Page 10 of The House on Haven Way

“The money you’re not making at all?” Honey has the gall to point out.

“Yeah, that. I’m gonna do this place up in Mid-Century Modern. Gonna antique this shit. In fact—forget the trashy television, I’m going to binge DIY home renovation shows.”

“God. Just don’t fall off a ladder, okay?”

“No promises—ooh.” I swivel too fast, and there it is. That sharp, shooting lower back pain that travels all the way up to my shoulders. “I’ll start by just watching shows for some ideas.”

Something is wrong with the invader. The intruder. She sleeps all the time. She winces away from bright lights even after she’s been awake for hours. She’ll stop walking suddenly, and her hands will fly to her back or her neck.

She’s not that old.

And she’s still where she’s not supposed to be.

She’s got it so easy, and I hate her. She doesn’t even realize what she’s got, even with her aches and pains, and whatever else is wrong with her. She’s alive.

Alive people pick up the phones and call their loved ones. They get in cars and cruise. They get married. Have babies. See their kids grow up from the front row, not the misty, invisible sidelines. They get to go to weddings, funerals, and just out of the damn house!

I hate her with a passion that surprises me. How sharp and bitter it is, how angry it makes me. The lights buzz and flicker when I think about it too hard, and this chick doesn’t seem to notice.

That makes me madder.

I ought to just go to another room, but I don’t.

Even though I hate her guts, I can’t help but watch her, seeing her have all the things that should have been mine, that would have been mine if it hadn’t been for that no-good, two-faced Harry Rogers.

I won’t lie, she is pretty, too, and not like any woman I’ve ever seen, not up close. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen a whole bunch of beauties in my travels, but that was a long time ago. I haven’t seen a beautiful woman in my house since Nancy—oh, not that my brothers and their boys were slouches when it came to the girls they brought here over the years, but they were family. I never looked at them with that kind of eye, you know?

This girl is called Amber, and it fits the color of her curls—even though she hides them under a black silk bonnet most of the time. I don’t have to do any snooping for that, because she’s on the phone a lot now that she’s awake, and she keeps calling people to set up things, and so I hear her say it over and over again: “Amber Pierce, Amber Pierce” and my address! She keeps telling them that my house on Haven Way belongs to her.

If I had any blood, it’d be boiling.

You know what else ticks me off? She was asleep for hours and hours, and I hovered over her, trying to be all ghostly—and this chick literally opened her eyes at one point, stared right at me—and went back to sleep. Now that she’s awake?

Can’t see me if I’m five feet in front of her.

Like right now. I’m pacing at the end of the bed while she watches something on her “laptop” (her words, not mine. Never seen it anywhere near her lap), and she hasn’t looked at me once.

“Damn it!” I shout, and fling the closet door shut. She left it open when she decided to put a few things in it earlier, and now I close it so hard that the hinges rattle. A screw falls out, a hinge dangles, and let me tell you, I keep all the hinges and things nice and oiled, nice and tight with the toolkit my brothers left here back in the day.

There’s no way she can miss my outburst with the closet, I tell myself.

And I’m right.

Amber hears it. Sees it, too.

She jumps out of bed, gasps in while chewing a handful of popcorn, chokes, and her eyes immediately go wide.

Holy shit, I think she’s actually choking. Can’t breathe.

Staggering. Panic on her face. Popcorn spilling all over the bed as she reaches for her phone and knocks over the half-empty plastic bowl.

If she dies, she’s going to be my permanent roommate—and I think if I cross over, I might end up in Hell, because maybe this will count as murder. Or manslaughter?

With all the skills I’ve saved up over the last seventy years, I turn my translucent form—a see-through image of the man I used to be— into a corporeal form. Anyone who says ghosts can’t do that just hasn’t met the right ghost, or the ghost isn’t working at it. All we are is matter, and we can let it fan out until we’re a scary, shadowy mist in the corner of the room or a semi-solid being, the kind that feels like warm, over-set Jell-O.

I slam into Amber like she’s an enemy lineman with the ball, a real forward tackle that drops her to the ground, and the stuck popcorn comes flying out.

She’s breathing. Half-sobbing, half-coughing, scrabbling around on the hardwood floor in a sea of spilled popcorn.