 
Eviction Notice

A _Slayer of Evil (Prices Negotiable)_ Story

By

Andrew E. Moczulski

Copyright 2012, Andrew E. Moczulski

Smashwords Edition

*****

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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author's imagination and used fictitiously.

She was like the personification of good cheer; a sharply pressed and professionally cut sky-blue suit, the absolutely brightest green eyes I had ever seen, soft white skin with a dusting of childlike freckles, and a smile so bright it could melt copper. The best part was the hair, though. A bright, frizzy mass of red curls that bounced around seemingly of their own accord and appeared constantly on the verge of absorbing her head. It was almost hypnotic. Under different circumstances, I'd have been asking if I could buy her a drink.

Under the current ones, it was starting to get hard to listen to her talk.

"And if you'll turn your attention to the _ceiling_ , you'll notice the _simply_ exquisite molding normally only to be found in homes built in the _pre-classical_ era but which was included in _this_ particular home at the express request of Mr. Harcourt _Stanfield_ , the wealthy financier who _first_ ordered construction as long ago as _eighteen_ -seventy-five, _" s_ he said. I had been talking to her for nearly three hours now as we toured the house in question, and I still couldn't work out exactly how she chose which words deserved emphasis. It clearly wasn't any sort of human intelligence. Maybe her voice just did it automatically, or possibly she had some kind of device hidden in her hair.

"That is very _wonderful_ Ms. O'Conner, and I thank you _so much_ for telling all of it to me despite my repeated claims I will not be increasing my offer no matter what," I said with forced cheer. I chose to emulate her own speech patterns, in the hope she would perhaps understand me better this way "I will give your employer ten thousand dollars for this house. And that is all."

The smile didn't quite _fade_ , but the wattage might have decreased by about five percent. "Yes, I have... noticed, Mr. Fitzpatrick. And while I under _stand_ your unique _position_ , I had _hoped_ for a tour of the manor _and_ grounds to make this _clear_ , I must specify that the dwelling you wish to purchase is in fact worth... well..."

"Roughly one-hundred times my offering price?" I said cheerfully. In contrast to her, I wasn't terribly striking. My eyes were a nice blue, I guess, but beyond that I was pretty average. Brown hair. Medium height, in shape but not hugely muscled. T-shirt. Jeans. Big baggy jacket that looked about thirty years old but comfortable and had tons of pockets.

The lovely Ms. O'Conner and I did have one thing in common, though. Both of our images were carefully crafted lies. She was designed from the ground up to make customers feel comfortable, make them trust her clearly adorable Good Ol' Irish Lass self, and (let's face it) to make the sort of customers who noticed her skirt tugged around her thighs very _interestingly_ think with their hormones instead of their wallets.

My image was carefully crafted to inform _her_ that I didn't care.

"Well, yes," she said. I think she wasn't used to people being this cheerful in her presence. I strongly suspected that by halfway through her presentation of a home, most people just watched her in a kind of mesmerized daze. "Given the _age_ of the home, the _extensive_ size of both the manor _itself_ and the grounds, the prime location here in the _lovely_ rural countryside of upstate _New_ York, the-"

"Ten-thousand dollars. My one and only offer." I interrupted quite happily. "The house is in disrepair, the grounds are unkempt, and the location is an hour's drive from the nearest town, which is _barely_ a town. Frankly, I think that ten grand is generous!"

It was not generous. It was stupidly, ridiculously dirt cheap. But half the joy of being a customer is that you get to be indignant about stupid things, right? That's the American Dream, right there. The right to be proud of things you shouldn't be proud of and be offended by things that shouldn't offend any reasonable human being.

"While some might argue that this exquisite _antique_ home built by one of New York's finest _captains_ of industry might, perhaps, be a bit of a _fixer-_ upper, I personally _feel_ that-"

I waved a hand, cutting her off before she could start describing the molding again. Or god forbid, the buttresses. "But more than that? More than the fact this place is, quite frankly, an inconveniently-located dump that should have been condemned ages ago? I strongly suspect that you, Ms. O'Conner, were instructed to try your very best to wring as much money out of me as possible, but in the end, to take whatever price I offered."

She didn't reply. But the smile definitely faded this time. It made me a little sad, actually. She had such a pretty smile, even if it was totally fake.

"Possibly," I said, almost idly, "because nobody has made any offers on this house in the last oh, forty years, have they?"

"Not... not _as_ such, no."

"Because of the location? Noooo, there's always someone who wants a nice rural summer home, get back to nature, commune with the... elk, or something." I said. Given how often work took me out into the wild and how messy that tended to get, I personally didn't like nature very much and would never go there for fun. I really have no clue what people go out there to commune with. Shrubs, maybe? Lots of people like shrubs, and they don't move around as much as elk so it's probably easier to commune with them. Regardless, I kept speaking, deciding elk sounded good enough and going back to change it to shrubs now would just make me look indecisive. "Because of the disrepair? Nooooo, that's like a _challenge_ to the right sort of buyer, especially with how popular all that house-flipping nonsense was for awhile, right? So now, I _wonder_ why it's been so long since anyone has made any offers on this fine home with its amazing mold?"

"Molding, actually." She muttered.

"Could it be because of the, y'know, horrible murders?" I asked, my eyes wide with feigned shock. "The ones you so carefully didn't tell me about as you were describing the exquisite craftsmanship of the windows? See, I did my research too, and funny story: the history of this house is really less about the fantastic architecture, and really more about the fact that everyone who has ever lived in this house except for the original owner himself, has died under mysterious circumstances! Most of them very much on the horribly violent side, and the vast majority within three weeks of moving in, no less! How terribly odd, wouldn't you say?"

"A bit odd," she murmured. She was not smiling much at all, anymore. I really was starting to feel bad now; her smile had been nice. It made me feel chipper, I admitted it, and the more it faded the less happy I was. Maybe I should get a clown nose or something, for the next time I met her. After I finished destroying her business position, of course.

"Why, it got to the point that people began to say that the ghost of Mr. Stanfield... that would be Harcourt Stanfield, I believe? Wealthy industrialist and entrepreneur whom you yourself so thoughtfully mentioned before? Whose charming family of cutthroat, money-obsessed robber barons and occasionally just plain _robbers_ was well-known for treating their workers like slaves and their slaves like cattle? Why, people started to claim that he was still _haunting_ the house, and would wreak horrible vengeance on _anyone_ who lived here." I said. "But of course, that's crazy, because everyone knows ghosts do not exist."

"... Yes."

"Even though in every single one of the deaths, there was never any sign of forced entry, and it is completely impossible for them to have been suicide in the majority of the cases. Unless that strapping young man in 1957, the most recent owner, I believe, who lived here alone and which all evidence suggests was alone at the time of his death, somehow managed to throw his _own_ head onto the chandelier in the main hall? Which, I grant you, would have been pretty impressive if he had pulled it off, don't you th-"

"Yes, that will be quite enough, thank you!" Ms. O'Conner said. Her skin had gone so pale the freckles were starting to look creepily dark.

"I just feel that would be a somewhat difficult trick to perform. But that may be just me." I said. "Not that it's really relevant to our situation right now. What _is_ relevant is that I am going to give you a very small sum of money for this house. And you're going to accept it. Because your employer? He desperately wants to be rid of it. It costs him in taxes year after year after year. Nobody will buy it, and nobody is brave enough to tear it down. So you will take my ten thousand dollars for this place, because I am the _only person who is ever going to pay you anything at all for it._ And really? You knew that going in."

"I... shall consult with my superiors, but I believe your offer to be... I believe it will be accepted. I... I feel, that..." She squeaked. She looked like she might cry.

Awwwwww, poor thing, I might have been a little hard on her. "You seem a bit ill, miss. Perhaps you should get some fresh air. I'll show myself out. After all, barring a few papers to sign and a few checks clearing, this is my house now, right? Why don't you go outside, take a walk? In fact, take the rest of the day off, you've earned it. I'll see you in your office tomorrow to finalize things."

"Yes, yes, thank you..." she muttered, practically sprinting out the door. I listened to her footsteps, heard the door open, and heard it slam shut with way too much force. Yeah, I was too hard on the poor thing. I'll work on that for the future.

Regardless, I tried really hard not to grin. Crying real-estate agent aside, that had gone _perfectly. "_ And now it's just you and me, isn't it chief?" I said to the empty house.

Right on cue, a cold wind howled through the house, despite all the windows being firmly shut. A creaking could be heard in the attic, which I had personally seen was empty during the tour.

I smiled. Nothing pisses them off like smiling when they're trying to be intimidating. "Heh, so even that little bit of nervousness on the cute redhead's part was enough to wake you up? You are a _nasty_ one, Harry, to be up and moving so fast. I admit: Never seen one get up to no good with that much pep. You are a darn impressive spook.

"But tell me, do I feel scared? At all?" I asked. "Or do I feel like I'm gonna go get some very nice salt and some assorted powders and liquids and such from my car, do a little chanting, light some candles, and exorcise your ass? You tell me. Oh, wait, you can't, you're not powerful enough to speak actual words yet, because I am not afraid of you at all and you can't feed on my emotions. Haha, my mistake. Well, you just wait here, and maybe try to get some chains rattling. That always adds to the ambiance for when I throw your type out like yesterday's trash. I'll be back in a few minutes to kick you out of _my_ house."

I should probably give you an explanation, huh? You look confused.

For starters, Mr. Colin Fitzpatrick is not my name. My name is Eric Margrave, but that doesn't sound Irish, and when you're buying a house from a real-estate company owned by an Irish-American and staffed mainly by Irish-American workers (like the lovely Ms. O'Conner), it pays to sound like you might be a little bit Irish yourself, and a good fake ID goes a long way. Also, I can't use my real name for most things, on account of the possibility that certain law enforcement agencies have me on certain watch-lists, even though I swear to God that all of the people who died in those cases were either not my fault, or some kinda shape-shifting monstrosity that just coincidentally happened to look human or turn back into a human when it died. Or both.

Oh, and the house? Totally was haunted.

A lot of them are, really. Most ghosts are pretty benign. But Harcourt 'Harry' Stanfield (One of New _York's_ finest old business _men,_ as Ms. O'Conner had _put_ it.) had been a bastard in life, a genuine robber-baron whose death toll from unsafe factories and unsavory business practices had probably been in the hundreds. It made sense, then, that he would still be a bastard in death, and the unsavory fate of anyone who moved into his old house showed nicely that was indeed the case.

Luckily, he was also a ghost, and limited by a ghost's rules. Ghosts are just bundles of emotion and left-over life energy from when a particularly strong-willed person dies, and as such they have little power to affect the physical world unless we allow them to. They feed on our emotions, see? The more we feel about them, most especially the more we fear them, the closer they can get to the real, physical universe. Hollywood actually has a decent grasp on your common murderous spectre: they start very small, tiny things, a gust of wind, a creaking floorboard. Building up the fear. Then as the people in the house get more and more scared, the ghost gets stronger, and stronger, and the manifestations get darker, and darker, until _boom!_ Amityville.

Stay more than a week or two in a house with a hostile ghost, and you'd have wasps swarming in your mattress and blood running from the faucets before you knew it. Try to stay after that, and the house was very probably gonna end up with a new ghost.

And the ghost here was very, very hostile indeed. Any poor schmuck who bought this place hoping for a nice summer getaway in the countryside would most likely have been tortured to horrible death by the spirit of Mr. Stanfield, who absolutely, totally would kill a commoner for setting foot on his property, and was in fact rumored to have done so several times even before he was dead. After? Well, that story I told about the head on the chandelier wasn't exaggeration.

If you knew how to deal with ghosts, though, then this was a darn fine place to put a safe house. Plenty of room for storage, no nosy neighbors wondering why I was bringing in heavy weapons or cartons of silver bullets or bulk spices, some nice forested terrain for laying booby-traps, and a convenient and widely-believed ghost story to keep away tourists. And so cheap! It would take some fixing up, sure, but I wasn't going to actually live here more than a few days at a time, so I wouldn't have to put much money into fixing it up. And it was still a damn sight better than living out of a hotel every time I was up in New York tracking a Wendigo (Which pop up more than you'd think; more people get into cannibalism than I like to ponder.).

The world of the supernatural was dark, twisted, and more prevalent than anyone cares to talk about. But if you know how to work it, earn the right reputation among the right people, and you don't scare easy? The money is more than decent, and there's all kinda perks. I charge $200 an hour plus expenses for extermination of the vast majority of spooky thingamabobs ($250 for Wizards, Rakshasa, Djinn, Elves and Elf-related situations, and Fairies of the Unseelie court, $300 for Any Sort of Tentacled Ichor Beast from Beyond Time. Absolutely No Demons, Dragons, Demon-Dragons, Liches, Demon-Dragon-Liches, or any kind of Sentient Bread), plus expenses. Special rates negotiable for unique jobs. And I'm rarely out of work, because when people's lives are on the line and they don't fully understand why, then ninety-nine percent of the time they will pay for someone who can make the problem go away. It's not a bad life, if you know what you're doing, and I've been doing it since I was sixteen.

Hell, it just earned me a possibly million-dollar house for ten grand, and all I had to do for it was stomp all over the face of one impotent dead businessman. Pretty good deal, if you asked me.

Another chill wind blew through the house. My smile got wider.

"Okay, I'll admit it, you're pretty neat. Formless wind and ominous creaking sounds? Classic stuff, Harry, classic stuff. I mean, if this were a horror movie, and I were an unassuming middle class family whose father had _just_ gotten a great new job that would let him buy this house, I bet my tiny blonde daughter with the big expressive eyes and quirky habits that imply she's psychic would be totally creeped out by your antics. So bravo, sir, bravo. It's really a treat to run into someone who likes to play these things old-school, you know? You don't see that much anymore, and I always get a kick out of it. I'll tell you what: I'm gonna go get my exorcism kit, and I'm gonna banish your ass straight to Hell. But I will be sure to do it respectfully. Because I _respect_ you." I said, starting to walk towards the front door, whistling a jaunty tune.

Things began, then, to go horribly wrong, and it was mostly due to the woman who had somehow gotten into the living room.

She was cute, in a crazy sort of way. Mid-twenties maybe, with very smooth pale skin and long, auburn hair that was piled on top of her head in an elegant coif. Nice, slender figure accentuated by an oddly formal-looking peach-colored dress that managed to be both concealing and alluring, hanging off her shoulders provocatively but covering everything below them, up to and including gloves. And very big, brown eyes. Really big brown eyes. Wide as dinner plates with stark, raving, unreasonable horror brown eyes. Very pretty girl, yes. The aura she projected of a terrified rabbit kinda took away from the appeal, but very pretty.

Oooooooh, that was _not good_.

"Hi!" I said. "You really need to absolutely leave, please! Now!"

I tend to overuse exclamation points when I'm in danger of having my soul eaten by a ravenous phantasmal creature. Call it a personality flaw if you want, but I feel emphasis is important in cases like that.

"You... cannot... buy... this... house..." she gasped out, sheer horror making the words come slow and thick.

"Ordinarily that would be true, but I got a really good deal! Well within my finances, made everything okay, may be putting a nice herb garden in the back yard! For spices! I'll make you dinner some time! Please leave _now_ , and do not come back without invitation!" I said. The howling wind was starting to get louder. Shit.

"It killed them... all of them, my whole family..."

"Oh come on, the records said nobody has lived here in forty years! You're _not_ forty. Did they lose your paperwork in the system? Oh! Oh, I know, that stupid jerkass real-estate agency, I bet they wanted to make the house seem more 'antique' or some garbage, like 'nobody has lived in it in soooooo long, what an undiscovered treasure it must be'. Cute redhead _lied_ to me! Oh, that does it. I am officially cutting my offering price when I talk to _them_ again." I complained. I then heard the clanking of chains from upstairs. "Actually, let's solve that mystery later! Let's leave now, together! Or just you, I'm good with either one!"

"My family! Everyone! And everyone else who ever lived here!" The girl shrieked in my face, her nails digging into my arm with strength born from sheer, mindless horror. "This house is _evil!_ "

"I'm sure that was just your imagination! They were probably killed in a series of unfortunate and totally non-sinister accidents, and some are in fact probably alive and enjoying a nice breakfast at one of many fine local eating establishments located near this piece of prime real-estate!" I said. Maybe if I complimented the ghost's taste in housing, it would go easy on me (Even though the location really wasn't that good and the closest eating establishment was at least a 30 minute drive! Take _that,_ you spectral prick! Yeah, I mock your choice in housing, whatcha gonna _do_ about it?). And yes, I was aware that I was still exclaiming an awful lot, but the situation warranted it: out of the corner of my eye, I could just barely see the pipe where the kitchen sink would have been if one was hooked in, and it was spurting blood.

