[September 1, 2042]

The ghost pumped her fist in the air. “Okay, get hyped!” she said, “get hyped and get scary!”

Cal sighed, and with a resigned expression on his face, entered the room. He walked around where the ghost was hovering, and gloomily sat down on the bed, placing his suitcase down next to him. In the spacious room, there was a writing desk with a chair, a wardrobe, and a large window with a lovely view of the grassy hill, but he wasn’t in the mood to admire it. The bitter disappointment of losing his briefly-attained normal life and the ridiculous sight of the bare-footed ghost girl hovering in the middle of the room had abruptly darkened his mood. He watched the ghost girl float up and down softly, as if she were attached to a buoy upon a gentle ocean, and wondered if he should say anything.

Meanwhile, the ghost girl was still talking to herself, stroking her round chin as if she were puzzling over something complex. “Slamming the door seems like a good trick, but patience, patience Mel! In horror movies, when the young bright-eyed couple buy a haunted house, the haunting doesn’t properly begin until at least a half-hour into the movie. That’s when the ghost chucks a book at their child’s head, or something. So, you have to give him a few days to settle in. To become comfortable. To lower his guard. Then-” She pumped her fist again. “You use your special move!”

“And what special move is that, may I inquire?” Cal had decided to interject, if only to stop the ghost girl’s endless monologue that seemed to have no end.

“Tsk, tsk.” The ghost girl, who was still facing the open door as she hovered in the air, closed her eyes and wagged her index finger in a pantomime kind of gesture. “A master cannot reveal their secrets. You must build anticipation, intrigue, suspense-”

She stopped. She opened her blue eyes, and jerked her head up. She began to rotate in the air, the hem of her white sundress twirling gently. She looked at Cal as he sat on the bed, narrowing her eyes, as if trying to look straight through him at the white-painted walls. Then she looked behind herself, checking that there was nobody else in the room.

She looked back at Cal. “That was weird,” she said under her breath, “it’s almost like you responded to me. Like you can hear me.”

Cal opened the suitcase that he had placed on his bed. “I can hear you. I can see you, too, in case you were wondering.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes, I can.”

The ghost, still floating above the floor, started to drift slowly toward where Cal sat on the bed. She continually leaned her body and neck forward, until the shape of her lithe body was nearly parallel to the floor. Her face close to his, she studied Cal. He could see the faint freckles on her nose and the deep blueness that twinkled in the depths of her eyes. Her expression was one of pure confusion and curiosity.

“You can hear me?” The ghost’s voice was soft and tentative, as if she was scared of hearing the answer.

“I can.” Cal responded simply.

“And you see me?”

“I can.”

Her eyes lit up with an emotion that Cal couldn’t quite explain. It was something between inexpressible sadness and relief. She smiled, and silently drifted close to Cal’s face. He could have counted her eyelashes, she was so close.

And then suddenly: “Eh!!!”

The ghost reeled backward in the air, her limbs flailing, her face flushing with a look of embarrassment and horror. “B-b-but…” she stammered, trying to orient her thoughts. “How is that possible?! People who are alive can’t-”

She froze perfectly in the air, and blushed a deep shade of red. “Wait, does that mean you heard everything I was saying?!”

Cal was disinterestedly assessing the continents of his suitcase. “Oh, about your plan to pull off the perfect haunting? Yeah, I heard all of that. Sounded dumb. Like anything you mentioned would be enough to legitimately scare a person from this room.”

The ghost girl looked slightly hurt. “It… wasn’t dumb. It was a good plan.” Then a look of realization crossed her face and she looked accusatory at Cal. “Wait! If you can see me, why aren’t you frightened? I’m a ghost!”

Cal shrugged. “You’re a girl in a sundress. You aren’t exactly intimidating.”

“But I’m still a ghost! Doesn’t that scare you? Doesn’t it make you question your faith? Doesn’t it fill you with existential dread and confusion?”

“Not really.”

The ghost tried to stamp her foot, but since she was floating, all she succeeded in doing was kicking her foot in empty air and making the hem of her white dress jump. “Well, in that case, you have no idea the horror that a true haunting entails!” She grinned wolfishly, and jutted a finger at Cal. “Let me paint you a picture. Tell me mortal, have you ever seen the movie… Poltergeist?”

“No.”

“Oh. How about Candyman?”

“No.”

“The Shining?”

“No.”

“The Ring?”

“Nope.”

“...Ghostbusters?”

“No. Why are all these movies like seventy years old?”

“How about The Exorcist?”

