1518 Bartleby Way

None of the other delivery drivers liked to deliver pizza to the dead people, but I didn't mind. They never complained about anything, and they always tipped really well.

I suppose I should explain.

Everyone who grew up in Cornersville knew about the house at 1518 Bartelby Way; it was the deserted house behind the cemetery. No one had lived there for years - probably since before the cemetery was started in the '50's - but every kid in town had seen lights on in the windows. Myself included. If you told any adults about it, they'd say it was just the caretaker, or maybe a realtor was showing the place. I suppose those were more logical explanations than ghosts, but I never saw any caretaker on the grounds, and I don't believe for a second that the house was actually for sale. And why would they show it at night, anyway?

My parents had told me in no uncertain terms that if I was ever seen breaking into that old house, they would ground me until I was eighteen - if I made it out alive in the first place. They didn't really need to bother with threats, though. The place freaked me out.

But by the time I started working for Leon's Pizza, I was already twenty-one. But I still hadn't snuck in, and most of the youthful curiosity about 1518 Bartelby Way had passed.

The work at Leon's was easy enough. I'd hang around the store folding boxes and doing dishes, waiting for an address to appear on the computer screen. When an address came up, I'd drive a pizza over there, and the people would pay for the pizza and give me a two or three dollar tip. The money was pretty good on the busier nights, and I couldn't complain about a job where half of the work was just driving around listening to the radio.

Tuesday nights were the slowest. Most people who wanted to order pizza on a weeknight either did so on Monday, which was Two-for-One night, or Wednesday, when we had the "Two Large Pizzas for $15" night. There were no special deals on Tuesdays. Naturally, Tuesday was the first night that I delivered pizza to a dead person. I'd been spending the whole night in the store, doing grunt work and talking to Brian Bernowski, one of the other drivers, whose guts I pretty generally hated.

"I'm gonna go get so fucked up after work, dude," he said, as usual. Our conversations were all pretty much the same. He really called me "dude."

"Have fun," I said.

"How bout you, man? You getting wasted?"

"I'll probably just go home and watch some TV."

"You ain't into bars, dude?"

"Nah."

"You're gay, dude."

It wasn't that I had anything against getting wasted - I was just trying to save money. Getting drunk has never been cheap, and getting stoned can be downright expensive. Plus, if I went out to bars, there was a better than average chance that I'd run into Brian, and wind up having to talk to him again.

I went through variations on that conversation for about three hours, and, as it got dark, it looked like I was going to have made about $10 the entire night - hardly enough to be worth my while. Then, finally, an address came up on the screen.

"1518 Bartleby Way."

"No way!" I said. "Hey, Brian! Check this out!" I had to show someone.

Brian came to look at the screen. "What's up?"

"Isn't 1518 Bartelby Way the old house behind the cemetery?"

"Yeah. Just cancel that one; we get calls for that address now and then. It's probably some prick playing a prank."

"No, no, I'll take it," I said, desperate to get out of the store. My hands were a mess of cardboard cuts from folding all the boxes. "It's probably the caretaker. Or maybe a realtor."

"I guess you can if you want to," said Brian. "I mean, we've got all of the in-store work caught up."

We were more than caught up; I'd folded enough boxes to fill the entire shelf, with enough left over that I could've built a little fort. I got the pizza out of the oven and put it in the box myself, sliced it, and loaded it into a delivery bag.

I was about halfway there when I started to get nervous. I was going to have to drive right through the cemetery, get out of my car, and walk up to the door of one of the most well-known haunted houses in town, and I didn't even expect anyone to be there. I thought about just turning around halfway through and telling my boss that there had been no answer. He certainly would've believed me, and then I could've just eaten the pizza myself. But as I drove up towards the cemetery and the house came into view, I saw that the downstairs light in the house was on.

As I pulled my car into the cemetery gates, all of the old grade school curiosity started to come back. This was like a free pass - I had a perfectly good excuse to go up to the old house, and even a chance to get a look inside for myself. And, to my knowledge, no kid had ever gone in on a night when the lights were on. It may have been too late to be the hero of the playground for sneaking in, but I could always e-mail all of my old classmates.

I'd only been in the cemetery a few times before, at funerals and on Memorial Day. Both of those times, I'd been anxious to get out as soon as possible. Then, in high school, I went once with a group of people who were into drinking next to the grave of someone called Casabere - which, as far as anyone could tell, was pronounced "Case o' Beer." I hadn't told any of them that I was scared out of my wits at the time, but the fear went away after I'd had a few drinks, and, after that, the cemetery didn't seem quite so mysterious and frightening anymore. It was a good thing, because if I hadn't gone there that night, I don't know if I would've had the nerve to deliver that pizza.

