Let me tell you something: being dead sucks. No, really, it is the worst. I mean, sure, you might immediately think I’m talking about losing the “pleasures of the flesh” and all that. Yeah, that gets to you, but six months in – tops – you’re over it. No, it’s the whole existential thing – you’re no longer there. Poof. Gone.

The first couple months are the worst of the worst. Let’s say you died a normal death – you know, maybe long battle with cancer, or a heart attack, or you stepped out in front of a bus. Run of the mill death. Those first couple months you’re all about “I’m not there!” That’s literally all you’re going to think about. And that’s the rub – those who are like, “Whoa, I’m dead… okay, I’m dead.” They’ll pass on. They’re the lucky ones. But if you really cared? I mean, if you just can’t let go of it? If you’re more like, “Okay, I’m dead, but I am not okay with this!” Yeah, buddy, then you’re gonna stick around. And it sucks to be you. Take it from me.

Cancer. Started as… it doesn’t matter where it started. Where it ended was my liver. Liver went, lights out. But I wasn’t ready. It was a war, man, you know? “I will conquer this!” “I’ll beat this!” “It won’t beat me!” Ha! After I died I was in serious denial – how could I “lose”? Lose! That’s a laugh – but that’s a laugh I can have now. Now I know it wasn’t a thing to be won or lost. It was a matter of chance. A clump of cells went rogue for some reason. You can point the blame wherever – did I smoke? A bit. Ate exclusively rabbit food? Are you kidding? Maybe I stood too close to the gas pump when I was filling my Chevy. Maybe they used some shit chemical in the upholstery of that same Chevy. Blame. It don’t get you nowhere. And you want to know the real kicker there? Check this out: you will never find out. Ha ha ha ha! I can’t tell you how many people I meet when they come across who are like, “I’m dead, okay, so tell me why?” I tell them the same thing: “I got no answer for you, buddy.” Ha ha ha, you should see their faces! It’s the shits, man! If you didn’t find the answers you were looking for when you were an air-breather, it ain’t gonna make any more sense over here. But you won’t find that our until it’s too late..

But I digress…

Those poor suckers who hang on to the living world too much, those first couple months all you’re going to focus on is who you left behind. My wife… yeah, I sat on the foot of her bed for the first month. Visited my boys, too, sure, but Eleanor… When I died, she broke. Just broke, man. Me too, of course, but like I said, I’m here. So, yeah, I haunted her and my boys… and I couldn’t do anything.

Oh, I hear you, what about all those stories about ghosts appearing. This ain’t no Patrick Swayze bullshit. Okay, so, yeah, if you try really, really, really hard you can maybe rattle a chain or knock on a wall. But like fully appear? It’s possible, sure. But… let me put this in perspective: rattling a chain is about as easy as lifting a Buick. Can you do it? Yeah, if you’re really strong, super determined, some super-human strength kinda thing – not normal, right? But, yeah, it can – and has – been done. But like full apparition? Like lifting a bus. Pshaw. Good luck to you. And, yeah, it’s true what they say about the “veil being thinner” nearer Halloween. But that just means that Chevy you have to lift isn’t full of gas; it’s still a goddamned Chevy.

To recap: you’re haunting your loved ones. They can’t see you. You can’t touch them. Y’all can’t communicate in any way, shape, or form. But you can still see them – eating, sleeping, crying, laughing, singing, loving… After those first couple of months when they’ve started to move on, started to get used to the idea that you’re not there… Man, that kills you. And you’re already dead, so, you know, double death or something. What do you do? A lot of guys, it drives them freakin’ nuts. Seriously – you’ll see them around dead-eyed – heh, that’s kinda funny, dead-eyed – but it’s an apt description. You’ll see. There’s nothing to ‘em anymore. And that’s what they’re gonna do until… fuck knows – the sun burns out? The Universe cools? I don’t know.

