“The girl lies by the black canal, her face turned upwards to the sky like a stargazer. But she will never see the stars again. Her eyes have been torn out. The rain fills the empty sockets until they brim over, spilling bloody tears down her cold white cheeks.”

“His face was a little anxious around the eyes, with a crease of worry between the eyebrows—but it was just a face. A normal face. Nothing to give away the fact that he was a freak who saw ghosts around every corner.”

“Gran’s cottage might be tiny, and the furniture old and battered, but she ran a tight ship. As long as everything is in its right place, there’s plenty of room, she liked to say.”

“Callum didn’t need a lifetime’s experience of seeing ghosts to know that the creature was not of this world.For a long moment, he stared at the phantom. What was it? And why was it following him?”

“Callum swallowed, his throat dry. He didn’t want to think about what that something might be.Ahead, through the trees, he could just see a pinprick of light. Home.”

“It hungers, always.It takes shape after shape as its own, and each body it puts on is as hungry as the last.”

“An introverted woman spends hours contemplating a thought or observing a pattern in her life. She turns it over in her mind until it becomes a companion to her and then decides to share it in the context of a small group. When she musters up the courage to voice it, trembling as she puts words to this precious inner stirring, someone in the group cuts her off when she pauses in the middle, her thought still building steam. This person quickly tells her she shouldn't feel the way she does or else counters with a story of her own, which only tangentially relates to what the introvert was saying. Nouwen's words perfectly capture the sense of personal violation and emptiness: "Often we come home from a sharing session with a feeling that something precious has been taken away from us or that holy ground has been trodden upon.”