I’m not alone in the street. A dozen lost souls cram shoulder to shoulder in the cul-de-sac. One revenant turns toward me, then another, as if my mere presence outside the house is enough to draw their attention.
I’ve broken the seal. I’ve exposed myself. Their eyes are like oysters in half shells, nearly oozing out of their sockets. Their mouths open and shut, open and shut, lips syncopated with one another, a dozen greedy newborns reaching for the teat. They lick their lips with sandpaper tongues. One takes a hesitant step toward me, reaching out. Others follow.
I step back through the doorway. The symbol is still there, rusted flakes of dried blood—of course it’s blood, but whose—crumbling off. I check my hand to see if I can still see the slice running through my skin. Is that my blood? Is it me painting the house red? Once I close the door, hiding behind the crimson emblem, the revenants stop, set adrift once more. Whatever magnetic pull drew them toward me is severed, cutting these lost souls loose in the cul-de-sac.
I hear the sound of feet scrambling through the walls. Something scurries over my head. Lonnie is waiting. He grunts impatiently.
I’m trapped. I can’t escape this house—and even if I could, I’m so addicted to my ghosts, I don’t know if I could stay away forever. Isn’t that what haunting a house is, after all? You can never leave. I need to accept that this is where I live now. Where I haunt. Home sweet home.
“Hmmm,” I announce to our home. “Where oh where could my little Lonnie be?”
My little ghostlet. My baby boy…
rent-a-cop
“You’re on kitchen duty,” Adriano informs me. He’s clearly not a fan of mine since I see right through his gutter punk posturing. He’s just another trust fund kid who hit the streets after his mom and dad cut off his allowance. He can go back home whenever he wants to.
“I thought I was grounded.”
“As long as you stop trying to set the house on fire…and scaring away our houseguests.”
“Why doesn’t Tobias tell me himself?”
“He’s busy.”
I’m dosing two or three times a day to maintain my haunting. There’s taking Ghost and there’s everything else. The next fix is never enough. Ghost isn’t a way of life anymore.
It’s a way of death.
But Tobias doesn’t want us haunted while we work. I’ll get my next dose after kitchen detail: Chores first, then you get your allowance. Time to slip on my latex gloves and disposable face mask decorated with the same symbol that’s painted on the front door.
I’m working with Melissa and Stephanie. We form a three-woman assembly line: Melissa scoops the off-white powder and I disperse the dust into the capsule distributor, then Stephanie places the pills in Tupperware containers. We use plastic shovels from a kid’s beach kit, as if we’re building sandcastles out of pulverized mushrooms.
“Ever fucked on Ghost before?” Melissa asks like we’re besties. But I don’t want friends. Not anymore. I want to get haunted, not hang with the living.
“It’s a hundred times better when you’re haunted,” she singsongs. “It’s almost like a…like a religious experience, you know? An orgy with the angels. When it’s me and Tobias—”
Gross. Not an image I want occupying my headspace right now.
“—and our ghosts, it just feels like…like there are all these hands on me, touching me all over.” Melissa is on Ghost right now, I can tell. Big no-no. She has that empty-eyed gaze, like a ventriloquist’s doll. She pulls her mask down and wipes her nose and I can see her apple cheeks have all but shriveled, revealing sharp cheekbones that threaten to pierce her skin.
We’re prepping for our housewarming party. That’s what Tobias calls it. Our ghost story isn’t spreading fast enough for his taste. We need to invite people into our house. Friends. Family. Anyone we can share this experience with. Let them get haunted just like us. It’s not enough to take the drug ourselves. We need to share. Let it spread. Until everyone is haunted.
I hear bare feet shuffle into the kitchen and turn to find Marcia wandering aimlessly around. She opens the cabinet beneath the sink, peering in. Empty. “Have you seen my son?”
“Sorry.” I still haven’t had the heart to tell her about Lonnie. I know she’d be jealous, so I don’t mention he’s hiding in the recesses of the wall just above her head, observing us.
“Have you seen my son?”
“Nope.” Stephanie glances at Melissa, the two of them silently snickering. Poor Marcia. Her bare feet shuffle through the hall, fading further into the house.
Melissa starts nattering away again, but I lose myself in the motes of dust swirling around the kitchen. A helix pattern of particles rotates in the air, captured by a stray beam of sunlight reaching through the boarded-up window. It has a copper tincture, darker than dust.
Not dust, I realize—spores. Mushroom spores set adrift throughout the house. The kitchen is thick with it, a miasma of mushrooms floating through the air. Even with the face mask on, I can taste it at the back of my throat. How long have we been breathing this junk?
“Tobias said he’s going to give me my own house,” Melissa says.
“What did you just say?”
Melissa gives me this half grin that exposes her gray gumline—tee-hee—pleased to be Tobias’s favorite now. “He says I can take my pick. Whichever house on the block I want.”
“Don’t worry, Erin,” Stephanie says. “I’m sure he’ll give you a house, too, if you ask nicely.”
Both start giggling. Fucking witches. “I don’t want another house. This is my—”
“What the hell?”
An unfamiliar voice breaks through the kitchen, startling all three of us. Melissa turns. I see her panicked expression, those dead Betty Boop eyes bulging at whatever’s behind me.
I turn to see a man sweating in an ill-fitting uniform in the doorway. A yellow emblem is sewn on his chest—just a flimsy patch made to look authoritative enough to strike terror into the hearts of trespassing teens. But there’s nothing official about him.
“What’s going on here?”
A rent-a-cop. Just some middle-aged heel hired by a security company to intermittently patrol the housing development, making sure no one vandalizes these empty homes. His paunch presses against his black uniform. He’s sweating, wet shadows seeping from his armpits. I glance at his belt to see if there’s a gun holster. Nothing—just a key chain dangling from his hip.
“You—you can’t be in here.” There’s nothing in his tone for us to be afraid of. He looks genuinely perplexed. Of all the things to walk in on, this clearly isn’t what he expected to find.
Melissa bolts for the kitchen door like a spastic spider, thin limbs waving through the air. The rent-a-cop performs a sloppy side step, too late to obstruct her. Her body collides with the doorjamb before slipping off into the hall. “Hey! Come back—”
Stephanie doesn’t wait around, either. She pushes against the man, thrusting him back and rushing out of the kitchen to hide somewhere else in the house.
“STOP!”
I haven’t moved. It never occurred to me to run and now I’m trapped.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, just—”
I step to my right.
The guard’s arms shoot up to shoulder height, a sweating vulture ready to take flight. “Don’t! Just—just stay right where you are, okay?” He pulls out his cell phone. He doesn’t even have a walkie-talkie. It takes a few swipes with his slippery fingers to unlock it, his attention shifting. He’s no longer looking at me. This is my chance to run.
Before I can even take a step, I notice movement behind him. Shadows gather just behind his shoulders, solidifying, becoming something, someone. My first thought is Silas is here!
But it’s not him. Tobias’s eyes sparkle in the darkness.
“Don’t!” I shout. Not at the rent-a-cop. To Tobias.