From the Prada-wearing devil file…someone is going to extraordinary lengths to evict a tenant behind on her rent, while trying to juggle the remains of her marriage. Who did she hire to do the eviction?
Helen marched up to the grave, furious at how long this was taking.
“No, not the summons,” she said into her phone. “The summoning. Why can’t you keep the two straight?”
Helen waited, tapping her foot. Having arrived from an open house, she was still in her work clothes: a white blouse, black pencil skirt, and heels, all complimented by her layered brunette bob with blonde highlights. In her perfectly manicured hand, nails painted lavender, was a brick.
“Emmanuel, I don’t have time for your incompetence,” Helen said. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to walk through a muddy graveyard in heels?”
“Isn’t this a little silly?” Emmanuel asked. “My contact’s reputation is sketchy at best, and who knows if it’ll even work through the phone, and—”
“Emmanuel,” Helen interrupted, “I don’t pay you for run-on sentences. I’m putting you on speaker. Say the incantation so I can get out of here.”
Emmanuel sighed, then spouted a gargle of words in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Ancient Sumerian. Helen only recognized a name: Avery Van Pelt. When it was over, she held the brick to her cheek, expecting it to feel warm, or to hear something stirring inside. But the brick was cold and silent.
“Emmanuel, you’re fired.”
“Wh-what? I said the words exactly as written. Either they worked, or my contact is a fraud, which is what I’ve been telling you all along, and if you’d just trust me, you—”
“Emmanuel, what did I say about run-on sentences?”
He stopped. “Got it. Sorry.”
Helen dug her heels out of the mud. “I’m getting out of this graveyard. You better hope the incantation worked. That girl has to go, do you get me?”
“Yes, Helen.”
She put the brick in her Valentino handbag (well, first she put the brick into a brown paper bag, and then into her Valentino handbag. Helen had priorities), took the phone off speaker, and walked away, struggling through the spongy mud.
If the summoning hadn’t worked, Helen didn’t know what she’d do. Thinking about it made her angry. Not at the tenant—well, yes, at her, too—but at her soon-to-be ex-husband, Chris. Did he have any idea how foolish it felt to be served papers by her own husband? He was the one who cheated. Helen was the one committed to the marriage. And she had looked like an idiot, standing outside the hotel room in her nightgown, blind as a bat without her contacts, struggling to read the words on the envelope.
“I’m not the bad guy here,” Helen continued. “Did you know Russian oligarchs own half the apartments in Manhattan? And they don’t even rent them out. Now that’s criminal.” Emmanuel started to say something, but Helen talked over him. “If you want to blame something, blame squatter’s rights. I don’t care if there’s a housing crisis, it shouldn’t be this hard to evict someone. Property owners have rights too, you know.”
Chris might take the house, but the apartment was still hers, and she wouldn’t let anyone, let alone a cheap lazy freeloading college student, take advantage of her again.
Finally, reaching the entrance, Helen kicked the mud off her heels and searched for her Mercedes-Benz, which she’d double-parked across the street. If she got a ticket, there would be hell to pay.
***
The second Bailey came home, she knew something was wrong. Sure, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The lights were off, the furniture and blankets were exactly as she’d left them (in complete disarray), and in the corner of the studio apartment, nothing seemed abnormal about the glowing white ghost waving at her. Except for—wait a second.
“Don’t freak out,” the ghost said. He appeared in his early-twenties, with long brown hair and a disheveled look. Oh yeah, and his body was translucent and emitting an unnatural white light.
Bailey dropped her handbag. “Don’t freak out? Seriously?”
“I’m sorry,” the ghost said. “I didn’t want to frighten you.”
“Have you tried not breaking into my apartment? Or not being a ghost?”
“I didn’t choose to come here. I was summoned.”
“Summoned?”
“Yeah, by this lady in fancy high-powered clothes and blonde highlights.”
He was describing Helen, her landlord. Now she understood. Bailey hadn’t paid rent in two months. Lately, Helen had been harassing her with calls, and even showed up at the apartment not once, but twice. It wasn’t that Bailey didn’t want to pay her rent. For a while, she’d balanced between classes and her jobs waiting tables at two restaurants. But now, Bailey found herself at home during a pandemic without either job. Her friend helped get her this data entry gig at an insurance company, which allowed Bailey to work from home and attend classes virtually, but she was already way behind on her bills, in debt, trying to save up for tuition next semester, and owed at least a dozen friends money. She planned to make up the rent next month, but Helen wasn’t cutting her any slack.
Bailey sighed, kicked off her shoes, and threw her jacket on the floor.
“So, what, are you here to haunt me? Then I’d break the lease and move, and Helen could sell the place. Is that it?”
“I think so.”
Bailey plopped down on the couch and grabbed a blanket. The ghost was hovering in front of her.
“Okay, let’s see what you got.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve had a long day interviewing for four jobs, and I’m tired, man. If you’re going to haunt me, get it over with.”
The ghost looked surprised, then seemed to gather himself. He scowled adorably, drifted closer, and threw his hands into the air. “Boo!”
Bailey laughed. “Is that the best you got?”
“I’m new at this. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“You’re new at being a ghost?”
“I was in the other place until the summoning. Only became a ghost today.”
The other place. That meant the afterlife. Bailey wanted to know more.
“What was it like over there?”
“Oh, not great,” the ghost said. “There’s so many of us, it feels cramped. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to stay.”
