Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit!

In the middle of his first night sleeping in his new apartment, Loren Abo woke up from troubled dreams to find himself shivering violently from the cold. He gasped, arms flailing as he instinctively tried to swim out of whatever cold water he was submerged in before realizing he could breathe. Blinking, Loren hastily tried to sit up, but it felt like there was a weight on his chest pushing him down.

Even as he wondered what was going on, his soul responded to the cold he was now aware of, the heat of his magic blooming outward from his heart. It spread across his torso, which continued to shiver as his muscles continued to convulse, the feeling of fire spreading down his limbs and up his neck. He sighed in relief as the despicable chill was pushed away from him as he tried to sit up. The strange feeling of weight disappeared as he managed to get his hands under him, and Loren sat up raised a hand to summon a flame.

A small tongue of fire, neat and tapered as from a well-trimmed candle, appeared from the end of his index finger. It gave off no smoke as it bathed the room in familiar yellow light allowing him to take in the still-unfamiliar room he was in. It was of a size with some hotel rooms he and his family had stayed at over the years, although with lower ceilings, no wallpaper and no TV. The latter was still at home. Well, his parent's house.

Loren looked around, the flame he held up flickering as he reassured himself the room was still empty. There was no place to hide except…

He hurried sat up on his knees, looking around to make sure there was no one hiding over the edge of his bed, as shallow and ineffective a hiding place that may be. All he saw were the old but still serviceable linoleum tiles on the floor, looking like stained teeth in his firelight. Stumbling to his feet, bare soles on the cold tiles of the floor as chilling breezes tickled at his ankles, Loren checked the kitchenette and front door. The kitchenette still had gaps for the stove and refrigerator, and the door was still bolted shut with the chain in place.

The last place to look was the bathroom, and he swung opened the bathroom so hard the narrow plastic door hit the wall and bounced a little. There were no intruders. There was only the toilet, the small sink that was mounted to the wall, and the shower.

That was all.

Loren finally let out a sigh as he flicked the little flame upward, willing it to shed only light instead of heat as he leaned on the bathroom's doorframe, letting out a shaky breath as he tried to get himself under control, the cold air flowing over his bare feet.. A part of him desperately wanted to go home, to be back in his familiar childhood bed in his childhood room, with its familiar colors and posters hiding discreet scorchmarks where he'd accidentally singed the paint when he'd been younger.

He shook his head as he felt cold air blowing across the back of his neck. No, that was just the homesickness talking. He had his phone, he could call his parents and little sister any time if he got lonely…

For a moment, he considered doing just that. It was the middle of the night. They wouldn't appreciate having to get out of bed for a ringing phone, if they heard it at all. He needed to get back to sleep. He had more furniture to move in tomorrow, which meant commuting home to borrow the car and load it up with more of the stuff from his old room.

Sighing sleepily, he rubbed at his eyes and stepped into the bathroom, tugging down his shorts to take a piss. Cold air blew over him as he relieved himself, then moved towards the little sink to wash his hands from force of habit. The water from the faucet washed over his hands, and he flinched at the hated substance touched his skin, but it wouldn't be enough to keep him from using his magic and his hands would dry quickly.

As he washed, he couldn't help catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. The light coming from the little tongue of fire he'd left floating outside the bathroom lit only the left side of his face, leaving him outlined in blackness and partially blocking the face of the woman standing behind him. He could feel her cold breath on his back, joining the breezes blowing around his feet—

Loren stared.

He screamed.

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In the muted heat and relative quiet of the early morning, Loren knocked tiredly on a familiar door. His bare feet were caked with dirt, small pebbles and hopefully just that, and he was still only wearing the shorts and old t-shirt he'd went to bed in. Without any money, he'd had to walk the whole way, keeping a wary eye out for dogs, muggers, keres, and any evil puddles of water out to get him.

He stood there, swaying slightly from a mix of a lack of sleep, a mild headache from using his Flame to substitute for sleep to keep him awake, and the ache of his legs and feet from walking this far. For a moment, he wondered whether he'd need to knock louder—

To his relief the door opened, revealing the familiar face of his best friend. Of average height, her complexion a bit paler than his and dark of hair, Harmony Atlawan looked wide awake and puzzled as she stared at him standing pathetically outside of the house she shared with her aunt and her aunt's family. "Lor? What are you doing here?"

"Hey, Hari," he said. "Can I sleep here tonight? I think my apartment is haunted."

A resigned, knowing expression came over her face. "Ah. Come in. I'll get my stuff off the sofa while you wash your feet."

Nodding woodenly, Loren stepped inside, wiping his feet on the door mat as best as he could. "Thanks."

