The transparent figure floated through the basement and stopped when it saw someone on the couch. It moved closer slowly, menacingly… “Alan?”

The similarly transparent figure on the couch looked over his shoulder. “Oh, hey Tony.”

“What are you still doing here? There’s haunting to be done! It’s October, you know? Veil between our world and theirs is thinnest? Maybe you’ve heard of it? Got to get haunting while the haunting’s good,” Tony made ghost jazz hands.

“Wow. That’s a lot, Tony.”

“Come on, man, it’s October. Let’s get out there!”

“I know, I know… I’m just, I don’t know, not feeling it tonight. Wait, what are you still doing down here?”

“Me? Oh, forgot my ghost boots.” While he had initially come through the room completely silently, now Tony started walking very deliberately and the distinctive sound of booted footsteps echoed loudly with each step. “Do you love them? Listen—” he held still. “They totally heard it upstairs!” He bounced up and down and clapped his hands. “They’re going to come down here and investigate and…” he noticed Alan had gone back to zoning out. “Whoa, Alan! Snap out of it!”

“I’m sorry, Tony. I don’t know what’s gotten in to me. I really love October. It’s just… I don’t know, I’ve been going through a lot lately. There was that whole thing at the cemetery…”

“Oh, that’s right, they moved your grave… That’s tough.”

“Right? What’s a dead guy supposed to do when that happens?!”

“Haunt them!” Tony’s eyes lit up.

“Tony,” Alan sighed exasperated, “Everything isn’t solved by haunting.”

“No, but you feel better afterwards! Do you want to haunt the guy who re-sold your plot or the gravediggers?”

“Tony, come on, you’re not listening… I mean, what’s the point?”

“The point? The point is to make that pencil pusher in a black suit pee himself. That’s the point!”

Alan pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just feel, I don’t know… like I’m a ghost of myself…”

“Alan,” Tony said seriously, “You literally are a ghost of yourself.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Alan said. “It’s been a while since I died… I’m just having issues accepting it.”

“It’s been five years, man,” Tony said. “That’s like a significant anniversary. An excuse to haunt the crap out of the living!” Tony stared off in the middle distance, “I remember when I was five… I mean, that was a long time ago…”

“Last year, Tony. That was last year. You’ve been dead six years this year.”

“Oh… yeah. Well, that was 2020 and that really counts for, like, ten years.”

“Look, go out without me tonight, Tony. Raise some literal hell. Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Come on, man,” Tony wouldn’t give up. “I’m worried about you! Come on, let’s go do something you like… hiking, right? Let’s go scare the shit out of the deer again! That was fun! They all scattered and then we appeared in front of them again and they took off in the opposite direction. That was so cool!”

“Until that one darted out into traffic and that kid hit him…”

“Oh… yeah… forgot about that,” Tony said quietly to himself. “But then we partied with that ghost deer for the next week!”

“Tony,” Alan said firmly, “Go. Just go.” I’ll go out tomorrow.

“Fine,” Tony said defeated. “I’ll go. But I’m going to hold you to that going out tomorrow bit!”

“That’s fine,” Alan said.

“Oh, and I’m going to stomp up the stairs with my ghost boots because who doesn’t love a dramatic exit?!” The stairs creaked as he slowly stepped up each step, his footfalls echoing loudly in the dark basement.

Alan was alone. And not really enjoying it. He sighed and decided to go upstairs – not to haunt, just to see what the guy living up there was up to. He found him sitting in front of his computer, screen showing a Microsoft Word document. The page on the screen was empty except for the title which read, simply “Ghost Story.” The man in front of the computer let out a sigh of frustration that Alan could totally relate to. The man checked his watch, stared blankly at the screen again, then sighed again…

“Ghost story?” Alan said to himself. “I’m suddenly interested,” he said moving to the bookshelf and forced his will into pushing a hardback book off a shelf and landed with an enormous clap in the silent room. The man in front of the computer jumped and stared at the book on the floor, his breathing rapid, his face a mask of terror.

“My muse…” Alan said and blew cold air on the terrified man’s neck.

I don’t know when Josie started talking to her latest imaginary friend. I’m her mother – you’d think I’d know that, right? She’s four, so it’s not unusual for her to have conversations with herself. But when I first figured it out I could tell she was having a conversation – back and forth, only I wasn’t privy to the second half of the conversation.

