Well, there is one other thing I suppose I could tell you. Just a small thing, but I think I recognize the look in your eyes, little ghost. And I would spare you a wasted effort if I could. Time is precious, even here.

You see, once the Haunters took me in - or took me, as the case may be - I was very busy. I suppose everyone puts their new members to hard work to try and get their minds off of certain things, but those things will keep coming back to you.

And while it took some doing - a couple years' doing, I'll admit - I finally gained the courage to track down the man who'd done this to me.

I could have seen him at any time, really. You see, he still had the knife. And I knew more or less where it was, and who had it at any given time. You know how these things work.

But I couldn't bring myself to face him, just yet. I was afraid of what might happen. Or what I might do when I finally looked him right in those half-closed, uncaring eyes of his...

And then, one day, I realized that I was being stupid. Sitting around and dreading that meeting was probably doing more harm to me than confronting him ever could.

And there was a matter of professional pride as well. Here I was, preparing to call myself a master of fear, and I was afraid of him? How pathetic.

So one day I concentrated on that knife - almost holding it in my hand - and went to see my killer.

He was living in a one-room apartment he rented by the day, downtown in some city South of here. It was threadbare and pitiful: a broken bed with no sheets, clothes strewn on the floor with no dresser or closets... not even a bathroom of its own.

There was just the bed, a cracked window, and a small, plastic chair he'd probably taken from someone's trash. He sat on the chair, between the bed and the window, looking down at his hands with those half-closed eyes of his.

I could read his fears as easily as I could read anyone else. He was jobless, living off of what he could scrape together and steal. What he could rob. What he could bully out of those who feared him...

But what was there to fear? After years of painting him to be some horrible ogre, I found that he was a sorry little man, full of fears of his own.

Lots of fears, though. Terrible, soul-crushing fears from a childhood gone wrong. The sort of fears that leave scars as deep as any knife could gouge. The sort of fears that lead you to think that you must either be feared, or be afraid.

And that's what started him down the road that led him to me, and to those trees over there. That's why I was dead. That's why others who'd had the misfortune of meeting him since then were either living in fear of him, or not living anymore...

Fear. Stupid little fears. And a stupid little man broken under the weight of them, until he had to go and put fear into others just to get anywhere.

Obnoxious and tawdry, really. And something of a letdown, too...

Oh, no. I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. I did not kill him. I could have done it, and I know that I was going to, at first. But no, I did not kill him.

Because once I saw him, and tasted his fears, I knew that I just couldn't do it. That would have been... anticlimactic. And rather like using a tire iron to squash an ant, to be honest.

So, I did the same thing that I did to so many people, all those years, over by those trees, and ever since. I took his fear, added in my own, and let him see it.

What happened next? I'd like to say that I sat there and watched him face his fears, but the truth is that I'd decided to leave just as soon as I saw that it had worked. And once those half-closed eyes had opened so wide that I thought his lids would split from the strain, and he was just starting to shake and to scream... yes, that was more than enough of a reward for my time.

And so I left, just as he fell to the floor in shock, voiding himself like a babe in arms. And I didn't look back - not even once.

But the truth is that I could have gone without that afternoon, little ghost. All those years I spent, fixated on that fool, only to get there and find that what I'd been afraid of all that time was hardly worth my time at all. More of an afterthought than a closure...

No, he doesn't have the knife, anymore. Someone else took it - probably whomever cleaned out the apartment after his unfortunate mental episode - and it's traded hands a few times since then.

I could find out who has it, now, if I cared to, but I think it's in good hands. A knife will always be well looked-after.

So that just leaves my trees. That and the small favors I do for the Haunters from time to time in exchange for being one of their number... such as showing little ghosts what fear really is...

Oh, you're most welcome. Like I said, we all have our hobbies.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I've wasted enough of my time on you today, little ghost. I'm desperately in need of some refreshment, and I can't help but notice that some out-of-towners have gotten much too close to my little nook for their own good.

And that means it's time for my curtain call...