Photo by Phillip Goldsberry on Unsplash
“Hey where did my—” the female guest twisted on the dark green sofa to better search the end table”—drink go, there it is.” She picked it up from where it had been tucked away from the edge making it difficult to see from where she had been sitting. The underlaying cork coaster featuring North Carolina’s state bird lifted a moment from the moisture before falling back on the wooden surface.
Dwight chuckled before saying, “Sorry, that would be Molly.”
“Who?” Sabine asked, sharply.
“The house ghost. Unlike most poltergeists, she doesn’t knock things off tables but moves them back. She is very helpful to have around.” Dwight looked mid-air, then said, “Molly, this is Sabine. I told you about her. Sabine,” he waved generally around, “this is Molly. Came with the house and is the bestest ghost one could ask for.”
“When you invited me over to meet people, I thought I would be able to see them.” The deadpan in Sabine’s voice was flatter than a squirrel run over by a steamroller.
They first met dancing at a nightclub, him with a bachelor’s party and she with a couple friends taking advantage of the free drinks. After a few dates, Dwight thought it time to introduce her to his roommates. “Well, yeah. Tom will be back from work anytime now. But Molly is also part of the package.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but let me show you her room.” Dwight pushed out of the recliner, and the AC rattled as it kicked on. “Molly, it’s fine, she won’t break anything. This way Sabine, it’s just up the steps.”
The blonde put her glass back on the wood. Extracting herself from the overly soft sofa took some effort, but the woman managed with minimal grunting. Unseen, the glass moved from the wood back to the protective coaster. “Isn’t this new construction? How can there be a ghost?”
“Don’t know, but she definitely came with. Maybe them moved a cemetery to build here?”
At the top of the stairs was a bathroom door, open and just off center from the stairs so no one would accidently fall down the steps leaving the toilet area. The second-floor landing oversaw most of the living room, the soaring ceiling providing an open area with a skylight to let in the sun in the morning. The left wall had a closed door, as did the right wall. Along the landing on the side with the staircase and to the left was a third door.
Dwight pointed at doors. First he pointed at the right door over where the kitchen and dining room was located in the open floor plan below. “That’s Tom’s room.” The left side of the second floor was located over the garage. “That one is my room. And this one,” he opened the door on the staircase wall, “is Molly’s plus our work-from-home room. Tom gets Mondays and Thursdays and I get Wednesdays and Fridays.”
The outside wall facing east was filled with glass, giving an excellent view of the neighbor’s matching window across the street. Someone had covered the lower half with a one-way viewing film. Sabine brushed by Dwight to enter. Near the huge window was a desk with two neat paper stacks on opposite sides of the desk in little in-boxes, each having wired business holders behind them with pens, pencils, paperclips, and other paraphernalia. The laptop on it was probably Dwight since it was Friday. Tucked under the left side of the desk was a wireless printer. The majority of the room was taken up by another table, this one covered in Legos. Beside it were two toy chests filled with dolls, books, balls, and blocks. In between the child haven and the business zone was a small table with three blocks, each side a solid color.
Sabine could see the tops were red, and one of the sides facing her was black and the other green, the third was angled and showed a yellow and a white.
Dwight frowned at the blocks. “Problem kiddo?”
“What?” Sabine asked.
“Oh, Molly uses the blocks to talk to us. Red means bad or stop. I guess she is not okay with us being here.” He turned to the air, “Sorry about that.” He then addressed the living person before him. “Let me show you my room.”
“Whatever.” Sabine backed out and waited for him to open his door. A made bed, nothing on the floor, and the white carpet looked freshly vacuumed. “You cleaned up.”
“Nah, Molly does that. It’s great.” He brought her in the room. “I love this house. Both Tom and I got a little nook that looks out on the non-existent backyard. He made his into a workout area and I read books in mine.” He led her over to an area with an oversized chair easy to curl in with five books beside it sitting on the window sill. Dwight indicated for her to sit while he leaned against the wall. “The house was cheaper since the couple who originally ordered it put three bedrooms with a single bathroom upstairs instead of the standard two bedrooms, one with a master bath as well as the open guest bathroom. But with the half-toilet downstairs, Tom and I are covered. We had originally thought to get a third roommate to help with the mortgage, but then we discovered Molly. The loss of a third income sucks, but we hadn’t really wanted to give up the office space either, not with COVID fresh in our minds, and once we figured out giving her a Lego set a month kept her happy, and a happy Molly is a dusted and vacuumed place, it’s a loss we can handle.”
