Excerpt from I Am the Ghost Here by Kim Samek, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I Am the Ghost Here

It is not until my older brother is thirty-¬three that I learn he's controlled by a puppeteer. The truth comes out after a family emergency, when Jeff is unable to summon the puppeteer on short notice and must appear as himself for the first time. I don't immediately recognize my brother as he hurries through the automatic doors of the hospital. He's usually an alpha male, a tech founder who takes big strides and has a deep, booming voice, but this man is nervous, twitchy, weird.

Normally my brother greets me with a compliment about my appearance. "Looking good, SunnyD," he'd say. "Really fit. You've made some gains?" He nicknamed me for the drink I chugged after judo practice as a kid. I am no longer a jock, but the nickname stuck. This man doesn't use my nickname. He doesn't greet me at all. He slinks up to me with his head down, like I am unfamiliar, except he is the one who is unfamiliar.

"Is Dad okay?" he asks, sitting down next to me not far from the triage window.

"I don't know," I reply. "I'm waiting for an update. Mom's in the back with him. We should know something in a few hours. Are you okay?"

"Fine, fine," he says brusquely.

I ask my brother what is going on, why he is so unfriendly. He says that now is not the best time to get into it, that we should focus on my father's surgery and forget about how weird he is acting. He slumps over in his seat as we wait for news. The hospital is noisy with other emergencies. I hear what sounds like a seizure. I hear the aftermath of surgery, screaming that sounds naked in its timbre. I thought a hospital would have better walls. I hope my father will not be screaming like that when he wakes up from his surgery.

"Remember when Dad accidentally ate one of your magic mushrooms and thought he went to Jupiter?" I ask Jeff, attempting to conjure a happier mood. My mother had found these mushrooms in Jeff's backpack and put them into a salad.

"The only time I saw Dad relaxed," Jeff says, nodding. "Maybe if he'd tried a few more shrooms, he wouldn't have had a heart attack."

A few hours later, the doctor emerges. My father has survived the operation and is expected to make a full recovery.

* * *

A few weeks later, my mother holds a family dinner to celebrate my father's return to health. She prepares stir-¬fried rice noodles, papaya salad, chicken wings, and sticky rice. My brother decides this is the moment to introduce us to his puppeteer. He arrives as the brother we are familiar with, but after a few minutes of chitchat, a petite redheaded woman pops out from inside him and stands by his side. Her name is Michelle, she is Canadian, she is thirty-¬six, and she has over fifteen years of puppeteering experience. She says she has been scripting Jeff's dialogue since he was in college. I didn't become close to my brother until after he left for Stanford. In the summer breaks, when he returned home, he seemed happier, interested in connection. I'd assumed he had simply grown up, that the time away from home had been good for him.

I can tell my parents are uneasy with Michelle. They've heard rumors of celebrities hiring puppeteers, but no one we know has mentioned using one. Using a puppeteer is not the kind of thing a well-¬adjusted person should do. My parents don't have to speak to make their opinions clear. As they take turns making faces at Michelle, I ask her polite questions, like how she ended up in puppeteering. She tells us that she is an empath and being other people comes naturally to her. She says that she always wanted to work in the arts, that puppeteering uses her writing and acting skills. She even tells us a long, boring story about her high school theater days. My brother and I nod along politely.

As Michelle talks, it becomes clear that tonight's intro was her idea, not Jeff's. She says she's grown tired of doing her work anonymously. Unfortunately, no one is interested in offering the praise she seeks. We are preoccupied with noticing how my brother is diminished without her. He isn't gregarious, his arms are crossed, and his lips are arranged in the same permanent frown that he wore through high school, back when he would take his dinner to his room and eat alone while blasting Jane's Addiction.

Excerpted from I Am the Ghost Here by Kim Samek. Copyright © 2026 by Kim Samek. Excerpted by permission of The Dial Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.