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“And there was brains!” the child gloats. “All red and squishy.”

“Cold spaghetti,” the mother explains. “They turned off the lights and let the kids stick their hands in it.”

“Well, I want a latte,” the woman in the trench coat says. “Join me, anyone?” and she looks pointedly at the bearded man, who edges away.

Annie says, “You can get apple cider and cookies at the Welcome Center. It’s free.”

She feels a tug of regret as her little group disperses, heading for cars or hiking north to Germantown Avenue. She forgot to ask their names. What’s the matter with her? She was with them for an hour, ever since they gathered at the side entrance of the Chestnut Hill Library and paid five dollars each to benefit a youth group. She volunteers because she loves to tell the stories of these old streets, the old churches, and especially the tale of Frances and Vaughan. She grew up with it; her mother remembered seeing the Beverly mansion as a child. The story makes Annie proud. It’s her heritage.

It’s practically all she has, she admits to herself. She grew up in the neighborhood, on Highland Avenue, went to college in Altoona for two years, came back, and allowed the job at the bar to become her career.

For one spooky, lively evening every October, she’s a star.

She hurries toward Germantown Avenue, wondering if anyone ever guesses that pieces of her own life, not only her great-great-grandmother’s, are embedded in the story. An old boyfriend had seen a soap woman at a museum. Captivated, Annie worked her into the spiel. She has no idea what Vaughan Beverly looked like, so she made up a description. Her own widowed mother can be maddening and oblivious, like Frances’s mother. Yet Annie feels she has not found the right ending. It’s not enough, somehow, that Frances gets away.

Annie and her mother used to entertain each other by embellishing the few known facts. Then her mother left Chestnut Hill for a retirement home in Jenkintown. The last time Annie brought up the Frances story, her mother gave a sheepish smile and said, “It’s bunk, for all I know. I’ve forgotten what’s true and what isn’t.” Annie went cold, for if the story is bunk, then her whole life feels like a lie.

When Annie reaches the corner, one platform sandal twists loose. She trips, falls, and skins her knee. The lantern flies out of her grip and smashes on the sidewalk. Its light sputters out, and she smells the spilled kerosene.

“Are you all right?” someone asks.

She looks up. A streetlight illuminates the bearded man from her tour.

“Here,” he says, taking her hand and helping her to her feet.

“Thanks,” she says, feeling shaky. “These stupid shoes.”

How quickly he vanishes. Her knee stings, and there was that brief panic of losing her balance. She gathers the shards of the lantern and tosses them in a trash can. Another Ghost Walk group passes by. Annie doesn’t recognize the guide, a woman with a booming voice and silver eye shadow. This group looks jollier than Annie’s was.

The bearded man is gone, but Annie’s hand still tingles from his touch.

She has given the Ghost Walk for ten years, and she suddenly feels too old, at thirty-nine, to speak in the exaggerated cadences she uses for drama, and to wear navy-blue nail polish and a tight black dress: her witch outfit. Did the man even recognize her? She hurries along, her ankle aching. Trees and restaurants along the avenue twinkle with strands of tiny white lights. Every store, every bank, has a glowing jack-o’-lantern out front, or cornstalks and baskets of gourds. She smells the raw squash of pumpkins and the potpourri of candles. Fake cobwebs drape the doorway of the Irish bar. She lifts them up and ducks inside.

It’s a busy night, but Dale, the manager, seeks her out to talk.

“It’s like this,” Dale says. “Everywhere we go, people give my wife pigs. Knickknacks and stuff. Always pigs. She don’t even like them. She don’t know how it all got started.”

Dale never talks to her, not like this. Annie can’t get rid of him, because he’s