A blessedly warm hand patted him on the shoulder. "What are friends for? I'll be smug about you not listening to me when you wake up."

Loren nodded gratefully, and stumbled towards the bathroom to do just that…

He hesitated.

"Hari? Could you come with me?"

Harmony stopped at the threshold of the living room. "…sure."

Loren slept fitfully through what was left of the rest of the night. He'd asked Harmony to leave the lights on—he hadn't wanted to not be able to see around him—and she'd left the kitchen door open, letting the lights from there shine into the living room as she'd worked. Every breath of air on his skin made him shudder in panic, causing him to jerk upright and look around frantically. The windows had been turning blue with the predawn light before he'd finally managed to fall asleep.

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"I told you that place was haunted," Harmony said smugly several hours later after Loren had managed a few more hours of sleep and was in the middle of a very late breakfast that probably counted as brunch. "That place was far too cheap. You only rent out a place in that neighborhood for that much when there’s something seriously wrong with it, and since there weren’t any horrible smells, it had to be haunted."

“I thought you were joking,” Loren said defensively as he ate the breakfast Harmony’s Auntie Ganda had been nice enough to prepare for him before she'd gone out to the market for the week's groceries. Rice, egg, tocino, lechon sauce… that last wasn’t usual, but Auntie Ganda, bless her heart, remembered how he liked his rice.

He'd asked Harmony to turn off the electric fan for the moment. Loren didn't think he could take the feeling of breezes on his skin right now.

“Why would I have been be joking? You know where I work.”

Loren swallowed the mouthful he’d been chewing. “Don’t you work at a real estate place?”

“We’re a real estate investment company,” she corrected.

“What’s the difference?”

Harmony rolled her eyes. “A ‘real estate place’ is a realtor. They’re middlemen who help people buy and sell real estate. A real estate investment company buys properties for cheap, fixes it up, and sells or rents it for high.”

He stared at her blankly.

A sigh. “We’re house flippers.”

Oh. “Oh. Why didn’t you just say that?”

Harmony sighed again. Loren took the opportunity to eat some more. "Did they give some kind of reason for why the rent was that low?"

"Lease," Loren corrected pedantically. "They told me that the place was really hot in the summer because it was a south-facing room."

Harmony snorted. "And you believed that bullshit? This is Tawilisi, everywhere is hot in the summer."

He shrugged pathetically. "It seemed like a good deal at the time."

A sigh. "What happ—no, no, you clearly don't want to talk about it yet." Harmony shook her head. "Never mind then. Just to confirm, though. You're sure your place is haunted?"

Loren remembered cold like he was submerged in water, and shuddered. "Yes," he hissed, resisting the urge to set the back of his neck on fire.

Harmony reached across the table and put a hand on his forearm. "It's all right. You're here. I'm here. The sun is out and hot."

Despite himself, Loren shuddered. "Some magician I am. Panicking when I saw a ghost."

"That's perfectly normal." Harmony's voice was gentle and calming, a sharp contrast to her more familiar cheerful excitability. It sounded vaguely like a 'customer service' voice. "Theory is different from practice, and it's not like you expected to run into a ghost in the middle of the night. You're an alchemy-pharma grad, not a vigilant. Machismo aside, you can't expect to be able to just fight off a ghost. You took Civic Welfare and Service Training for your two semesters instead of Reserve Officer’s Training, so you didn't go on the retreat for basic combat magic."

Loren wanted to shrug her off in what he knew was exactly the machismo she was talking about, but her hand was warm and solid and there… "What do I do now?" he moaned out. He knew the traditional way of getting rid of a ghost and-slash-or a haunted house: burn the house down and the ghost with it. Loren didn't know what a professional ghost removal went for these days, but he was willing to bet it wasn't cheap.

"Any chance you can take the easy way out and just cancel the lease?" Harmony asked.

He winced at the idea. At the time, he hadn't thought about it much since he'd had no intention of leaving the apartment early, but now the very punitive terms of the early cancellation clause came back to him. "If I cancel the lease, I still need to pay six months worth of rent."

Harmony sighed. "Assholes. They definitely knew about the place being haunted, then."

Loren scowled, impaling a piece of tocino on his fork with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. "Aren't they supposed to tell you if a property is haunted? I mean, legally?"

"In Lasablica, maybe. It depends on the principality. Here, though? Realtors aren't legally required to inform you if the property you're buying or renting is stigmatized. They'd usually tell you if you asked, because if they lie to you they can be taken to court for misrepresenting the property—maybe—but actually telling you? Not something they need to do."

"Fuck," Loren sighed, and resumed eating. "How do you know all this stuff?"