_Oh, shit,_ I thought. _The plumbing is bleeding? Already? It's only been like, five minutes and we're already getting near the actually violent stuff! How is he moving so fast through the manifestations, dammit? He must be cheating, something not in the historical records. Was he a wizard, a demon-worshipper, spent a few years in high school on the Ghost Sprinting Team, what?_

Out loud, I continued trying to steer my excitable new friend out the door. "In fact, why don't we go join them? I will purchase you some delicious pancakes, my treat, if you only walk this way with me and leave this fine and beautifully preserved period home... with exquisite molding!... and never enter it again, ever!"

I placed my hands on the girl's shoulders and began to steer her back to the front door. For some reason she tried to struggle out of my grip, despite the fact she was trying to get me to leave the damn house and now I was offering to leave the damn house with her. "You have to _listen to me!_ Everyone who has ever lived in this place! They _all died_! You have to get out while you still _can_ , before..."

"I _am trying to do that, you little twit, so please stop trying to get away and walk to the door with me!"_ I snapped, perhaps with a bit too much snarl in my voice. In my defense, sunlight was no longer coming in through the windows. I don't mean 'clouds had gone over the sun', I mean 'the sun was still up, the house just wasn't letting it inside'. The spectral omens were piling up like... like... like a thing that piled. _I don't make up good similes when my life is in danger,_ okay? Be more accepting of my personality flaws. It's not like you're perfect.

"You believe me?" The girl said, going almost totally limp. "Oh, thank God, I was so scared, I almost couldn't come in here again, but I couldn't just _leave_ you to die like all the others! Thank God, thank God, thank... no. No, no, no, no no..."

The sudden change in tone, it should be noted, was due to the fact that we had reached the front door, opened it, and found a brick wall where the opening had been. "Okay," I muttered. "High school _and_ college on the Ghost Sprinting Team. Maybe even made it to all-state."

"No... no, no, no... not again, it's happening again..." She said, her voice little more than a muffled squeak.

"Yes, it surely is." I said, resisting the urge to smack her upside the head. "So, kid. What's your name?"

"It's happening again, it is always like this, we cannot escape, nobody ever escapes," She babbled. The sound of a man's laughter echoed through the halls, and I thought I heard metal rasping against stone, as if someone was sharpening a large blade. "He's coming for us! He's _here!_ "

"Name, please?" I asked one more time. When she didn't respond, I slapped her across the face. Hard. "Name. And _chill out_ , we're in enough trouble without you adding to it by giving me a headache."

"L-Lydia," She said, her eyes wide with surprise rather than fear, for once. She rubbed her reddening cheek a bit tenderly. "I a-am Lydia Talman. Why do you-?"

"Thanks," I said. "Now, Lydia. You have very possibly doomed us both, and if you want to get out of this alive, you are going to listen to every word I say, got it? And then, if we do survive, Lydia, I am going to find a good, sturdy piece of lumber, and I am going to _beat you heavily about the head and neck for being a dolt_ , Lydia. Do you understand me, Lydia?"

She nodded a bit dully. I accepted this: I had her listening to me out of sheer numb shock, the natural herd instinct of a frightened animal. The drive to just shut down your mind and follow someone who seemed like he knew what he was doing was a powerful motivator in certain types of people. It wasn't as good as having someone watching my back who really knew what they were doing, but it was a damn sight better than having a panicky idiot running off at random, so I would accept it for the moment.

Besides, the sound of metal scraping against stone was getting closer, and blood was starting to leak out of the cracks in the walls, and my exorcism kit was currently on the other side of a spectrally-manifested barrier that I was willing to bet encircled the whole house. I wasn't exactly spoiled for options at the moment. Herd away, little sheep. Herd away.

"Okay, Lydia. You used to live here, right? I need information, and you're my only source. So before things start getting really bad, and trust me, they are about to, I need to know everything you remember. Are there any rooms that the manifestations were particularly bad in? The attic, the basement? Any place that it felt like the ghost was trying especially hard to keep you away from? Or anywhere it felt like they were less horrible in, maybe, places the ghost didn't like to appear? Anything at all could help."

This felt a bit nasty, making her relieve the days that killed her family, but I was short on options. Normally when hunting active, powerful ghosts, I would have two shotguns loaded with rock-salt to temporarily de-corporealize (Is that a word? Human vocabulary really isn't made for this line of work.) them, several vials of holy water to purify the ground and prevent manifestation, and if possible some kind of improvised flamethrower (Which works on more things than you'd expect! Fire is great for multi-purpose monster extermination. Almost nothing enjoys being burned.). First rule of hunting, always bring more weapons than you think you'll need.

But the problem here was, I hadn't been expecting a real, nasty ghost. I'd been expecting Casper the Impotent Ghost, and I didn't want to risk a real-estate agent questioning why I had enough firepower to outfit a small army. As such all I had on me by way of weapons was a pair of knives hidden under my coat, and a six-shot Beretta .22 in an ankle holster. They were decent; the knives are special-ordered, with as high as silver content as you could get without making them too soft to use, and of course I buy silver bullets in bulk; not the best ordinance for a ghost, but better than nothing. Silver had a decent symbolic purity to it, and it will at least _annoy_ most malevolent entities.

And, in my defense, it _was_ more weaponry than I had thought I would need. Not in my worst nightmares could I have pictured this day going so very off-kilter. Next time? Screw planning, I bring the arsenal. I'll tell the house lady I'm a hunting enthusiast, it's only a semi-lie.

Now, it's important to state, this was _not_ the worst situation I've ever been in. Remind me to tell you about the time I killed a troll with an exacto-knife and a broom; far and away the worst vacation I've ever taken. Now, though, I was not confident in my ability to defend myself if things went violent.

The walls were bleeding. A lot. I heard a scratching inside them too, as of something with claws skittering around. Upstairs, something that sounded like a wasp the size of a bus began buzzing furiously.

Things were gonna go violent. I _really_ needed info.

"I... I..." she stammered. "It was so long ago, I don't... I've tried so _hard_ to forget..."

"I know it's hard, but I need you to think, please." Footsteps. Getting closer. Damn, damn, dammity damn. "And hurry, if you don't mind." I slipped a hand into my coat and put a knife in my hand. At least if something started like, flying at me, I could maybe swat it away.

"It didn't like you being anywhere. It wanted to hurt you no matter what. But most of the time it moved slowly. Made tiny cuts. So you wouldn't die quickly, so it could keep playing. Yes, yes it likes to play. But it stopped playing when you tried to go into the room past the kitchen. The small pantry, where we kept the spices and dried goods. I don't know why, I just know that my husband tried to run that way, after the fear finally took him and he panicked, fled from my daughter and I. I saw him go, and..." She stopped, a sob wracking her body. "... so many knives. So, so many knives."

I nodded. "Kitchen. Got it." Dammit all, we had just _been_ there, and I'd tried to drag Lydia out the front door! Now it was three, four rooms away, which might as well have been five miles if we had an angry ghost on our case the whole time. But still, I thought we probably had some time. We needed to get to the kitchen, and see what Harry didn't want us to see, and since he hadn't yet started trying to actively _kill_ us we probably had at least a few minutes.

Sometimes it hurts my faith in a fair and just universe that I am so often so very wrong when I try to be optimistic.

A boot, sopping wet with blood, slammed down in a nearby doorway. The man wearing it did not step through fully. After all, he wasn't here to be seen. He was here to imply, to build fear, to let our imaginations see _just_ enough to make them run away in a blind panic. Something else rounded the corner, at roughly the height to imply whoever was holding it was at least eight feet tall; a long, rusted sickle that scraped idly across the wooden door frame, making a sound like a cat being tortured.

Shit. He'd _manifested_. Already. Ten minutes from Lydia arriving to the ghost being powerful enough to take physical form? Forget all-state, this guy had been in the frickin' Ghost _Olympics_. I had never heard of one that could build power so quickly, even with a source of emotional energy as freely available as Lyd, here.

"Well, this is gonna suck." I said.

" _Trespassers_ _,_ " said a deep, guttural masculine voice that did not appear to be emanating from the figure still partially hidden in the next room. It rebounded off the walls, full of righteous fury and sounding a bit like the speaker was gargling with gravel. _"_ **Hoodlums, vandals, common thieves! Come onto my land, will you? Come into my home? You'll pay. You'll pay. You'll pay. You'll** _pay_ **!** "

The hook and boot simply vanished, and the world went totally silent for several long seconds.

"I don't suppose he just wanted to chat, and he isn't coming back?" I asked nobody in particular. "Maybe stopped for lunch. Lots of people like lunch."

Lydia, through her blind terror, turned to look at me. "Are... are you quite sane?" She asked.

"Well, that was rude of you. It's _possible_ he just left." I said, my feelings just a tiny bit hurt. Really, that had been uncalled for, I hadn't done anything really crazy yet.

And then things got a bit weird.

The blood pouring from the walls had been a trickle; it now suddenly and without much warning (which I felt was rude) a flood; cold, sticky, nauseating liquid up to our ankles and rising rapidly. The thick, coppery scent of it assaulted my nostrils; I'm used to the smell of blood, but not usually to this _extreme_ , so thick it was almost more smothering than the liquid. This alone would have been bad, though also, I had to admit, still pretty cool. I had to give Harry credit, he had a flair for old-school drama. Blood and moans and rusty hooks. Classic stuff! But my admiration was tempered by the fact that the rising liquid also featured a disturbing number of rippling contrails beginning to move toward us. So not only was there blood up to my fucking shins _,_ something I couldn't clearly see was _swimming_ in it. Lots and lots of little somethings.

Okay, so the ghost had in fact not gone to get lunch. But I maintain that the possibility had, at the time, existed. We didn't know for sure, and someone had to venture a theory. Science is important!

"Lydia?" I said, grabbing her hand. "Run."

This was easier said than done. The liquid around our legs was knee-high before we'd made it five feet, and it wasn't like running in water; nasty, viscous stuff, somewhere between tar and molasses in consistency. And then the pain started, of course... each time a ripple of something tiny and fast and _sharp_ reached me through the red pool, there was a bite, like being prodded by a razor. Each painful, sloshing step brought on half-a-dozen tiny bites.

Not bad. Just barely breaking my skin through the jeans. Lydia had been right, Harry _did_ like to play; this wasn't a trap to kill anyone. This was designed to hold them still and _hurt_ them. Sap strength, destroy will to fight back, and just inflict a million tiny, pointless little agonies for no reason other than sick amusement. _Good. Gives me time to think, time to plan, time to run. Every step brings me closer to a plan, focus on that. I just need to keep moving and hope that- ouch!_ I thought, my mind kind of side-tracked by the sudden stabbing pain. Again. _Douchebag, I will seriously hit you in the ghost-face for this. My pants are ruined, and I like these pants!_

Every step brings me closer to new pants. Focus on that.

Everyone needs to have their priorities.

The blood, disturbingly enough, vanished almost literally as soon as we finally managed to slog out of the room. It still clung to me, of course, making every movement cold and sticky and nasty, which didn't help the fact that I already had to drag a hundred-thirty (Heyyyyyy, she was in pretty good shape if I was judging her weight right!) pounds of mindlessly terrified dead weight in a deeply impractical dress behind me.

"Huh." I said. "Well, that sucked, but it wasn't the worst thing ever. Looks like he isn't planning to drown us, good, never been a fan of drowning. Still, wonder why the whole pool just vanished? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

The floorboards shattered, and what appeared to be a rotting, blood-covered hand burst from beneath them to clamp onto my ankle.

"Oooooooooh, so it's like, every room has something different in it." I said, using my powers of logic. "Well, I guess the variety stops us getting bored? And it's kinda cool, like a game show, only with death."

Lydia screamed. This was... I dunno, maybe she thought it was helpful. I can't speak for her. She just seemed kinda skittish in general.

Oh, well. The hand clamped around my ankle felt solid enough, what with the grip like a fucking vise and the nails that I was pretty sure would be drawing blood if I didn't follow the basic and essential monster-hunting strategy of "Wear thick boots." And, it just so happened that I had a knife! When in doubt, try stabbing. Works well on a surprising number of things. I let go of Lydia's hand, bent down to hack away at my new ankle accessory (I was thinking of naming him Roger), and was treated to the sight of several more seemingly disembodied, very much rotting limbs bursting from the floor around the room.

I rolled my eyes as I stabbed the arm around my ankle a few times until it let go. This was probably more scary to someone who had never dealt with _whole_ zombies before. Just the arms didn't have the same impact, y'know? Plus, unless this house was built on a burial ground, they weren't even real zombie arms, just some kind of ectoplasmic manifestation. I would have had to cut off the whole wrist to make a real zombie let go, while this sissy imitation gave up after a few jabs with a silver-plated dagger. Tenacious bugger, your basic zombie, very keen on brains.

Granted, there were a lot of these things, so I guess I could forgive a lack of tenacity.

"Um." I said. "There really doesn't seem to be a path. Do you remember how you got through this last time, Lyd?"

"I turned back." She whimpered.

"Oh, goody. Well, _screw that_ , I am not changing my plans just because some spooky hands say so." I said. "Okay! Count of three, we run through it."

" _What?_ "

"Did I stutter? We are totally going to run through that bunch of zombie arms."

"Are you _quite_ sane, sir?"

"I am super sane! This will work, I'm seriously like 65% sure."

"That is _not_ very suEEEEEEK!" She said, as I started running without actually counting to three and grabbed her hand while I did.

Spoiler Alert: Sometimes I am a huge, _huge_ jerk. But I swear, I always do it for a good reason. Almost always. Usually. Sometimes.

Secondary spoiler alert: Sometimes the 'good reason' is that I find it funny.

Tertiary spoiler alert: That is almost always the 'good reason'.

But hey! This was probably going to work. You saw the percentage, right? That's more than a one-in-two chance of success! That's pretty good, right. Good solid plan, running.

_Lydia is going to get dragged to the ground and pulled to death by zombie ghosts, and you're probably gonna join her. This is really, really stupid._ Said the part of my brain that exists solely to depress me. I threw a rude thought in its direction and kept running, cold, jagged talons tearing at my poor pants. They were good, solid pants that had done nothing to deserve being shredded by blood-dwelling spirit beasts, or to be rent by spectral hands.

Also? This hurt. Quite a bit. The first hand had clamped onto my boot, and further on the boot that was laced up over my quite thick and well-secured ankle holster. The rest of them weren't getting near as firm a grip, but many of them were also impacting on denim. They had really, really sharp nails, and they were very cold and strong as _Hell_. It was a bad experience. I had to give props to Harry, he ran a solid ghost-house. Maybe a tad bit more old-fashioned than I would have pulled, blood and disembodied limbs and ghastly voices, but it did its job. If I had been a normal, inexperienced sort who had never run into this kind of situation before, I would have been a useless, gibbering wreck by now.

Like Lydia. Who seriously would _not stop shrieking._ Something is wrong when you are surrounded by the wails of a damned soul, and yet the most annoying sound is coming from the person you're supposed to be saving. Still, and I'll give her this; girl could run. She was clinging on to my hand just as tightly as ever, and she was making the same sprint I was, through the same obstacles. In a dress! Even if she did have raw terror propelling her along, that was a Hell of a feat. She was a screamer, and yeah, it was all her fault I was in this situation, but at least when presented with something terrible, she had the presence of mind to run away from it, and latch onto someone who knew what he was doing.

... well, at least I _looked_ like I knew what I was doing.

The point was, she might have been in a blind panic, but she was doing the smartest thing she could have in this situation despite her obvious terror. Girl wasn't an idiot, whatever you might say about her. And she'd come out to this house despite being clearly horrified of stepping through the door, all to help a complete stranger. Wasn't _her_ fault she'd gotten the opposite effect.

Well, mostly not her fault.

Totally her fault.

She was a smart, tough girl, and I respected her quite a lot after seeing even this much of her. And if we both survived this, I really _was_ going to beat her face in. She had it coming! Just, y'know, in a respectful way. Shut up, it's logic.

