“Tell me the last thing you remember.”

“Umm… let me see… I remember a light. There was a bright light… and I went towards it.”

“Oh, okay, good…”

“That’s good?”

“Well, that’s something… What do you remember before that?”

“Before the light?”

“Yes. Before you went towards that light?”

Elizabeth ran her hands through her hair as she tried to recollect what came before the light. Or at least she tried to. She screamed, “I have no hair!”

“Yeah, so…”

She screamed again, “I don’t have any hands! Wait, I don’t have anything! I… I…”

“Well,” Jacob explained, “That’s not entirely true…”

“The hell, Jacob! I’m not here! I have no body!”

“Ah, okay, no body… but you’re still here.”

“What do you see? You’re looking at me. What are you seeing?”

“I mean…” he stalled.

“Jacob… what do you see?”

“Like… a cloud.”

The cloud that was Elizabeth slumped against the corner. Or at least slumped as much as a glowing cloud of motes could slump. “Well, shit,” she said. “How did this happen? I woke up this morning as a normal, breathing woman and now… cloud.”

“Uh, as point of fact…”

“Oh, Jesus, what?”

“You didn’t wake up this morning.”

“Excuse me?”

“This morning – I mean, time works a lot differently on this side. More fluid. But technically this morning you were… uh, we were… dead.”

“Oh shit, that wasn’t a dream?”

“Oh! You remember then?”

“I… I remember you and I trying to figure out how we died… like some detective dream.”

“Okay! That’s good. That wasn’t a dream!”

“But we died? We figured that out?”

“Do you remember when you were alive?”

Elizabeth thought hard. “I… no,” she said finally. “I don’t remember.”

“Okay… but you know who I am?”

“Jacob,” the cloud that was Elizabeth started slowly like she was speaking to a child, “I think we’ve established you’re Jakob.”

“…And,” he coaxed her on, “I am what to you?”

“You’re my… well, I guess soulmate would be an apt word.”

“Heh,” he laughed, “Yeah, I guess that’s incontrovertible at this point…”

“We died?”

“Together. We died, yeah.”

“It was cold…”

“So you are remembering?”

“It’s like a dream within a dream – fragments of fragments.”

Jacob nodded. “First big snowfall of the year. You put a pot roast in the oven,” He smiled at the memory. Then he sighed and frowned. “We took a nap and didn’t wake up.”

“Oh, yeah. Huh… we solved that?”

“We did. Finally. It was…”

“Squirrels!” the cloud said excitedly.

“Yes! Yes, it was squirrels! They built a nest in the stove exhaust. Backed up the carbon monoxide, no windows open because it was cold out…”

“Fucking landlord… I told him I heard something in that pipe,” Elizabeth shook her head. Or she would have if she had a head to shake. As it was, some of the motes in the cloud kind of shook.

“You said that when you were, well, a ghost.”

“So, what am I now?”

“You’re, uh, you went into the light?”

“There was a light…” she said, remembering. “And, yes, I was encouraged to go towards the light.”

“By who?”

“The Ghost Whisperer.”

“There was a ghost whisperer? Who? I don’t remember anyone…”

“No, Jennifer Love Hewitt, the Ghost Whisperer!”

“Like the show?”

“Yeah… I love that show…”

“Wait, what the fuck? How…”

“Okay, I remember… You were asleep…”

“Ghosts don’t sleep.”

“You weren’t there, okay?” she said frustrated by his interruption. “We weren’t together… I don’t know where you were. I think I thought you were…. Asleep.”

“Time is funny…”

“Yes, you mentioned that,” she snapped. “You weren’t there and I was scared. Being alone sucks and being alone and dead is, like, scarier. So, I turned to my comfort media…”

“You watched Ghost Whisperer reruns?”

The cloud seemed to settle a little. Elizabeth sighed, “I just love how Melinda brings comfort to all those spirits… And then I guess I realized I’m one of those spirits… And you weren’t here…”

“You’ve made that abundantly clear.”

“I was scared!” she yelled. “There was a light. I took Melinda’s advice for myself. I went towards the light.”