"I told you I worked at a real estate investment company, right? We specialize in rehabilitating stigmatized property."

"Stigmatized…?"

"We're haunted house flippers."

Loren stared at her. "Are you shitting me?"

"I'm being serious, Lor. Why do you think I was offering you listings when you started looking for a place to move to? Those were some of the properties we had available."

"I thought it was because you said you'd get a commission?"

"Yes, and I can't believe you'd rather give your money to some asshole who wouldn't tell you the apartment is haunted instead of your good friend! But don't worry, I forgive you."

He winced. "Sorry, but most of the listings you gave me are pretty far, and the ones that were nearby were a bit pricey."

"I'd have been able to get you a friends and family discount if you'd told me! Ten percent, easy!"

"…okay, now I wish I'd known that sooner. The big reason I went with my apartment is that it was cheaper than the listings you gave me, but if you could have gotten me ten percent off…"

"We can talk about it. For now, we need to go back to your apartment and get your stuff. If nothing else, you probably forgot to lock your door when you ran out last night."

A groan rose from Loren's throat as he realized Harmony was right. He remembered the door slamming shut behind him as he'd finally run out of the apartment, but the doorknob wasn't the kind that automatically locked when it closed, meaning the his door was open. His wallet was there, along with his phone, his laptop, his stash of strawberry-flavored vegetable oil… "Any chance the ghost will keep people from stealing my stuff?"

"Pretty good chance, actually," Harmony said thoughtfully. "I bet your neighbors all know your apartment is haunted. Someone would have needed to die for a haunting to start, unless it's a spiritual haunting instead of a ghostly one, but those are rare in buildings that are still occupied. Unless one of your neighbors is a mage and violently reckless, the ghost should act as a decent deterrent for casual thievery. See, things are looking up already!"

Loren rolled his eyes, equal parts annoyed and reassured at his friend's cheerful optimism. "Great. The ghost that drove me from the apartment I just moved into is keeping my stuff safe. How are we supposed to get past it?"

"I can handle that. I've done it before. You'll have to be quick though. Get only the important stuff. Wallet, phone, and whatever else you can carry in one trip. In and out in one go, as quick as possible."

She said it so confidently he had to stare. "Hari… you're not planning to wave your prayer beads at it, are you?"

That got a derisive snort. "No, of course not. I'm a Symbol, remember?"

Loren nodded slowly. "Yeah, but… you never told me what kind you were."

Harmony blinked. "I didn't?"

He shook his head. "I remember coming back from visiting my grandparents that summer and hearing you'd had an accident that had managed to ignite your magic, but my parents told me not to ask you about it and you never really said anything. Then we were busy with school and I was busy taking those extra classes to learn to control my flame… "

"Oh… right." For a moment, Harmony looked uncomfortable, but it was a remembered discomfort. "Yeah, learning how to get my magic to work and dealing with the mood swings it caused was… well, it took me a while." She shook her head, visibly banishing whatever memories had been summoned. "Well, today's good time to show you. We can commute to your place, I'll symbolize and hold down the ghost while you get your stuff once you're done eating."

Cold dread tried to climb up Loren's spine at that thought of walking back into that room, with that ghost, and he had to suppress and urge to let fire ignite from his skin to get rid of the feeling. He was wearing his only shirt, so unless he wanted to commute to his pare—commute home shirtless or wearing one of Harmony's shirts, no flames to make himself feel better. Under his control or not, he had to think of his magic as a fire hazard at all times, or it would be.

He took a deep breath, then another and another. Not the controlled hyperventilation he'd been taught to do to fuel his Flame with oxygen, but calming breaths. His Flame flared slightly regardless. No, he was not going to be afraid of the lingering magic of some dead person's soul. It was just a ghost. There was nothing it could do to hurt him that he couldn't deal with as long as he stayed calm and used his magic properly. He didn't need to fear its cold breath that wasn't really breath at all, only the ghost feeding on the ambient magic around it to continue to exist…

Besides, Harmony would be with him.

"Can I borrow something to cover my feet? I don't want to walk barefoot again."

Harmony gave him a thumbs up. "Sure!"

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Commuting with only rubber sandals on was an experience Loren didn’t want to repeat. Harmony had to pay for everything since they were doing to get his wallet back, for which he’d thanked her and apologized in turns. Thankfully, they’d gotten onto a geepee that still had some open spaces along the pair of long benches that ran its length, so they were able to sit mostly comfortably. Well, he was comfortable. Harmony was sweating like crazy because not a lot of air was coming in through the windows behind them and muttering about cutting her hair to stay cool, the same way she had every summer they’d grown up together.