I stomped down onto a particularly persistent hand which I was pretty sure had been following me across the room based on a ring it was wearing (Eeesh, were these the limbs of the people the ghost had killed while he haunted the house? Yuck.). "Okay, on my word, we dive and roll!"

"I do not believe I can do that, actu-" She said.

Oh, silly girl, she thought I was asking!

"And _dive!_ " I said, yanking her forward, throwing an arm around her waist, and springing off the Doom Hand to give our leap some extra 'oomph'.

We flew. We hit. We rolled... well, I rolled, and Lydia kinda tumbled, while still shrieking. She _never stopped_. She was like a well-dressed noisemaker.

"Hee, hee, hee, you see _that,_ Lyd? God, we rock! We are the Grand High Lords of Awesome! Two rooms down, and we are kicking some ghostly ass, baby! He hasn't even come _close_ to inflicting mortal terror on u-" I began as we came to a stop in the next room over. I stopped short when I saw that Lydia was whiter than a sheet, and maybe telling her how scared she wasn't was a bit of a misnomer. "Well, okay, one of us is scared, but you're still doing really well! And... oddly clean! Is this dress soaked in scotch-guard or something, because it is weirdly stain resistant. I'm sure that fabric does not work that way."

"I... I... cannot... this is..." She whimpered, her eyes filling with tears. "It's exactly like the last time! They all died, and all I could do was run, and run, and never escape!"

"Hey! _Hey!_ " I snapped, shaking her. "You got out alive once, and you will again. You have me here, and I am oddly good at living through things. And you've lived through this once before, and come on, if you can live through a thing once you can do it twice! It's easy-squeezy!"

"I... I... I..." She sniffled, her eyes wide with panic and red with something that might have been shame and might have been pain.

"Good. Good person." I said, patting her on the head. "That's a good girl."

"I am not a dog, sir." She whispered.

_True, but treating you like one confused and annoyed you, which made it just a lil' bit harder for you to panic. Hee, hee, hee._ I thought. Out loud I said, "Of course you're not. Goooooood girl! Smart girl, knowing such big things!"

"Are you _quite_ sane, sir...?" Lydia asked.

"At the moment, no. Running on too much adrenaline, y'know?" I replied with a manic grin. "But we should keep moving. Lots of danger about... not that you should fall into gibbering terror again! You shouldn't! Look on the very bright side: we only have two rooms to go, and he isn't even trying to _really_ kill us yet!"

Then, because the universe loves proving me wrong, the wall exploded and something giant and fur-covered and horrible burst through it.

It was, I couldn't help but notice, the wall between this room and the main hall we had started our little mad dash from, which I felt was kind of cheating since, after all, we had _just been in there_ and there had not been, to my memory, something that looked like what you would get if a wild boar and a grizzly bear had a baby together and that baby grew up in the deepest pits of Hell. So how had it come in from over there? Stupid ghost-physics.

The boar... bear... thing narrowed beady red eyes at me. Long lines of drool ran down from its mouth to the floor, each of them tinged in red, and it dug disturbingly sharp hooves into the floor in preparation to charge.

Lydia made a kind of plaintive whimpering sound, like you'd expect from a frightened dachshund.

"Okay, _now_ he's trying to kill us." I admitted. "I have two knives and six very small bullets. That thing has a half-ton of evil. We should now run."

Unfortunately, Porky had the same idea, because he started running too, with his head down and tusks in my direction and...

I pushed Lydia, who made her usual squeak, and threw myself the other direction. I've dealt with things that big before... granted, I usually had a high-powered rifle of some kind and preferably some silver-lined bear traps set up around the area, maybe a few land mines if they were in the budget this month and my supplier came through. But even if I was cursing my general lack of prep time, I still know how to handle the big ones. They are big and they are scary, but they also do not turn on a dime. All that mass has a downside, and once they get moving in a certain direction they have a rough time changing targets. Its current target was the spot where we were standing, and so the best thing we could do was to _not be there_ anymore.

As planned, big ugly went right between us.

Not as planned, rather than skidding into the wall or even just _stopping_ , it did a weird thing where it kind of... it's hard to put into words, but it was like the whole thing got suddenly blurry, there was a sound like 'plonk', and then it was just sort of facing right at me without even turning. And it hadn't lost a bit of momentum.

_Cheater,_ I thought, just before impact. I was still in mid-dodge, so it only clipped me, but seriously, ouch. Have you ever been hit by something ten times your size? Even a little hit doesn't exactly feel peachy keen. I didn't hear a rib break, so that was good, but I _felt_ like every bone in my body had been shattered by a wrecking ball.

I went flying like something far more dignified than a rag-doll, I swear, and sprawled with the sort of grace and gravity you don't often see these days anymore, which I think is a shame. All told, it was a highly elegant and poised flight across the room, and I challenge anyone to do better. That said, I wasn't _too_ happy with it since I had lost my knife and the second one was in a sheathe strapped across my back, a.k.a. 'Currently underneath me'. I might be able to get to my gun before Big Pig got charging again... the bullets were silver, generally the best metal to be using on a surprising number of things, but I only had a few of them and it wasn't a large caliber weapon. Honestly, with the ordinance I had available, I might as well have tried browbeating him into submission with a severe scolding. It would be more likely to have a lasting impact.

"You," I said, "Are just _cheap_."

The creature gave its counter-argument, which was to just charge again. Big furry jerk.

"I want you to know that all this is making it very difficult to kill you!" I said, rolling to one side. I really had no other options, here, so I had to hope Demon Pumba played by the rules of the rest of the house and wouldn't leave this room. Next up was the dining room, and then through it, I could just make out the island where a kitchen counter-top had once been before rotting away.

It was a straight shot.

And I had a propulsion source. A big, fast, angry one that was almost on top of me, so I had to time this _perfectly_ or I was gonna be a smear on the floor.

I rolled to one side, held my feet up flat, and let the monster charge past me. As before, it redirected its charge by doing that weird, creepy blurry thing that left it instantly facing a new direction without turning. Normally, I would have found this to be kind of cool but horribly unfair; this time, I was counting on it. I planted my feet into the charging creature, and just as it swung its head to dislodge me I _kicked_ off and-

Oh, well, it worked. That's the important part, right? You don't need to know the details, or the sound I made while I was flying through the air. It wasn't a girlish sound, I can tell you _that_ much. Didn't scream like a girl. And I did _not_ flail. I flew gracefully, like a falcon.

As I finished my frantic tumble... I mean, graceful eagle-like stoic flight, I rubbed my head. Ow. Oh, ow. I was gonna have bruises on my bruises tomorrow, and that was a fact. But I had pulled it off; skipped a room, even! I was in the kitchen, and now I just needed to find out _what_ about this room had goaded Stanfield into getting serious on Lydia's family when she had lived here, before he got serious on _me_ and I ended up without my sk-

Oh. I'd forgotten Lydia. Oops?

I got to my feet as quickly as adrenaline would allow, ready to sprint back through whatever was in the dining room and straight back to my friend the Hell-pig... and almost ran right into the girl in question, staring blankly into space.

"Gah!" I said, because when something like that happens, you really cannot think of anything else to say. Sometimes a nice 'Gah' is the most you're able to get out on short notice.

"How did you- when did you- I had to jump off a giant pig, and you just _walked_ , or-" I said. I was finding it kind of hard to finish a sentence through the confusion and also a tiny bit of rage that apparently I'd secretly been hanging out with an Olympic sprinter and she hadn't mentioned it until now.

She replied very softly. "We're going to die."

I rolled my eyes. "Has anyone ever told you that you are a total Negative Nancy? I'll have you know that this is not the worst situation I've ever been in. Not even the worst ghost! I mean, sure he's got a lot of raw muscle, but he's not _creative_. Remind me to tell you about this one haunted house that had the bathroom full of spiders that screamed at you, _that_ was crazy. Harry? He's strictly an amateur."

Lydia raised a shaking hand and pointed behind me.

I winced, and slowly turned around.

I hadn't gotten a really good _look_ at this thing before. It hadn't come into the room. But I recognized the hook, a nasty, jagged butcher's tool that had scraped along the doorway. And aside from the fact that it was _huge_ , that was the main defining quality. It was human shaped, but no flesh was visible... thick leather gloves, a butcher's apron over loose-hanging leather wraps, a mask that looked more like a burlap sack than anything intended to be worn over the head. The damn thing was at least eight feet tall, and stocky to match it; hard to tell if it was supposed to be fat or muscle through the outfit covering it. The whole thing, every inch, dripped blood; the scent of it was somehow stronger than the whole roomful from the main hall had been, despite the fact it wasn't one-thousandth the amount of liquid.

"On the other hand," I said, "he's a _dedicated_ amateur."

" **Trespassers** _,"_ hissed that voice from the main hall. It wasn't centered on the figure in the center of the room; it wasn't centered on anything. It bounced up and down the halls, reverberated from every surface. " **Thieves. Defilers. In my home,** _my_ **place! I'll take a** _gallon_ **of your blood for every step you've taken into my house, cut a** _pound_ **of flesh from you for every scratch on my possessions! You'll die, you'll die** _screaming_ **and-"**

"Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, you're evilly evil, we _get it,_ " I said. There was only one door out of this room, other than the one we'd come in through. Hook Harry was between it and us. This was gonna suck.

I reached behind myself, under my shirt, and slipped my remaining knife into my hand. "Lyd, when I say, make a break for the closet. Try to get inside, work out what he doesn't want us doing in there. I got this."

Lydia just made a whimpering sound and sank to her knees.

_Oh you horrible woman do not give up on me now!_ I thought. I smacked her again, just a little tap to make her notice me. "Did you hear me?"

She wrapped her arms around herself, and began to rock back and forth. And Hooks McLeather was moving very meaningfully in my direction.

Well.

I wish I could put this in a way that makes me sound brave and awesome. But the fact of the matter was that in my mind, one of us getting out of this alive was better than nothing. And if she wasn't gonna run, it wasn't gonna be her.

There's a reason I charge money for doing this sort of thing normally. I'm not a hero by nature.

I let go of Lydia and ran for it. Maybe if I got the ghost focused on me again she would make a break for it... I doubted it, but it was a nice thought.

Not that I felt guilty or anything.

Anyway! This was Harry's go-to apparition, the one he took on himself when he was done playing around. I needed to be careful; it was big, so it was safe to assume it was also strong as an ox. Hopefully it didn't have speed to match with all that bulk; it wasn't walking terribly quickly, so I felt pretty safe dodging around the side of i-

The hook came slicing up from a prone position so fast I could barely see it. Only the fact that I had my knife already in-hand and between myself and the manifestation let me get a guard up in time. The rusted metal of the meathook screeched, striking up oddly bright sparks against the silver-lined steel of my knife.

Okay, data acquired! He didn't walk fast because he was apparently in no big hurry, but that didn't mean he couldn't move quickly in a pinch! Useful to know.

Also, he really _was_ strong, yikes. Blocking his strike felt a little bit like being punched in the arms by God. Luckily, I've been in enough knife fights with things bigger than myself to know how to handle it.

First rule: Do not be stabbed to death! That rule actually applies to every sort of fight.

Second rule: Standing toe-to-toe and trading shots evenly with a guy who is bigger than you is a stupid way to fight.

I slid my knife down his weapon and slashed it across his wrist, where the tendons would have been in a human being; I wasn't expecting to cripple him, but it would at least annoy him and that was about the best I could manage at short notice. I then jumped backwards and to the left. He swung again and, rather than try to block it, I used his speed against him; dodging to the side and swatting at his weapon as it passed me, I overbalanced him and sent him stumbling. I also, though I wasn't _obvious_ about it, took another small step left.

I wanted him swinging wildly, in frustration, and not noticing the tiny little fact that I wasn't exactly fighting him.

I smiled. _Two advantages. First, I haven't brought any of my stuff in here yet. The house is a derelict, and you don't have any handy knives or broken glass to throw around. You have to make all your weapons yourself, and your imagination isn't all that dynamic. You tend to stick to one approach at a time, even if it isn't working._

Second, you may be strong and fast, but I've seen enough amateurs to know you've never been in a real fight, jackass. You swing wildly, you haven't got the footwork down, you aim where I am and not where I will be.

You haven't noticed I'm maneuvering you.

The door I needed to get to was now to directly on my left side, and the thing trying to stop me from getting there was in front of me swinging like a doofus. In other words... not between me and the door anymore.

I swear I don't normally solve my problems by running away this often. You're seeing me on an off-day. But yes, I waited for him to take another of his fast but big and stupidly overblown swings... and made a break for it.

The hook whirred past my head, so close I felt the breeze on my ear, but he was too late. It was only a few feet now, and he was too bulky to correct himself before I got where I needed to be. I slammed open the door, ran in and...

It was just a closet! There was nothing but empty shelves! I was gonna die!

"Oh, come on! He wouldn't have been trying to keep us out of nothing, right?" I snapped to an uncaring universe. I was just about to go back into the kitchen and play another round of dodge-the-hook just for the right to smack Lydia in the face for telling me to go to the wrong room, when I saw something... kinda weird.

There was a lot of dust in the house. It was old, it was unused, it wasn't weird. But dust doesn't just move on its own, right? There needs to be an air current, a person disturbing it, _something_. So... how come the rear wall of the small pantry, the dust wasn't as thick as it was along the side walls?

As if there was some kind of air current there?

I didn't halt my run and slammed into the wall, flattening my palms against it and frantically sliding sliding it as hard as I could to the right. There were no handles to pull out, it didn't give when pushed on, it _had_ to be a sliding door, and it had to slide to the right, mostly because if it slid to the left or was stuck on something, I was gonna die...

The wall, a hidden door after all, started to move. Too slow.

Harry took his step into the closet; it was too small for him to raise his weapon over his head, but I strongly suspected he wouldn't be terribly inconvenienced by this, given that there was also nowhere to run from him. The door was sliding slowly. It wouldn't give quickly enough.

_Dammit, we were so close..._ I thought. As last thoughts go, it wasn't terribly original, I'm sure. I kept working at the door, despite realizing how futile it was. Given how big Harry was, I was not gonna get past him in this enclosed space, and if I tried to fight him head-on, it would end with me a smear on the floor. Better to give it a shot and die trying, right? Even though there was a ghostly killer thing a foot away from me reaching out with its bloody hand to disembowel me that didn't mean there was no hope. Okay, yes, that's exactly what it meant, but still.

A few seconds passed, the door slipped open another few inches. I was notably still emboweled, and didn't really know why.

The door slid another inch. Okay, why had he not killed me yet? I was very killable, the jerk. Was I not good enough for him all of a sudden? After all the trouble I'd caused him, all the things I'd survived! I had put a lot of effort into this, said some very disparaging things about the quality of his ghostliness, and he was giving up at the last second? That dick.

I hazarded a look behind me, curiosity overpowering common sense. The scene I saw was so absolutely surreal that I almost lost my grip on the hidden door.

Lydia. Little cowardly, too-scared-to-run-away Lydia, was standing between me and Harry, arms outstretched as if her five-foot-nothing frame could somehow repel a three-hundred pound ghost man.

And it was _working_. He seemed bizarrely hesitant to do anything. He wasn't moving forward, taking a swing at her, no actions of any sort. Maybe he was just as confused as I was, because honestly, I almost missed the 'click' that signified the door cracking through whatever was holding it shut. It slid so hard into the wall that I didn't so much walk into the hidden room as trip into it face first, my support suddenly not supporting me anymore.

This adventure was not allowing me a great deal of dignity. Just like, in general.

I scrambled to my feet, spitting out dust that was probably older than I was, and grabbed the back of Lydia's dress. I yanked, and thankfully the dress held; I ended up with a woman in my arms and a ghost on the other side of an easily-closed door, not a dress in my hands and a woman in her underwear facing down a killer phantom.

I slammed the hidden door shut, the frustrated screams of Mr. Stanfield echoing through the room outside, but oddly not reaching the hidden little closet.

"Well!" I said. "That was fun. Good exercise, right Lyd?"

Lydia just kind of desperately panted, apparently not able to get out real-people words right this moment. She _had_ almost gotten me killed, but she had also just saved my life, so I was willing to be patient. I let her catch her breath while I looked around.