“But you’re still here.”

“I’m… I’m still here, I guess.”

“…A ghost of a ghost…”

“Is that like back in the day when you’d copy a tape onto another tape but that copy was never as good as the first?”

Jacob stared at the cloud. “Sure looks like it from here.” He sighed. “I mean… I don’t know what this means. We solved our death. I figured if we both died at the same time and we were, you know, earthbound spirits…”

“Ghosts.”

“Ghosts, then that would be the reason, right? That’s like the big mystery, right? Husband and wife, Jacob and Elizabeth, died mysteriously… until they figured it out! I mean, shit, you got a light! You went toward the fucking light!”

“And here I am…” the cloud expanded in a motion that made Jacob realize it was supposed to be an approximation of a shrug.

“Here you are. And me too,” he shrugged in return. “No light for me though.”

“But you still see me,” she said.

“I see your cloud.”

“Okay…” the cloud said excitedly, “hear me out…”

“I’m listening…”

“You’re a ghost…”

“Established.”

“Right, but you’re haunting our house…”

Jakob looked around at the little cottage they had rented on the edge of the woods, though he knew it was… dimmer than it was when they were alive, like looking at it through vellum. “Yeah, I… we are haunting our house.”

“Ah!” she said. “That’s the thing: I can’t see the house at all anymore. I mean, I could, I did – that’s how I watched the Ghost Whisperer. But now… there’s you and just gray…”

“No couch? No TV? No walls?”

“No shitty carpet that smells like wet dog. No stove that killed us, no, Jacob, nothing. Gray.”

“Wow…”

“That means I’m now haunting you.”

“The fuck?”

“Right? Crazy! But it makes sense!”

“I mean, I guess it does… but why?”

“Well, if we were hypothetically here to solve the mystery of our death…”

“Which we did.”

“Yes, which we did – and then I was able to cross over.”

“But I wasn’t…”

“Exactly. And, really, I didn’t either. Well, I did, but only to haunt you…”

“My head hurts…”

“Don’t you see?”

“Clearly I don’t…”

“You’ve still got some unfinished business to take care of…”

“Apparently.”

“Right, and you’re my unfinished business.”

“And I’m a ghost….”

“I’m a ghost haunting a ghost. I’m two steps removed from the living!”

“Huh,” Jacob said. “Okay… that makes some sense. But what do we do now?”

“By Jove, Watson, we go forth to solve your mystery!”

“But what’s my mystery?”

“That’s the first mystery!”

“First mystery?”

“Yeah, like a mystery inside a mystery. Or a enigma with a mysteriously crispy crust!”

“Elizabeth?”

“Yes, Jacob?”

“I’m glad you’re here with me.”

“Me too. Until some approximation of death do we part.”

After last night I needed something a little (a lot) lighter. This is like the Diet Coke of ghost stories!

Dale just finished scaring his third family out of the house he inhabited, but it had been a rough one. Family of four, and the father steadfastly didn’t believe in ghosts. So, naturally he focused on the kids. But the two boys were cut from the same cloth as their father. Truth me told, Dale might have been more afraid of them than they of him – at least initially. The mom, then, would be the weak link. But she had some psychic ability and was convinced she could help him cross over.

“Man, Mitch, if I heard her say ‘go towards the light!’ one more time I was going to hang myself.”

“You know you’re already dead, right?” the other ghost said as they both stood in the upstairs bedroom and watched the Uhaul roar away from the house with abandon.

“Yeah, yeah, metaphorically hang myself…”

“Ah, of course…” Mitch nodded. “Seriously, though, that was a tough one – how’d you do it? I mean, the dad didn’t believe, the kids were terrors of their own…”

“The pets!”

“The pets?”

“Started with the cat, then moved on to the dogs… once the pets were scared and jumping at everything, Dad and kiddos start thinking, ‘hey, maybe something is up’ and that little opening was all I needed. After that, a few late night scare sessions, some flickering lights,  before you know it they were packing!”