He had yet to see her with actually short hair, and that included the summer when they'd been nine, when she'd been trying to be a tomboy and kept wearing shorts and shirts.

They got off when they reached the corner nearest to his new and soon to be former apartment. It was a pleasant enough walk, which meant they were occasionally passed through the smells of garbage that seemed to have permeated the very cement. Given that it had been ten years since local garbage laws had been put in place to prevent huge mounds of trash from just being dumped on the sidewalks, it spoke of just how much of it had seeped into the cement that the odors still lingered years later.

His apartment was an old one, seven stories high and about twenty-four apartments per floor. The first floor was mostly little businesses like a convenience store, an internet (gaming) café, a laundromat, a drug store, and even a small massage parlor. While it was hardly new and shiny, the frontage was clean, relatively secure, and at the back there was a small gym and swimming pool that someone had been using for a child's birthday party when Loren had come here to sign the lease.

They had a security guard in the lobby to keep people from just using the stairs or elevator, but fortunately he was the same one from yesterday, and he remembered Loren being a new resident. They were through to the residential part of the apartment with an admonition to not forget their residential ID, which Lorne just smiled nodded at before they were through and he was leading Harmony to the old elevators. Fortunately, it was an older elevator that you didn’t need some kind of ID card to use, which was why the guard was there in the first place.

"Not the worst place I've ever seen," Harmony commented as she checked on a nearby pair of trashcans. "At least it's clean, so less likelihood of rats. Pretty good neighborhood too. What floor are you on?"

Loren shrugged as he watched the numbers on the pair of elevators count downward. "Fourth. Which now that I think about it is slightly ominous."

"Eh, it's probably just a coincidence. Unless someone is making up some kind of ritual to help make the programing for the Spiritualism and maybe Flame, numbers like that don't matter," Harmony said dismissively.

"I'll take your word for it," Loren said. "We didn't really mention rituals in alche-pharma, except the old songs they used to use to time how much flame you needed to apply to pasteurize milk and things like that."

One of the elevators arrived, the doors sliding side to reveal the occupants, a pair of purple-skinned eyeless payatin women that loom at least a foot and a half over the two of them. The two women were chatting casually, their lips politely concealing their saw-like, triangular teeth. Though it was hard to tell their ages—payatin, humans, and oni aged differently, and he was only familiar with the payatin he'd seen on TV—they both had hairstyles that reminded him of his grandmother—the old-fashioned dresses made him think that too—so maybe they were of a comparative age despite the smooth skin on their faces. One of the two glanced towards them, the smooth and blank skin where eyes would be on a human or oni, and gave them a a polite nod. The two walked off, both pulling along a wheeled trolley bag—exactly the same kind his grandmathor had, actually—with one of their tentacles.

They stepped into the now-vacant elevator, Loren pressing the floor number on the panel.

"All right," Harmony said once the doors were closed. "Here's the plan. When we get there, we're going to check if the neighbors are in. The hallway's defined boundaries should keep my magic contained, but better to make sure we're not bothering anyone. It's a weekday, so there shouldn't be anyone around, but it's only polite to check."

He gave her a look. "What?"

"Look… have you ever been around a Symbol while they're Symbolized?"

"No, because you've never brought it up." He'd read things from the internet of course, and sometimes his parents would announce something they've read, but Loren knew how those were. Given some of the absurd claims made about Flame even after he'd told them it wasn't possible—like how reading my Flame-light would cause nearsightedness—he assumed the same things were true of the other kinds of magic as well. "I've read some stuff, but…"

"Yeah… Well, the important takeaway right now is that when we're Symbolized, we tend to radiate the emotion we're a Symbol of. Defined boundaries can muffle it, depending on how strong the threshold is, but apartments tend to be iffy about that, so if I'm going to do this, it would be best if there wasn't anyone around. If there's no one around, then this'll be easy. Well, easier. "

"What exactly would we be doing?"

"Oh, that part's simple. I Symbolize outside of your apartment and we open the door so I can get in. I'll try to isolate you from the effects of my aura, but I'm not sure how good that will be, Do you know how to protect your mind from external influence?"

"Just the basics I learned from the classes I had to attend when I first ignited my Flame," he admitted. He wasn't really sure how effective those basics were, though.

Harmony gave him a blank look. "Last-minute defense against keres influence?"

"Yeah…"

"Well, better than nothing. Hopefully between that and my trying to not influence you, you'll have a mostly clear head. Right, once I symbolize and get inside the apartment, I'll hold the ghost down and keep them from interfering. I'm not sure I'll be able to tell you when it's time to go in, so after I go in first, count to ten before following me." Harmony paused thoughtfully as the elevator stopped and they stepped out. "Make it fifteen. Once that's done, run in—run, since I don't know how long you'll remain unaffected—grab your stuff and get out. Don't linger. We won't have time for a second trip."