We had come to rest in a second closet, hidden behind the pantry by that annoyingly sticky fake wall. It was smaller than the main storage section, but similarly appointed: a bare room with wooden shelving covering the walls. The major difference was that this room wasn't on any of the blueprints, and _these_ shelves were not only not empty, they were covered in some very, very... well, they were weird.

"Huh," I said. A very eloquent soul, am I. "Well, didn't see this coming."

Lydia's eyes were wide in stark, raving terror. I started to wonder if she _had_ any other expressions. "It... it was just like... my family, it was just like when...!"

"Hey! Hey! Breathe deep, okay? Breathe nice and deep. You were right about the room near the kitchen, okay? It didn't follow us in here, we can rest here for at least a little while, so you can chill." I said. "You did good, sweetie. Remembering this place, I mean. Sometimes, ghosts won't enter certain places. The specific spot where they died is a popular one, but another big one is a room that had special significance to their lives, a place filled with reminders that they're afraid to risk damaging. I think that's what we have here."

"It won't follow? We are safe?" She asked, her frantic breathing slowing just a bit.

"He'll come in here eventually. Before his powers start to wane, he'll try to drive us out by force. But as long as he has energy to burn, he won't risk it." I said. "So we're not exactly safe, but we have a bit of time to rest, hopefully look around to find out what is so special about this room, and if that information can be used against our buddy out there."

I rifled through the shelves, opening a few stray bottles and carefully sniffing at the contents, checking inside a few of the boxes, and flipping through what appeared to be old and mostly worn out photo albums and journals. The trend was a bit, erm, off-putting. Yes, that was a good word for it.

"Offhand?" I began. "I'd say that this place was very dear to his heart, and that heart was black as pitch and full of maggots. Yes, it really does look like this was where he, yuck, stored his toys."

Lydia blinked in confusion. "Your meaning eludes me, I'm afraid. I see only bottles, and some old boxes."

"Not everyone plays Pin the Tail on the Donkey." I said, looking around the closet. "For instance, take a look at what the good Mr. Stanfield out there was storing in all those bottles: A lot of it is too worn to read, but I can make some labels. Formaldehyde, arsenic, chloroform... not exactly the sort of stuff a well-adjusted mind keeps in the pantry. And as for those boxes, well, the contents are even creepier, if that's possible. For example, let's look in this one and oh my, what an oddly large variety of _knives_ our friend owned. And yes, there we go: his favorite hook! So dear to his heart he made a ghostly copy of it just to keep it close. See what I told you? Sentimental value, all over the place. He sure did keep his toys here, and off-hand, I'mma say our ghoulie-ghostie buddy outside had kind of _specialized_ tastes in his playtime. The kind of game the other person only plays once, for instance."

"He... he..." the girl stammered, her eyes somehow widening even further. Geez, were they gonna fall out of her head? I mean, I had _never_ seen a human person with eyes that did that, but until today I'd also never seen the lovechild of every masked movie killer ever roaring down a hallway at me brandishing a rusty hook. It was a day of firsts, is my point.

Errantly, I took a box off the upper shelves and opened it. Part of me wished I hadn't, as there was, erm, a noticeable increase in the odor upon breaking the seal. Sadly, I'm cursed with a boundless curiosity that doesn't always lead me into good things. And I had to admit, if nothing else, the contents of the box gave me something that might calm my jumpy little sidekick down a bit.

"Huh. Well, if it makes you feel better, it looks like you weren't his type," I said, rifling through several black-and-white photos of very young, very pretty, very dead women, each wrapped in wax paper with a lock of what may have once been hair and was now mostly dust and rot. "It's hard to be sure with how old these are, but from what I can make out, Harry apparently really preferred blondes."

Somehow, Lydia didn't look terribly calmed by this. I swear, there is just _no_ satisfying some people, you know?

"You... you mean he really was a..." She began.

"Serial killer? Oh, yes. Apparently, the rumors of his sordid personal affairs were greatly _understated,_ if anything. People used to say he killed anyone who trespassed on his property... turns out you didn't even have to do that much. But hey, in a way, that's a good thing!" I said. A master of positive thinking, I am.

"I fail to understand your joy!" Lydia snapped. Sadly, my knack for keeping a bright and cheery attitude was not one shared by my associate. There really _is_ just no pleasing some people, I swear.

"Well, admittedly, it's mostly good in the sense that this means I don't have to worry about his feelings, the prick. The more of a douche he turns out to have been in life, the more joy I'm gonna get from kicking his undead ass," I replied cheerfully. "So that's a nice weight off my shoulders. Morally speaking."

Lydia was silent for the better part of a minute. Finally, she said, very slowly and deliberately, "Good sir?"

"Yes, Lyd?" I asked. It's good to seek knowledge!

"Does this information, in any way at all, help _to keep us alive_?" Lydia asked. With each word, her voice grew higher in pitch, until by the end I was starting to worry that she'd shatter the bottles on the shelves. And hey, it turned out she _could_ have another expression besides fear. Granted, 'disbelieving annoyance' wasn't a huge improvement to me. But still, good for her! I always knew she could do it.

"Not in the strictest sense, no." I admitted. "But that's what planning is for, right? And there's no such thing as bad knowledge, Lyd. It might not be useful to know he's a relentless thrill-killer, but it doesn't hurt either, right? We were already running from him anyway, it's not like we're all that inconvenienced by the fact he wants to kill us. We _knew_ he wanted to kill us."

"... Are you quite sane?" Lydia asked.

I ignored her. "But anyway, back to planning. You mind if I think out loud?"

"I suspect you would not listen if I asked you not to."

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhh, you're disrupting the creative process," I said. "Okay, so here's what I got from that whole display out there, all the blood and bugs and the jerk with the hook. This ghost is... weird."

Lydia's mouth opened and closed several times, but no words came out. I assumed her to be struck silent by my genius, and paid it no mind. It's so hard to be so constantly brilliant, you know? I so rarely find anyone I can talk to.

"I mean, all the junk he does, that's normal ghost stuff. But I can't work out how he's pulling it all _off_. He should still be... re-arranging plates and rattling windows, not flooding the house and _definitely_ not taking physical form! There is just no way he should be so fucking _strong,_ not this soon." I said. "You're part of it, I know that, but all of it? You have a lot of unreasoning terror going on, sure, and that's like candy mixed with rocket fuel to a ghost.... Which in retrospect, sounds both disgusting and unhealthy, so maybe I should think of a better metaphor for i-"

"Focus, sir!" Lydia snapped.

"-right, sorry! Focusing now. Okay, my _point_ was that you're only one person and you haven't been here that long. He should be capable of basic telekinesis, poltergeisty garbage at best. Not... not _that!_ Reality warping, manifesting avatars, making a mess of my new kitchen? _And it is mine now, you prick, I have already made the arrangements! I shall find a way to bill those cupboards to your ghost-account and you will pay me for them!"_ I said, raising my voice so Harry could hear me.

"Are you _quite_ sane, sir?" Lydia asked me once again, confused irritation rapidly beginning to replace fear as her default expression.

"I personally like to think that I'm so sane I looped back around to just a little bit crazy," I said. "I mean, come on. You have to be a little bit crazy to actually go around doing this sort of thing on a regular basis, right? But you have to be sane to do mathematics, and I totally can do that. It's how I work out how much I'm paid for it!"

Lydia did that thing where she opened her mouth without saying words. It made her look a little bit like a fish.

"What?" I asked.

"So... we are going to die here, then," Lydia said.

"That hurts, Lyd. It does. Your lack of faith hurts me, right in my soul. Why you gotta hurt my soul?" I asked. "This is just getting old. I got Harry out there trying to hurt my body, and I got you in here trying to hurt my soul, and the universe in general seems to be doing its very best to hurt my mind. Is this 'Hurt Eric' day? Because nobody told me it was, and I think I deserve warning."

"We are going to die. Die horribly. I have entrusted myself to the protection of a lunatic child." Lydia moaned.

" _Hey!_ I'm thirty," I said. I then stuck my tongue out at her, because I like to stay young at heart, you know? "Besides, of the two of us, only _one_ is giving the ghost limitless fear-based superpower, and it isn't me. Hint. _Hint_."

Lydia looked like she was somewhere in between crying and slapping me, and settled for just sitting down on the floor in a huff, her skirts billowing around her.

Wait a sec.

Billowing?

I looked down at my own clothes, which were just now beginning to go from 'wet and sticky' to 'dry and sticky' after the whole mess with the bloody entrance hall. And yet, Lydia looked...

"Hey, Lydia," I said. "I need to talk to you about your time living here again. One more time. Is that okay?"

"I told you... it's been so long, and I've tried so _hard_ to forget," She murmured. "I don't know how much else I can remember. I can try, but... it's so dark. So confusing. Even what I can remember does not always make sense to me."

"Well, that's okay. I really need to know about one particular event," I said, as gently as I could. I'm normally not much for preserving people's feelings, but in this case, the poor thing was really gonna need some help to deal. Therapy was the order of the day. I tried to think of a gentle way to break the news to her, but honestly, beating around the bush would just waste time. I needed to get this out in the open, and the direct approach was really my only option. "Lydia, I'm not gonna lie. Recalling this is going to hurt you. A lot. But I honestly think it is the only way I have to get out of being horribly killed, and the only way that _you_ have of getting out of something far worse."

I took a deep breath and asked, "Do you think you could remember how you died?"

Oh, hey. Her eyes really _could_ still get wider. Who knew? The last thing we needed was her jumping back into blind hysterics, though, so I reached out a hand for her shoulder in as calming a gesture as I could manage under the circumstances.

"Please, try not to panic," I said. "At the moment, it's just a theory, and I admit it doesn't make 100% sense just yet, but it's gaining more ground in my head than I like to admit. So try to stay calm, and we'll just take some time and look at the evidence together, okay?"

"There is no _evidence_ of such insanity!" she snapped. "I am most certainly not..."

"How did you get into this house, Lydia?" I asked. "Today, I mean. You weren't here when I arrived. At the time, I was in too much of a rush to think about it, but I didn't hear you open the door, didn't hear your car pull up. You were here to warn me about something, so why bother being stealthy? Why not knock on the door, try to lure me outside? Because you didn't come in through the door. You manifested. Appeared from nothingness and took on a physical form already inside the house, just like our friend with the hook."

"No! No, I... I came to warn you. I knew that you were moving into the house, and I had to warn you. I must have entered quietly, that's all. To avoid frightening you _._ " She said.

"Interesting choice of words. 'I must have' entered quietly. Because you don't remember doing it, do you? It's not just the time you lived here you can't recall easily, is it? Your memory is full of holes. Now, is that because you're a trauma victim whose mind isn't coping well, or because there have been large stretches of time, decades even, where there was simply nothing for you to possibly remember?"

"I... of course I..."

"And then there's the physical evidence before our very eyes." I continued. "Your clothes are oddly formal for this day and age, and especially for this situation. A full dress to go to an old house out in the country? Most women would throw on jeans and a t-shirt, not a gown. Especially not a gown like that, which is very clearly not in any current fashion _I've_ ever heard of. And I can't help but notice that despite the fact we've had a house full of crazy trying to kill us for the last twenty minutes, that dress isn't even wrinkled. No stains, no tears in the fabric, not even wet after we took what amounted to an impromptu blood-bath. My hair looks like I've been through a heavyweight boxing match, but yours isn't even out of place. You don't have any wounds after we went through the fucking gauntlet out there, not even a _scratch_. In what world does any of that make sense?" I pressed.

"I... you're a grown man. Strong. Armed. The monster sees you as the greater threat, of course, and he chose to focus his efforts in that direction, clearly."

"Disregarding the fact that this does absolutely _nothing_ to explain the whole thing with how I am covered in blood after swimming in blood, and you are not," I said, just the tiniest bit impatiently. "you do have a point. He definitely did focus his efforts on me. No question there."

"There! You see, it, the explanation makes perfect sense..." She said, her voice trailing off uncertainly. Denial is a universal trait, it seemed, whether you were alive or not.

"Oh, come _on_. Even by my standards that barely explains anything. And besides, you're missing the most important thing: The ghost went after me a bit _too_ much considering you were there being all generally weak and easily-murdered. You were the perfect target and he never once even _tried_ to hurt you. All his little creepy-crawlies went for me. You went through a whole room without anything going after you! And when we got near here, when he broke out the hook personally, he went for _me_. Most telling, when you jumped in front of me back there, he _held his blow_. He's not trying to kill me first, he's trying to kill me _only_. He is totally ignoring you most of the time, actively avoiding you the rest of it. Why do you think that is, Lydia?"

"I..." she said, very, very quietly. Poor thing looked on the verge of tears. "I don't _know_. I don't know why it's always me, I don't..."

"Always you," I said. "Because this has happened before, and more than once."

"No! It can't, it just can't, I..."

"You remember what I said, when we met?" I asked her. "According to records, nobody has lived in this house in over forty years. I thought the agency was just being incompetent, but they weren't, were they? Because you lived in this house way more than forty years ago, didn't you? Tell me, Lydia... what year do you think this is?"

"I... I...!"

"Easy question, but I know it's hard to remember things. Just try to focus, okay? Take it slow." I said.

"T-the... the year of our Lord... nineteen... hundred and three." She whispered, In the quietest, smallest voice I think I'd ever heard.

"You're...a bit over a century off."

"Oh, God." She said softly, her eyes welling up with tears. I had expected her to rage, to keep denying, to call me a lunatic. This was worse. "Oh _God_ , no. No, no, no..."

"Lydia, you said your last name was Talman," I said. "I didn't think at the time, I was too worried about getting you out of the house, but... when Harcourt Stanfield died, he had no living family, did you know that? Last of his line. And so, when he wrote up his will, he left his properties and company to the vice-president of his firm, Edward Talman."

"My Edward." Lydia said, a tear running down her cheek. "My poor Edward. He tried so hard to be brave. He did. But it just wasn't in him. He was no fighter. He was always a clerk at heart... I used to laugh, to tell him his first love was numbers, and I would always be second. He never wanted this house, he loathed the countryside, but our Madeline loved it so. For her, he kept it as a summer home, where she could ride the horses when the weather was good..."

"Madeline was your daughter?" I asked. I felt bad doing it, but... the pain seemed to have unblocked some pipes in poor Lydia's mind. She seemed to be accepting her situation, and with acceptance was coming a return to memories she'd tried for a very long time to suppress. I needed to do whatever I could to keep them flowing.

"My little one," she whispered, her tears flowing freely now. "She loved this house, but was always afraid to sleep here. I never believed her when she said she heard voices from the attic. If I had..."

"That's how ghosts usually work," I said. "They move slowly. Building up a tiny reservoir of fear that they feed on to grow stronger, manifest more visibly. They keep repeating the cycle, over and over, soaking up the growing fear and becoming more and more powerful and active the longer that goes on. It's not your fault... by the time you could have realized what was really going on, it was already too late to do much about it. He fed on your daughter's night-time terrors, getting stronger and stronger, until it was enough for him to just basically do whatever he wanted. And in this case..."

"What it wanted was pain. Pain and blood," Lydia said dully. "The old man always was a monster. Not just in business... many of the factories in the big cities treated the workers like vermin, that wasn't rare. Just the price of making a profit. But Stanfield... he was worse. Sick inside. You could tell when you looked into his eyes. He ate dinners at our home more than once, to discuss business with my Edward, and I could barely stand to speak to him. He was like... like a serpent wearing human skin. He _always_ wanted pain. Dying himself just made him more open about it."

"Yeah, I'm getting that," I said, glancing around the room, at the bottles, and boxes, and albums. I wondered, vaguely, how many girls' photos were in there. "And he got that pain, didn't he? From... you. And yours."

"My Edward was the first. He tried, he did, but he was a delicate man. He broke. He fled. He..." she trailed off, casting her gaze meaningfully towards the door we'd made our desperate dash through to get into this closet.

"Right, the kitchen. You already remembered that much, at least."

She shuddered. "So many knives..."

"Lydia, when that happened, you and your daughter were still alive, yes?" I asked. "Do you... do you remember what came next?"