“Sure, we can play,” I heard her say when she was alone in her room. “Yeah, that’s my favorite!” Then she laughed. “Why can’t we tell her? …I don’t know… Mom said we shouldn’t go outside alone…. No, she’ll be really mad…. Are you sure? …sure sure?”

I stepped into the room. “Josie, honey? Who are you talking to?”

Josie turned around to face me. “My friend, Ellie.”

“Who’s Ellie?” I asked, the hairs on the back of my neck.

“She’s,” Josie turned around to face her purple stuffed bear who was slumped over. “Hey! She was right here.” She looked around quizzically.

“Isn’t that Buddy?” I said, pointing to the slumped purple bear she’d had since before she could speak.

“Yeah…” she said prodding the bear experimentally. “But Ellie said she could talk and play with me through Buddy. That’s pretty neat, right?”

“Uh…” I fought down the urge to say, “No, it’s creepy as hell.” Instead, what I actually said was, “sure, honey… You’re going to need to start to get ready if we’re going to go over to Grammie’s tonight.”

Josie lit up at the mention of Grammie. Ellie was forgotten for now, and Josie set about picking out her dress for Grammie’s.

…

With Josie at her Grammie’s and Dave still at work, I decided to run a vacuum through the rooms. I had moved down the length of the carpet runner in the hallway and pushed into Josie’s room when I reached the end of the cord. I turned the vacuum off and started out of the room to move the cord to a closer plug.

“I will get her,” a woman’s voice said calmly. I spun and saw Buddy the bear standing in the corner.

“Ellie, I presume?”

She let out this little girl giggle that belied the woman’s voice. “I am,” she said and the bear curtsied.

“Who are you, Ellie? Or, should I ask, who were you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said bending the bear arms to her black glass eyes, “I’m just an adorable bear now, aren’t I?”

“What do you want with Josie?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice steady.

“Oh, you know, the innocents are the best…”

“Best for what?”

The eyes of the purple bear glowed red. “Best to consume!” she said lasciviously.

“That’s what I was hoping for,” I said.

“Wait, you what?” the bear’s eyes snapped up to mine.

I made a motion with my hand and the stuffed bear’s unnatural movements froze, yet the bear didn’t fall over. “What? What have you done?”

I stepped closer to the bear and squatted down to be at eye level with it. “Now, Ellie was it? Didn’t you think it was a little too easy to take over that bear?”

“I mean… wait, what?”

“Hmm… not too bright,” I said, standing up I picked the bear up by the ear as I walked out of the room. “You see, Ellie, you’re not the first imaginary friend Josie has had.” I opened the door to the basement, flicked on the light with my free hand and started down the steps. “That bear was a trap. Honestly, I thought it’d take you a lot longer to really manifest. But you couldn’t resist the old glowing eyes, could you?”

“Let go of me!” she shrieked. I could feel the energy of the spirit struggling within the confines of the bear, though the bear remained perfectly rigid.

With my free hand I unlocked the door in the back of the basement. I uttered a word in a long-dead language and the dark room illuminated as the wicks in the sconces on the wall burst into flame. I pulled open a cabinet drawer and was greeted by a cacophony of voices some stridently crying for help, others cursing me in guttural unintelligible languages, some swearing profusely.

“What? Who are they?” the bear asked.

“Kindred spirits,” I said and laughed at my own joke.

“You bitch, you can’t keep me here!”

“You’re close,” I said as I held the bear over the roiling energy of the dozens of spirits trapped in the cabinet. “But it’s ‘Witch,’ not ‘Bitch’ and nothing is going to ever come for my daughter.” I dropped the bear into the dark void of the drawer. As I closed the drawer the loud protests of the ghosts cut off abruptly.

I sighed in satisfaction, walked to the other side of the room and picked up an identical purple bear from a row of purple bears. I traced a symbol on its forehead. Its black eyes flashed and then dimmed. “Well, Buddy number 73, ready for duty?” The inanimate bear just, well, hung loosely. For now…

As in, I could use one! Just kidding… I mean, I could use one, certainly. But I tend to write these quickly and other than reading them aloud to Akilah (where I do manage to catch a lot), I don’t have a lot of time for editing. I’ll go back and edit all of these soon. I may have a project for these after this year’s 31 Ghosts wraps up. But more on that later!