“You are for real, about the ghost.”
“Yeah.”
A shout and a door came from below. “I’m home. And the Thia food has been delivered.”
“Want to meet the housemate you can see?”
“Delighted.”
***
Two months was a fast hunt for Lisa but time to finish. Pity, she thought as she stroked Dwight’s dark hair, sitting beside him on the ugly overly soft couch. He snored away in his heavily drugged state. His insistence that he lived with a ghost just was too much. It’s hard to gaslight someone into crazy when they were already there, and where is the fun of breaking someone who was already broken?
And with Tom away on a business trip, now was the perfect time to end this and move onto something more exciting.
Fire or suicide? She couldn’t decide.
Dwight would be awake in another five hours, give or take basic tolerations. She would want him awake for the fire. Suicide could be done sooner, an “overdose” of sleeping pills, and she could hit up the nightclubs for Tuesday Night Tacos. If she found a new mark tonight, she might even be able to marry by June. She could use a renewal of her bank accounts with another turn at widowhood. Suicide then.
“Ouch!” A block, which had just hit the back of her head, landed in Dwight’s lap, red side up. “Are you kidding me?”
Lisa, whose present Driver’s License claimed the name Sabine, leaped out of the sofa like a cobra. Pilates and yoga gave her core strength and dexterity she hid from her victims until the final cycle. “Molly?!?”
Another block flew over the upstairs railing, hitting her hard enough midchest to leave a bruise. It landed white-side up.
“Oh, even better. I’m going to love this.” Lisa smiled up the stairs. “I’ve never had an audience before.”
The third communication block launched toward her face, but Lisa easily sidestepped it. Behind her, it landed on the black side.
“No? Molly, Molly, Molly,” she tisked. “I say yes.”
“And I say no.” Echoed through the house, rattling through the AC and bouncing through the kitchen. An icy wind blew and lights dimmed. Behind Lisa, the voice continued, scratching the ears like static and glass, “I like this one.”
Lisa spun, expecting nothing and discovering many things she understood about the universe was wrong. Ghosts, or something supernatural, existed. Some things could scare her enough to pee herself. And she wasn’t the top predator in the house. “You aren’t a kid,” she managed to whisper.
“Imagine that.” The shadow form of a slim small woman reached out a clawed hand toward Lisa’s throat.
Lisa felt the claws sink into her throat but no blood gushed. A jerk pulled her slightly forward and pain ripped through her.
In the ghost’s hand was a glowing globe, which it promptly swallowed, becoming more solid. The hair sprayed high, floating about a young teen face in a Farrah Faucet cut.
“Ah, that is better,” said the ghost with her voice. “Now, we need to reach an agreement. I know you would like to live.” It stroked the side of her face with a claw, the face widening into a grin literally splitting the face in half, showing jagged teeth supported by braces.
Lisa nodded quickly, backing toward the front door away from the poltergeist.
It picked up a block and gave the toy to her. “Turn it to white for yes and black for no. I want our contact to be clear.”
Lisa rotated it to white and put it on the table inside the front door where the housemates dropped their keys and change when entering.
“Now, green means anything, yellow means only certain things, and red means nothing. You summoned me by calling my name three times, so the contract is under your control. What will you give me so you can live?”
Icy air turned Lisa pants into puffs of fog. Grabbing the cube, she rotated it to the green side, put it down, and took two more step away from the solidifying terror. Her back hit the door. She reached behind with one hand, grabbing and twisting the doorknob, hoping the creature was housebound. In ten seconds, she would run like the wind.
“Excellent.” The ghost stepped close enough to whisper into Lisa’s ear, slamming the door shut just as Lisa cracked it. “I want your life.” It then stepped into her body. “Just so we are clear, as long as you live, I get to possess you and your life. Do you understand?” Molly used Lisa’s body to pick up the cube and rotated it to white before putting it down again.
(Words count: 1,747; first published 10/12/2025)