"My skirts were torn. My limbs were heavy. Blood. Pain. Cold. But I had my Madeline in my arms, and I had to protect her. We fled. Room to room. The doors wouldn't open, the windows wouldn't break. We tried to leave, it wouldn't let us. Beasts and blades, blood and ice. Torments, until we could not even walk. And then, after what felt like forever, he came. Silent, and masked, and covered in blood and rot. He was done playing, you see? He could tell we wouldn't run anymore, that we were on the brink of giving in. It was no _fun_ if we didn't run. So he came himself, to bring the game to the only end he cared to see."

She turned her face toward me, and she was actually smiling. It was an expression with absolutely no joy in it. "And of course, he brought his favorite hook," She said, with a bitter chuckle. The fear was gone from her eyes, the confusion, the annoyance, everything. She just looked... well, dead inside, appropriately enough. "I'd never known Mr. Stanfield to be sentimental about such things in life. Perhaps death helped him re-connect with the things he'd once loved? I imagine he had to give up this... hobby, as he grew older and his health declined. It must have been rather pleasant for him to be so strong once again."

I stayed silent. There are times when even I have realized it's best to just keep my damn mouth shut, thank you. But apparently I needn't have bothered, because Lydia's Macabre Story Hour seemed to be coming to a sudden stop. She seemed to deflate, almost; eyes closed, shoulders drooping, head sinking. The aura of depression was almost palpable.

"I don't remember what happened next," She murmured.

"You remember," I said. "You just don't want to."

Tears were starting to flow far more readily from eyes that logically shouldn't be capable of it. Damn. "I don't want to."

"Well... I have my suspicions, but I can't confirm anything. Not yet. I'm very, very sorry, but I really do need to hear it from you. Please?"

Silence. _Damn._

All right, then. There _is_ more than one way to skin a cat. Or a ghost. Or, if you were really in a very odd situation, a ghost cat. "If not to save me, then because this might help me make him suffer. Because I'm a monster hunter, Lydia, and the most important weapon I can have for getting that job done and done _well_ is knowledge. Every piece of data is another nail in that psychopath's coffin, Lydia. Every memory you share gets me one step closer to the knowledge I need to send him to Hell where he _belongs._

"If you won't talk for me? Do it for Edward and Madeline."

Lydia took a deep breath into lungs that didn't need air. Old habits are hard to break, and living is the oldest habit of all. She opened her eyes and something was burning in them that I hadn't seen there before. Sometimes, the only way to pierce fear is to use rage as a weapon. Sad, but true. "He raised his blade. My little Madeline. My little girl. He swung his weapon down at her, and I..."

"You leapt between them. Like your body was moving on its own?" I guessed. I hoped. I prayed. _Please, please, pleeeeeeeease let this guess be right, God? You owe me one, I think, after the business with the priest and the succubus in Costa Rica? I never got paid for that, and my favorite shoes still smell like pineapple to this day. So throw me a bone here you Divine son of a bitch!_

"... Yes," Lydia said softly.

" _Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!"_ I said, pumping my fist. Oh, it was totally _wrecking_ the dramatic mood we'd gotten built up, but I really couldn't have cared less at the moment, because dammit, this was what I needed to hear. "Oh, we are back on top _,_ baby! Just you wait, Stanfield, I am gonna _wreck your ghostly shit_ in a minute here, right after I do my victory strut! Uh-huh, uh-huh!"

Lydia hauled back her arm and slammed me across the face in a fairly decent right cross.

"...Ow." I said, rubbing my nose. Dammit, I thought she was a turn-of-the-century girl, weren't they supposed to be more ladylike than that? "What was _that_ for?"

"How _dare you!"_ She snarled. "I... my family! My _child!_ I'll..."

"Sorry, sorry!" I said, raising my hands in a gesture of placation. "I... well, I went a little overboard, yes. In my defense, it's because I just put together the tiny little piece of the puzzle I was missing, and everything just fell into place like the most perfect artwork you've ever seen. And _you,_ sweet darling Lydia, are the central theme. Have I told you lately that you are awesome? You are. You are awesome."

" _Elaborate."_ She said. It sounded a bit icy, I think. Probably just my imagination, I think. She was really quite fond of me, I think. Probably.

"You're not a ghost." I said, smiling my most wicked smile.

She punched me again.

"OW! Would you stop _doing that_?" I asked.

"You are the one who said I was not alive! Who forced me to relive the worst moments of my existence! Have you been torturing me for no reason, then?" She roared, full of more fury than I'd ever seen in her. Not that I had seen much of her other than her quivering terror, granted.

"You aren't alive, you're just also not a ghost!" I said. "Jeez, there's more than one kind of undead, you psycho!"

"... Continue elaborating."

"Well, think about it. I just told you how ghosts work, right? They manifest slowly. Need to feed on the building fear for awhile before they can affect the world. But you were here, and solid, and doing such a convincing humanity impression that even _you_ didn't realize you were dead, long before anyone in the house was afraid of anything," I said, rubbing my nose again. She hit like a horse. Which was weird, because she technically didn't have fists, or... no, down that path lay madness or at least confusion. "So you don't feed on fear. It's not emotion that makes you manifest. You are _not_ a ghost, but you are definitely dead."

"So, then, what _am_ I?" She asked, seemingly curious despite herself. I had to admit, she was taking this news rather well when she wasn't hitting me in the face with her pointy little spectral fists.

"I couldn't be sure, until you confirmed how you... um... passed." I said, then jumped back and held up my hands.

She sighed. "I shall not strike you again, sir."

"... okay. Well, the gist is... you died protecting someone. Gave your life heroically," I said. "That's a pretty damn powerful thing, metaphysically speaking. I mean, would it show up in so many movies if it wasn't true?"

"Would it?"

"... Okay, yes it would, because seriously sometimes I think those writers have never actually seen a monster," I said. "Seriously, you would not believe some of the absurd werewolves I have seen in film. And don't get me started on zombies! Vampires, I can't confirm or deny, granted, since I've never actually _seen_ a vampire in the flesh. Isn't that weird? They're all over the place in fiction lately, but you almost never run into one. And I think that's a shame, because they're one of the classics. I've always wanted to do vampires, but you _never_ see a real one these d-"

" _Focus_."

"Bah, I think I liked you better when you just gibbered in horror," I muttered. Louder, I said, "Look, it's not just modern stuff. Myths about this sort of thing go back forever, you know? Guardian spirits, protective deities, the works. I think you're one of those. The Romans called them Lares, so let's go with that for convenience's sake," _And because it's the only one I know off the top of my head, but it isn't my fault I don't have any way to look things up right now._ I didn't say this last out loud, of course. One must maintain one's dignified image.

Her nose crinkled. "And you truly believe me to be one of these spirits?"

"Well, it makes sense. They don't work on the same rules as ghosts, because they're... well, Lares are more like a very, very low-key divine being than a ghost. Like a guardian angel, really. They watch over a house, protecting the family that lives there from malevolent spirits and black magic," I said. "They can be created from a lot of different ways, and one of the most common is if a family member dies in protection of his or her bloodline. I'd say you fit that bill pretty well. And you're definitely not alive, so you must be some kinda spirit, but you aren't a ghost. You must be _something_ , right?"

She laughed bitterly. "And so I must be this spirit? Oh, _clearly_. Why, just look at how very powerful I am! Clearly, my daughter _thrived_ from my protection. And certainly, I have done _so much good_ in save the other poor souls who dwelt here."

"Sarcasm is an ugly color on you, cupcake," I said. "And for your information, I actually did consider that, and I think I know what happened. I bet the blade went right through you and into her. You died to protect someone who died immediately as you did. You were a guardian spirit with nothing to guard, and you went dormant... until someone else moved into the house."

"And? I tried. As with you, I tried to warn them, and it did _no good_. They died, and I could do nothing to save them. Any of them," She snarled.

I took a deep breath, preparing to maybe get punched again. "Actually, it made things worse."

"... _Explain_."

"Well, it's... your 'creation', your transformation into a spirit, was highly irregular. You became a spirit to protect someone who was already dead before your rebirth, so you didn't become a Lar in the normal way. It's possible your lapses of memory until I forced you to recall was a result of that, more than the trauma. You weren't, for lack of a better term, 'complete'. You didn't have the real drive to protect that Lares should have, since you lost your first and most important protectorate. You were alone, and had no clue what had happened to you, and you had just lost everything you loved and were fading in and out of existence, unable to think clearly, just aware that this house is _dangerous_ and you had a deep, driving need to protect anyone who chose to live here. But you didn't know how, and, well... you were very, very afraid."

Lydia's eyes widened. "Then, you believe..."

"Yeah," I said, wincing. "That's the missing piece. That's why he's so much stronger than I expected, why _your_ fear, in particular, super-charges him so much. You're a spiritual being like him, a creature of pure energy and emotion. And he's been feeding on you for a hundred _years_. It's given him power that he shouldn't _have_. He might be closer to a demon than a ghost at this point, frankly. It's... gonna be a pain to deal with this."

"Then it was my fault." She said, shrinking down into herself again.

"... Nooooooooooo," I said. I rubbed the back of my neck and very carefully did not look her in the eyes.

"Do. Not. _Patronize_. Me," She snarled.

I sighed. Sad fact was, from a certain point of view, it _was_ her fault. Her spiritual nature and the constant mind-numbing terror she was filled with as a result of the bizarre circumstances of her death and rebirth had given Stanfield ludicrous powers. She had instinctively manifested to protect anyone who lived in this house from him, and in doing so had given him the power to do basically whatever he wanted to them while she watched helplessly. And with each repeat of the cycle, she grew more and more afraid, less and less able to accurately touch her own memories. If I hadn't... well, I could admit it, _used_ her family's memory to screw her mind a little bit, I doubt she ever would have realized what she was or what was going on in this house.

"It wasn't your _fault,_ per se," I said. "I mean, it's not like he wouldn't have killed those people without you. It's just, well, you made it a lot _easier_ for him to do it, really. So you're not a murderer. You're more like a weapon!"

For some reason, she didn't look cheered by this.

"And you tried to save them. I mean, that counts for something, even if your good intentions were possibly just the instinctive result of your half-finished transformation into a guardian spirit, and were _definitely_ of no use to anyone in the end," I said.

Lydia started to sob again. She was muttering something in between tears, which sounded a bit like, "It's all my fault... it's all my fault... it's all my fault..."

This might be a good time to mention that the things that go through my head and the things that come out of my mouth don't always match up perfectly, and the latter often don't have quite the desired effect. It's possible I'm not a people-person.

"I like your dress?" I said. It seemed like a nice, safe thing to bring up.

"Just... leave me alone..." She gasped, once again in between wracking sobs.

Well. Fuck.

I had been trying to get her to abandon her fear, focus her on some useful emotions, and I'd really had something with that that nice solid rage I'd inspired for awhile there. Pissed off and wanting to destroy the thing that destroyed her family, _that_ was a solid, constructive emotion. That would have been helpful. I could use the backup. But I guess I'd gone too far, unraveled her actual history too much and made her realize that it was, in most ways that mattered, _worse_ than she'd thought. Poor thing was in a bad place already, and it looks like I pushed her over the edge into straight-up and wholly useless despair.

You see? This is why I professionally kill stuff instead of trying to be a therapist. It's so much easier.

"Look, it really isn't anything you can be blamed for, you kn-" I began.

" _Leave me alone!_ " she roared, in a voice that made my every bone in my body vibrate like I'd been tied to a jet engine.

And that was the fun part.

Far worse than anything physical was the soul-deep sensation of someone not so much 'walking on my grave' as putting on steel-toed boots and dancing a tango on it. A shock of despair and hopelessness and desperate, aching loneliness that ran through me, driving me to my knees like everything that had ever made me sad my entire life suddenly happening again, all at once.

I totally did not cry. At all. Shut up.

Still, it was unpleasant. Like, really horrible. I didn't wipe away tears from my eyes and stood up, taking a few steps back from her to seek... well, the closest thing to fresh air I was gonna find in a semi-haunted murder closet.

Damn. Was that how Lydia felt right now?

Oh. Um. Crap.

"Lyd? Nothing personal, but your voice sounded, um, awfully phantasmal there. Just getting a bit ghostly on me. Just... just throwing that out there. Figured you'd want to know." I said. Ghosts were defined by their emotions; fill one with sufficient darkness, and it can end up turning into something way, way worse. Just look at old Harry, who really was halfway to being a demon at this point thanks to nothing more than a hundred years of deep-rooted sadistic psychopathy and om-nom-nomming on Lydia's spiritual energies.

I didn't know if that applied the same way to Lydia, who wasn't technically a ghost. But there was a very real chance that her despair could alter her existence, turn her into a pale shadow of what she was, a lost soul in the most literal sense of the word. Or worse, a twisted monster inflicting pain on others to help her forget her own suffering. I didn't know if it was possible, and I really didn't want to find out. Lydia was okay, when she was lucid. Brave, tough, a bit impatient but that was okay since she made a decent straight man. And really, isn't that a super-witty monster-hunter like myself really _needs?_ Someone to make us look even funnier by association?

Also, I didn't want to be killed, and having her in my corner seemed the best way to manage that. Especially if the alternative was her going all crazy and monstery; Old Harry was trouble enough without giving him a girlfriend to hold people down while he played with them.

But it was mostly the other thing, I swear.

I am _very_ altruistic.

"Look," I began. I had already proven a few times here that I wasn't the best therapist in the world. Or even a good one. But I was the only thing available, and I needed to give it a shot, right? I probably couldn't make it worse. Or, more accurately, I guess I should say 'I probably couldn't make it worse again'. "You haven't made the best accounting of yourself. And it's easy to beat yourself up over it, I know that. But the fact of the matter is? You're a decent lady. You mighta done some bad things, but it's not like you did any of them on purpose. It was really just a long string of bad luck on your part. Really bad luck. Insanely bad..."

_No! No, bad Eric! You are fucking it up again, now be more reassuring before she starts crying again!_ I thought, catching myself before I ruined the situation for the third or fourth time.

"Look, my point is, you have some stuff to feel guilty for, maybe, but it's guilty in a 'mistake' way, not an 'evil' way," I said. "And that's not so bad, right? Certainly not worth falling into existential despair over. So how about a smile?"

"... a smile." She said dully.

I smiled. You know, to show her how it was done.

"I am dead. My family is dust. And I have spent countless years..."

"Only a hundred, actually, not that hard to count to one-hundr-"

" _Countless years!"_ she snarled. " _Feeding_ the monster that _took them from me! Aiding him as he_ _tortured and murdered countless others!_ "

The voice like a rumbling jet engine was back. But at least she wasn't crying? She just looked like she was gonna punch me again. That might have been a step in the right direction. I wasn't really sure. I wished I had some salt. _Great_ for driving back spirits. Not sure why... maybe it's symbolic of something.

... Not that I thought I needed to protect myself from Lydia, mind you.

Really.

Well, regardless, she was getting kinda scary again, and didn't have much in the way of salt or even pepper, so I decided maybe calming her down was a good option.

"Well, when you put it that way, it makes you sound really bad, so..."

"I am an _abomination!_ " she snapped.

"Fine! You wanna see yourself as a monster? That's fine. You never hurt anyone on purpose, and you've tried your best to protect both family and total strangers for a very, very long time. That puts you as one of the nicer monsters I've ever met, and I've actually met a couple really pleasant ones." It's true, too. Gnomes are quite personable, and I've never had a problem with any sort of dryad. I once met a pixie who washed my car! But that really was getting beside the point.

"More to the point, there's a worse monster right outside, who's done much worse than you, and who definitely _doesn't_ mean well in any way, shape, or form. If you really wanna blame someone for this situation, you blame _him,_ because it is his fault and he _relishes_ that fact. He has spent a century of death and almost that much life systematically torturing and murdering everyone he could get his hands on. The only thing _you_ did was get scared by a scary situation. So tell me, of the two of you, who's worse?"

"You should go," Lydia said, very softly. Her voice wasn't sad, or angry, or much of anything. She just sounded tired.

"Look, I know how hard it is. But you _need_ to focus on-" I began.

"No, I mean you should go because he's tired of waiting," she said, pointing at the door. Something black and viscous that smelled vaguely of rotting meat was beginning to drip down it.

"... Oh. Well. Um. We should get out of here."

" _We_ don't have to do anything. You said yourself, he can't hurt me. He can't do anything to me. I shall stay here, and... I do not know," she said with a hopeless shrug. "I don't know anything anymore."