“Isn’t that movie about a demonic possession, not a ghost?”

The ghost stamped her foot again into empty air. “You’re useless!”

Cal sighed. “I don’t see why it’s my responsibility to justify the aesthetic of your would-be haunting. Look, this is how I see it.” He fixed an intense stare at the ghost, and she flinched in response, holding her clenched hands to her chest. “If you were already planning to haunt me, then that means you knew I was coming, and that means you know who I am, right? The new caretaker of Otter Manor. Now, as the caretaker, I’m responsible for the paying tenants of this building. That does not include you.”

Imitating the ghost’s dramatic gesture from early, Cal sharply pointed a finger at the ghost. “That means you’re trespassing in this room — my room, now — and in this building.”

The ghost girl’s mouth was open in shock, and her voice was incredulous. “Trespassing? How could I possibly be trespassing?”

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Cal got to his feet, and walked over to the open door. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing until this point, but from this moment, you’re evicted,” he said. “Go haunt some other place. I don’t know if you have some possessions of any sort, but you can take a moment to gather them before you float out of here.”

As Cal walked out of the room, the ghost stared after him in shock, filled with so many conflicting thoughts she couldn’t get a single one of them out. Finally, she called after him, quite lamely: “B-but, you can’t evict me… I’m haunting you…”

Cal went back downstairs. He memorized the foodstuffs in the kitchen to determine what meals he could make with them, used the downstairs bathroom, and checked out the books in the expansive library. Next, he went to the living room and turned on the TV, and was pleasantly surprised that he found the old appliance easy to use. When the TV flickered to life, Cal saw that it had been left on the evening news.

“...Still haven’t confirmed the identity of the masked individual.” The middle aged-newscaster appeared to be the middle of a story. “But the citizens they saved yesterday in Central Extremis still have these words to say to their mysterious savior…”

Cal switched off the television, and went back upstairs. As he made his way back to room 01, he noticed that a page of paper had been pushed underneath the door frame of room 02 into the hallway. It was the paper he had written his note on earlier, and underneath his original words, was a new message in a delicate hand. It read: It’s nice to meet you, Cal. My name is Ram. I’m sorry for not answering your knock earlier. It’s not my intention to be rude, but I just became very nervous when I heard the noise. I’m not a very outgoing person, so if you see me and I don’t answer your greeting, please don’t take it the wrong way. I’m trying to improve myself. I’m watching an online course on how to speak to people. I hope we can be friends.

Cal read the note, and smiled just a little bit. He folded the note, tucked into the pocket of his trousers. He re-entered 01, where the ghost girl was still floating in the air. “Oh, you’re still here,” he remarked casually to her.

“I live here!” She said, pouting. “You can’t make me leave.”

Cal went back over to his bed, but not before closing the door to the room behind him. “I suppose that’s true.” He said this partially to himself, and frowned. “Though maybe I could throw salt at you or something, and that would banish you to the afterlife.”

“Ha, as if that would work!” The ghost girl tried to project a confident voice, but her face looked a little nervous.

“I have no intention of leaving this room,” Cal informed her. “I got this room and this job fair and square. Besides, I don’t have anywhere else to stay on such short notice.”

He pursed his lips. “Why can’t you just haunt another room, Poltergeist? There’s two empty rooms down the hall.”

“I could ask you the same question! …Hey! Don’t call me that!”

“”Because those rooms are for future tenants, and this room is specifically for the occupation of the caretaker.” Cal explained this slowly, as if he were talking to a child. “Besides, it’s a lot harder for me to eventually relocate if those rooms get filled than it would be for you. You don’t have any belongings, it seems. Can’t you just float through the walls?”

The ghost girl shook her head, and rubbed a tangle of her untidy black hair next to her ear. “I can, but that’s not the point. I’m attached to this room.”

“Why?”

The wolfish grin returned to the ghost’s face. “Oh, are you sure to know, mortal? Because… this very room is where I died…” Perhaps, it was simply the setting sun outside, but the light in 01 seemed to dim in that very instant, and a chill began to seep into the air. In the dark, the wolfish smile seemed to turn ominous. “I died here, in pain, in confusion, in suffering. The bed upon which you sit is where I took my last, choking breaths. And when I passed to the other side, when I traversed that thin rivulet of light that led to somewhere unknown, I swore upon my last breaths that I would not vanish from this world until… Wait, what are you doing?”

“Hmm?” Cal looked up. He had been putting the folded shirts he had taken from the suitcase into the wardrobe. “What?”