Loren eyed her. "Do you deal with holding down a lot of ghosts at that job of yours?"

Harmony waggled her hand. "Not as a regular thing. Me holding them down like that tends to get them riled up and harder to deal with the way we usually would. Mostly I do research, run papers, help with running our ScryVids channel, help with cleaning up the houses… regular work stuff. Which room is yours?"

"409," he said, pointing around the corner to the right. Now that they were on the same floor as the apartment, nervousness was starting to trickle into him.

A warm had rested on his shoulder. "Hey, relax. If you start running hot, the ghost might feel you coming."

That made Loren pause as anxiety gently wrapped bony fingers around his heart, cupping it gently. "Can they do that?"

Harmony shrugged. "Who knows? Let's not risk it. Deep breaths. Calm down. No magic until you're ready. Now help me knock on some doors."

As quietly as they could, they knocked on the doors of the apartments on either side of 409, as well as the ones that were one over. Harmony handled checking on the apartments on the other side of 409, in case ghost was watching through the peephole. It felt strangely like trying to sneak up on the apartment, which… well, was pretty much what they were trying to do. No one answered their knocks, which made sense since the fourth floor held primarily studio-type, one- or two-person apartments—if the dimensions of his own was anything to go by—who probably had to be at work to just barely afford their apart—

"Hey, shouldn't you be at work?" Loren said suddenly as Harmony walked towards him, her knocks going similarly unanswered.

She shrugged. "I took a day off. Helping you get this all mixed might be a while."

He winced. "Sorry."

"Eh, what are friends for. Besides, either you cancel your lease, in which case I've gotten a lead on an apartment the boss might be interested in, and a commission because you're picking from our listings next, or you decide to keep the place and hire us to flip it for you."

Loren stared at her. "Keep it? Why would I want to do that?"

Harmony held up a finger. "Hold that thought until after we get your stuff back. Remember, quick in and out. Just grab the important stuff. Got it?"

Right. Best not to get distracted right now. He nodded.

"All right. Start protecting your head. When you're ready, give me thumbs up. I'll symbolize, you open the door, I'll go in, count, then you."

"Got it. Wait, why am I the one opening the door?"

"Because I won't be able to. You'll see."

He supposed he would.

Loren stood against the wall between apartment doors, trying to stay out of sight of 409’s peep hole, while Harmony stood opposite him on the other side of the door. Closing his eyes, he felt the heat of his Flame, and pulled it up towards his head. He felt actual flames flicker on his cheek before he suppressed it, not letting any of the magic leak out inefficiently.

As she’d said, it was a simple, basic defense, a means of making it harder to be influenced by the keres if he happened to find himself drawing their unfortunate attention. He wrapped his head in Flame, which would both interfere with any external energy flowing into his brain—he had been warned not to do this if he was getting an MRI or any other sort of medical instrument scan—and saturate his brain with his own magic, diluting any existing external influence, and eventually cleansing them. It was the simplest defense possible, inelegant and not very effective, but also something easily done when one’s thinking was already compromised because it was the equivalent of dunking one’s head in water. Not a longterm solution, but enough for a quick moment of clarity… maybe.

After checking to make sure his head wasn’t on fire, Loren gave Harmony a nod. “Ready,” he said quietly.

She nodded back, then took a deep breath and closed her own eyes as she began to take slow breaths. Sometimes she'd pause, breaking the calming rhythm as Harmony tried to get into the right state of mind, or at least Loren assumed so. He wondered what she was thinking of. Something hopeful? Something to make herself angry? Was she praying? Reminding herself of what she believed in? Thinking of the people she loved? Or was she…

Across from him, Harmony shuddered, and the air around her seemed to darken. Her knees shook, her breathing starting to get shallow and panting. A blackness that seemed to glow seemed to cover her body, somehow standing out against the dark—

For a moment, Loren thought Harmony had become naked, even as all he could see was a dark, vaguely purple-tinted outline that seemed to… shimmer? And then that moment was gone, and Harmony was collapsing to her knees. She was wearing something white, a garment that replaced the clothes she’d been wearing as shapes on the floor around her began to writhe…

Three things happened at once.

The first thing was that on seeing his friend stumble, Loren instinctively moved to try to catch her.

The second thing that happened was that what felt like a giant pillow slammed into him from above, causing him to abort his own move as he caught himself from stumbling and falling to his knees as well. He felt like he’d been awake for more than twenty-four hours, his head fuzzy with lack of sleep and every thought needing to be carefully focused on and paid attention to.