I stepped out of the car, leaving it running so that the headlights would stay on. I walked up the stairs, and stood on the porch for a second. My knees were shaking. I wasn't as scared of the old house as I'd been as a kid, but, still the place was spooky. I turned around for a second to look back at my car, but all I could see was the graveyard, which, in the rain, wasn't any less spooky than the house. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I raised my fist and knocked on the door a few times.

For a few seconds after, nothing happened. I waited for a few more seconds, and was just about to turn around and bolt when the doorknob began to turn. The hinges creaked. The hair on my neck stood on end and my mouth dried up.

The door slowly opened, and behind it was an old woman in a green dress - an old one, from the sixties, from the looks of it. She looked just like any other old lady - wrinkled skin, curly white hair - but her eyes were sort of glowing, and she never blinked once. It was like she was looking through me. I gulped for a second, then put on my biggest smile.

"Good evening!" I said, taking the pizza out of the delivery bag. "Th. that'll be $13.59."

She held up a twenty dollar bill, staring at me the whole time, which was rather unnerving. My knees were shaking so hard that I could hardly stand up. But I couldn't turn away. She laid the bill down on top of the delivery bag, and I handed her the pizza.

"How much change do you need?" I asked. But she didn't say anything. She just took the pizza and disappeared back into the house without a word. Apparently, she intended for me to keep the change, which meant I'd just been given a $6.41 tip.

Not wanting to stick around in the cemetery any longer than I had to, I shoved the twenty into my pocket and ran as fast as I could back into my car, shifted out of park, spun around, and drove out of the cemetery as fast as I could.

I was about halfway back to the store before it hit me - the woman had to have been a ghost. Probably the ghost of someone buried in the cemetery. For a second I was freaked out, but only for a second.

Was that all there was to ghosts?

I'd always pictured ghosts as old women with stern faces and enormous, flowing hair in long white robes. All white, sort of transparent, floating a few inches off the ground, and moaning. In reality, they were just like regular people with glowing eyes.

I saw scarier people than that among the living all the time. Hell, the guy in the apartments on the south side who always answered the door naked was twice as scary as any ghostly old lady.

The rest of the night passed without incident, and after I got off work I spent the rest of the night going from local bar to local bar, looking for anyone from my elementary school classes to whom I could brag, but didn't find anyone. I ran into Brian more than once, but managed to get away before he could say anything. Eventually I went home, watched a couple of reruns on TV, stole a beer out of the fridge, and went to bed.

As I lay there, I started to kick myself for not taking better advantage of the situation. I'd been face to face with a real ghost, at the door of a real haunted house, and all I did was sell her a pizza. I could've asked her some heavy questions about God, the afterlife, or philosophy. Worst of all, she'd opened the door, but I hadn't even taken a peek into the house for myself. Stupid, stupid. I hadn't even heard the ghosts' voice, which left me to wonder if she would've simply sounded like a normal person, or if the voice would've been one of those lonesome moans that ghosts in movies always have.

But Brian had said that they got orders from that address pretty regularly. I figured I'd get another chance soon.

As it turned out, I got my next chance that Friday. There were lots of other drivers that night, and I was dismayed when 1518 Bartleby Way came up on the screen, because it was Erin's turn to make a run, not mine.

"Hey, Erin!" I said. "You got the house behind the cemetery!"

"Cancel it," she said. "It's a prank."

"No," I said. "I made a delivery there on Tuesday night."

"Who was it? A ghost?"

"Yeah."

She looked at me for a moment with an eyebrow raised, like she was trying to figure out whether I was telling the truth. "Were you working with Brian that night by any chance?"

"Well, yeah," I said. "But I was perfectly sober."

"And you really took a pizza to 1518 Bartleby?"

"Yep."

"Well," she said, "do you want to take this one, too?"

"Sure! They tip really well."

"Whatever. I'll bet it's just a realtor or something."

So I took the pizza - another $13.59 order - and headed out to the cemetery. Unlike the last time, it wasn't dark yet, and the place didn't seem quite so spooky. I boldly walked up to the door, and knocked right away.

Once again, there was a pause, and the door opened. To my surprise, it wasn't the same ghost - this time it was a man in an army uniform. The door was open just enough so that I could see the guy; I couldn't see anything inside.

