“Good evening, Ambrose! I’ve got this great idea to try out for haunting tonight. Hear me out: remember how last month we made the walls bleed? This is similar to that, but instead of blood we use–”

“They’re gone, Orville,” Ambrose stood in the lightless study staring out the window into the night.

Ambrose looked around and quickly realized all the furniture was gone. “What… when did this happen? How did this happen?”

“Today,” Orville sighed and turned around. “I guess we pushed them too far with our antics last night.”

“That’s what drove them out? I mean, animating the army of stuffed animals was kind of creepy, but wasn’t shaking and levitating the beds worse? Or that week we just screamed at top volume? Those were certainly worse…”

“I agree,” Ambrose said, folding his hands in front of him. “Maybe it was the proverbial last straw – the cumulative effect of it all. Whatever it was, as soon as dawn broke they left and came back with a big truck and loaded everything.”

“I’m sorry I slept and missed the activity – I was pretty worn out by that last bit where I threw the kitchen knives at the mom as she ran through the kitchen.” His brow creased in thought, “Okay, yeah, saying it out loud maybe we pushed it a little too far.”

“I mean, I’m not about to tell you to dial it back, Orville. You’re an artist at causing fear and panic. I’d sooner tell Michelangelo to dial back the whole Sistine Chapel ceiling.”

“You’re too kind, my friend,” Orville blushed. “But to be fair, no one is as good at the long scare like you – remember that one family that you kept whispering different things to different family members over the course of months? They were positive they were all going crazy. Well, then they did go crazy… I’ll tell you, I didn’t expect them to kill each other.”

“There was so much blood – even for us!” Ambrose nodded solemnly. “I guess we’re lucky their ghosts didn’t stick around, right?”

“Dodged a bullet there, old chap. That’s the last thing we need – roommates, am I right?”

Both ghosts were quiet for a long time. Finally, Orville broke the silence, “So, we wait for another family to move in? The rental market’s still pretty hot… shouldn’t take too long… wait a minute, Ambrose, you’ve got that look in your eyes…”

A wicked grin spread on Ambrose’s face. “Well, you see, in their hurry to get their things out of the house they also took the grandfather clock.”

“Oh,” Orville said sadly, “I liked that old thing. It was such a nice touch to do something dramatic as it chimed three am…”

“You’re missing my point, dear Orville.”

“Oh?”

“They took the grandfather clock with them….”

Realization flashed across Orville’s face, “Oh, you devil! They’re still connected to the house! We can go haunt their new place now!”

“Two houses to haunt are better than one!”

“Shall we terrify them in their new place?”

“Absolutely. But let’s hold off on the blood for a little bit.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Orville said. “I’m feeling partial to throwing things anyway.” And he disappeared.

“I love this job,” Ambrose said and disappeared with his friend.

I walked into the rental agency, past the receptionist, and marched directly into Hans Edgar’s office. He saw me coming towards the door and said to the person on the phone, “I’m going to have to call you back..” and abruptly hung up.

“Ms. Tanner, everything okay?” he asked, knowing from my demeanor and the look on my face that everything was not alright.

A thousand things flashed through my mind to say. Finally I just said, “You were right,” and dropped the keys on his desk.

I was already walking out of the office with nowhere to live when I heard him sigh and say to my retreating figure, “I’ll refund your deposit and first and last month’s rent…”

A week ago he paused before handing me the keys on the stoop of 346 Sycamore St. I was elated to get this place. Walking distance to downtown, it was a gorgeous little bungalow that should have been renting for twice what Hans Edgar was asking – for good reason.

“Now, Ms. Tanner, I know I’ve already warned you that this place is haunted—”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” I said dryly for about the fiftieth time.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply and then continued, “I know I’ve already warned you that this place is haunted. Before I hand you the keys I want to tell you that if you want out of this lease because,” he held up a hand to forestall me saying again there’s no such thing as ghosts. “If you want out of this lease for any reason, you have two weeks and I will refund your deposit and first and last month’s rent, no questions asked – this is the only property I do this for.”

“Thank you, Hans, but I’ll be just fine.”

He gave me a dubious nod, dropped the keys in my open hand and said, “Have a good night, Ms. Tanner.”

That first night the footsteps started. I put in earplugs and slept like a baby in my new place.

