~Two weeks earlier~

"He's trying to kill us."

"He's not trying to kill us. He's just...having fun."

I leaned over the back of Ben's chair, watching the grainy night-cam footage of our bedroom.

Ben had installed the cameras after the third time we woke up with a haunted doll between us. He said it was clearly possessed by some sort of pervert ghost. I said it was probably just lonely.

We tended to disagree about these things, just like we were disagreeing now, although I had to admit that, this time at least, the evidence might be in Ben's favor.

"Fun?" Ben repeated, a trace of frustration and anger underlying his tone. "Matt, you could have died. If I hadn't come in when I did..." He put a hand over his mouth.

On his computer screen, I watched myself sleeping. The time stamp showed it was only half-past nine, but I'd been tired and Ben (as usual) had been working late, locked in his office.

In the recording I tossed and turned a few times and then lay still, finally having drifted off. Then, the closet door opened a crack, and something long and thin snaked its way out and towards the bed.

Later, we'd identified it as an extension cord.

It moved, seemingly propelled by its own power, up the side of the bed, where it proceeded to loop itself several times around my neck. The other end then lifted and wove its way through the unmoving blades of the ceiling fan overhead, which then turned itself on.

The blades moved in a slow rotation, and the length of cord gradually lost its slack as it was wound up by the fan.

Fortunately, it was a long cord, and when a moment later the video showed Ben entering the room, stopping in confusion, and then rushing to wake me and free me from its coils, there had still been several loose loops lying across the top of the bed.

"How is trying to hang you in your sleep fun, Matt?" Ben asked, sounding bewildered. "When are you going to admit that Pete is—" He stopped and lowered his voice, obviously worried the poltergeist might be listening even now. "When are you going to admit that Pete is dangerous?" he finished in a whisper.

"No one's been hurt," I protested. "These are just...pranks." I shrugged.

But to be honest, Ben had a point.

Pete had played little jokes on us since the day we moved in—silverware in the toaster, switching the sugar for the laundry detergent, smearing butter over the top step on the second floor—silly things like that.

Like I said, no one was ever hurt, and I took it as simply Pete's way of saying hello.

Recently, though, things had escalated.

Last week I'd fallen asleep in the bathtub and woken up underwater. I'd have chalked that one up to a simple accident if not for the hand-print that showed up on my chest. Then, I'd been tending the flowerbeds along the side of the house, when a box of Christmas decorations somehow made its way out of the attic window and narrowly missed my head.

Last night's incident would be Pete's third 'attempt,' and Ben didn't even know about the other two. I'd been afraid to tell him, because I knew he'd run straight to Ari Lorenfield and ask to have Pete exorcised.

Ari owned the house, lived here most of his life, was a powerful mage-witch, and also happened to be Ben's ex-boyfriend. Ben still went starry-eyed whenever Ari was around, and the only reason I wasn't jealous is that I loved Ari, too (as a friend, of course) and he was in a rock-solid relationship with a hot vampire.

Now, as he stared unhappily at his monitor as the video replayed again, Ben proved my prediction true.

"I'm calling Ari," he said, reaching for his phone.

"Ben, wait—" I placed my hand over his, "—just give me a chance to talk to him. Pete, I mean. I think I can sort this out. Please?"

"Matt...What will it take for you to accept that this isn't fun?" he asked, exasperated. "It's dangerous, and terrifying. This isn't Casper the Friendly Ghost, it's...I don't know...The Conjuring, or something. It's scary shit."

"Just let me try," I pleaded. I actually thought I got along with Pete pretty well, so I didn't understand why he suddenly wanted me dead. Maybe, like the haunted doll in our bed, he was just lonely, too.

"Fine. You can try," Ben said, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet. "But one more incident—I don't care how small—and that's it. Either we go, or Pete goes. Okay?"

"Okay," I agreed, though not happily. I loved this house. I loved everything about it, from the powder-blue exterior, to the ancient plumbing, to the museum it housed, to the resident poltergeist. I never wanted to leave.

Well, maybe not never. I didn't really want to end up like Pete, after all.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

I thought it went well.

Following the directions Annabel gave me (Annabel being Ari's godmother and the woman teaching me the basics of magick), I did my best to talk to Pete. I drew a circle, lit a candle, called the five elements, envisioned myself protected in a bubble of white light, and then invited Pete to join me.

I didn't sense anything, but my candle flickered a few times. Politely, I asked Pete to please stop trying to kill me, and warned him that Ben would tell on him to Ari if he didn't.

While I didn't get a direct response, the house felt light and cheerful afterwards, so I figured that was his way of saying he got the message.

I may have been wrong.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

"Ben!...Ben!!!" I shouted.

I was trying to change the light-bulb in the downstairs storage room, which had blown out for the fourth time in a week.

Usually, if a house was experiencing this level of electrical faults, one would call an electrician.

However, if said house is haunted by multiple entities, then calling the electrician every time something explodes is just a waste of money.

It's much more economical to simply change the bulb.

I was standing on a metal folding chair, balancing on my tiptoes and trying to figure out why the bulb wouldn't fit in the socket. I needed a flashlight to see properly (the light being out), and it would be very convenient and helpful if Ben would bring me one.

Unfortunately for me, he was in his office, as usual, and probably had his headphones on. Even when he was home, I was on my own.

Sighing, I climbed down from the chair, climbed the stairs to the second floor, found  a flashlight in the kitchen, came back down, climbed back up on the chair, and shone the light into the socket.

"Oh, well that explains it," I laughed. There was something jammed into the socket—one of the weird, tiny spoons from the collection on display in the front rooms, it seemed.

I reached up to grab it and hesitated. I'd turned the light-switch to 'off' before trying to change the bulb, of course, but with old wiring, maybe I should turn off the breakers, too.

But no, I considered, that would interrupt Ben's work. He'd have to turn his computer off, and he hated to have his concentration broken during his 'productive' time, and if he had his headphones on, that meant he was 'concentrating'.

It would be fine.

It would have been, too, if Pete had not switched the light back on as soon as I grabbed the spoon.

I felt a tremendous jolt as the electricity traveled through me, and then another jolt as my body hit the floor, and then...nothing.

At least until I opened my eyes and sat up.

Then I felt a third jolt—this time of pure alarm—as I saw a strange man standing over me. He was tall, ghastly pale, his face sunken and waxy like a corpse, and his eyes were like empty holes. He smiled down at me, thin lips pulling back to reveal black gums and yellow teeth. 

"At last, you see me," he said, in a voice that sounded like something half-rotted in the grave.

"P-Pete?" I asked. I recognized him from Ari's description, but I'd always imagined him...differently.

"Dа," he said, which I knew was Russian for yes. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you, face to face, Matthew Rose."

"Um, likewise," I said, getting slowly to my feet. I felt quite well for having just been electrocuted. "How...How can I see you?" I asked, fascinated by the clarity and solidity of his apparition.

His smile widened a little further, and he pointed at something behind me with a pale, bony hand.

"Because, my dear friend," he said, "like me, you are dead."

"What? No I'm not, I—" I turned and looked.

Pete was right. Whatever part of me was talking to him, my body, at least, was still lying behind me on the floor, pale and still, and quite unmistakably dead.

Ben was going to be so pissed.