"Hi!" I said. I waited for a response, but didn't get one. "All set for some pizza?" Still nothing. The ghost held up a twenty-dollar bill without a word.

"So," I said, as I slowly withdrew the pizza from the delivery bag. "Is this what the afterlife is like? Sitting around, eating pizza?"

The ghost blinked, marking the first time I'd seen a ghost do so, then quickly turned his head back and looked into the house for just a second, then turned back and shoved the twenty in front of me. I traded him the pizza for the cash.

"Need any change?"

"Keep it," it said, in a voice that sounded just like a regular person. He quickly backed into the house - on his feet, not floating - and shut the door.

I couldn't say that talking to a ghost made for great conversation, but I'd gotten two large tips from them, and there was something to be said for that.

In the weeks that followed, I got a lot of other chances to deliver to the ghosts. None of the other drivers were very keen on going to deliver a pizza to dead people, so every time the address came up, I would get to make the run. And the address started to come up about every other night. I guess that, when word got around the cemetery that the pizza place was actually delivering to them now, all of the ghosts wanted a pizza.

It was never the same ghost at the door twice. One time it was an old woman in a black dress, the next time it was some poor bastard who'd been buried in the tackiest brown suit ever made. None of them were ever smiling, though. Frankly, I came to realize that they all looked downright miserable. Not menacing, or mournful, the way I'd always pictured ghosts. Just miserable.

The order was always the same - a large, two topping pizza (the toppings varied from order to order) for $13.59. They always paid with a twenty and let me keep the change. I was making out like a bandit.

I would always try to talk to the ghosts. I'd ask them what the meaning of life was, or if they'd seen Heaven or Hell, or things like that. But they'd never respond with anything more than a grunt; as it turned out, the guy who told me to keep the change had been downright talkative, by ghost standards. But they never opened the door enough that I could get a look at the inside. The lights were on now and then, but the curtains were always closed.

Frankly, I started to enjoy the whole thing. I found the e-mail addresses of a bunch of people from grade school and told them all about it. I don't think any of them believed me, except for Seth Kleinschrodt and Tim Harshberger, who had claimed that they snuck in back in third grade. Back in those days, they told all sorts of stories about seeing magazines on the table - either Colliers or National Geographic, the story tended to change - and even finding a skeleton in the upstairs bedroom. Tim even went so far as to say the skeleton was the remains of a woman who'd been left at the altar by a runaway groom, and died that night of a broken heart, but I didn't believe it. Even if there had been a skeleton, there wouldn't have been a note explaining whose skeleton it was. Few people believed that, but even fewer believed their story that there was a very modern television set in the living room. Why would there be a late model TV in an abandoned house?

When they wrote me back, they both said that every word they'd ever said about the place was true, and that I had to try to get inside some day if I got the chance. Tim was now at Yale, and Seth was studying biomedical engineering at some school in Wisconson. Clearly, a fellow could get inside the house and come out no worse for wear.

But I was content just to go about my regular routine of asking the ghosts questions, even if they did go unanswered, and collecting the $6.41 tips, then going home to watch some television and going to bed. Seeing a ghost was enough excitement for me, even if they weren't very engaging conversationalists.

Then, one rainy Tuesday night in early August, things changed.

By then, the house didn't seem very frightening at all any more, even though I knew for a fact that it was haunted. Even on a dark, wet night, it just seemed like another run on which I knew I could get a great tip. When the order for 1518 Bartelby Way came up, I drove right up to the house without even being nervous. This time, I planned to ask if the people in the cemetery took turns with the house, or if they all stayed in there at once. I didn't expect an answer, but I had to ask something.

I walked up to the house, just like normal, and knocked on the door. As usual, it took awhile for the door to open, but when it did, I was greeted by my Uncle Ernie.

I nearly dropped the pizza. In all the time I'd been delivering pizza to the house behind the cemetery, it hadn't once crossed my mind that my Uncle Ernie was buried there.

Uncle Ernie was my favorite uncle when I was a kid. He was a party animal. He was in his fifties, had never been married, and got really funny when he was drunk. He wasn't a great looking guy - he had a beer belly, and took to combing the three hairs he had left over his bald spot, trying to cover it up - but he went out with a lot of women that he met at the bars down by the airport. Best of all, for a kid, his house was always loaded with junk food. Of course, if he'd lived a healthier lifestyle, he might've lived a little bit longer, but I think he had a good time while he was alive.

