Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – October 27, 2017

Lauren heard that journaling can help.

Having your life uprooted as a teenage girl and leaving cherished friends was difficult, but apparently her father’s raise was more important. She loudly voiced her concerns – let me stay, please God, let me stay! Her parents nodded politely and said they heard her, but she had to leave with them for Harrisburg.

And what did her parents do on the first Friday night in their centuries-old Queen Anne?

Leave her all alone.

Patrick and Kendra went on a date to celebrate a successful move, while Lauren stayed in her unfinished room wearing a tank top and shorts with no make-up, simmering in teenage angst about the new life she didn’t want.

The journaling did help, though. She wrote aggressively about her parents – about how they don’t care. How they couldn’t have just waited a few more years for her to graduate and then move.

Lauren heard the ping of something hitting metal outside. She put her pen down on the right side of her journal and walked to the window. More pings. She looked around the black night sky and realized it was rain starting to hit the downspout. The pings got more frequent as the rain became heavier.

She wished her parents got stuck in the sudden downpour.

The resentful teenager walked back to her desk, grabbed the pen on the left side of her journal, and started writing again. How her parents probably laughed about how depressed she was leaving her friends. They thought it was funny that she was miserable.

A loud boom came from outside and startled her.

“That thunder is crazy,” she said, again putting her pen on the right side of her journal and walking to the window.

It was now a full-fledged storm. Rain. Thunder. Lightning. She smiled thinking about it ruining her parents’ date night. Served them right.

She walked back to the desk and picked up her pen on the left side of her journal and started writing again. Another noise from the window startled her: the open vertical blinds swaying and hitting each other. There wasn’t a vent near the blinds, so she wondered what made them move.

Lauren put the pen down on the right side of her journal and walked to the blinds. She held her hand to the old window to see if air was getting through, but there wasn’t any draft. How odd, she thought and grabbed the final two blinds that were slowly swaying and steadied them.

She walked back to her desk and couldn’t find her pen. It probably rolled off the desk, so she got on her hands and knees to find it. The lighting was awful in her room – stupid old house – which made it hard to look.

A noise came from her door and she looked up. Did the door handle move? It sounded like it moved.

“Dad?” she called out.

Nothing.

“Dad?” she called out again, a little bit louder. “Mom?”

Nothing.

She got up to look in the hallway, but the doorknob didn’t budge.

Stupid thing, she thought. Stupid old doorknob and stupid old house in this stupid town.

It wasn’t stuck, she realized. It was locked.

“Dad?” she yelled, pounding on the door. “Dad, did you lock the door? Dad? Are you home? This isn’t funny!”

The blinds swayed behind her and made the sound of colliding plastic. She let out an involuntary noise, then walked over to the blinds and grabbed them so they’d stop.

Her heartbeat rising, she looked around her room. Her bed. Her desk. A stack of cardboard boxes filled with her things.

The box on top of the stack slowly started to move by itself. Sliding, sliding, sliding until it crashed to the ground and Lauren shrieked.

Out of the wall came a translucent form of a man, bluish hues around him – like a dream – as he slowly floated toward her.

She screamed wildly and ran to the door, but the knob didn’t move. Using both hands didn’t do anything. She screamed louder and louder, then turned to see the ghost inching toward her.

“Dad!” she yelled. “Dad! Mom! Hello!”

With both hands she pounded at the door. No answer. Then she helplessly put her back against the door and sat on the floor. She covered her eyes with her hands – tears pouring through her fingers – as she screamed for help that wouldn’t come.

“Young woman,” the ghost’s raspy voice muttered and followed with menacing laughs.

Ha-ha-ha.

“Please don’t hurt me!” Lauren begged. “Please don’t hurt me! Please!”

With blurred vision, she looked up and saw another translucent form coming through the wall – this one a woman.

“Oh my God,” Lauren cried and covered her mouth with her hands.

This was it. This was how she dies: alone and scared.

“What the hell are you doing, Sebastian?” the woman ghost said.

The man ghost turned around and saw the woman ghost in the room.

“Shit,” the man ghost muttered to himself. “Nothing dear. Just haunting the new girl is all.”

The woman ghost floated over next to the man and eyed the house’s new resident. Lauren was young and pretty. Curvy in spots that you wish to be curvy, and flat in spots that you wish to be flat.

“Uh huh,” the woman ghost said, crossing her arms.

“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘Uh huh’,” Sebastian asked.