I sighed. "Dammit. So that's your final answer? Well, guess I can't blame you. You've had it rough, and frankly not everyone is cut out for this life. Er... death. At least you're not afraid anymore, that should help."

"I'm not anything anymore," she said softly. And indeed, she did appear to be somehow _less_ than she had been. Less solid, less substantial, just somehow, terribly _less_.

Damn. I'd been trying to get her to show some backbone, and yeah, hadn't gone at all as planned. The poor thing was traumatized, overly emotional, and my attempts to snap her out of her fear had apparently just dumped her onto the emotional roller-coaster straight to Depression Town. Great.

Still, it worked in a _way_. Her fear wouldn't be feeding Stanfield anymore, since she had none left to give at this point. Despite this, I felt like I should apologize, even if I would be pretending later that this wasn't my fault. "Look... I'm sorry. I was trying to help, and in the end it looks like I just kind of ran you through the ringer, huh. And, well, if I get out of this alive, I'll get rid of him for you? I don't have much else to give you, sorry. I mean, I have a knife, but it's the only one I have since I lost the other one in the room with the boar-bear. Bear-boar. You know what I mean."

There! I had apologized, so I now had a clear conscience. That's how it works, I'm told. "Well, glad we covered that! Catch ya later, have a nice afterlife. Hope ya cheer up."

She blinked a few times, as if confused. I wasn't sure why. She told me to leave, I was leaving. Common sense, right? Perhaps my tone of voice threw her off? But I mean, no sense sounding depressed as you walked into probable death. You might die, sure, but moping won't make that better.

"Well, you're not in any danger, so I don't really have to stick with you, right? Plus, I've only known you for like, half an hour. And there's kinda like, some sort of ghost juice coming under the door. I've already swam in ghost juice today, and it wasn't fun. Sooooo, I'm gonna get going," I said with a smile. "I wish you'd get up and help me, I really do. But I can't force you to do anything. I'll just say that wallowing in despair never did anyone any good."

Lydia shrugged right back. "Nothing does any good. Is there some reason for me to do anything but fade away?"

"I've always been a fan of revenge, personally," I said.

Lydia sighed, and turned away from me. "Just go. The black liquid is starting to pool."

"Ah, well. Again... hope you feel better. As for me, I guess I better get back to dealing with our resident murderghost. It's not gonna be easy without my exorcism kit, but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve and this isn't my first ghost. I admit he's a bit of a nastier ghost than I usually deal with, but he should be a bit less horrifyingly terrible now that you're not all scared anymore. And I have a few more options." I said, reaching for one of the bottles on the shelves.

I smiled.

"Wow. A lot of these bottles still have liquid in them! You gotta appreciate that, y'know? Really good, quality bottles that keep the air out and stop all these great torture-chemicals nice and damp, for all this time! I really appreciate quality workmanship like that.

"Especially when it gives me access to just... wow, all kinda nice flammable chemicals, and I still have a gun in my ankle holster." I looked through the bottles, picking out the ones whose faded labels still had the warnings against flame visible. Once I'd picked out six or seven, I smiled down at the steadily growing pool of black sludge under the door.

Hee, hee, hee.

I started to pour bottles into other bottles, giggling just a tiny bit unsteadily under my breath. I couldn't help it! These were the moments I lived for, the moments that life stopped making sense and just started being a mad rush of adrenaline and something not entirely unlike _raw awesome_. I was in my element, right on the razor's edge between living in an action movie and dying like a dog. I knew it was a personality flaw, and I knew it would probably get me killed some day, but _God_ , life without these moments just wasn't worth living.

The first bottle was full, and starting to make a weird hissing sound. I considered that a good start, and jammed a cork into it. Next bottle! Oh, so many random chemicals, I had no idea what most of them did - beyond assisting in torture-murder, I mean, since clearly Harry did have specialized tastes - but I bet that mixing all of them together like this was _super_ dangerous.

Hee, hee, hee.

Ah, well. As fun as this was, it looked like I was gonna have to put them to good use soon; the pool was getting poolier. Harry was gonna break the door down soon, so I might as well go out to meet him and save my door. Yes, _my door_. This was _my house_ now and I was not going to be bullied anymore! Time to take out the trash.

I grabbed the bottles I'd prepared, slipping one into an inside pocket of my coat (see? Convenient!) and holding the other in my right hand, slipping the holdout gun from my ankle holster into my left. I walked to the door, trying not to step in the icky black stuff, and said, "See you around, Lyd. I hope. And if you don't mind my saying...?"

"I suspect I could not stop you if I cared to. You are quite insane," She said.

"Maybe," I admitted. "But even a loony can have a point, right? And my point is... well, if you wanna just fade away, that's your business. But if you wanna feel _better?_ If you want your life, or I guess afterlife, to _mean_ something? Sitting around and doing nothing is not gonna accomplish that. Giving in is easy and pointless. Atoning is hard, but unlike moping, it actually helps. Just, y'know, something to ponder."

Then I opened the door and stepped out of the Closet of Doom back into the Kitchen of Anguish.

Ugh. My property values were _plummeting._

Harry had been busy while we'd been locked up. The kitchen was still a shambles, of course, but it was now even more of a shambles than decades of neglect had left it. The disrepair was all still there, of course, but it was now well kind of soaked. Not in blood, like the entrance hall, but with that same semi-liquid black sludge that had begun seeping into the closet. Every inch of every surface dripped. _Oozed_. The place smelled like a dozen corpses had been chopped up and left to rot and liquefy in the center of the room. And in the center, coated in it, that damn hook still in his hand, was Stanfield. He still wore the same mask, but he looked different in a few key ways.

First, he seemed less solid than before. I couldn't exactly see through him, but it was a bit like staring at opaque glass. You can't see what's on the other side, but light still goes through it...

The second change was that he now appeared to be rotting. His body dripped with what I was rapidly beginning to realize was liquefied corpse. Maggots crawled visibly under his spectral skin, occasionally burrowing out to fall to the floor and vanish in the pool at his feet.

Um.

Ew.

" _Suffer. Suffer. Suffer. Suffer. Suffer. Suffer_ ," _h_ e said, again and again. I guess his waning powers and the fact I had 'defiled' his favorite souvenirs had put an end to his chatty mood. Oh, how _ever_ would I live with myself? Oh, wait, I knew:

I smiled and waved, bottle in one hand, gun in the other. "I see you missed me too!"

Ah, being just a generally insufferable human being in the face of utter horror. You _always_ make me feel better.

I took one last look at the room, wincing at the stench, even as Harry began to slosh towards me, hook raised. I admit, I felt better about this plan, now. I was gonna need to refurbish the whole room no matter what, so no need to worry about that.

I threw the bottle at the manifestation. It didn't shatter on impact; real glass is tougher to shatter than a lot of people really think it is. It just kind of bounced off his barrel chest and splooshed pathetically in the ghosty-corpsey-goo at his legs. He actually stopped briefly, his masked head tilting to the side in seeming curiosity.

I winked, leveled my little Beretta, and fired two rounds at the bottle. I was a pretty good shot, and one of them apparently hit, based on the reaction I got.

There are people in this world who would say that taking a bunch of flammable chemicals (many of which are not clearly labeled and of dubious origin), mixing them all up in a big glass bottle, shaking it thoroughly so it starts to make a weird and kind of ominous hissy-fizzy noise like an angry cat drowning in soda, then throwing it into the middle of a ghostly manifestation and shooting it with a gun is a bad idea.

Suicidally so, even.

I say that those people _lack vision._

Sure, on paper, there were some things that could go wrong. I admitted that. But come on, it was just such a _cool_ moment. I felt the risks of burning myself to death in a chemical explosion were worth the rewards of _setting a ghost on fire._

The explosion was a bit larger than I'd expected, but I got off with minor singeing... due in part to the fact I was soaked in liquid already! _Suck it_ , blood-filled room, you ended up _saving_ me! I would have stuck out my tongue at blood-filled room, but the kitchen was currently full of both a burning chemical fire and ghostly corpse juice, so I didn't wanna open my mouth any more than I absolutely had to.

I got off with minor singeing.

Harry was not so lucky.

The flames were a sickly sort of reddish, at first, but as I said before, you'd be surprised how many things fire works on. It's a very symbolic thing, your basic fire, and symbolism counts for a _lot_ when you're dealing with spirits. In this case, fire symbolizes both purity _and_ destruction, and that's a pretty darn potent combination when you're pressing said fire up against something as nasty and corrupt as the spirit of old Harcourt 'I love serial murder' Stanfield over there.

So the pale red chemical fire changed as it roared across the ghostly body, flowed like water across every inch of the viscous black sludge that coated the room. The masked figure screamed as it was engulfed by red flames that then turned pale blue, then blinding, _searing_ white...

It sort of exploded.

I really can't think of a better way to put that, frankly. It was like... there was light, yes, so bright that I had to avert my eyes. But no heat, no shockwave of any sort. There _was_ an explosion from the bottle itself, but it was like the ghost just sucked up all the power from it to ignite its own, weird, sort-of-explosion. A room literally filled with fire, and no heat to speak of, isn't that weird? Nothing but a huge burst of pure white light that made you think, really _believe_ that there should have been an explosion, but there really wasn't one at all. Can you have an implied explosion? Like, a situation where the universe is all like, "Look, there really isn't the needed physical components around here needed to create the complicated chemical reactions required to make an explosion, but you trust me when I say that from a moral standpoint you really should have been sent flying across the room while a kickin' guitar riff played in the background. Also it should be your last day before retirement and you should be partnered with a loose cannon who breaks all the rules but he's _still a damn good cop_."

In a just and kind universe, that would be a thing. I'm gonna go ahead and claim that right now, thanks.

I opened my eyes when the light stopped searing through my eyelids, and looked around the room. It took a few seconds of blinking to get any kind of clear image, but I was enthused by what I saw: nothing. Small licks of flame burned, scattered all over the room, burning most thickly around a huge, black scorch mark in the center of the kitchen floor where the ghost had been standing. And other than that, nothing. Just fire, and soot, and a lot of smoke, and...

Man, I was gonna have to re-do this _whole room_. Stupid goddamn ghost and his stupid goddamn hook making me need to set my stupid goddamn kitchen on fire. The house had already been a fixer-upper, but now I had fire damage to worry about on top of the extant problem of the place just being seriously old. And it's not like I was going to have any chance to put this fire out any time soon! It didn't look like it was going to be spreading, I think that burning the ghost all up had sucked most of the nastiness out of it, but that didn't save the kitchen from needing new flooring, probably new goddamn plumbing if I ever wanted a sink in here, and seriously it smelled like somebody had been cremating bodies all over the place in the room I was supposed to have my food in.

Oh, hey, my clothes weren't bloody anymore. Ghost-fire must have gotten it out.

Score one for Team Margrave! Sometimes these plans work out in little ways you don't expect. Good stuff.

I walked through the kitchen, smothering tiny flames and kind of... cleaning. Sort of. I couldn't do much beyond like, picking stuff up and putting it on top of other stuff. It wasn't the cleanliest clean in the world, I admit that. But one does what one can.

I sat down, checking my watch. I waited for fifteen seconds, then drew my remaining knife.

"Five. Four. Three. Two. O-"

The whistling of metal slicing through air filled the room, and I got the dagger into position just in time to keep a rusty metal hook from diving into my right ear.

I smiled despite the sudden need to keep a metal thing from stabbing me. " _Knew_ you weren't gone yet! God, I love being right."

The ghost just let out an inhuman howl this time. He had seen better days; his mask was half gone, revealing a mouth full of blackened teeth gritted in fury and surrounded by rotten (and, I noticed with some satisfaction, _burned_ ) flesh. The blood-soaked clothes were in similar disarray; blackened, huge chunks of them just missing to reveal decaying flesh or even, in the case of his right arm, sickly yellow bone.

There were also a _lot_ more maggots. Just like, in general.

This was, despite the commonsense logic of 'maggots = bad' a generally good thing. The less alive he looked, the better; showed he was being forced back into his natural state. Even better, his form, which had already been leaning toward the blurred, was now very nearly insubstantial. I could see clearly through him from this distance. While he still had physical form, he was struggling to maintain it and couldn't make it look anything close to alive anymore. I had actually done some damage to him this time.

Hee, hee, hee. No... no, that little chuckle will do it for little triumphs, but this was big. BWAHAHAHAHA!

Still, couldn't chill yet. He was still a threat, obviously, and he was kind of trying to chop my head off with a big ol' rusty hook. Again.

He snarled, pressing forward with all his considerable weight; I rolled with the effort, coming to my feet with my knife between myself and him, backing away as he limped in my direction, growling like a rabid dog.

Okay. Not so bad! If I could just keep my cool, he wouldn't be a major threat. He was strong, but slow, and his power was waning. Maintaining a manifestation as advanced as Mr. Hook over there took some serious ghostly muscle, he'd lost a fair chunk of power with the fire, and Stanfield no longer had a limitless power source to draw on since Lydia's emotional collapse. I didn't need to kill him; I just needed to run out the clock.

I backed up several steps, vaguely wondering if I could just endlessly back up while the rotting nasty hook thing shuffled ineffectually after me. It would be kind of a lame ending to the case, but, Hell, I'd take it. I love me some of that sweet, sweet anticlimactic surviving without any major injuries.

I backed out of the kitchen into the living room, and heard a low buzzing sound. I closed my eyes and let out a deep sigh of frustration.

"Oh, _fuck you_ , Harry," I said, just before the first giant fucking demon wasp bombed me.

I don't know why I'd thought the other manifestations would have faded, I really don't. My eternal optimism is just a curse, I guess. But whatever the case, I was suddenly very glad I had missed this room on my first trip, because it turned out the flavor of terror in the dining room this week was, again, 'giant fucking demon wasp'. The thing was at least the size of my thumb, and while it didn't seem a healthy wasp - its buzzing somewhat strained, its flight slightly erratic - that didn't change the fact that it was the first of what appeared to be roughly five bajillion of the things crawling all over the ceiling and walls.

And I noticed, from the pain in my face, that however unhealthy their wings were, their big freaking mandibles and big freaking stingers still worked just fine. Because nothing can ever just go _smoothly._

I smashed the first one against my own cheek with the hilt of my knife; it hurt like a bitch, but probably less than letting the thing crawl under my skin or whatever creepy ghost crap it was gonna do if I left it alone. I whipped my hand away to try to hopefully get the twice-dead insect off my damn face, and whipped my coat up to cover my head as its buddies started to swarm. A lot of whipping, in general, but that's to be expected, I think. When a house is trying to eat you, you tend to move fast.

Shuffling footsteps entered the room.

_It was following me?_ Came the inevitable thought. _Oh, shit, can they all move room to room now? Are the wasps gonna... and crap, the boar-thing was in the next room and that thing was fast as...!_

"Unfaaaaaaaaaaair!" I shouted, ducking my covered head under the swinging hook and running for my life into the next room, really not sure of what to do but run, run, run away.

The wasps totally _did_ follow me into the next room. Harry wasn't playing anymore; every manifestation he had created for his sadistic little game was coming after me, all at once. "Unfair!" I shouted again, just because there was a giant demonic pig in my way, again. And a giant rotting shambling horror with a fucking meathook following far too close behind me, _again._ And now, all of it was just lovingly punctuated by wasps the size of my thumb! I was at the point where I couldn't think of anything else _to_ say but how unfair _all of this was_.

But... then inspiration reared its lovely head. I still had one bottle-bomb of dubious origin and four bullets left. I could turn and empty those four bullets into the big hooked thing, and most likely hurt him quite a bit, at which point he or the wasps would probably kill me. I could try to blow him up again, but the first bottle had devoured a whole room full of ghostliness and not finished him off, and I really had no clue if this one would be stronger or weaker. But, that first explosion had given me the lovely lil' reminder that ghostly liquids burned like napalm mixed with... with something else that burned ( _Still not good at similes when I'm about to die!_ ).

And if all the manifestations were still active, there was a big old room that was gonna fill up with blood as soon as I entered it.

Right through that hole that the Big Evil Pig Thing had so thoughtfully opened up on his first charge.

Hee, hee, hee.

The Doom Pig was, like the other manifestations, not quite up to his old standards. He was so scrawny I could count his bones now, and the thick, blood-matted fur was reduced to a thin, mangy layer of fuzz. The eyes were the same, though, red and crazy. Just the way I liked 'em!