Me? Yeah… well, shit… after two months I couldn’t do it anymore. I left. I mean, you know, you’re dead. You can go anywhere – that’s what a lot of folks on this side forget about. So, I traveled. Saw the pyramids. Antarctica. Walked the streets of Tokyo. I even walked the sea-bed looking for the goddamn Loch Ness Monster (didn’t find him). But this is the curse there, too – you learn that the reason why you traveled when you were alive was to feel the hot, fine sand of the Sahara, to know the unspeakable cold at the bottom of the world, to eat the best fucking sushi in your life in some back-alley stall in Tsukiji fish market. After a while – and for me it took another two years – you realize seeing these places you didn’t get to go to when you were alive is just another form of torture.

And I did go back to my family from time to time. Usually around the anniversary of my death, but it was so fucking sad. Everyone was sad. That day sucks, there is nothing redeeming about it. I’d go to my grave, see if anyone’s been there. I’d go check in on my friends, see what they’re getting up to. But it’s that same thing – you’re dead, they’ve moved on, yada, yada, yada. It could drive a guy to drink if, you know, you could drink (spoiler: you can’t). So then what? Travel again maybe, lather, rinse repeat…

Are you getting the impression that it’s not exactly unicorns and kittens being dead? Yeah, like I said, it sucks. But I’ll tell you something: I have no idea what the dead did before the internet. Seriously, I already said you can’t do much more than knock on a wall – you want to knock a book off the shelf at the library? Good luck! And how do you plan to turn the pages? Uh-huh. Sucks, right? No, with the internet we can just slip into the information stream – boom! Everything out there is at your command. I can speak six languages now! I can definitively tell you what the best LOLCAT meme is. And I can recite 80% of Bob Dylan’s catalog – except for that shit-period in the eighties? Yeah, who wants to put mental energy towards that? So, you know, all that’s a lovely diversion. But you learn that, too, is like some cursed version of “Groundhog Day” because while Bill Murray is learning new things every day, the world resets and starts over with that lousy Sonny and Cher song, but for us? … I can speak Sanskrit but I can’t show my son how to tie a tie for his first Homecoming dance. Another torture.

So why do I seem so together if everything after death is a shit-show? Yeah, that’s a great question. Hanging on to your family won’t get you anywhere. Traveling won’t get you anywhere (figuratively speaking, right?). And hanging out in the internet won’t get you anywhere. When I realized all that I ended up sitting on a rock at the end of a jetty in Santa Cruz harbor a lot, just watching the waves for months at a time. No, I wasn’t one of those dead-eyed motherfuckers. I was still whole, just thinking. Trying to accept. Trying to shift my mental reality.

Then something happened. I’d always stayed the hell away from anyone or anything I knew around my birthday. It was bad enough when I was around for the anniversary of my death – I did not need to see… well, I didn’t need to see that I wasn’t there to celebrate another birthday. But one day I went back. It was… five years out. The fifth birthday I missed. I went back to my family. And you know what? They were all together. My oldest came home from college for the day, my youngest skipped basketball practice. Eleanor took them both out to Frankie’s – that was my place, man. They got a four-top table right in the back like we used to do. Yeah, I took the fourth seat – they didn’t know. They couldn’t see me, I couldn’t make a sound… But… I’ll tell you what… they talked about me. They laughed. They told stories about how I would reach back and try to grab the boys when they were terrible on road trips. They laughed about the food fight we had that one Thanksgiving. Eleanor talked about when we were first dating and had too much to drink and threw up on me. About how I had to have tinsel on the Christmas tree and the boys to this day despise tinsel because of it. Ha! I realized then that, yeah, they had moved on. Eleanor was even dating this guy – nice guy, don’t get me wrong. And the boys – like I said, one in college, the other about to graduate – they were different men from the boys I left. But there at that table, five years after I was gone… they brought me back to life. On my birthday, five years after my heart stopped I realized that as long as they tell these stories? I’ll never really be dead.

“

Someone’s going to call the cops.”

“We’re cool,” Jason said. “Trust me. There’s one security guard for this whole complex. He doesn’t go into the buildings. As long as we’re inside the sanatorium before he gets back, we’ll be fine. We’re going to need to keep it quiet and dark. Cool?”

“What’s why we brought the goggles, right?” Alice replied.

