The Ordinary Haunting II

8b. The Conflicted Caves

"That was awkward."

"Why?"

"What do you mean?"

"What was awkward about it?"

"You didn't think there was anything awkward about that?"

"Your sister just got something pretty large off her chest. And you caught it. The way the two of you talk... It's nice."

"Oh."

I watched New's finger ripple along the bumpy texture of the cave wall ahead of me. I trailed it with mine. I'd worried about him being in these tunnels, which seemed darker and more claustrophobic than they had as a kid, but he seemed to be fine. I raised the video I had playing on my phone. It was a ten-hour loop of firelight.

If he wasn't too scared, then I figured it wouldn't hurt to lean into the cave aesthetic a little.

We walked slowly, our feet having to readjust with every step along the uneven floor. I'd folded up my hat and stuffed a corner of it into my back pocket, my hair sticking to the backs of my ears in the humidity of the cave, and New was humming some song under his breath. I could feel Kid Tay having fun, glad he'd finally figured out how to make a friend. I really liked having friends. I didn't understand why it cropped up every now and then as a problem people wanted to solve for me.

"Dads lecture their kids, right?" I asked New after a few minutes. "That's not just a mum or older sister thing?"

"Yeah, they do," he replied, gazing up at a small hole in the rock above us that was letting in a bar of light. We weren't underground yet. When New moved through it, it broke over his shoulder and then became whole again. When I moved through it, nothing.

"Did yours?"

"Not really. He definitely made it a Ma thing." New knocked the wall to alert me to a jagged formation protruding into the tunnel. We stepped around it carefully. "But I guess sometimes he was like that when he showed us how to work in the orchard, or taught us his spaghetti recipe. I think it's the same kind of language. Just practical instead of moral."

"I like that."

"I like your sister. I'm not sure about her husband, but I'm sure about her."

"Yeah, I'm sure about her, too. And him...I used to be sure. Sure of some bad things. That might be the problem. I just have to start again."

"It's okay to start again." The tunnel opened briefly into a larger space, not as large as the chamber where I'd left Muk waiting for Sasin, and only one pathway was coming off it. It was incredibly dark. The flickering light from my phone could not reach the corners. New and I paused here to scan the walls for any interesting markings, like we were explorers searching for hieroglyphs. "Did you know that after seven years, every cell in your body has died and been replaced?" New added. "So every seven years we're a completely different person. We start again."

I chuckled at the well-known myth, but I liked the idea of it. "Then every time a cell dies and is replaced, you could say that that part of us starts again. We're always starting again."

New grinned over at me from where he was studying the wall, his nose almost touching the rock. "You could say that."

"Hey, you're twenty-eight this year, so you're a completely new person." I looked him up and down in the fake firelight. "The fourth New Thitipoom. New Thitipoom The Fourth."

"Nice to meet you, Tay Tawan The Fourth And A Bit."

"You know, I first met you when I was twenty-eight."