Page 48 of A Very No Strings Halloween
“Say hello to Wilhelm for us!” Oma says before I hang up on her.
Billy is already at the house. His car is parked outside, and it’s alarming how happy I am to see it there. He has his own key now. We don’t have keys to each other’s apartments, but he has a key to my haunted house. That’s something, I guess.
I’m still wearing scrubs because I just got off work, but I comb my fingers through my hair and apply lip gloss in the rearview mirror. I’ve got the wooden box filled with letters that Lars gave to me forsafekeeping. Hopefully we can just read them aloud to Lara, she’ll find peace and have closure, and then she’ll be on her merry way and I can focus on the cranberries and my sunroom and my shiplap. Hopefully.
If she doesn’t leave, well, I probably won’t be able to sell a haunted house, and I can’t live here, so I’ll just keep living in the city and paying the property taxes on this place because my late patient, who was so very sweet, forgot to leave me money to pay for taxes and upkeep and, oh right, he also didn’t mention his wife’s ghost.
So this has to work.
Not that I’m in a big hurry to move out of the apartment, because that would mean moving away from Billy. The thought of it makes the rims of my eyes sting and the tip of my nose tingle. Even though I work twelve-hour shifts, even though Billy’s always out doing God knows what, God knows where most of the time, I’ve gotten used to living under the same roof as him. But if he does start dating someone seriously, it will be a lot easier for me if I don’t have to hear him come home with her, so I really do need a ghost-free house to move into.
As I step up onto the front porch, I get a better grip on the wooden box and start to flip through all the keys on my key ring to find the one for this house. But before I do, the front door pops open. I wait for Billy toappear, but he doesn’t. Stepping through, I find the inner door open as well. I guess he forgot to shut them.
He isn’t waiting to greet me in the front hall either. I find Billy’s toolbox on the first step of the stairwell, but I do not find Billy. “Hello?”
No reply.
I don’t hear any movement downstairs.
And then I hear humming from upstairs.
Shit.
Not the upstairs humming again.
“Billy?”
No reply.
I clutch the box to my chest and pick up a flathead screwdriver from the toolbox before going upstairs. I do not plan to stab a ghost with a screwdriver, and I also don’t think I’ll do much damage if there’s an axe murderer up there. But if there’s another dove stuck in the closet and I have to pry open the window, this will definitely help.
But now I hear more than humming.
I hear singing.
And the hint of an echo that can only mean one thing—Billy is singing in the bathroom. It’s not that damn Chumbawamba song. It’s not a Meat Loaf song. Nor is it a Neil Diamond song.
I don’t recognize it, but it sounds like a classic.
“Everymorning, every evening
Ain’t we got fun?
Not much money, oh, but honey
Ain’t we got fun?”
I pause when I reach the door of the en suite bathroom. It barely sounds like Billy. He’s got that old-timey ragtime vibe going. It’s weird.
Very weird.
As I’m about to step into the bathroom, I get a flash of an image of Jack Nicholson inThe Shiningwhen he’s in a shower with that woman.
If Billy is showering with the ghost of Lara Olander in my house and singing to her, I will murder him and then I will make his ghost live here with me forever.
But he doesn’t appear to be in the shower with anyone else, living or paranormal. He’s in the tub, stepping back and forth, holding his caulk gun in both hands and then twirling it like it’s a cane, while he’s back to humming. Is that the Charleston? Or a foxtrot? He’s really into it, so I just stand here watching him for a bit. And he doesn’t seem to realize I’m here at all, even though I don’t see an earbud in his ear.
I clear my throat.