“Gotta say, Dale, when you became a ghost just last year and were assigned to my block I thought for sure you’d take a lot longer to get up to speed. But you’re a natural! It’s like you live to be dead!”

“Love what you do and you never work a day in your death!”

“True that,” they fist bumped.

“Hey, Mitch, that reminds me… how does a ghost, you know… get a little time off.”

“Time off?”

“Yeah, this family took a lot out of me…”

“Sure did, I can see right through you!”

Dale laughed at the obvious joke. “Seriously, though, I’m pretty wiped out,” he said. “How do I go about taking a little vacation?”

“Uh… just stop haunting.”

“It can’t be that simple,” Dale said. “I mean, who’s going to watch this place while I’m gone?”

“No one. You just pick up where you left off when you get back.”

“But… aren’t there back ups for something like this? Like some ghost to, I don’t know, foster this haunted house? Like AirGnH? Air Ghost and Haunting?”

“What are you even talking about?”

“How about cross-trained ghosts?”

“You mean like lifting truck tires and waving heavy ropes?”

“No, that’s Cross-fit. Cross-trained, like another ghost trained to haunt this house in addition to their own?”

“Why… why would we do that?”

“Better ghost coverage! What happens if I take, say, a week off and a family moves in here – there’s no one to haunt them?”

“Yeah. When you get back you start haunting them.”

“But that’s haunting time wasted!”

“’Haunting time wasted’? Dale, what are you talking about?”

“Quantifying scares – seriously, hasn’t anyone ever sat down and did some real-time scream per scare analysis?”

“Dale,” Mitch shook his head, “You’ve barely been dead a year…”

“So? That just means I’m better positioned to scare outside the box!”

“How did you die?”

“I was in the office working late on a report…”

“Okay, this is making more sense…”

“And I was carrying some files to the mailing room when I tripped on the stairs…”

“Got it. Dale, you spent too much time alive in the office. You’re right, you need a vacation.”

“But, when I’m gone…?”

“Right now, Dale, you’re scaring me.”

Dale took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Everything will be okay while I’m gone?”

“Just fine.”

“Okay…. Okay. I think I’ll go then…”

“Where are you going to go?”

“Oh, well, there’s this amazing accounting class I always meant to take…”

“Oh lord…”

This is the second part of last night’s “Repeat Tenant.” But I want to warn you before you go any further: this is probably the darkest thing I’ve ever written. I’d say “trigger warning,” but I genuinely think trigger warnings can be triggering in and of themselves. Suffice it to say, this is dark. If you want to skip to tomorrow I won’t hold it against you.
In fact, I’ll do you one better. Here’s the first line of the last paragraph, “Andi slept soundly that night.” So, you know, you know how it ends now! 😉

Andi threw the front door open and ran screaming from the house. She tripped on the top step and fell the remaining three steps, landing hard on her shoulder. Pain exploded through her but that barely touched the terror she felt. On the ground she looked back over her shoulder and saw the dark shadow figure standing in the doorway. She staggered to her feet, holding her shoulder as she stumbled backwards towards the driveway, not taking her eyes off the shadow figure. She shuffled back into the car in the driveway, her shaking hand finding her keys and managed to press the unlock button on the fob; she never took her eyes off the shadow figure.

Door open, she let herself fall into the car and slammed the door closed.

The shadow figure let the front door close slowly.

Andi didn’t remember how long she lay in the car crying. She didn’t remember driving to the emergency room. She did remember waking up the next day when the pain killers wore off and her arm throbbed painfully in the sling as the sunlight broke her sleep in the front seat of the car still in the hospital parking lot.

With the sun up she returned to the house. Even in the daylight it had felt ominous, like it was waiting for its time to pounce. That day, though, it didn’t feel ominous. It felt like it was gloating. It had won.

Later that day she would meet with the owner, Daniel, and, well… that was that…

Until now.

She sat on the couch in the family room thinking about her previous ignominious exit from the house. Fifteen minutes earlier she had just basically called the ghost out.

“I will make you wish you never came back,” it had said.