…why bother… there was nothing he could do… it was too hard, the only thing to do was give up… they were going to fail…

With an effort, Loren poured more flame around his head, and the intrusive thoughts and feelings lessened, though not quite disappearing. The weight seemed to persist, however, and it was a struggle to straighten his legs.

The third thing that happened was that the door to 409 suddenly opened by itself, the knob rotating sharply and the door swinging open so violently it hit the wall.. He barely mustered the energy to turn his head and face it. The room was brightly lit as hot sunlight streamed in through the windows, reflecting on the linoleum tile floors the color of spilled coffee stains and white-painted walls. He could see the rubber sandals he had been wearing last around the apartment yesterday on the floor at the foot of the bed, his laptop bag on resting on a large plastic chest full of his clothes…

There was a sudden pressure on his arm as a cold breeze wrapped over his limb, and he stumbled again as he felt a force start to pull him into 409—

“No!”

The word was a wail, a cry, a plea, and a growl, pulling Loren’s attention back towards Harmony. She was face-down on the ground now, and for some reason her back was crisscrossed with thin, dull purple chains that seemed to have sprouted from the floor. Her arms were stretched out toward him, and she crawled across the floor on all fours with surprising alacrity, chains tinkling almost musically as they dragged behind her. With a sound like a sob, more chains suddenly sprouted up from the floor, and began to wrap around the air next to Loren. The chains that began to define a shape. There was a leg… a torso… a chain shot up practically next to his arm and wrapped around air, defining the shape of an invisible forearm.

He felt the pressure and cold wrapped around his arm loosen, and Loren pulled himself from, stumbling back from the open door. With another sob, Harmony crawled past him with a tinkling of loose chains, and the shape in the air stumbled back. The floor under Harmony was dark as dirty motor oil and writhing, chains emerging from the ground like corpses rising from the grave as she pushed herself up and did a sort of violent belly-flop toward the wrapped chains in the air, and they skidded back to the sound of heavy chains dragging on the ground.

Harmony looked over her shoulder towards him, and he almost stumbled back again. Her eyes… like a shark's, soulless and black and infinitely deep. Hair like a curtain, lank and oily falling down in locks. And her face… it was Perfectly symmetrical, with all the little minor imperfections that made it a real face removed, leaving something fit for a beautiful doll. If he hadn't known who he was looking at…

"Go!" she wailed, and Loren shook his head. He rushed into the room, his footsteps heavy and tiring as he scooped up his own footwear—they felt strangely weighty on his fingers—and throwing them out the door, where they fell a little short, just barely hitting Harmony.

Despite the bright, hot sunlight, the air in the room was cool as he looked around for what was important. He scrambled to his bed and grabbed his phone, which for some reason was in the middle of the mattress instead of next to his pillow. His laptop bag was where he'd left it on top of a plastic storage bin full of his clothes, the zipper partly open, but a glance showed his computer was still inside. He slung that over his shoulder, then after a brief pause grabbed the jeans he'd been wearing yesterday that had been lying next to the laptop bag, holding it to his chest. His wallet was heavy in the front pocket as well as another bump on the other side.

The giant pillow pressing down on him was slowly getting bigger, more forceful, and he stumbled again as the intrusive thoughts came to him once more. Sending more flame towards his head to clear it again—he could see a little tongue of flame on the end of his nose—Loren noted it wasn't as effective as before. That… was probably a bad sign.

For the second time, he ran for the door of the apartment, each step feeling like he was carrying a heavy backpack and had a toddler hugging each leg. His eyes darted around for chains wrapped around nothing as he carefully moved around Harmony as quickly as he could.

His step faltered as he found himself facing the open door of the bathroom.

The lights inside were off, the room's only illumination coming from what little light was reflecting off the white walls of the kitchen. In the gloom, he saw the ghost. If he hadn't seen the face in his mirror last night, he'd have thought this was just a trick of the light, random chance arranging the shadow he cast and the light glinting off the bathroom tiles to form a face and shape in the middle of where several of Harmony's chains were wrapped around air.

Shadows that suggested dark hair framed what might have been white glints reflecting off tiles or might have been a face. Pale shapes hinted at arms and leg amidst the wrapped chains, and there was a baggy, flickering shape of shadows and implied lines that might have been a nightdress or an oversized shirt. The only thing Loren could say for sure was that the ghost he thought he was seeing was human, since there were no shapes suggesting the distinctive horns of an oni, or the tentacles of the payatin. The shape of the ghost implied it had fallen on its back with head and shoulders resting on the tile wall, weighed down by the chains that crossed over its torso, limbs splayed wide as if it had tried to catch itself from a fall or was trying to rise and failing.