"Ole! Toro, toro!" I said. "That is the right thing to say for a bullfight, right? I mean, that's an important ceremony, I want to get it right."

I was cut off at this point by the thing just charging me, which I felt was rude. I mean, here I was trying to be politically correct and culturally sensitive, and this spectral horror (which I bet had never even been to any kind of sensitivity classes at all.) just charges right at me! The Hell, pig? Just rude.

What I had been hoping it would do, yes, but still rude.

Rather than try to run away from the thing, or dodge to the side, either of which it would have expected, I did something that I knew would be stupid and risky, unless it worked, in which case it would be cunning and insightful. I ran _toward_ the charging rabid beast, coat still held up over my head and wasps still buzzing around it. I imagine I looked pretty absurd, if we wanna be honest.

But then I jumped over those nasty tusks, hit the beast's back shoulder first, and (I am not making this up!) rolled across the top of it to land on my feet and running for the hole in the wall.

Yeah. I pulled that off.

And I bet now you feel _really bad_ about saying that I looked silly before, huh. _Repentant,_ on account of that awesome thing I just did. You couldn't have done that. You'd have gotten trampled by a giant monster, but me? I keep my cool and just leap right over that fucker and it's the coolest thing ever and... okay, yes. I have no idea how I pulled it off, and I'm amazed it didn't kill me horribly.

Still! Pretty awesome, right?

Realistically, I should have just kept running away. But I had totally just pulled a slick action-movie style acrobatic stunt, and I am nothing if not a person who has always wanted to live in a movie. I _had_ to turn around and give a cool one-liner. There's just some things you _need_ to do.

"Ha! Looks like..." I began.

The charging demon-pig-thing slammed directly into the hook-wielding giant, and the universe made a kind of 'sploit' sound at the impact. The boar creature vanished in a rippling, like it had somehow leaped into a vertical, invisible pond. And the killer, in turn, grew about a foot taller, his exposed skin growing a layer of thick black fur and his hook transmuting into something that looked not entirely unlike bone. He threw back his head and roared, an even more inhuman sound than the ones I'd gotten used to hearing from him.

"... I totally had a pun I was gonna use here," I said, my one-liner sadly left by the wayside. I know, it's a shame, but in my defense I hadn't seen that one coming. Guess Stanfield was consolidating resources? Well, he was a businessman, when he wasn't being a senseless murderer. He knew how to manage employees. Also kill them. So, he was multi-talented, was the point.

The ghostly creature raised a hand, and the swarming wasps landed on the outstretched limb, vanishing in a ripple like the other manifestation had done. "Oh, hell," I said.

The ghostly voice laughed, and masked creature drew back its head, opened its mouth, and _screamed,_ the buzzing of angry wasps clearly audible behind the howling fury. The crawling motions beneath its skin grew more frenzied, as if, well... as if a big swarm of wasps was crawling in its veins. No need for similes when it's plainly obvious what is actually happening. Oh, and just for that extra bit of 'My Life Sucks' I've come to expect from these situations, the hook in its hand changed again as well. The curved, razor-edged bone began to drip with a sickly green liquid that I very much suspected was bad for my health, based on the tiny fact it smoked and started to eat a hole through the floor.

"That is _my floor_ , you jackass!" I snapped. "As if the fire damage in the kitchen and the big damn hole in the _wall_ right over there isn't enough, now you're melting the floors? _This house was already a fixer-upper!_ "

Some things are more important than life-and-death, dammit. Do you have any idea how much contractors charge?

A long, black, pustule-covered tongue licked suddenly fur-covered lips, and a scent that made rot seem fresh and clean filled my nostrils. The creature took a step toward me, its motions far more steady than they'd been just a moment before.

"On the other hand," I said, "I guess it used to be your house, so you should have some say in the decoration."

See? I can be reasonable.

Oh, and then I turned and ran for my damn life. Which, really, is just one more way of proving that I really can be reasonable.

I felt the hook miss my fleeing back by maybe half an inch, and heard the hiss of the venom beginning to melt through my jacket. Ick. I really was lucky I'd gotten that thing cheap... though not as lucky as I was that it was pretty thick, since acid on one's flesh is not good. I have the scars to prove that one. Ah, well, it would wash off soon enough, I was almost to the big pool of blood.

Was it _sad_ that I was actually looking forward to leaping into a giant pool of blood filled with invisible biting things for the second time in one day?

You know, maybe I really _am_ insane.

Ah, well. I came upon the hole in the wall I'd been sprinting for, a wasp-boar-serial killer-ghost roughly five steps behind me, and took a flying leap. The bloody pool, which had previously been up to my waist, was now roughly an inch deep, causing my face to sink right through it and slam into the wooden floor, sliding along it roughly.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. I was seriously getting sick of this stupid fucking house. Maybe I would just take the loss and burn the whole stupid place down. This was the second time in one day that I'd been covered in a pool of ghost-blood, and you know, I bet that's a cancer risk or something. I mean, sure, what _doesn't_ cause cancer these days, sure, but still.

I rolled to one side, letting the descending hook slam into the floor where my head had been, and reached into my coat for the second bottle-bomb. It was hissing, releasing some kinda weird purple smoke, and I think the bottle itself felt softer than it should have been. For the second time that day, I wondered vaguely if I was about to explode my own face, what with how I didn't actually know most of what was in it.

Meh, probably still better than what Harry was gonna do to me.

I chucked the bottle between the monster's legs; it made a kind of weird glooping noise rather than a thunk, which in my expert opinion was not normal. It looked like it was actually _melting_ , and that seemed like a bad sign. Glass, ideally, should not turn to goo. I decided quickly to get a bit further away from it before I took my shots, and-

The bottle exploded, quite spontaneously, quite earlier than planned, and most noticeably quite before I was nearly as far away from it as I would have preferred. Though there was the benefit there that I was suddenly _moved_ farther away as the blood pool and the ghost in it went up in the same bizarre white flame as the kitchen had before. Fun fact? Turns out that while the whole 'ghostly energy' thing might have absorbed _most_ of the shockwave from the previous bomb, it hadn't absorbed _all_ of it. I just hadn't felt it because I'd been at a kind-of safe distance.

I wasn't this time. And oh my, it didn't feel very good.

I lay on my back, ears ringing, chest feeling like I had been hit in the torso by a wrecking ball. I think I might have said, "Ooooooooow...", but I wasn't sure because I couldn't hear anything and I couldn't feel my face. I decided, and not just because I couldn't do anything else, to lay there for awhile and ponder the nature of the universe. It seemed the thing to do.

The universe was boring. I fought my way to my feet.

I looked around, checking the hall. No blood. No hideous amalgamation of ghostly monsters. A big damn scorch mark on the floor... _again_. So that was, what, three floors I would need to replace? This house was turning into a bigger financial investment than I'd originally planned. Sure, it was mainly for storing gear and stuff, so it didn't need to be comfortable or luxurious but it still had to _look_ good, or what was the point? I'm sure you've figured out by now that I do this job 50% for the money and 50% for the opportunity to look cool. A safehouse that didn't have any style was gonna send the wrong message.

I heard something scraping behind me, like metal scratching against wood as, for example, something huge and carrying a weapon in one hand struggled to its feet.

I dove for my knife, lost in the impromptu swim and subsequent explosion, caught it up in one hand, and rolled to my feet, spinning to face the source of the sound with dagger held at chest height and gun leveled at the source of the sound the event I needed to repel an attack at my upper body...

And realized just a second too late that I'd fallen for one of the simplest and weakest ghostly tricks in existence. Just a simple little fake noise, intended usually to get humans jumping at shadows and panicking without reason. Intended, in this case, to make me look in the wrong direction.

I spun, just barely in time to keep the hook from slashing into my spine and leaving my legs useless forever... and just a second too late to stop the hook from digging into a less irreplaceable portion of my back anyway.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

The wound wasn't fatal. If it had hit an artery or a vein, I would already be unconscious from the blood loss. But it wasn't something you could call a flesh wound, either... muscle had been torn in my lower back, and that muscle group is tied up to almost all the others in very annoying ways. I didn't think I could stand up, at least not without some time to right myself and get my mind on something other than how much it fucking _hurt_.

The ghost, flickering like a static image on an old television, smiled. He took what looked like a deep breath, and the bizarre visual flickers that made up his form began to stabilize, solidify. I could still see through him, but it wasn't as simple as just looking in his general direction anymore; he had the visual consistency of a thick fog again.

For a second, I had no idea what he'd just done, how he had pulled that off, what source he had drawn power from now. When it finally hit me, I almost laughed. Couldn't help it... it really was kind of funny, you know? I had come so close, managed to really, really hurt him, and more than once, but in the end? It really was over this time, and there wasn't much I could do about it.

I was scared.

Really scared. I didn't want to die. I _tried_ to contain it, I really did, but the instinct for self-preservation is a damn powerful influence. I couldn't suppress it, not fully, not now when my life was in such clear danger. And that was good enough for my buddy to draw on my fear, consume it, pull himself at least partially back together.

Stupid emotional control. If I had been better able to stop myself from being afraid of dying, I wouldn't be in a situation where I was about to die. In some dark corner of my mind that was able to have thoughts through the pain and fear, I wondered if that counted as irony or if it was just 'a really shitty situation'.

I took some small comfort from the fact that even now, my thoughts did not make a whole lot of sense. At least I was gonna die as I lived.

The thing smiled, and God, it really did have the worst smile imaginable. Rotting black teeth and maggots crawling along his gums and... ugh. Just ugh. I didn't want that to be the last thing I saw, I just didn't. It was a wholly instinctive reaction, and it was the _wrong_ reaction, as the manifestation grew once again more solid.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, I was just making him stronger, and I couldn't control it. I needed to move. My dagger was out of reach, I needed to fight through the pain, suppress my emotions, get a weapon in my hands and get to my feet before he-

I never even saw him move when he crossed the room. One second he was calmly watching me crawl, the next he was standing over me as I tried to crawl for my weapon. With a black chuckle, he quite cheerfully stomped his foot onto the wound in my back.

Oh.

God.

It.

Hurt.

White lights flashed behind my eyes, and the only reason I didn't scream was because it hurt too badly for my brain to get messages to my mouth. And I knew it had a practical purpose, knew it stopped me from getting my hands on a weapon, and that was in his best interests, but I also _knew_ Stanfield. He didn't care about that, had no practical thoughts in his mind right now whatsoever. Something weak and small and suffering was in front of him, and he wanted to hurt it more. That was all. Nothing else mattered to him beyond that scream of agony.

He might have been a great businessman, but that had been more like a hobby to him, really. His day job. His real passion was and always would be pain.

I looked up at him, teeth gritted. "You know..." I said. "If I have one regret? It's that I only got to set you on fire twice before I died."

The ghost's head tilted to one side, and his smile widened.

" **The tongue next** _,"_ said that voice from everywhere and nowhere.

Ugh. I'd been trying to goad him into killing me, not trying to give him spiffy ideas. Harry, you _asshole_.

Well, I tried to look on the bright side. Maybe being tortured to death by a serial killer's ghost was good enough karma that I would get to be reincarnated as something neat, like an eagle or a souffle chef. Or even something that was just practical, like a guy who had enough common sense to _not_ choose 'monster-hunter' as a valid career option. Because I had to be honest? While it had its upsides, it turned out the retirement plan kinda sucked.

The ghost raised his hook, and just. Kept. Smiling.

I closed my eyes. I admit it. There was no point in pretending to be brave anymore, really... I was gonna die and I didn't want to see it coming. Simple as that.

Later, I would wish I had kept my eyes open. I apparently missed something _really_ cool, and I mean... seeing cool things is half the reason I kept doing this job despite the aforementioned crappy retirement plan and total lack of benefits (Though I do get to set my own hours, which is pretty cool.).

There was a sound like someone tossing dried ice into a volcano, and _no_ , I _don't_ know how that's what it sounded like, I just _knew_. It sounded like the coldest thing you could imagine hitting the hottest thing you could imagine, and the resulting sizzle was the mother of all sizzles. The image of ice and fire colliding ripped through the minds of any who heard it, along with a certain hunger for bacon (Though any bacon that sizzled like _this_ would be the bacon of gods, hewn from the flesh of Celestial Pigs. Which might be a real thing!).

Stanfield screamed.

To put this in perspective: I had stabbed knives into his ghost arms and set him on fire twice, and he had been completely silent through all of it. I had only been damaging a manifestation; I hadn't actually caused him any pain, just some expenditure of energy that he had shrugged off without much effect beyond inconvenience. But this time, he screamed; that echoing, booming ghostly voice raised in abject agony, probably the first it had felt since death.

Also, I wasn't dead yet.

Combined, these two things caused me to open my eyes. And I saw, standing between the ghostly killer and myself, the most _beautiful_ woman in the universe, all soft curves wrapped in a pretty peach dress and elegantly coiffed hair... and the best part, the most _alluring_ part, what set her forever above all other women in my mind: a big, sharp knife in her hand, the dagger I'd lost in the other room.

I love a girl who kicks ass. Sue me.

Harry didn't look as enamored as I very much was, but that might have been because of the way that my lovely lady was glowing, her entire being suffused with a faint blue aura that was brightest around her weapon. Or, possibly, because of the long, thin slash across his chest that was currently bleeding brilliant white light. Either or.

I smiled up at Lydia, despite the pain. "I think I'm in love."

Lydia rolled her eyes. "I am married, good sir."

"Aw, c'mon. That was a long time ago, baby," I said, chuckling with a very slight, almost unnoticeable, edge of insane glee. I couldn't help it. The sudden absence of terror was like a drug, and I could freely admit I was a tiny bit delirious. "Besides, you remembered my knife. Shows you're thinkin' about me."

"You said you wished that you could give me a present. This one seemed fitting," She said. Her gaze locked on Harry, and her eyes narrowed. "But I'm not here for you."

"I'm better looking than he is."

She shrugged, her expression indicating a lack of concern that really was not good for my self-esteem. "That matters less to a dead woman than you would think."

"That hurts, Lyd. See how hurt I look?"

She shrugged again, and the air in the room felt colder. "I've been thinking, and I believe I may have had a small epiphany. Several, in fact, and they have made me realize that I truly have not done all I could to move on with my life."

"Afterlife."

"Yes, quite so. It was depressing, to say the least. So much so I had pondered surrender to oblivion," she said. "But something strange occurred. A madman, who simply would _not_ stop his prattle into my ear, made the excellent point that taking action and working to correct my errors would be the more ultimately satisfying course of action. I have made many mistakes, and I think that Madeline would rest better if I atoned for them before I joined her in Heaven."

She raised the dagger in her hands, and azure light gathered around it, intensifying the sheen of the blade so brilliantly it was hard to look at. The aura actually extended a few feet out from the physical blade, giving it the appearance of a sword. Or maybe just the _idea_ of the appearance of a sword, an unfathomable aura of sharpness that 'knife' just did not properly encompass. I could fully realize that my nice, mortal senses really couldn't properly analyze her anymore. "And I feel that there _is_ something to be said for the catharsis of sheer, bloody revenge," She intoned, the voice of an executioner preparing to carry out sentence.

"You are just getting hotter, you realize," I said. "Seriously, I am one step away from just worshiping you, here."

"Oh, do be _silent_ , sir."

Then Lydia Talman, Lar and Guardian Spirit of this household appointed in selfless sacrifice and consecrated in her own blood, began to do her sacred duty for the first time.

It was all metaphysical, really. Probably some quantum involved somewhere, but the gist of it is that Lydia was not a ghost, and Stanfield, despite his power, was. Both were spiritual beings, yes, but he was a spiritual being specialized to prey on living things, whereas _she_ was a spiritual being specialized for repelling _other_ spiritual beings. _Especially_ when she was doing so in protection of others, such as right now. So tell me... which do _you_ think would have the advantage?

I admit, I was smiling so hard my face hurt. But really now, can you blame me? I have been in this business for over ten years, I have seen a lot of things that were truly awe-inspiring, a lot of things truly horrific, and a _lot_ of things that I couldn't describe as any other way but 'utterly insane'. But I have never, _never_ , seen a five-foot-nothing girly-girl in a pretty peach dress stand up to a seven-foot tall rotting ghostly serial killer and kick his _ass_.

With a _lightsaber_.

It. Was. _Awesome_.

