“Make new friends,” Melissa sings on cue, out of tune, “but keep the oo-ooold…”
I don’t know where she comes from, but I know her story already. I don’t want to admit it, but I sense the same exact desperation to run away from her prefab identity that I had. That’s what’s brings us here, isn’t it? We all want to— get haunted
—escape our lives. And here’s Tobias, taking her in with open arms. Mi casa, su casa.
“Toby?”
It takes him a moment to open his eyes—and when he does, it takes even longer for him to find me. His eyes drift about the room before locking onto mine. Now he’s all smiles. “Yeah?”
“Have you been here this whole time?”
“Where else am I gonna go?”
He never left. This home with no electricity, no running water, nothing but his—
ghosts
—stupid drugs. “What’s going on here?”
“Oh, you know…I’ve been busy, just being neighborly.” He holds out his hand, a dose of Ghost pinched between his fingers. “It’s a wonderful day to get haunted.”
“Would you be mine,” Melissa sings, “could you be mine, won’t you be…”
“What do you say?” Tobias asks. “Wanna get haunted?”
Yes, I say to myself. “No.”
“You sure?”
Yes, god, yes, I want it.
But just seeing the pill turns my stomach. I don’t know if I can go through with it again.
“I’ll pass.”
“It’s okay, Erin. Just one more time? For Silas’s sake?”
“No.”
Tobias backs off, unable to wipe the shit-eating grin from his face. “I’m just messing with you. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Stay, go, totally up to you.”
There’s a knock at the door. My shoulders spring up, startled by the sudden sound.
“You mind getting that?” Tobias has already closed his eyes, shutting me out.
I don’t seem to have much of a choice. A bit pissed, I leave the living room and head back to the front door. I need to get out of here, I think. I need to get as far away from this septic shithole as soon as humanly possible. I should just walk out now and never look back.
A sinewy pair of gutter punks prop themselves up on the porch. They couldn’t be older than twenty, if that. Just kids. Christ, is Tobias peddling his drugs at the playground?
Wait. I recognize these two. This couple has been squatting on the sidewalk outside my apartment, haven’t they? Strumming their guitar for pocket change? I recognize her topknot of dreadlocks and his homemade face tattoos.
“Is this the haunted house?” she asks. She’s wearing his leather jacket, a little too large for her diminutive frame, studded with buttons from bands I’ve never heard of. Crudely sewn canvas patches run along its sleeves.
“Who told you? How did you—”
The words catch in my mouth.
There’s a boy standing in the center of the cul-de-sac. Just a boy. He doesn’t move. Only his clear plastic tarp billows in the breeze, flapping at his feet. He stares back at me.
He hadn’t there before, I swear. Did he follow me?
“I’d close the door if I were you,” Tobias calls out from the living room. “Don’t want any uninvited houseguests sneaking in.”
The boy senses something has shifted in the air. He steps forward—toward me, the house. He wants to come in.
“Get inside,” I say to the couple. My eyes never leave the boy. He steps onto the lawn. If I don’t close the door, close it now, the boy will slip in. And somehow I know one lost soul will lead to two will lead to ten will lead to— “Hurry.” I grab the girl by her sleeve and pull, and her boyfriend comes with her. I slam the door, sealing us in, and peer through the peephole. The boy stops, set adrift. I nearly feel a twinge of regret for him, all alone with no place to haunt, no friends to play with.
The couple has already joined the circle when I enter the living room.
“Erin”—Tobias makes introductions like a good host—“this is Adriano and Stephanie.”
“Hey,” Stephanie says with an awkward smile. Adriano doesn’t even look at me.
“So you’re selling,” I say. “You’re a dealer now?”
“That’s a pretty crass way of putting it,” Tobias admonishes me. “Ghost isn’t the kind of drug you find. It finds you. You hear about it from someone who’s used it. They tell you about it, then you tell someone else, like a—”
“Ghost story?”
“Exactly! That’s how we’re going to let it spread.” He holds out his hands, presenting the living room to me in all its glowing, rippling glory. “We all have a ghost story to tell. I’m merely providing the campfire.”
I force my way into the ring and sit. “How’d you hear about this house?” I ask the circle.
Dead Betty—sorry, Melissa—chimes in, happy to have an answer. “Facebook.”
“Jesus, Tobias, you’re posting about this place?”
“I got friended by Silas,” Melissa says defensively. “He sent me a message—”
“When?”
“—asking if I wanted to get haunted.” Of course. Social media is a perfect platform to reach out to people who have lost someone.
“So you’re the one who hacked Silas’s account.” I’m intensely aware that I’m harshing their mellow but I don’t care. Tobias used his friends list as a phone book for people in mourning after Silas’s death. Imagine receiving an Evite from the afterlife. People want to believe so badly, they’ll RSVP to anything. “You lied to me.”
“We’re helping people,” Tobias says. “People who are hurting.”
“You’re exploiting their grief—”
“We’re reuniting them,” he says. “Silas always had this…this sway over people. Everyone listens to him. I figured I could use his account to reach out and—”
“Silas is dead.” It’s the first time I’ve said the words out loud.
“You think death is really going to stop him?”
This isn’t like Tobias. This isn’t like Tobias at all. He’s pretending to be this chill Zen master and I don’t like it.
“I’m glad you came back, Erin…I am. I couldn’t have done this, any of this, without you.”
“I don’t want anything to do with—whatever this is.”
“You brought Silas back! If it weren’t for your connection, none of this would’ve worked.” Something in the way he says the word connection makes it sound like what he means is addiction. “You’re my good luck charm. Let me pay you back…Say hey to Silas.”
“I told you, I don’t want any more of that shit.”
He raises his hands. “Suit yourself.”
Tobias passes a Tupperware full of gelcaps around the circle. “We all have our own ghost stories. This”—he holds up a pill, then swallows it—“is how we tell them.”
Each member takes a cap, giddy as schoolkids at snack time. Melissa forces a gelcap into my hand and smiles. “Here.”
I glance at the pill between my fingers. I turn it over a couple times, up and down, up and down, the ashen powder tumbling around. I feel the mounting itch.
Even now, I want it. That chill down my spine. The gooseflesh ripple. I can’t stop myself.
I want to get haunted.
Maybe this time it won’t be as bad? I’m in a safe place, a controlled séance. Not out there, in the city, with all that supernatural static. I’m protected here.
Tobias said he perfected the dosage, didn’t he? Maybe it was just a bad batch. Stay away from the brown acid. One more haunting, that’s all. What’s one more ghost going to hurt? Feeling Silas inside. Sensing his spirit drift through. Inhabit me. I can have that feeling back…
You don’t have to do this, I hear Amara say. You came here to—
I perform a magic trick: The Vanishing Capsule. Now you see it, now you don’t…
“Thatta girl,” Tobias says. I didn’t realize he’d been watching me. “That’s my Erin.”