She came face to shadow with the thing. “You’re the ghost I know,” she smiled. “I’ll take that any day.”

The shadow figure laughed and retreated back up the stairs. “I will make you regret that…”

The house was quiet – for now. Her hand reflexively rubbed her shoulder – mostly healed. The ghost would come back any time now. She felt strange – she was unafraid. Completely unafraid. She ran over that memory of fleeing the house again. She remembered the cold petrifying terror. She remembered being terrified of losing her life – or worse, her sanity. She remembered feeling insignificant and powerless before the shadow figure. She remembered all these things perfectly clearly, but it was like she was remembering a movie she’d seen – it wasn’t her. Not anymore.

She stood up, picked up a backpack and slung the bag holding a camping cot over her shoulder and walked back into the foyer. She didn’t see him, but she had the uncanny feeling of eyes watching her. She started up the stairs when she heard the sound of running water upstairs. She saw water begin pouring down from the top of the stairway, but as it got nearer she realized from the metallic smell what was verified in the red sheen as the liquid came pouring down the stairwell. Blood. It coursed down over her feet, splashing crimson onto her jeans as it flowed down. A deep rumbling laugh filled the room.

Andi kept walking.

A few steps further and the blood vanished. The laughing ceased.

As she crested the stairs the energy in the house changed – she knew it was frustrated and angry. She didn’t care. She turned left at the landing and walked towards the closed door ahead. She reached her hand out to turn the doorknob but then stopped. She couldn’t.

The doorknob turned on its own. Andi stepped back. The door opened. A lithe woman wearing a deep purple satin chamise and nothing else stood in the doorway framed by candle light flickering inside the room. She looked Andi up and down slowly and said, “I was waiting for you to get off of work.” She smiled. “Rough day?” Andi didn’t say anything. The woman tilted her head to the side slightly and said, “Come on, babe. Let me make you forget about the day…”

Andi closed her eyes hard. When she opened them, the woman was gone. The door was still closed. That, she knew, wasn’t the ghost that did that. That was a genuine, pure memory. No ghoul could be that cruel. She winced, then reached for the doorknob, opened the door and walked inside.

A single chair stood in the middle of the otherwise empty room.

Andi walked in and immediately set about putting together the camping cot and covering it with blankets that would suffice until she had time to properly move in. When she was done, she sat on the chair and regarded the empty walls.

She closed her eyes remembered the room as Zoey had decorated it. Four poster bed. Lavender sheets with big green flowers on the duvet. Round white shag carpets next to the bed sparing feet moving from the warm bed to the cold hardwood. Fairy lights offering a soft light alternative to the harsh overhead. Andi remembered how happy they were for a few weeks. It was their first place on their own.

She remembered the nightmares Zoey had told her about. Andi said they weren’t anything but bad dreams.

They were more than bad dreams.

And they got worse.

And Andi started experiencing the torment around the house – screams, footsteps, blood on the stairs (that was a nice reminder the shadow thing threw her way). Andi remembered being scared, but also angry and determined. This was the place she and Zoey had made for themselves and she wasn’t going to let anything ruin this. The outside world had tried to beat them down. This was their sanctuary and she would kick some ghost ass if it tried to ruin it.

And as Zoey started to unravel, Andi tried to get the house blessed. She invited a shaman in. Some self-proclaimed demonologists. Holy water was sprinkled, salt lines were laid down, sage was burned. The haunting would go away for a day only to return worse – more violent noises, more blood. And what Andi didn’t see was they came harder and quieter for Zoey.

Andi came in from work and froze. Zoey stood at the top of the stairs, standing atop the railing, her too-thin arms braced against the ceiling, while her legs shook trying to balance up there, tears streaming down her face. “Zoey! Whoa, baby, what’s going on?!”

“I… I can’t, Andi,” She wept. “I can’t. They won’t leave me alone. The voices. The ghosts. They… I can’t, Andi. I can’t…”

“It’s okay, babe. It’s okay. I’m making headway,” she said moving slowly towards the stairs. “I’ve got this paranormal investigator crew coming Friday. They’ve have a lot of success…”

“No, Andi. No, it’s going to be like last time… and the time before…. They won’t stop. They won’t stop! I’m done. I can’t!”

