Secret Histories

Photo by Kristina Flour

More often than not, the dead do not return to rejoin the living but rather to lead them into some dreadful snare, entrapping them with disastrous consequences [… What] haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.

– Nicolas Abraham

I was about six when I learned the word decapitated. Behind one of the two hotels in the main street of my hometown, Angaston, there was an abandoned quarry with a cave where two men lived.