The second night the lights in the bedroom came on intermittently as I tried to sleep. I was grateful I had my sleep mask on the nightstand.

After that, cabinets opened and slammed when I was in the kitchen. In the fogged-up mirror when I was getting out of the shower “LEAVE” was scrawled by an unseen hand.

By that point I was out of logical explanations. My pat “There’s no such thing as ghosts” felt more than a little like fading bravado as whatever it was played on my nerves one by one.

And then the morning of the seventh day I woke up to my alarm as usual, but I was surprised to see my phone screen unlocked and open to the camera app. I flipped to the pictures to see dozens of pictures of a dark room… this dark room. With my sleeping figure in the bed. The pictures kept getting closer, and closer until the camera was right up in my face. The last picture was my blurry face, eyes wide in terror.

And I don’t remember a thing.

The back door opened on its own with on creaky hinges, he typed.

“No, that’s no good,” he mumbled and deleted the sentence and stared at the blank screen.

She woke with a start and looked at her alarm – it was 3:00 in the morning. The witching hour.

“So cliché! Three AM?” He sighed and deleted everything again.

No one ever goes into the attic, he wrote. There was just something about it that made everyone pause on the landing just below and stare at the closed door…

“Okay, I’ve got something here…” and he kept typing.

…She reached for the door knob, but before her hand closed around the brass knob it turned on its own and the door began to open…

“Ugh, no! It’s crap!” he cursed at the screen and deleted everything and reached for his coffee mug. Taking a sip he realized it was empty. “Just great… Well, it’s not like I’ve got anything going here…” and he stood up and carried the cup out to the kitchen to make more coffee.

Unbeknownst to him, as the man left the room a ghost walked past him, eyeing him quizzically.

“Where’s he going?” the ghost said to another ghost standing by the computer. Then he snapped his fingers and pointed accusingly, “Eliot! You’re doing it again!”

“What?” Eliot stammered. “I’m not doing anything. Why do you think I’m always doing something, Jake?”

Jake crossed his arms in front of his chest and raised an eyebrow. “So, you’re just standing there right next to him while he writes and you’re absolutely not telling him his ideas are stupid?”

“Pshaw,” Eliot said with a laugh. “Why would I do that?”

“You mean why are you always doing that?” Jake sighed, “Why do you do this when he has to write his ghost stories? Only the ghost stories!”

“I don’t know…” Eliot stammered. “I guess I just feel so… exposed, you know?

“No, Eliot, I don’t know! They’re fictional ghost stories – he can’t see us! He has no idea we’re in his house – how could you possibly feel exposed?”

“I mean… he’s like giving away all our secrets…”

Jake stared at the other ghost incredulously. “What part of ‘fictional ghost stories’ do you not understand? He makes these things up!” Jake made an explosion gesture by his head, “Poof! Out of thin air he gets these ideas about ghosts and hauntings – that in no way resemble you and me haunting this house – and he writes them and people read them and they enjoy them. But you! You, Eliot, you whisper things in his ear and he thinks he has writer’s block and he doesn’t get the stories written and you know what happens? You know what happens then, Eliot?”

“What happens, Jake?”

“He doesn’t make his deadline.”

“Heh, you said dead,” Eliot tittered.

“So help me, Eliot!”

Eliot went serious again.

“He misses his due date,” Jake said pointedly, “doesn’t get paid, loses the house, and they tear this place down and build a dozen condos on the lot. Do you want that to happen, Eliot? Do you want to be a homeless ghost?”

“But we could haunt the condos…”

“No, we can’t haunt the condos! There’s nothing to anchor us there! “

“But can’t he write about something else? I mean, ooh!” he pointed at Jake, “He’s got that urban fantasy story with the assassins that—”

“It’s October, Eliot! October! It’s spooky season! Ghost time! He writes ghost stories in October – this is what he does! At least that’s what he’s supposed to do until you convince him his ideas are terrible. So stop! Stop, Eliot!”

“Okay… okay, Jake. I’ll stop.”

“I mean it, Eliot! Here he comes….”

The man came back in with a hot cup of coffee and sat down at the computer. He moved the mouse to wake up the screen, took a sip of coffee, set the cup down and started typing.

Deep in the forest there is an unmarked grave…

Eliot leaned over towards the man.

“Don’t you say a word, Eliot! Not another damn word!”