Now, as a ghost in the doorway, Uncle Ernie looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. We stared at each other for awhile. He looked just like I remembered him, except that he was in a real suit, not one of the leisure suits that he was still wearing ten years after they'd gone out of style. I hadn't seen his face, except in pictures, since I was ten years old, but he hadn't changed a bit from the way I remembered him. Frankly, he looked a lot healthier than he'd looked when I'd visited him in the hospital the day before he died. I suppose that was to be expected; he was sick and dying at the time. Now that he was just plain dead, he was probably in better shape. But he looked miserable, just like all of the other ghosts.

"Uncle Ernie" I said, finally "I brought your pizza."

He stared for a second. "Well," he said, softly, with a voice that sounded just the way I remembered it, "Long time, no see. You wanna come inside?"

"Sure," I said, every bit as nervous as I'd been the first night I'd come to the house. He opened the door the rest of the way and began to walk inside. Shaking so much I could barely stand, I followed him in.

Inside, the place was a bit of a mess, but looked cozy enough. I followed Ernie down the hallway, into the kitchen, and through the kitchen into what I guess was the living room. There were paintings of landscape scenes on the walls, and the kitchen table was covered with old copies of both Colliers and National Geographic. There were also a couple of old issues of Playboy, which I figured must have been a new addition. If anyone had seen those back when I was a kid, they would've mentioned them before they mentioned the skeleton.

Inside the living room was a shaggy green couch, set up in front of the famous television set. It wasn't top of the line, but it was a pretty nice one. I guess Tim and Seth really did sneak in when we were kids.

Ernie sat down on the couch, and I sat next to him. I opened the box of pizza, and he took out two slices. One he kept for himself, the other he handed to me. Without saying a word, we sat on the couch and had a slice of pizza together.

Finally, as I finished mine, I asked "so, do you guys all live here at once, or do you take turns?"

"We take turns," he said, softly. "We each get a night about every three or four months, and we get twenty dollars to spend. Most of us never use it."

"Where does the money come from?"

He shrugged. "They say it's like an allowance, but I'm not sure who pays it. When money appears on a table, I don't ask too many questions."

"Where do you stay the rest of the time?"

"Out there, mostly." He nodded toward the window.

I decided to take complete advantage of the situation and ask all of the questions I could think of.

"Is this the afterlife, then?"

"Pretty much."

"Sounds kind of boring."

"It's not so bad. The living spaces are small, but comfortable. And there's a pretty good poker game Friday nights in the mausoleum."

"Is there more to it? Is there a Heaven, or a Hell, or anything like that?"

"Well," he said, "I suppose so, but I've never really gone. You know how people who live in New York never really go to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building? It's sort of like that."

"Heaven and Hell are tourist traps?"

"Something like that, yeah."

We ate another slice each in total silence. Ernie was awfully talkative for a ghost, but nowhere near the way he was when he was alive. When I was a kid, Uncle Ernie would talk my ear off about whatever was on his mind - sports, politics, women. Actually, I learned about all I know about sex from Uncle Ernie, which probably explained a lot about my sex life. He now sat next to me with his beer belly and comb-over, eating pizza more than ten years after his death. An eternal bachelor. And, for once, I was driving the conversation.

"Is the food in the afterlife good?"

"Well," he said, "I'll tell you one thing that I'm sure you'll be glad to hear. Pepperoni doesn't give me gas anymore."

When he finished his second slice, Ernie reached into the couch cushions, pulled out a remote control, and turned the TV on. I was hoping that it would be some sort of "afterlife TV," where you could see what was going on in other dimensions, or look at people in the shower. But it wasn't. If it was, I'm sure that, knowing Uncle Ernie, he would've turned straight to whatever channel had people in the shower, but, instead, he turned on Nick at Nite. It was time for The Andy Griffith Show.

"This is a good one," he said. "These two kids in Mayberry are in love, but their parents hate each other."

"I don't think I've seen that one."

"Well, no time like the present. Have another slice."

And so we watched television. It was one of the early ones, when Andy was still playing a shit-shoed hillbilly sheriff. They made him act more dignified in the later episodes.

They got to the point when Andy was explaining the story of Romeo and Juliet from a redneck point of view to Opie, and I said "Hey, do you believe that kid just won an Oscar? He directed the movie that won Best Picture last year."

"Oh yeah? I knew he was a big director now, but we don't get that much news."