Sophia had just cleared the dinner plates and came back in from the kitchen with an ornate tart with plum slices carefully layered in concentric circles inside a crumbly crust. “Hope you left room for dessert,” she said as she set the plate on the table.

“Oh, Sophia,” Jacqueline said, “That looks exquisite!”

“Thank you!” Sophia beamed. “Plum tart with lemon shortbread crust.”

“Honey,” Andrew said, “That does loom amazing. Can I get anyone anything else to drink? Coffee? Oh, you know, I have a lovely Navarro Gewürztraminer that would go great with this…” he stood up and crossed to the wine fridge next to the kitchen.

Lacy shared a look with Jacqueline and said “That sounds amazing. Jacqueline just introduced me to Gewürztraminers recently.”

“Well, she liked the Riesling we served at our wedding,” Jacqueline explained, squeezing Lacy’s hand. “I figured she should try some other Alsatian wines.”

“That was such a wonderful wedding,” Sophia said setting down a small stack of dessert plates.

“Thank you!” Lacy said. “We’re so glad you both could make it—”

Her sentence was cut off as Andrew opened the door of the wine fridge and a bottle violently shot out at bullet-speed, missing Sophia’s head by inches and smashing loudly against the opposite wall.

Sophia stood statue still, eyes squeezed shut, her face a mask of fear and resignation.

“Oh my God, Sophia,” Andrew ran to his wife. “Are you okay, honey?”

Jacqueline had instinctively thrown her arm around Lacy. “What was that?”

Before Andrew could say anything, a deep laugh echoed through the house and all the cabinet drawers in the kitchen started opening and slamming shut repeatedly.

Lacy burrowed into Jaqueline’s arm and Andrew put his arm around Sophia who melted into him.

Then, as suddenly as everything started, everything silenced. The laughing abruptly stopped. The cabinets ceased flapping open and closed, some hanging open.

Still holding his wife, Andrew broke the heavy silence. “I am so sorry,” he started.

“What in the hell was that?” Jacqueline asked, eyes wide.

Andrew helped his wife sit down, pulled his chair closer to hers and started, “So, uh… we have a bit of a ghost problem…”

“I’m sorry, what?” Jacqueline asked incredulously.

“Ghosts,” Sophia said. “Or a ghost,” she waved a hand, “I don’t know,” she said, tears of frustration in her eyes. “We have a haunted house.”

“Ghosts aren’t real!” Lacy said, straightening up from Jacqueline.

“Uh, honey,” Jaqueline cocked an eyebrow, “I think we just witnessed some pretty incontrovertible proof to the contrary.”

“It’s been getting worse,” Andrew said seriously. “When we first moved in two years ago there were some little things – items would disappear and reappear in weird places… then it became footsteps at night. The wine bottle,” he gestured to the pool of shattered glass and wine at the base of the wall, “That’s new.”

“It makes sense, though,” Sophia said. “After the… messages…”

“Messages?” Lacy asked.

“About a week ago?” Andrew looked at his wife who nodded “Sophia was getting out of the shower and there was this… message written on the condensation in the mirror.”

Sophia pulled out her phone and flicked a few screens and handed it to Lacy. Jacqueline looked over her should at the screen with a picture of a fogged-up mirror. written on the mirror THE words “WERE WATCHING YOU” in large letters were clearly visible.

“’Were watching you?’” Jacqueline said. “Like, what, they were watching you but aren’t now?”

“No,” Andrew said, “We think the ghost or ghosts forgot an apostrophe, like ‘we are watching you.”

“Oh,” Lacy said, nodding.

“There’s more… scroll,” Sophia said making a swiping gesture.

Lacy scrolled to the next image and Jacqueline gasped in horror.

“You’re not alone?” Lacy asked surprised at the outsized reaction.

“That’s not what it says. They used the wrong ‘your’!”

Andrew guffawed. “I should have known that’s what my editor would notice!”

“You,” Jacqueline leveled a finger at Andrew, “Have never given me anything with this level of horror before.”

They all laughed, breaking the tension for a moment.

“There’s more,” Sophia said.