“Yeah,” Jason agreed. “Trust me, Dave, I did my homework here.”

“I’m still not okay with this… we can’t publish any of these results…”

“Maybe not, but at least we can validate the equipment… Look, Dave, call it a dress rehearsal. We’ll get everything dialed in and when we do get permission to perform an investigation we’ll be all set.”

“Fine. Fine. Let’s just get in there.”

“Yes,” Jason looked at his watch, “We’ve got about twenty minutes. Follow me, stay in the shadows, and keep low.”

“I thought you said he was the only guard,” Alice asked.

“He is, but I’d rather not take any chances. Let’s go.” The three scurried from the dense trees by the perimeter chain link fence and along the trees bordering the parking lot. They emerged from the shadows following the weeds that used to be landscaping along the west wing of the dark, decrepit sanatorium building. Dave looked up the face of the building as they passed along, many of the windows broken out, the rest dark like dead eyes.

Reaching the front door, they found a heavy padlock in addition to the main entry door’s locks. “I thought you did your homework?” Dave asked accusingly.

“I’ve got this. Follow me,” and he started off along the east wing. Ahead a depression in the earth came into view, low rusty guard rails surrounding it on three sides. As they closed in on it, Dave saw that the fourth side was a stairway leading down into the dark earth. “Maintenance entrance,” Jason said as he bounded down the stone stairway. Alice looked at Dave, shrugged, then followed with Dave following her a beat later. When they reached the bottom, Jason had a penlight in his mouth illuminating the doorknob, his hands already working a set of lockpicks. An agonizingly long few minutes later, they heard a click and the door swung open. “Yes!” Jason put away his tools, pulled out a larger flashlight and shone it inside the room illuminating a cobweb-laden room with empty work tables running the length of two sides of the room. Jason’s flashlight fixed on a door set in the far wall. “That leads to the Sanatorium,” he said.

“You’re sure?” Dave asked.

“I pulled the blueprints on this place. I’m sure. Let’s get in and break out the equipment.”

They moved to one of the empty workbenches and unzipped their backpacks and quickly organized their equipment. They had practiced setting up numerous times, so before long, Dave turned on his bone induction mic along his jaw. “Check, check,” he said quietly.

“Hearing you fine,” Alice said. “Jason?”

“Roger that,” he said. “The recorder is picking all three of us,” he said as the waveforms danced on his channel on the digital display of the recorder. He turned the display off and stowed it in the side pocket of his backpack. He folded down the night vision goggles over his eyes and turned them off. The room became a dimly lit world of greens and black. He put away the flashlight and pulled out an infrared flashlight, turned it on and shone its invisible beam around the room which glowed like daylight in his night vision goggles.

“Video from all three body GoPros is recording,” Alice said closing a laptop and stowing it before flipping down her own goggles and retrieving an infrared flashlight.

“We’ve got data on the instruments,” Dave said checking the readout on his small tablet indicating ambient temperature, and electromagnetic radiation levels among other sensor data. He turned off the display and put it in the front pocket of his jacket and then flipped down his own goggles. “Ready to go. Jason? Do you have point?”

“I do,” Jason replied quietly, shouldering his backpack and moving through the complete darkness to the far door as the other two followed. The unlocked knob turned easily in Jason’s hand, the door opening with a creak on rusty hinges. They made their way up the service stairway to the main floor. From there Jason led them up to the third floor of the west wing – the “black floor” as it had become known.

The “black floor” was known to house the incurably insane and violent patients. It was also the floor where they experimented with frontal lobotomies, the failed patients living out their days on the black floor. They decided this would be the most likely area for contact.

As they made their way from the landing to the doorway to the black floor, Dave called for them to hold just outside so he could make a baseline reading. He almost asked if everyone was ready but knew they were – this was what they all had planned for.

Jason looked at Alice in the green and black vision. She nodded, and he opened the creaky door. Immediately they could feel the temperature markedly cooler there. Dave felt a foul, oppressive energy and a voice in his head screamed for them not to continue, but he fought back the fear by telling himself this was about the science and the instruments. And besides, they were all together. They’d be fine.