Andi made it to the top of the stairs. She had wrapped her arms around Zoey’s bony frame and eased here off the railing. She helped her down the stairs and out the door. The shadow figure closed the door behind them and turned out all the lights but the light in the bedroom. As Andi helped Zoey into the car, she saw the silhouette of the shadow thing in the bedroom window. Then that light winked out.

She checked Zoey into an inpatient facility. “You rest,” Andi told Zoey as she tucked her into the bed. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

Zoey looked up at her sadly. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what, Z?”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough.”

“We’re facing off against ghosts and demons, Z. None of us are strong enough.”

“I’m so tired.”

“Sleep.”

Zoey nodded and was asleep in moments.

Andi left the facility, but she didn’t go home. She hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten for Zoey. While Andi thought she was fighting the good fight, the ghost had come for her love and almost succeeded.

That was the first time Andi slept in the car.

The next day the doctors said it would be best if Andi let Zoey get some rest; maybe the next day. The next day the doctors said Zoey didn’t want to see her. They weren’t married, so Andi had no way to press the issue.

Zoey’s mom called Andi the following day. “Andi, Zoey needs rest. She’s afraid of the house. And she doesn’t want to see you right now.” Andi protested, but… what could she do? “She’ll call you when she’s ready,” her mom assured.

Only she didn’t.

Andi went back to the house, which remained suspiciously quiet. Sure, there were footsteps, some banging, but compared to previous behavior, it was downright peaceful.

Andi was at work when Zoey’s mom called and told her Zoey had killed herself.

Andi went numb. She expected grief to overcome her, but instead she felt pure, hot rage. She didn’t remember driving. She remembered throwing open the front door. She remembered yelling, “I’m here for you, you fucker!” at the top of her lungs. She remembered the shadow figure at the top of the stairs. She felt it grin. She bolted towards it up the stairs…

At the ER the doctors reset her dislocated shoulder and explained the sling would help for the hairline fracture of her elbow. They were more concerned with the bruising all over her body. They said it looked like she’d fallen down stairs. She didn’t remember that, but it was reasonable. There were bite marks. She didn’t remember those. But, again, she wasn’t surprised. She couldn’t explain the burns either. Again, though, not surprised.

Now, back in the house she stood up and moved back to the hallway and stood at the railing and leaned heavily on it.

That’s when she saw the shadow figure enter the foyer from the kitchen. It turned coal-red eyes up to her and she could feel the hatred and malice coming off of the figure as it moved slowly but deliberately towards the stairs. She could feel its gaze boring into her as it moved up one stair at a time, but she didn’t return the gaze. She stared straight ahead, unfocused.

The ghost reached the top of the stairs and started towards her step by step. When it was feet from her, it spoke quietly with hate-filled words. “I killed your girlfriend,” it said. “I beat you within an inch of life last time.” She felt the cold evil move within inches of her, “Tonight I will finish you.”

She felt an icy coldness envelope her in a surge. It constricted and writhed and smothered the light. The deep voice laughed as it held her tight in its deathly embrace.

And then it released her. The shadows slithered back into the person form and stepped back. “What? How? You should be dead!”

Andi straightened and swiveled her gaze towards the figure and focused on it. “This,” she said evenly, “Is why you cannot harm me. You can’t touch me.” She stared hard at the shadow figure. “I’m already dead inside. There’s nothing for you to take,” her face broke into a smile that made the shadow figure flinch back a step. Without another word, Andi turned and walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. The shadow figure stared at the closed door. Then it turned and descended the stairs, walked into the kitchen, opened the door to the basement and started down those stairs, slamming the basement door like a sullen teenager.

Andi slept soundly that night. She dreamt. It was a fragment of a scene – a lithe woman in a deep purple chamise leaned in to her and said, “I don’t blame you,” then smiled brilliantly, vibrantly, and said, “I will always love you,” before she disappeared.