The ghost growled, his voice thick with rage and pain, his fury so palpable it seemed to radiate from the very walls of his life-long (And I suppose, death-long) home. He charged, that bloody hook flashing down at Lydia's face with the same brutal strength he'd always shown. For her part, she simply moved her blade into position to intercept. There was no technique to it, she clearly didn't know any swordsmanship. She didn't even swing the weapon, just moved it and held it still.

The two blades connected in a brilliant flare of white light, and when I could see again, I was treated to the sight of Stanfield's hook, shattered, the point where it had snapped off leaking the same white light as the wound on his chest. The merest _touch_ of Lydia's lightsaber (Yes, I am _going to keep calling it that_ and no, you _cannot stop me_.) had taken it apart with more ease than a steel blade would cut through one made of cheese.

Hee. Hee. Hee.

The ghost shrieked once again in obvious agony... the hook hadn't really been a weapon, after all. Like the rest of the manifestation, it was a piece of his spiritual energy given physical form, and Lydia had already shown she could stab right through that to cut at the actual creature generating it. For her purposes, destroying his weapon was no different than sliding a blade in between his ribs. Anything she cut would harm the source all the same.

And my gal was in a cutting mood.

She shifted her wrist, bringing the blade down in a wide arc. There was no technique to it, no finesse. She just hacked away like any rage-fueled amateur, and had this been a real battle, she probably would have been torn apart by her much larger, more experienced enemy. But she had one major advantage in this battle: her opponent really couldn't do much of anything. This was a spiritual war, and emotion was vastly more important than skill, and as Lydia was right now, confronting the monster who had made her life Hell for over a century, for the first time holding both the ability and the resolve to fight back? She wasn't a woman any longer. She wasn't even a spirit. She was an avatar of righteous fury, and it didn't _matter_ how clumsy her strikes were because there was absolutely nothing her enemy could do to defend against them.

Every single stroke not only cut the manifested ghost, it outright tore huge chunks of rotting flesh from his hide, as though she were taking a broadsword to him rather than a formless blade of light. The smell was repulsive, but what stuck the mind _most_ was the light. That same brilliant white energy poured from every wound, gushing forth in torrents more forcefully than real blood possibly could have. The manifestation could barely even move at this point; Lydia had lopped off its legs, hounded it to the ground and hacking mercilessly every step of the way, her voice raised in a wordless shriek of rage even as the ghostly voice echoed through the halls in an answering scream of agony. The killer lay uselessly under her endless, frenzied strikes, a lump of unrecognizable meat that was hemorrhaging light from a hundred mortal wounds, so brilliantly I could barely look at it.

All the same, I couldn't turn away, and not _just_ because it was the third-coolest thing I'd ever seen. Lydia's face was set in a feral snarl, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. She had spent the day going through the emotional blender, and this was the cherry on the trauma sundae. She was a walking emotional wound laid bare to the world, at this point. If she could bring herself to do this, I could bring myself to watch it.

What else were friends for?

Lydia brought her blade down one last time, one more brutal two-handed chop, slicing the thing completely in half at the waist. Once again, 'exploded' wasn't quite the right word for what happened to it... there was no force to it, not even a light breeze to go with the blinding flare of luminance. But it was the closest word I could think of.

Lydia looked down at the spot where it had been, her shoulders rising and falling. She didn't need to breathe, but again... old habits.

"It's okay," I said, in what I hoped was a soothing voice because she still looked really, really angry and she still had a lightsaber in her hand and frankly I had gotten some mixed signals on whether or not she actually liked me. "It's all over, now."

Her eyes narrowed, and I gulped a bit. Yeah, she was definitely still pissed.

"No," she said. "It's not."

_Pleasedon'tkillmepleasedon'tkillmepleasedon'tkillme..._ I thought. Out loud, I said, "Um... it sure _looks_ over, so..."

Without another word, Lydia slammed her fist into something I couldn't see. The air cracked, and she appeared to be reaching through _something_ because I could not longer see her hand. I got the impression that metaphor was happening again, because my head hurt and that usually happens when I see things my five senses aren't equipped to properly interpret.

She _pulled_. There was a sound like every nightmare you've ever had, all at once, and an old, slightly overweight man with thick, bushy gray hair and very old, severe, but expensive-looking black clothes came tumbling out onto the floor from out of nowhere.

Well. That was new. Still, at this point, it wasn't too hard to figure out exactly what was going on.

"Hi, Harry," I said.

The ghost no longer had any of the rage or haughtiness that had inundated its voice up until now; just a deep aura of fear, and a great deal of confusion. Ghosts don't normally take on a physical form, they stay safely as spirits and use their powers to create physical forms they can use as puppets. But this was the real Stanfield, the man's actual ghost, and he had _not_ chosen to come here. Lydia had, as far as I could tell, reached out, grabbed his soul, and forced him into a physical body against his will.

Well. I hadn't known that was possible, but then I've never pissed off a spirit of justice and/or vengeance. I wasn't really sure what she qualified as right now, in point of fact. Some kind of goddess, probably? Something much, much worse than any ghost, _that_ much was very clear, based on the fact that the worst ghost I'd ever run into was crawling on his hands and knees in front of her, totally powerless and whimpering like a kicked dog.

This was gonna be _awesome_.

"Harcourt Stanfield. You are accused of the brutal and callous torture and murder of twenty-seven young women over the course of your life, and of thirty-nine innocent men, women, and children in the years following your death. How do you plead?"

The words came from Lydia's mouth, but it wasn't really Lydia saying it, honestly. Not anymore. What spoke now was the hand of bloody, relentless retribution, just choosing to manifest itself via the voice of a tiny turn-of-the-century aristocrat. And somehow, that did not make it any less fucking horrifying. The sheer weight and solemnity of the words was so brutal I think the only reason I wasn't outright crushed by them was because they weren't aimed at me. Harry, for instance, certainly didn't look like he could have stood up at the moment. His spectral flesh was so transparent as to be barely visible, yet still somehow managed to have the pallor of raw terror.

"I... I... please, I do not... please, have mercy..." he gasped out, seemingly unable to gather the strength to speak in anything above a pained whisper.

"The accused," Lydia (sort of) said, "need only state his plea. Guilty, or innocent?"

"I... my mind was clouded... please, I was afflicted by madness, I did not do those things in my right mind, I swear!"

I winced. Wow, he really couldn't read the mood, huh? Since I'm kind of a jerk (It's okay as long as I admit it, right?), I couldn't help but chime in, "Oooooooh. Making excuses. That's gonna go over really well with the fucking spectral executioner, I'm sure. Very smart move, chief."

"The audience shall _please be silent, sir_ ," Lydia said, and this time it really _was_ Lydia. Apparently I annoyed her enough to pierce through the possession by the very essence of Justice or whatever the Hell was going on with her. I considered this an accomplishment. "And the _accused_ shall state. His. _Plea_."

Harcourt Stanfield's eyes were wide with the deepest panic I had ever seen in my life. "I... am..." He began, and I _saw_ his mouth form the word 'innocent', more than once. He was desperate to say it. He put more effort into trying to put forth that single word than most people put into their entire lives put together.

But this was no ordinary trial. And he was under far more than his own oath of honesty. There would be no false plea here.

"... guilty," he finally said, the word snapping from his mouth with such suddenness and force it was clear that he had spoken it against his will. He collapsed to the floor, a puppet with his strings cut.

"The jury," 'Lydia' said, "shall now pronounce sentence."

The jury showed up.

There were roughly fifty of them... more than I could count quickly, at least, and the effort wasn't helped by the fact that they were all translucent, fading in and out of vision like they were being seen through a thick fog.

They took on many forms. Old men in formal suits, younger men in antique smoking jackets that looked like they were just getting ready for sleep, plump matriarchs, scrawny girls in the skirts of a maid, and even one or two much-too-young children. But most of them were young, blonde women. Just like the sort I had seen in photos in the secret closet just off the kitchen.

And two of them in particular, a tall but slender young brunette man in an older-style business suit, and a young girl with thick black hair and a bright green dress, stood out. Not for anything they did; they stood silently in the crowd just like the others. It's just that I noticed that Lydia, even in full Merciless Justice Mode, would not stare directly at them. Every other spirit in the room was fair game, but her eyes would not rest on those two.

Ah. Ah- _ha_. I guess the benefit of a trial run by-and-for the dead is that you have access to the perfectly appropriate jury at all times.

I tried really hard not to chuckle, since I felt pretty sure that Lydia would yell at me if I did and she was creepy right now. I almost felt bad for old Harry. Especially when every single one of the stone-faced spirits in the 'jury' raised their right hand, thumb pointed very firmly downward.

I _almost_ felt bad. Mostly, though I was just smirking.

Lydia's blade was moving the instant the final thumbs-down was cast. The blade of light flashed at the faded old monster's neck, and by this point I'd spotted the pattern well enough to know I should close and cover my damn eyes. I was _still_ blinded, the light flowing through both my eyelids and hands as though physical matter was empty air to it.

And Hell, for all I knew, it was.

There was a scream. Not the bellows of agony from earlier, nothing that powerful. Just a sad, empty wail as the weak, broken, and fading spirit of Harcourt Stanfield, entrepreneur, last of his line, and oh yes, utter heartless monster, was finally and completely obliterated.

And as far as I was concerned, good _riddance_.

When I could open my eyes again, things were a bit closer to sane. Harry was gone, of course, not even a stain on the floor to show he had ever been there at all. The 'jury' as well; they had all moved onto whatever afterlife awaited them long ago, I assumed, and this had been a special guest appearance. Only Lydia remained.

The knife I had given her lost its otherworldly luster and clattered to the floor, to be followed shortly by the helplessly sobbing spirit of a deeply traumatized young woman who had not asked for any of this, not one bit. She had wanted to live a normal, happy life with her normal, happy family, and the universe had royally fucked her over at every turn. Revenge was cathartic, it was true, but catharsis only does you so much good in the face of what she'd been through.

Moving was hard, but dammit... there's some things you just have to do. It took me awhile to crawl to her side, and I left more blood on the floor than I liked to think about, but I got there. I tried to place a hand on her shoulder, but I kind of passed through her; she was a spirit of protection. With nothing needing protecting in her general area, and her mind no longer focused on much of anything because bawling her eyes out, I really shouldn't have expected her to be able to hold a physical form.

I settled for just sitting next to her. I was silent for a long time, letting her get in the good cry that life seemed to keep denying her the time for. It was probably at least ten minutes of sobbing before she seemed to stop enough for me to risk actually speaking to her.

"You did a great job, kid," I said. "They're proud of you."

She knew who I meant.

The tears kept going for awhile yet, but they didn't seem so desperate after that. Or maybe it was my imagination.

"Did I ever mention I really like your dress?" I asked.

*****

I got the house for nine-thousand, three-hundred and sixty-four dollars and seventy-five cents. If you go into an office screaming about hidden termite damage making walls collapse and fire hazards, you'd be shocked how quickly they start trying to placate you. Remember kids: whine often enough and loudly enough, and most people _will_ give you what you want. The world is a funny place sometimes.

I started moving gear in the next day. Guns and assorted knives, silver bullets, garlic and wooden stakes (I have never run into an actual vampire, but helps to be prepared and besides I like garlic on my hamburgers), rock salt, a few cold iron bars, some flares, some kinda voodoo thing that I got from a witch doctor and which works better on ghouls than you'd think, piano wire (for zombies), a large kind of thing that made a 'doink' sound and other than that I'm not sure what it did...

I have a lot of stuff, is the key point here.

Lydia looked critically at the boxes. "Are you _certain_ you are quite sane?"

"Nope!" I said. "But that's what makes life fun."

"I feel unsafe storing such things in my home, good sir."

"You're _dead_. You are in no danger from any of this! Except the stuff in the boxes marked with a kind of cartoon ghost, that's my anti-ghost stuff. And even then, I'm not sure, since you might not have the same weaknesses as a normal ghost. Is it sad that I think of ghosts as normal?" I asked.

"A bit, yes," Lydia said.

I narrowed my eyes. "You know, I think I liked you better when you didn't talk back. And besides, I thought you were planning to move onto that fluffy cloudy place in the sky after you finished giving old Harry the chop?"

She drew herself up, the very picture of Imperial Womanhood. "I am the guardian of this household, and feel that it is my duty to remain here for now, and if possible to curb your excesses somewhat. I have seen your activities first-hand, and find you to be _quite_ irrational. Clearly, your lifestyle is most lacking, most notably in the utter absence of dignity of any sort. This shall be best restored by a woman's touch around the house."

" _My_ excesses? You're the one who chopped a ghost in half with a lightsaber."

Lydia couldn't quite meet my eyes when she spoke next, and it was barely above a whisper, but I definitely heard something that sounded very much like, "He deserved it."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, yes, you're a real lady. Please, you make Xena look fluffy."

"... I do not know what that means," she said, though she looked vaguely insulted despite this.

"Oh, right. Remind me to set you up with a DVD player or something for after I leave."

She blinked. "Leave? But you purchased my house."

"Well, yeah, and I'm gonna fix it up a bit, don't worry, but, um... this isn't really a place I'm planning to _live_ in a lot. It's a safe house. I mean, I'll sleep here on occasion, but it's mostly for storing equipment, and..." I began.

Her eyes were already filling up with tears.

I sighed. "I... well, it's just that most of my orders come online these days, and it's gonna be a pain getting a connection way out here in the boonies, and..."

Her lower lip began to quiver.

"And have you seen all the damage around here? It won't be hard to make it into a place to crash for the night instead of a hotel, but _living_ here? It's gonna cost ten times what I paid for the stupid place to get it into decent condition, which really defeats the purpose of getting it for so cheap, and..."

She made a little sniffling noise. That _evil_ little monster _._

" _Fine_. Ugh, I'll _work something out_. I guess having like, a central base of operations will impress clients, maybe. Make me look high-class. Just jeez, stop crying," I snarled.

She giggled girlishly. "Excellent! I believe this shall be a wonderful association, good sir. It will be quite pleasant to have company again, even your rather uncouth brand. Now, by all means, do complete your unpacking. I shall prepare a list of needed repairs. Worry not, together we'll have this place looking as grand as the day it was built!" She said, skipping off. Skipping! Dammit, she actually _was_ cute when she wasn't screaming. Cute and _manipulative_. She was going to be a huge pain in the ass to live with.

... heh.

Though actually, when I really stopped to think and put it like that, I hadn't 'lived with' anyone in a long time. Even if she technically wasn't living, well she could snark in a kind of old-timey way, and she wasn't _unpleasant_ to be around. Might be kinda fun.

Still, I couldn't let her just skip off after using her feminine wiles on me like that, sent the wrong message. I cleared my throat and said. "And hey, having a guardian spirit around is probably gonna be really useful! Better than a guard dog."

The skipping stopped cold. "I am _not_ a dog."

"Of course you're not! You're _better,_ aren't you pretty girl? Arrrrren't you? Whoooooo's a good girl?"

"Honestly. I should have let the monstrous old man torture you for a bit longer. It might have burned some politeness into you," she muttered.

I pantomimed being shot through the heart. "So cruel! You know, I had to spend nearly a week in the hospital? The _hospital._ Getting stitches and pills and other medical things _._ Even now my back hurts like you would not believe. I can barely lift this..." I checked the box in my hands. "... powdered chicken teeth? How the heck is that even a thing, and where did I get a box from?"

"... Are you _quite_ sane?" my roommate asked.

I just smiled.

Yeah, this place was feeling more like a home already.

###

Afterword

Hey, all! You hold in your hands my very first published work. If this were a paper book and you were reading the first edition _and_ I sometime in the future become famous, you could have sold this for millions of dollars. It isn't any of those things, so you won't, but I'm still very happy you bought it!

I have been writing as a hobby for roughly a decade as of this posting, and only just now have I tried in any way to make money from it. This was possibly not the brightest move on my part, but it is probably good for you since it means the quality will be a bit higher, hopefully.

Thank you to Isabel, my dearest heart, for always supporting me in this. Thanks to Jen for editing my hideous first draft, Ari for helping me work out the characters far more organically than I could have on my own, and Lander for some truly awesome cover art.

And to you, the readers, of course!

About the Author

Andrew E. Moczulski is almost kind of a writer, now. He has a Masters degree in business that he has never really used for anything, and which has nothing to do with anything seen here. He is a dog person.