The face was indistinct, but for a moment, Loren felt like he was meeting someone's eyes.

He wrenched away his gaze and ran, kicking the rubber sandals he'd thrown out ahead of him as he did so.

As he stumbled out apartment 409, he heard a sound begin to rise. It seemed distant, with strange echoes like it was coming from the far end of a long hallway, a stuttering cry that rose and didn't stop. He turned, thinking it was Harmony again, but she was already turning towards him, still crawling on the ground. Pulling herself along the floor, she made her way towards him, and he resisted the urge to step back. The chains on her back had formed a net, and every movement dragged strands and strands and strands of it along the ground. A few chains trailed behind her to the open door of the bathroom, and they were shaking as if whatever they held was struggling.

"Close it!" Harmony wailed in a voice that made his heart break, filling the shattered pieces with tears—

He shook his head as Harmony repeated herself, stepping over her—and being unable to not step on the hem of her white dress—and managing to grab the doorknob. Loren pulled it to close the door, and was surprised when it didn't try to resist him. the door swung easily, and he actually stumbled back to get out of its way. He expected the door to catch on the chains on the floor that Harmony was trailing behind her, and was mildly surprised that the chains somehow managed to fit in the narrow gap between the door and the floor. At the last second, he reached around the door for the doorknob on the other side and depressed the lock before pulling the door shut.

The distant wail cut off, muffled by the door.

For a moment, Loren just stood there, the doorknob in hand, staring at the closed door. Then he heard the tinkling of chains.

"Back."

Loren let go of the door, stepping back until he hit the opposite wall. Chains began weaving back and forth across the door, somehow anchoring from the frame to the door and the frame again. It almost looked like a joke out of a cartoon, with a silly number of chains securing it—

The doorknob turned, and something inside the apartment tried to wrench the door open. The chains all went taut, keeping the door from opening.

"Need to go…" Harmony said, and with visible effort, she laboriously started pushing herself off the ground. Sitting up, Loren finally got a clear view of what she was wearing. Rather than a uniform white dress, he could make out what looked like pale white patterns of stitching and very short ruffles, all so pale they blended with the dress itself. Wide sleeves ended in what looked like airy lace cuffs that gave the impression the merely faded—no, wait, the sleeves did in fact simply fade away. What he had at first thought was pale skin on her hands turned out to be some kind of very tight glove that went up her arms and disappeared into her sleeves.

Before he could check if her feet were covered the same way, Harmony was getting her legs under her and pushing herself up to her feet. In mid-motion, the elaborate cape of chains on her back fell away and the air around her darkened again as the white dress vanished, and for a seemingly timeless moment Loren was staring at the purple-tinted outline before that vanished as well and Harmony was wearing her normal clothes again. He glanced towards the door, but the chains were still in place, still keeping the door shut as the something—as the ghost—tried to pull it open.

"We need to hurry," Harmony said, sounding a little out of it. "Now that I've changed back, the chains aren't going to last for long. Let's get out of range of being pulled into the door." She scooped up his rubber sandals. "You can put your pants on and stick these in your laptop bag in front of the elevator."

One of the chains on the door popped off and disappeared.

The two of them looked at each other, then turned and ran.

––––––––––––––––––

Loren was vaguely annoyed they weren't stopped by security as the left the building. He remembered two security cameras in the hallways of the fourth floor, but whoever was watching it—if someone was watching it—apparently hadn't seen fit to consider their behavior out in the hall suspicious. The two were mostly silent as they made their way back to Harmony's aunt's house, mostly so he could return the sandals he'd borrowed. It was late afternoon by the time they got back, and the sun's heat was starting to wane just a little.

"Thanks," Loren said as soon as they were inside the house. He took a moment to switch out the borrowed sandals he was wearing for his own as Harmony made her way to an electric fan and parked herself in front of it.

"You're welcome," she said, her voice reverberating as she spoke directly into the fan's stream. "You feeling okay? No aftereffects? My aura can be a little hard for people to shake off the first time."

"I'm good," he assured her. For a moment he hesitated, then pressed on. "So… you're a Symbol of Despair?"

"Yeah…" she said with a sigh. "Now you know why I don't really use it that much. Getting into the right mood… well, it sucks. I'm not a naturally Byronic emo 'everything is terrible as expected, woe to us all, source: me' kind of person." She turned and gave him a sardonic smile. "It's also part of the reason I dropped out of army training. One of my training modules was about learning how to consistently Symbolize on command and… well, it made me feel terrible. Not that the rest was any picnic, but I could have handled it if I didn't have to do the Symbolism training module too. Doing both… I had to drop out."