Inside the hallway, Dave verified the temperature had plummeted and the EMF detector kept spiking, though he knew that reading could be thrown off due to any number of anomalies – not necessarily anything paranormal.

Jason stopped. “Hear that?”

“Sounded like it came from there at the end,” Alice shined her infrared beam down towards an open doorway.

“Let’s go.”

Dave followed them, keeping one eye on their backs, another on the readings. EMF spiked and stayed spiked – unusual. He pulled out a camera and started snapping off pictures as they moved down the hallway.

Jason reached the open door with Alice just behind him, Dave a few more steps behind her. Ahead he saw Jason jerk backwards as if shoved with such force that Alice barely had time to dodge him. He staggered, but kept his feet, steadied himself, and stood stock still.

“Jason!” Alice started, “You okay? What was that?”

No response.

Dave stepped up next to Alice, now in direct view of the doorway they were heading to. He could sense a gale of overpoweringly rotten energy rushing out. He disregarded it, turning to Jason, “Hey man, you okay?”

No response.

Alice moved to touch his arm and he whipped it around and back, the movement somehow unnaturally quick and jerky. “Jason?” Alice asked.

The laughter from Jason’s mouth started low and built to a full cackle, the voice not Jason’s. As he laughed Alice and Dave exchanged panicked looks. Finally, Jason raised the night vision goggles, and through their goggles they could see his eyes had gone completely flat black – pupil, iris, and sclera. “Jason isn’t here to take your call right now,” the voice, a register higher and raspier than Jason’s, said. “If you’d like to leave a…a…a…a” it stuttered, “Message. He’ll get back to you from hell!” and the voice cackled again.

“Holy shit, Jason, this isn’t funny,” Alice said.

“Funny?” the voice shot back. “Funny? Nothing f-f-f-f-funny on the black floor. Nothing funny! Nothing funny!” It cried in near hysterics.

“Who are you?” Dave asked.

“Wouldn’t you, wouldn’t you, wouldn’t you like to know? Hahahaha!”

“Yes, we would,” Alice pressed. “Who are you?”

“You and your… toys,” the voice said, slapping at the GoPro on Jason’s shoulder. “My floor! My floor now! Why, why, why, why did you come? Why?! Why?!

“We mean you no harm…” Dave tried to calm the voice.

“They say that. They always say that. No harm! No harm! All you do is harm, harm, harm, harm….” He trailed off. “Harm… I’ll bring you harm!” and he ran towards the doorway the energy came from, but veered at the last second, colliding head first with the wall. “Hahahaha!” he cackled, staggering backwards. He turned towards Dave and Alice who could see blood streaming down Jason’s face. “No harm! No harm! No harm,” he repeated with glee.

Dave dropped his backpack and started rummaging through it.

“Please don’t hurt him or us. We came here to investigate and help you move on.”

“Move on? Move on?! Happy here! I’m in charge now! King of the castle, castle, castle! You come in here without my decree! Challenge me? Defend myself! Defend, defend, defend!” He started slapping Jason’s face, blood spattering off.

“We will leave. Just please leave our friend.”

“When I’m ready!” it snapped. “No sooner! Having my fun! Fun, fun, fun!” and started skipping in a small circle.

Dave came up from his backpack with a cross and several vials. Alice looked at him confused. “Brought these in case of emergency.” Then he nodded to Jason still skipping and singing nonsense, “Emergency.” He pulled the cap on one vial and flicked the contents at Jason. He screamed and staggered. “In the name of Jesus Christ, you will leave my friend!” Dave commanded as he held the cross in front of him like a shield.

“Stop my fun?” Jason’s blood-streaked face looked confused.

Still brandishing the cross, Dave popped the cap off the second and flicked the water at Jason.

Jason screamed again and staggered backwards again. “Not at full power – I would squish you and you and him,” he pointed at himself. “Squish, squish, squish,” he repeated.

Dave moved closer, cross up, and commanded again, “In the name of Jesus Christ, you will leave my friend!”