"No afterlife newspaper?"

"Nah. How's your mother, by the way?"

"Fine, everyone's fine."

"Good to hear."

When the show ended, we had finished off the pizza. He handed me a twenty dollar bill, and said "well, I guess you'd better get back to work soon. Don't want you to get fired."

"Yeah," I said. "I suppose so."

We walked slowly back to the front door, and he held out his hand. I shook it, and found that it was perfectly solid.

"So that's the afterlife?" I asked. "It's all just waiting around for your turn to order pizza and watch reruns?"

"We also play cards on Friday."

"But that's it? You never even leave the cemetery?"

"It's not so bad," said Ernie. "There's other stuff I could be doing, but I just don't really have the time, you know?"

"How can you not? All you have to do is watch TV one night out of every three or four months, and that takes up so much time that you don't have time to do anything else?"

"Well, it's weird, I admit."

"Man, you need to get out more. You can't just spend forever eating pizza and watching reruns."

"You'll understand when you're older. Much older, I hope. Tell your folks I said hello."

He shut the door, leaving me standing on the porch. I listened to the door and heard his footsteps walking back to the living room, then heard the opening strains of the theme from The Odd Couple.

For a long time, I just stood on that porch, staring out into the cemetery, thinking about things. After a minute, I started to notice that not all of the water on my face was from the rain. I was crying.

When I finally got into my car, I was still crying, and I didn't even know why. It wasn't that I missed Uncle Ernie - it was actually good to see that he wasn't in Hell, like some of my relatives had predicted. It wasn't that I was sad about anything in particular. For some reason, crying just seemed like the best thing to do.

Then, as I pulled into the parking lot at Leon's, it dawned on me. Ernie was dead. Really dead.

When he was alive, Uncle Ernie was a rowdy, party-animal of a guy. It was kind of pathetic to see a middle aged man with a comb-over partying all the time, and hearing him tell stories about all night drinking, sex with loose women, and rock concerts he'd been to, and when he tried to dance - which he frequently did - he looked ridiculous. But he always seemed pretty happy. And, when he wasn't hung over, he was about as exciting to a kid as relatives got. Something about being dead had taken all of that away. He wasn't partying anymore. He just sat around watching reruns and eating pizza, as miserable, as all of the other ghosts looked. Maybe they were all just bored. In any case, being dead had killed him.

Some of my relatives were always telling him that he was wasting his life. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't, but he was certainly wasting his death.

I thought about all of the shows that were currently on the air, and quietly contemplated having to watch them in reruns for all eternity. Then I cried some more.

I sat in the parking lot for a long time before I went back into Leon's. By then, the orders were backed up. I took a few more routine orders around town, then came back and started folding a stack of boxes. Brian came in a few minutes later.

"Dude," he said. "I'm totally gonna get fucked up tonight."

"Oh yeah?" I asked.

"Hell yeah, man. You just gonna go home and watch some more TV?"

I folded another box without saying anything. "No," I said. "I don't think I'll watch any TV for awhile."

"Wanna come out and party, then? I know where there's a huge party tonight."

I folded another box.

"Sure," I said. "I think I will, actually." I figured that, if it was a big party, I could probably manage to avoid Brian without too much trouble.

"Hell yeah, dude. You gotta live it up!"

"You're right," I said. "You gotta live it up."

So I went to the party. I drank. I danced. I made a complete ass of myself.

And I did it again the next night.

After that I cooled down a little bit; I didn't want to get into the habit of getting drunk every night like some hillbilly. But for the rest of the summer, I only stayed home a couple of nights a week. I figured that there would be plenty of time to sit around, read, and watch television later on.

I left my job to go back to school in August. In December, when school let out for the Christmas holidays, they let me have the job back for the break. I delivered to a couple of ghosts that I recognized from the summer, and maybe I'm just crazy, but I think they were happy to see me again. In any case, I noticed that they didn't look quite as miserable as they'd looked over the summer.

A few nights before Christmas, I made what looked like a routine delivery to the house, and Uncle Ernie opened the door.

"Well, well," he said. "How have you been?"

"Pretty well," I said. "Been partying a lot more than when I last saw you."

"Oh yeah? Back when I was your age, I was the life of every party."

"Guess it's hard to be the life of the party when you're dead, though, huh?"

He laughed. This was the first time I'd heard a ghost laugh.

I handed him his pizza and he handed me a twenty. "I'm going to a need a few bucks in change, if that's all right," he said. "I need to save up for the trip."