Bailey nodded. “I know the feeling. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Avery.”
“Hey Avery, I’m Bailey. Listen, since you’re no good at haunting, why not explore this world? You can head out, do whatever you want.”
Avery shook his head. “A fragment of this dwelling must have been used in the summoning. I can’t leave.”
“Ever?”
“Not until the incantation wears off, which could take years.”
“I’m sorry, man. Helen’s probably going to get her wish anyway. My job isn’t paying the bills. I wouldn’t mind working another gig or two if the pay is good, but my classes are time-consuming, and I can’t afford to give up this horrible data entry position.”
“What do you do for this job?”
“You’re gonna laugh. It’s literally inputting numbers from a spreadsheet into a data bank. Someone could probably create an algorithm to do it, but don’t tell the insurance company. Really, all I do is press buttons on the keyboard.”
Looking quizzical, Avery drifted to the laptop and pressed the spacebar. “Like this?”
Bailey sat up. “Wait, you can touch things? Doesn’t that go against ghost law or something?”
“I can interact with my environment in limited ways,” Avery explained. “Lifting or moving things is impossible, but pressing keys isn’t a problem.”
Bailey shot to her feet. “Avery, I have a brilliant idea.”
***
Helen knocked furiously on the door. She’d expected the girl to last a day, maybe two, before calling, in tears, explaining that she was unwell, and was moving out. Then Helen could spruce the place up, put it on the market, and sell the apartment before Chris could take that away from her, too.
That was a month ago.
Helen was planning to give the tenant a little more time, but she had two reasons for showing up at the apartment unannounced. The first was the check she’d received covering this and last month’s rent, with a promise to make up the rest next month. Where was the tenant getting this money all of a sudden? Helen’s plan was backfiring.
The second reason was the text message from her husband.
After an agonizingly long time, the door flew open. It was past 8pm, and the tenant’s look—gray sweatpants and an oversized “Intramurals Champs” T-shirt—contrasted sharply with Helen’s tailored pantsuit. The tenant’s unkempt blonde hair was barely contained by a scrunchie, and her white overnight face mask made her look as pale as a . . . well, you know.
“Hey, Helen,” she said. “What’s up?”
Helen stormed into the studio apartment, swiveling around to observe every corner of the room. “Where is he?”
“Oh, you mean Avery? I asked him to phase out so I could change into PJs. Really sweet that he can do that. Avery, you can come back now.”
A pale white ghost appeared, hovering above the couch.
Helen took a step back. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“I really need to thank you,” the tenant said. “A roommate wouldn’t normally make sense in a studio, but Avery doesn’t eat or take up much space. He’s a really good guy, actually. Took to his new job like a pro. And with housing so limited in the afterlife, this is a perfect situation.”
This didn’t make sense. Avery wasn’t a roommate; he was a ghost! And what was this about a housing crisis . . . in the afterlife? Helen had to fix this. Could she reverse the incantation? No, Emmanuel had been clear that the summoning would take years before wearing off. Could she send over another ghost? No, Helen would only be providing the tenant with another source of income. What if—
Helen heard a buzz from her Valentino handbag. Another text message from Chris: “I’m sorry about the summons, baby. It was the lawyer’s idea. Move back in and we can figure this out?”
Helen sighed. In the past, her husband’s manipulative tactics had worked, but even now that she saw through them, she didn’t feel liberated. Chris was going to drag this out and make the process as painful as possible. Until the divorce became official, she was trapped. Selling this apartment had been Helen’s one hope for financial independence, but even that plan had failed. Chris was going to take everything.
Dropping her Valentino handbag, Helen sank to the floor. Despite trying to hold back the tears, they came anyway.
“Hey,” the ghost said, “are you okay?”
“No,” Helen said, sniffling. “My husband, he won’t . . . He makes me so miserable.”
The tenant gave the ghost a look, then approached. “I’m sorry to hear that. What do you need from us?”
“I . . . just . . . I’m tired,” Helen said. “Tired of everything.”
The tenant knelt to her level. “We know exactly how you feel.”
Helen’s phone rang. This time, it was Emmanuel. She put it on speaker. “Helen, listen, I think I figured out another solution, which requires traveling to Bulgaria for this enchantment from a forest witch, which I’m not positive will be useful, but at least gives us a starting—”
Helen hung up.
“Man,” the tenant said after a moment, “does that guy ever speak in complete sentences?”
Helen smiled. “You have no idea.”
“Do you want to watch TV with us?” the ghost asked. “Bailey introduced me to a program where contestants make elaborate baked goods. Every episode ends with them hugging each other.”
“He’s talking about The Great British Baking Show,” the tenant said.
What was Helen doing? This tenant was trying to get by, yet Helen had done everything in her power to make her life miserable. Hadn’t she learned anything from her husband’s behavior? Bailey didn’t deserve this treatment.
Helen picked herself up off the floor and wiped away her tears. There was no use in trying to scare the tenant off. Chris was her mess. And she’d clean it up. But not tonight.
“What season is it?” Helen asked, joining them on the couch.
“One of the later ones,” Bailey said, turning on the TV. “Mary Berry left the show.”
“That’s too bad,” Helen said. “She was my favorite.”
Avery did an excited flip in the air. “Mine too!”
There was a bowl of chips and salsa on the table.
“Do you mind?” Helen asked. She hadn’t eaten a meal all day.
“Not at all,” Bailey said. “Make yourself at home.”
END
