The bench was hard, made of granite. In the shade beneath the nearby oak it was cool to the touch, though Corrine couldn’t feel it. She was aware of the hardness and the temperature, but she didn’t feel things like she used to. A breeze was blowing and it, too, was unfelt by her. It was fine, though. She was used to the way things were and she hardly ever thought about what she’d lost.

People around her were placing flowers here and there. The landscape around her was gently rolling hills, dotted with the stone markers. The newer ones were flush with the ground while the older ones stood erect. Corrine preferred the erect markers, though the flat ones were easier for the grounds crew, she supposed. In the long run, it didn’t matter what she preferred. She wasn’t the one making those decisions or having to deal with them.

The benches, so popular for a short period of time until the people in charge decided they didn’t like them and started banning them, were Corrine’s favorite. The reasoning behind the decision to ban them was beyond her. Were they really that much of a problem? It certainly made visiting a lot more convenient. Everywhere else people would have to stand or sit on the ground. The benches made so much sense.

With what felt like a sigh, Corrine got up. She knew she couldn’t actually expel any air but her body, such as it was, went through the motions and it sounded like a sigh to her. How did that work? In general she tried not to think about such things since there was no way to get an answer. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder about those things from time to time.

Being dead was a strange existence. Before, when she’d been alive, Corrine never wondered about the after life. She figured she’d figure all that out once she got there. Well, now she was here and she still didn’t have any answers. There’d been no welcoming committee, no grand revelations, nothing. She just stepped through the veil and that was that. She’d continued on with no more answers than she’d had in life.

How long ago had it been since she died? There were no calendars she could carry around with her. She thought it had been a few years, at least. It was a good thing she enjoyed being alone because otherwise she would have been quite a terrible existence. There was no one to interact with here or anywhere else she’d gone. Perhaps every ghost was just as invisible to one another as they were to the living. Or maybe everyone else knew something she didn’t. Corrine thought that was less likely.

Was this supposed to be heaven? Hell? Purgatory? Something else altogether? She’d never been all that religious in life and she had no reason now to be otherwise. Just because she was still around didn’t really guide her towards believing one version over another.

In life, Corrine had always wanted to travel but never had the time or money to do it. Now she had all the time in the world. She walked through the cemetery, reading headstones as she went and wondering where they were now. Traveling as a ghost was slow since you had to walk everywhere. Corrine stepped through a car, feeling the slight resistance it put up against her passage. That was how everything man made was. Why the ground felt so solid and everything manufactured didn’t was another one of those questions she had no answers for. If she concentrated she could interact with them as if they were solid to her, like when she sat on the bench, but otherwise she’d pass right through it. That was why she had to walk everywhere. She could never maintain her concentration long enough to hitch a ride in a car, let alone a boat or a plane.

Corrine thought back to the time she’d tried to take a flight out of the country as a ghost. She made it to cruising altitude and then lost concentration at the first sign of turbulence. She fell through the plane and landed on the ground. Sometimes she considered walking through the ocean to get to other continents. She had all the time in the world, but the oceans were vast and she had no way of knowing if she was going in a straight line or just wandering in circles. Getting lost in the ocean was not something she wanted to do.

“I wonder if anyone’s found me yet,” she wondered out loud.

Corrine didn’t speak very often and her voice was almost alien to her now. What was the point of talking anyway if there was no one around to talk to? She could just as easily think her thoughts to herself rather than speaking them, but sometimes the words just came out.

It was in the middle of nowhere that she’d died. She’d always been a wanderer and it was on one such wandering trip that she’d died. These days, it was almost a non-event to her. Being dead, a lot of the emotions, the reactive nature of life, were gone. She still felt emotions, of course, but they were muted, gentler, more like shadows of what they once were. Perhaps that was a result of not having a body with all its chemicals and hormones and whatnot. Even when she first died it was hard to get worked up about it. Being dead was just a fact of her existence now and there was no point in getting all worked up. It was the living that would be bothered.

Thoughts of her family came to mind now. In some ways she missed them, but she had never been able to bring herself to go see them after her death. What was the point? She couldn’t interact with them and even if she could, what would she do? Haunt them? That didn’t sound like a very nice thing to do, so instead she stayed away and let time pass around her.

This was a good town, Corrine decided as she left the cemetery. It must have been a bit of a frontier town in the beginning but was now moderately sized with a few thousand inhabitants. Still not a city by any means but growing out nicely. She would have enjoyed living here when she was alive, especially with all the natural trails she could explore. Corrine had already walked them before coming to the cemetery and now all that was left for her to do here was to leave. That’s what she did with most of her time. Travel to someplace new, see what there was to see, and then move on. It wasn’t much of a life, or existence really, but it kept her occupied and entertained. She never grew bored of visiting new places.

Even though she was dead, she still avoided walking on the road or along train tracks. She’d walk beside them, but not on them. Being hit by a fast moving vehicle, while not painful or really dangerous to her, was still unpleasant and could knock her over. She missed the sound of her feet on the ground. The crunch of gravel or the whisper of tall grass as she moved through it. Now, everything that she did was quiet.

“Quiet as the grave,” she laughed to herself.

Step by silent step, she left the town behind and wandered along the highway, not knowing what or where the next town would be. She was beginning to want to see some of the bigger cities. Those had museums and those were a sort of way to see other places. The problem with museums was the same problem she had with any building. She would fall right through the floor until she hit solid ground. She could try concentrating to stay on the floor but then she wouldn’t be able to focus on the exhibits. Kind of defeats the purpose of going there in the first place.

“Maybe that’s why basements are haunted,” Corrine wondered aloud. She was always more talkative when she was between places. “Ghost goes in, falls into the basement, and can’t get back out.”

Early on, she’d spent a few weeks trapped in a basement for that very reason. She avoided going indoors these days unless she was certain it didn’t have a basement. That limitation really hindered her ability to explore sometimes. One of the main reasons why she’d avoided cities was because so much of it was manufactured, including the ground, which meant if there were service tunnels underneath the sidewalk, she’d fall through. As cool as some of those underground places were, she really didn’t like the feeling of being trapped and the effort and time it took to get unstuck was a good reason to avoid those places. Still, cities had a lot to offer and a lot to look at.

A sign in the distance announced a junction in the highway. If she went east, she’d head to the coast and with it more cities. If she went west she’d head more inland and find more farms and little towns. She’d spent years visiting one place after another, most of them small to mid sized towns. Perhaps it was time for a change. She could be careful with where she stepped, and she was getting better at being able to interact with manufactured objects. Maybe this was the time to master that skill so she could finally travel abroad.

“Yes,” she said, and turned her steps towards the east.