morning, in the distorting reflection of his eyes by candlelight, anywhere I saw my own face all lit up - but the performance really grated. Ego over substance, I thought, he was too young and too indeterminate to claim so much attention. I was, oh, what, four years older?
I suppose I still am, technically, but it doesn't feel like it now. They say we're all the same height, lying down; that's demonstrably not true, but I do think we're all the same age, us lot, where it matters, in our minds. I think the count started again, from scratch. Where you scratch it, where you set the zero, that's a matter for debate - fifteen years ago, when Quin moved up here and we all got to meet each other, those first crazy months? or twelve years, when we understood that he was sick? or a neat nine years exactly, the day he died? - but we're all equal since. Except for Micky, who stepped out of the count. Even Stephen's going to be older than Micky soon.
Christ, I suppose the time's going to come when we're all older than Quin. That's flying in the face of nature. All of us bar Micky, anyway. Maybe he just couldn't face the solecism...
Maybe I should forget the dead. People keep telling me so. Maybe I should sell up, move out, move on. Bid my little collection of ghosts goodbye, the fixed and the transient and the still-living and all.
For sure, I should stop feeding them. Ghosts are like cats: cupboard-love comes naturally, they hang around and yowl for more and the only way to be rid of them is to leave that cupboard locked.
Do I want to be rid of them? The evidence is inconclusive, your honour. I say that Quin haunts me, but it's me that keeps his things around, it's my choice and I make it regularly. Micky just comes with that territory, dragging after Quin the way he used to, the way we all used to, no blame to him for that. Whether he'll fade, I'm not sure. So long as I keep having anniversary dinners, I guess not. And I may moan about the dinners, but I do still keep them going. Even just for the three of us. And there could be more next year: ten years, people might think that worth the marking. More ghosts coming out of the closet. So long as I'm here, to open the closet door.