“You’re a pig, you know that?” she responded.

“What did I do?” he pleaded with his hands up. “They live here now and it’s all spooky outside, so I’m haunting her. That’s it, Esther.”

“And it has nothing to do with her being young and pretty, huh?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

Lauren stopped crying, but she stayed sitting on the floor with her back against the door and her hands over her mouth.

“Little piece of advice sweetheart,” Esther said to Lauren. “When you find a boy you want to marry, keep in mind that you’ll be with him forever so make sure you don’t marry a pig.”

“She lives here now, so I’m haunting her – that’s it,” he said forcefully.

“If I see you haunt her in the bathroom, so help me God,” she said.

“Or what?”

“I’ll get the shop vac.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me. You think I’ll let you get your cookies peeping on this pretty girl?”

“I don’t know why you keep hitting me with the perv thing,” he said and shook his head as Esther floated around the room to examine Lauren’s things. She stopped at a framed photo of Lauren and her parents at the beach.

“This is your father?” she asked Lauren while staring at the photo.

“Yeah,” the teenage girl said, choking to get the simple word out.

“Hubba hubba,” Esther whispered. “I wonder if he’s packing.”

“What?” Sebastian asked.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t,” Lauren whispered. “I don’t understand.”

Esther floated back next to her husband.

“Yes?” Esther asked.

“Who are you?” the scared young woman asked.

“Oh, we used to live here,” Esther responded.

“And you’re married?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I thought it was a death-do-us-part thing. You know, we’d be together when we were alive, but in the afterlife we’d be done and I could trade up and get – I didn’t mean tra–”

“Wow,” Esther said.

“I didn’t mean trade up, exactly,” he pleaded. “You know I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Wow,” she repeated, even more emphatically.

“I love you and am happy with our life together and all that. It’s just, you know, I didn’t think it would be forever forever.”

“Do you see what I have to deal with?” Esther said to Lauren. “Pig. Absolute swine.”

“Did you die in the house?” Lauren asked.

“What a wonderful question,” he smiled at his wife. “Would you like to tell her how I died?”

“It’s, uh,” Esther started, shaking her head. “It’s not relevant or important.”

“Not relevant or important?” he scoffed. “Are you serious? Tell her. Go ahead, tell her.”

“I poisoned him. Big wow.”

Lauren looked over to see his reaction. He smirked and shook his head.

“Do you see what I have to deal with?” he emphasized to Lauren. “I accidentally knock over a vase when nobody’s home and it’s ‘Sebastian, you no-good, two-bit bastard!’ But she murders me by putting cyanide in my pancakes and it’s, ‘Whatever, it’s not a big deal. Get over it already.’”

Esther wanted to respond but couldn’t think of anything good.

“Listen,” Esther finally said to Lauren. “You understand that he probably deserved it, right?”

“If you both are so unhappy, why do you stay together?” Lauren asked.

“It’s complicated,” she said.

“You technically can get a divorce in the afterlife, but it is messy,” he said. “Worse than when you’re living.”

“I don’t understand,” Lauren said.

“It’s a whole thing,” he said. “You have to get formal visitation rights – not necessarily from Satan himself, but from a high-ranking demon ­– to get a temporary work visa for an attorney.”

A lawyer joke, really? Lauren thought.

“Besides, even though she can be a caterwauling ball-buster, I still do love her,” he said.

Esther crossed her arms and looked away from him.

“Huh?” he smiled, putting his spirit hand and rubbing where her back would have been.

“Well, you ruined this whole thing,” she replied, motioning her head toward Lauren. “She knows not to be afraid of us. We can’t haunt her because she knows too much.”

“Maybe we can be friendly ghosts to her,” he suggested.

“Oh, I bet you’d love that,” she replied. “How old are you, sweetheart?”

“Fifteen,” Lauren answered.

“Fifteen,” she sternly emphasized to her husband.

“I’m not–” he said in frustration. “I don’t get why you keep going to that. Honestly.”

They all turned their heads when they heard the front door open and slam shut. Lauren’s dad called out that they were home – which made Esther smile and raise her eyebrows.

“Okay, how about this,” Sebastian said. “For her, we are friendly ghosts, but we haunt the parents?”

“I do like the idea of haunting the dad – especially when he’s in the shower,” Esther said and then nodded to her husband.

“What do you think?” he asked Lauren. “Are you okay if we haunt your parents and scare them every now and again?”

Lauren grinned.