Lacy swiped to the next picture: “YOU CANT ESCAPE US SOPHIA”.

“Oh my God,” Lacy and Jacqueline said in unison. Then Lacy exclaimed, “It knows your name?” while Jacqueline exclaimed “It can’t give us a single apostrophe? Clearly this thing is indeed in hell. Punctuation hell…” she shook her head.

Lacy swiped. “”NICE PRIEST YOU HAD HEAR HE HAD NO AFFECT ON US WERE NOT GOING ANYWHERE”.

“They’re getting longer!” Lacy gasped.

Jacqueline shook her head in disbelief. “No periods? Look, being dead is no excuse here. And they used ‘affect’ instead of ‘effect’? This… monster!”

“Okay, to be fair,” Andrew said, “I screw that up too….” Sophia and Lacy both nodded in agreement.

“Oh come on, people! ‘Effect’ is a noun! ‘Affect’ indicates influence,” she gesticulated wildly.

After a moment Andrew shook his head, “Yeah, I still don’t get it…”

Jacqueline started to protest but Lacy let out a squeak.

“This one is from today?” she asked.

Sophie nodded seriously, “After work I threw together the tart and took a quick shower. I stepped out to find… that.”

Jacqueline looked at the picture of the fogged mirror with the words “THEIR IS NO WHERE TO HIDE WELL FIND YOU AND TAKE YOU’RE SOLE”. Her face twisted in fury at the grammatical nightmare. Then her eyes widened.

“Jacqueline?” Andrew asked at her apparent surprise.

Jacqueline took the phone from Lacy and scrolled back. “This one,” she showed the phone to Sophia. The picture with the message “NICE PRIEST YOU HAD HEAR HE HAD NO AFFECT ON US” showed. “You had a priest out here?”

“Yes, a few days ago. He blessed the house…. Sprinkled holy water… prayed. You can see it didn’t have any effect,” she emphasized the “e”.

Jacqueline smiled, then nodded thoughtfully. “Honey,” she said to Lacy, “I need your lipstick.”

Lacy involuntarily pursed her ruby-colored lips before reaching for her purse and fumbling around. She came out with a silver tube. “You know that’s not your color…”

“No, I have an idea…” she stood up and walked out of the room into the bedroom and closed the bathroom door.

Lacy, Andrew, and Sophia traded puzzled looks as they heard the sound of water coming on in the bathroom. Long moments passed.

“So… maybe some tart?” Lacy broke the silence.

“Oh, sure,” Sophia said and started to cut into the plum tart.

The lights went out. A deep, male, guttural howl rang out seemingly emanating from everywhere in the house at once vibrating the foundation. The sound of the cupboards flapping again echoed while the dessert plates spun off the table in different directions in the dark, lending the smashing of plates to the cacophony.

Then it stopped.

The lights flickered and came on steady. Andrew looked around and saw that magazines and papers had also flown around in the darkness and the whole place looked genuinely ransacked.

“Jacqueline!” Lacy sprung from her chair and darted towards the bathroom. Andrew and Sophia were close behind when the bathroom door opened, and Jacqueline stepped out casually putting the cap back on the lipstick. A self-satisfied grin split her face. “Oh, Jackie!” Lacy wrapped her in tight embrace.

“What… what happened?” Andrew asked exasperated.

“Take a look…” she said, gesturing over her shoulder at the door where steam still flowed out.

The three moved into the humid room and stared at the mirror. On the mirror was the previous message: “THEIR IS NO WEAR TO HIDE WELL FIND YOU AND TAKE YOU’RE SOLE”. But red lipstick crossed out “THEIR” and above it wrote “There”. Two horizontal parentheses indicated “NO” and “WEAR” should be one word, while “WEAR” was crossed out with “WHERE” written above it.  A red circled period split “HIDE” and “WELL” while an apostrophe inside a carrot hovered between the “E” and “L” of “WELL”. “YOU’RE” and “SOLE” were crossed out with “YOUR” and “SOUL” written above it.

“Oh my God,” Andrew stared slack-jawed. “You… you did it…”

“Did what?” Lacy asked.

“Only an editor,” Sophie said, “knows how to kill a writer’s soul.”

Jacqueline crossed her arms across her chest in satisfaction.