"I'm sorry, Hari," he said as he took his laptop bag off his shoulder. What else could he say? When they were kids she was the one who'd always wanted to be a vigilant, something that must have seemed finally doable when she'd awakened her Symbolism. Joining the army had been part of her plan so she could have the necessary experience to apply and actually be a viable applicant for the organization.

"Eh, it's fine," she said, waving the matter aside. "It's like being an astronaut: eventually, you realize you can't become one and do something else." They'd both wanted to be astronauts back when they'd been six, until they learned Tawalisi didn’t have a space program.

He walked past her to the sofa and collapsed with a sigh, putting his laptop bag down on the coffee table in front of him.. "Well, at least I have my important stuff back," he said, pulling stuff out of his jeans pockets. His wallet, his keys, his phone… they all seemed to be okay, not that the ghost was likely to have taken out the bills. What would it need the money for?

He handed Harmony a bill as she collapsed to sit down beside him, the fan now pointed towards the sofa. "Here."

"Thanks. I'll give you the change later." She leaned back and closed her eyes.

The two sat there, just enjoying the chance to rest.

"So… what are you going to do now?" she asked.

Loren sighed. "Move back to my parents' house, look for a new place, see if I can find a way to keep from having to pay for six months of lease on an apartment I'm not going to be able to use…"

"Hmm…" Harmony said. "Now, hear me out… what if you can use the apartment?"

“How much would it cost to get rid of the ghost, though?”

“Oh, probably a lot. It takes a lot of energy and effort of try and override a ghost’s claim on an area. It might be possible with this one, but it will depend on how long she’s been fettered to the premises.” Harmony made a dismissive gesture. “Depending on how long they lived there, how long they’ve been haunting it, and how intense what they were feeling was when they died, trying for an exorcism would be prohibitively expensive. And besides, once the building knows your apartment isn’t haunted anymore, they’ll jack up the price. You know they will.”

“So I’m screwed and out a lot of money no matter what course I take?”

“Not necessarily. There IS a way you can use the apartment, and keep the rent cheap.”

Loren raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening…”

“Now, this is a long shot right now, since what we did probably pissed her off, but what if… you and the ghost can live together?”

“Hari… if I could do that, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Lor, last night you ran out of your apartment because you found an intruder. Today, we crashed the apartment, took your stuff and got out. At no point during that did we actually sit down and try to communicate.”

He stared at her. “Are you saying you want us to go back there and… what? Hash out being roommates?”

“No, of course not. First, we’re going to do research and find out who this was. That means talking to your neighbors to find out who had died in there, hopefully in recent memory, then once we have a name we find out who they were, what they were like, talk to their friends and family if possible, and find out the circumstances of their death since that would have an influence of their ghost’s personality. That would take a few days, which should hopefully let her calm down a little after I tied her up. We get a sense of her personality and use that to assess whether she’s reasonable enough to be negotiated with.”

Loren gave her a disbelieving look. “What, just like that?”

“It’s how we do it at my job,” Harmony said. “Always try talking first, since trying to exorcise them is pretty final and really pisses them off. No one wants to die, and ghosts don’t want to essentially die again, especially since the first time would have to be really emotionally traumatic to produce a ghost. And yes, sometimes we’ve had to do it after we’ve pissed them off a little, so it’s not impossible. Just… difficult.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m sensing a catch here…”

“Well…” She shrugged. “Look Lor, I have a job. It just so happens my job is dealing with things like this. So… tomorrow, I think you should come with me to the office so you can talk to my boss for a free consultation about dealing with this ghost. We have the resources, the connections, the equipment and expertise to deal with this. The alternative is for me to make a list of things for you to do while you do all the research we would be doing. It’s going to take you longer since you don’t know the right people, will probably be harder, and when we go to confront the ghost it’s going to be just you and me, so if things go wrong we won’t have a fallback or support.”

“I don’t know…”

“I’ll get you the friends and family discount. You’ll be paying five thousand at worst, most likely less, and if it goes beyond that… uh, I’ll foot the rest of the bill as an early Solstice present!”

“I don’t know… can I think about it?”

“Sure. By the way, shouldn’t you be commuting back home and explaining to your parents you leased a haunted apartment?”

“So, I just talk to your boss right? Just a consultation, explain the problem, no need to pay anything yet?”

“Yup, free consultation.”

“Well… I guess that’s fine…”

“Great! I’ll ask my aunt and uncle if you can stay over tonight again. Need any spare clothes?”

“…please.”