The eyes of the ghost girl widened in distress. “You’re not paying attention! I’m explaining my tragic backstory! Be at least a little attentive!”

Cal waved his arm dismissively. “I got it, I got it, don’t worry. I mean, I basically figured most of what you said already.”

The ghost folded her arms and pouted again. She turned her back to Cal. “Forget it. You don’t deserve to hear anything.”

Cal continued to go back and forth between the suitcase on the bed and the wardrobe, putting away his folded clothes. “Look,” he began, trying to sound diplomatic. “My understanding is that neither of us are particularly keen to give up this room to the other? Correct?”

The ghost quickly shot a glance at him, and then turned her head away again. “Yes, I suppose.”

“So here’s my thinking,” Cal said. “What if neither of us leave? We just… cohabitate? An uneasy truce.”

“Cohabitate?” The ghost sounded unsure.

“It shouldn’t be hard to stay out of each-other’s way,” elaborated Cal. “I won’t be in the room for large parts of the day, especially when my university semester starts. So you can go on and do… whatever you do all day. As for the night…”

He frowned. “Do you… sleep?”

The ghost girl slowly rotated a full 180-degrees in the air, just so she could look at Cal and scoff. “Do I sleep? Yes, of course! …In a manner of speaking. I float here, in the center of the room, and I sort of… drift away. It’s sort of a hibernation. Ghosts can do that for long periods of time, if they wish.”

“Then, there’s no problem.” Cal clapped his hands together. “As long as you promise not to reenact scenes from old horror movies for the sake of a “haunting”, and you don’t bother me, and we both agree to be asleep by midnight, I will be willing to let you stay here, rent-free.”

The ghost tilted her head side-to-side, thinking about the proposal. “So you stay out of my way and I stay out of yours?”

“Essentially.”

She scowled again. “I don’t know. You don’t seem like a very nice person.”

Cal raised an eyebrow. “I think I’ve been perfectly reasonable considering before this you were planning to haunt me until I fled in fright.”

“I’m a ghost…” she said sulkily, casting her eyes downward at the wooden floor. “I’m supposed to do that sort of stuff.”

“So do we have a deal, Poltergeist?”

“I suppose…” She grimaced. “As long as you use my real name.”

“I apologize. What’s your name?”

The ghost girl looked at Cal, her blue eyes contemplative, as if she was unsure on how to answer. “Mel. My name is Mel.”

“Mel.” Cal tested the name in his mouth. “Let’s try to get along, Mel. I’m Cal.”

She snorted. “That’s a stupid name.”

Off to a great start, thought Cal.

However, after she said the mocking quip, Mel lowered herself to the floor, until she was standing before Cal — though not “standing” in any true sense, since her toes were floating about half-an-inch above the floor. In this position, though she appeared to be about only a year younger than him in appearance, Cal noticed that she was quite short. The crown of her head and the black hair only came up to his collarbone. She looked up at him, her eyes glinting with mischief, and extended her arm towards him.

Cal looked at her hand, and then awkwardly reached out to shake it. He gasped. His fingers passed right through her hand, and a chill ran up his arm, as if he had just submerged the tips of his fingers into a cold fog.

“Gah!” he exclaimed.

Mel laughed and twirled away, levitating a few inches upward as she did, until she floated with her eyes level with Cal. “Haha, you’re so dumb! You can’t shake the hand of a ghost, obviously! Oh gosh…” She wiped the corners of her eyes, and smiled at Cal, who was staring at her reproachfully. “Don’t be a grump. Our ‘shake’ is still binding. We stay out of each-other’s way. You focus on your studies and work, and I focus on my haunting. Let’s get along, Cal.”

She said his name like it was an insult.

Cal rubbed his hand, which was still cold, and felt almost moist. “I specifically requested you give up on the haunting angle. Whatever, okay.”

His disgruntled expression made Mel burst out into a fresh set of giggles, which made her shoulders rise and fall. She smirked at Cal, and then suddenly, her jovial expression was replaced with one of confusion.

Cal was still rubbing his hand, though the chill he had experienced upon touching Mel’s immaterial body had faded. “What?” he said.

“Nothing.” She responded slowly, like she was thinking about every word before saying it aloud. “I was just thinking about how many years have passed since… Nothing.”

Her smile returned, and she grinned with a set of wide white teeth. “I was just thinking about how best to create the best haunting ever.”

“Great,” muttered Cal, who had returned to putting his clothes into the wardrobe. “I’m not looking forward to it.

Thus, the cohabitation in room 01 of Otter Manor, between Mel the ghost and Cal the human, had begun.