jacob could not separate the nightmare within from the dream world around him. the fortune he had secured by various means purchased reveries of all stripes and climates. pine lodges in the foothills of helsinki. penthouses in the shanghai jungles. tuscan villas and yachts stationed off the shores of tangier. no one could say exactly how jacob made his money. it seemed to just stick to him as he walked by, as we catch the rain in a thunderstorm. but the thing about jacob was that he left ghosts wherever we went. he would hide them in every room, so that when he returned they would be there for him waiting. so that every place that jacob went became a haunted place. and the ghosts would pile like bodies on the floor, until he could not stay there any longer, and he would have to leave for good. perhaps moscow for christmas. or rio for carnival. 

and wherever he went, there was gerry. sweet, loyal gerry. jacob told her he loved her once in a tea house in tokyo. he never said it again. she never brought it up. she never forgot it. so among all the ghosts, gerry was the most alive. her flesh was cold, but clung firm to the bone, and when she was tired, she did not sleep so much as lay there prostrate in bed, waiting waiting waiting for the morning to come and jacob to wake and to execute the day's schedule. but then there was the summer in tahiti.

she had made the usual arrangements. a small private island off the coastline. a secluded alcove with a picnic lunch. a folding table with three white towels. the girl would bring the rest. lina carried the oils and lotions in her bag. her rate was normally twenty-five dollars an hour. so when someone called the tampa office and offered ten grand to someone willing to fly down to tahiti for the day, she'd been so excited, she forgot to pack. when the van dropped her off at the alcove, she found jacob alone on the beach. he was already undressed and laying on the table, facedown beneath the towels. he looked so peaceful lying there. she could help herself to the champagne and crudite. and when they were done, he invited her to take a swim. there was a spare suit over the back of her chair. lina was of course sensitive to her material conditions. she immediately mind mapped the shortest distance to the treeline, an exit strategy should this take a turn for the worse. but he was a good talker, jacob. funny, in a self-knowing kind of way. he didn’t ask that you call him, sir, like some dudes did. and he asked her questions about her mom and about school and her life, and laughed at her stories and told about the dumb times he’d had when he was in college. it was always a good sign, lina thought, when men expressed a comfortable distance between who they were in that moment with her and who they’d been once upon a time. it showed an ability to think of one’s life as phasal seasons, to accept change and move on. the dangerous ones never did. so imagine lina’s shock when three quarter hours into the first session, she has to set in motion the exit plan. the first hand came up the back. ‘mr blake you are engaging in non-consensual touch. i’m going to clearly state that i am not interested in your advances, and i am asking you to remove your right hand.’ she gave them all one. one came with a verbal warning: unambiguous, even technical. but sometimes a verbal doesn’t work, at which point the show’s over. second hand came up. she stepped back from the table. ‘mr blake, i’m afraid i have to end today’s session. i will refund your account the prorated balance, and have yourself a nice day.’ she turned to grab her bag, and that’s when he hand clutched her by the wrist. she’d have to pull the emergency latch on this one after all. damn, she thought, she hadn’t seen this one coming. she leant over and grabbed a handful of white sand and threw it hard and directly in his face. he lurched and fell off the table. grab the bag, grab the shoes and off she went, legs high so she wouldn’t sink in the sand. once she was at the treeline, she would make her way back to the main road.

jacob was left writhing on the beach. she’d gotten him good. the little grains of sand were like boulders across the cornea. if he blicked, it was like rubbing his eye with a piece of sandpaper. he stumbled, weeping tiny red tears, all the way to the sea where he carried fistfuls of saltwater to his eyes and washed the sand away. but the damage, as they say, was done. like potholes over streets of light, jacob’s vision was damaged. eruptions of light perforated his field of vision, pouring out from slits in the tapestry. but no shapes cohered long enough to be identifiable. and in the absence of shapes, the absence made shapes. his vision turned inward conjured ghosts and set them loose, wandering in a vast and upended labyrinth alongside the monster himself, who stalks jacob around every corner as he searches for the way out. and though he never finds it, he does occasionally come upon a pathway which leads to an opening in the sea. but the waters are insurmountable. blown everywhere in a tropical storm, they are choppy, gray and terrifying.

the pain beat away at him like a yankee slugger with an aluminum bat. and with every wallop, some spectral face came into tortured relief. one by one, a blonde ghost, a brunette ghost, a ghost with three kids and an ex in fresno, a ghost underwater on her mortgage with a son at brown, a ghost who works the vip room and offers you extras when the cameras aren't looking, a ghost who offers to fuck you if she can just stay the night. ghosts in shopping malls, in office buildings, ghosts online. ghosts with profiles and handles. ghosts with vpn's and 5g. a great web of ghosts, and they all knew each other, because they all knew jacob. jacob was the great thread between them all, though they never knew they were connected. they were all absolutely convinced they were alone. that was his gift to them. that was how jacob made them ghosts. that's how he left them, haunting the rooms they'd lived in for a time together. in his wake he left sadness, regret and fear. so no, they planned to keep at him, to keep beating him lifeless. not until he knew each and every one of their names. their was sandi from tulsa who jacob picked up while out driving his daddy's car. he was only seventeen, said the car was his, asked her if she wanted to go downtown with him, as though downtown tulsa were such a sight as all that. then there was tessa who taught second grade outside shreveport who jacob met while on business, who didn't know meeting strange men in far away hotels rooms was a dangerous thing to do. and then there was rocky, just your average trans bus driver out of chicago, who jacob kept saying was 'as good as the real thing' as he found them a quiet stall there in the howard street bus depot. they always went in so willingly. and that's because jacob knew the secret. if you don't give them a reason to say no at the outset, they won't be able to say no afterward.

when giselle reported to the beach, she found jacob sitting back on his heels at the shoreline. he was muttering to himself, talking to someone, perhaps many others, shouting back at them as if they were trying to cajole him. he did not hear her approach, nor when she called his name. and when she came to the front, she saw the blood dripping from his eyes which had morphed, the iris in jacob's two eyes had wiggled into a w-shape, like that of an octopus or manta ray. too terrified to approach, jacob ranted on, never ceasing, increasingly barraged by the voices in his head. i can't see, he said. you don't understand, i can't see! i can't see! suddenly a mob of white butterflies burst from out each ear. they circled in the air as a synchronized school, a mass so large in the sky that i near blotted out the sun. giselle fell back to the beach and clutched the sand beneath her. she heard little whispers, little voices in the air, tiny grunts and ahs and ohs fluttered by, all of them, each of them, clamoring toward the sun. then as quick as they had emerged from jacob's two ears, they returned, vacuum sucked back into his skull. giselle screamed, and jacob opened his eyes.

he no longer spoke, but sat upright, almost to attention, his legs crossed one over the other. at first giselle thought he had a stroke, but then he bowed his head and rested his hands upon his knees. giselle crawled forward on her hands and knees until she was right in front of him. jacob, she whispered. but nothing. she slapped him, but he hardly noticed. and then she saw, there, in the center of his right eye. a second pupil had opened, like an island erupted from some deep volcano out there in the east pacific. his other eye, however, was blocked by a tiny little structure. was it a calcium buildup? it was tiny but covered the corneal lens. it looked like a little pagoda, tiny boxes with little windows, one built on top of the other. she sat back to study both the eyes. one to see outward, one to see inward, and one to show him blindness.

jacob died in a federal prison, an old man with a peaceful heart.