Dave readied another vial, when the voice said flatly, “Fine.” And Jason slumped limply to the ground.

Sensing the ghost wasn’t giving up, Jason yelled, “Alice, drop!” She reacted instinctively, dropped flat as Jason threw the vial at her prone body. He could sense the spirit rush towards her and carom off as the liquid struck her. He sensed the energy zipping around the room and rush at him. He barely moved the cross to block the vector he sensed the energy darting in on. It made another round, but finding no purchase began to zip and dissipate. “Alice!” Dave yelled as he moved towards Jason, keeping low. She snapped to her feet, staying low as well. They draped the limp Jason’s arms over their shoulders and half dragged him down the hallway as quickly as they could. As they neared the doorway to the main corridor, they heard a voice echo from the end, “Come back soon. I’ll be stronger then. I promise, promise, promise…”

Natalie stared at the ornate dollhouse on the floor across from her bed. She remembered when her grandmother gave it to her forever ago. She didn’t ask for it, and the dolls were creepy looking. Even her My Little Ponies didn’t like to use that house – or at least she pretended they didn’t when she used to play with her My Little Ponies. A brief smile of memory fought its way to her face. Then She sighed. What eighth grader still had a doll house? “Not this one,” she said aloud.  She got up and headed to the garage where she raided the packing stuff for bubble wrap, a couple of folded cardboard boxes, and packing tape. Back in her room, she spent the better part of the morning wrapping the house with the dolls inside it, and constructing an elaborate carboard sarcophagus around the two-story house with the boxes, expending most of the roll of packing tape to keep it all firmly in place.

Her mom ducked her head in at one point when Natalie was securing a cardboard flap across the second-floor dormer windows. “What are you doing?”

Natalie sighed dramatically and said, “Eighth graders don’t have doll houses, mom.”

Her mom raised her eyebrows but left without saying a word.

Covering it had been a frustratingly long process, but getting it out of the room and down the stairs proved to be another thing entirely. Too heavy and awkwardly large, she pushed it across the carpet in her room until she reached the hardwood floor of the hallway where she slid it onto a runner and dragged that across the hardwood floor until the stairs. From there she descended the stairs backwards, ahead of the mummy-wrapped dollhouse as she guided it down the steps. She stole her brother’s skateboard for the journey from the bottom of the stairs to the garage, and in the garage, she guided it to a corner. She’d ask her dad for a better place for it when he got back from golf.

Back in her room she climbed back into bed to admire the empty corner of the room. The dollhouse had occupied that spot for so many years, the empty spot seemed glaring. But, she told herself, a good glaring. An eighth-grade glaring – and that was just fine.

* * *

Natalie woke with a start. She heard a noise, or thought she did, but when she listened she couldn’t hear anything. She reached over to turn on the light, but her arm was stuck. She tried her other arm, but it, too was held fast. She tried to move her legs, but she couldn’t budge them. The light she had intended to turn on switched on by itself. She looked over and saw the figure of the boy doll from the dollhouse on the night stand beneath the lamp switch. He stared back at her and she watched him walk from the nightstand, leap gracefully to the bed, and move to a thin cord that she now could see ran from the side of the bed and over her to the other side. He plucked the taught cord and it hummed like a guitar string. She felt pressure on her body and looked down to see the mother and daughter securing a cord around her leg.

She started to freak out and opened her mouth to scream, but as soon as she opened her mouth something was jammed into it – a sock? Eww. She frantically looked around and saw the father doll just to the right of her shoulder – he must have been the one to jam the sock in her mouth. He climbed up her shoulder like a mountaineer, and then walked over and stood on her clavicle with his arms folded across his chest. The other dolls – the mother, the sister and her brother, even the grandmother scrambled up onto her torso and stood behind him. The father doll shook its head and pointed to the empty corner where the dollhouse had been.

* * *

Natalie’s mom poked her head in her daughter’s room and saw her carefully removing the bubblewrap from around the dollhouse, surrounded by pieces of cardboard and tape. “I thought eighth graders don’t have dollhouses.”

“This one does,” Natalie said.