"What is your darkest secret?" I asked of the ghost. 

"I killed a man once," he replied. "But he wasn't much of a man." 

"That is cruel," I said. Truthfully, I did not care. Death was a pool of fractured ice, and thus far, only snatches of what lay therein were enough to parch me of my empathy. 

"He wasn't much of a man," the ghost repeated. "You might say I killed him before someone else could. A mercy. I threw him in front of Death before Death could be his hunter." 

"Hardly noble." I thought this might evoke a reaction. 

"No. Not noble at all. It took a long time to kill him. Many years." 

"Who was the man?" 

The vaguest impressions I received, in the atmosphere. A ghost's smile is a fruit too long in decay; it is bitter. 

"Myself," he said.