I handed him three bucks. "You're taking a trip?"

"Yep. I thought about what you said about getting out more often, and I'm taking a trip."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Awhile after I last saw you I decided to go out to Glendale, the biggest cemetery in the state, and checked the action out over there; I've been spending a lot of time there ever since. I wish you people had buried me someplace bigger, these small places can really make you feel trapped!"

"Quite a scene, huh?"

"Yeah. And it's a lot older than this place, too. Lots of women died young back in the old days."

I grinned. "You old dog, you!" I was also glad to hear that there really was more to do in the afterlife than lying around in a coffin. I'd been worrying about that.

"So I'm leaving tomorrow for a big vacation. Going to check out what goes on in Heaven at Christmas, then I'll swing by Hell to see that lake of fire. It's supposed to be pretty wild down there. Whole bunch of us are going; we can get a discount if we go as a group."

"I'll bet you'll fit right in down in Hell," I said, I said with a smile.

"Well, I'm a little rusty, but I can still dance. You wanna come in for some pizza?"

So I went in, and we ate some pizza, and just talked. Just like we used to back when he was alive, only now I was old enough to hold up my end of the conversation. I would've stayed all night, but I was afraid of getting in trouble at work, and, for no particularly good reason, I was afraid that if I stayed in the house past midnight, I'd die or something. It was just a superstition, but I wasn't up to taking that sort of chance. So, after we'd finished off the pizza, I said I had to get back to work.

"Think you can send me a postcard from Hell?" I asked

"I'll sure try."

I left that night feeling better than I'd felt in months. Seeing Uncle Ernie having a good time was a real relief.

The next summer, I came back to the same job, but the first time I went to the house, there was no one there. The call must have just been a prank.

The next time, though, the door was answered by the ghost in the military outfit. He smiled when he saw me on the porch and said "hello!" This was the first time I'd seen a ghost, other than Uncle Ernie, who not only didn't look miserable, but was actually smiling.

"Where's everybody been?" I asked.

"Out and about," he said. "Some guy figured out that we could use the twenty bucks for bus fare to go to one of the bigger places, and now there's no point sticking around here anymore. Don't know why we never thought of that before. Guess we were too caught up in the TV and poker games." I wondered if there was some sort of special "afterlife express" bus, but didn't bother to ask.

"Sounds like there's a lot going on in the afterlife these days," I said.

"There's always a lot to do when you turn the television off. I'm just staying in the house until it sells myself. Then I'm off to the Elysian Fields! Got an apartment waiting for me, and a job as an advisor to some psychic!"

He handed me the twenty-dollar bill and asked for a couple of bucks in change.

A week later, I got a postcard in the mail. The return address said "Ernie, 126 Azrael Terrace, Third Circle, Hell," but the postmark said "Clifton, New Jersey." Inside was a short note.

"Hey, kiddo! Bet you'd never thought someone would say 'wish you were here' from Hell! It's not cheap down here, but it's easy to find work as a poltergeist. Can you believe they're paying me to walk around moaning and throwing shit around in some old house? Stay in school, but don't work too hard! - E."

The night before I went back to school I made one last run to the house, and the door was answered by a young guy in a suit. His hair was slicked back, and I noticed a cell phone hanging off of his belt. I'd never seen a ghost with a cell phone before.

"Have any trouble finding the place?" he asked.

"No, I come here all the time?"

"Who else orders from this address?"

"All of the other, wellghosts."

"Ghosts? What do you mean ghosts?" "Well," I said, starting to get nervous. "Isn't that what you are?"

The guy crooked his eyebrow at me, and I started to worry that maybe I'd said the wrong thing. I'd never actually used the term "ghost" in front of one of them before. Maybe they preferred another term.

"No, I'm not a ghost, dumbass," he said. "There's no such thing as ghosts."

"Right," I said, trying not to look surprised. "I was just kidding. So what are you doing here? I thought no one had lived here for years."

"I'm cleaning it out," he said. "Gonna try and sell it."

"Ah!" I said. "So you're a realtor."

"Right," he said, looking annoyed. "And if people don't stop thinking this place is haunted, I'm never going to find a buyer. Now, can I just have my pizza, please?"

I handed him his pizza, and he handed me a check for $13.59. No tip.

The next day there was a "for sale" sign in front of the house. I understand that it's still there today.

But, from what I'm told, no one has seen a light in the window in a long, long time.

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