“It looks good in here,” I said as I looked around Finn’s room, which was adjacent to mine. His bunk bed was set up in the corner and his steamboat trunk was in the other corner, overfilled with Nerf guns. His bookshelves lined the opposite wall, housing Legos in half-built condition, board games, books and other toys that hadn’t found a permanent home yet.
“Yeah, I like my room,” Finn said as he glanced around himself, pausing in his unpacking.
“Well, think about what color you want to paint it,” I started as the sounds of yelling erupted from downstairs.
“What was that?” Finn asked, eyes going wide.
I took a deep breath. “You stay right here and I’ll go find out.”
“Mom, what if it’s ghosts?”
“It’s not ghosts,” I said, hoping I was telling the truth. The last thing we needed was another ghost. “I’ll be right back,” I said as I gave him a smile and started for the stairs, taking them two at a time.
A chorus of ghoulish voices drifted through the half-opened door. A pair of them, raised and angry, but definitely human.
Poltergeists weren’t big on witty repartee. It was usually ‘grab, smash, scream’ and not always in that order. The poltergeist that targeted Finn at our last house had been a big fan of the ‘grab and scream’ combo, waking him almost every night. That is, until I banished the SOB. But, by then, the damage was already done and Finn wanted no part of the house any longer. So we moved… to Haven Hollow.
I didn’t remember leaving the front door open and was tempted to slam the heavy oak into the faces of my evening visitors for scaring the life out of my son. But, on closer inspection, one of the people standing on the porch was holding a keychain with the Hallowed Realty logo on it.
So this person must have been Ophelia Ponsobby, my realtor. We’d talked briefly on the phone about the selling points of the house: that it was four thousand square feet and had once been a general store, and before that, a post office. Built in 1854, the house was the longest surviving on Orchard Street.
If the fashion police could have put Ophelia on trial, she’d be in for life, without the possibility of parole. Her checkered pantsuit had to have been pulled straight from a 70s catalog. And the boxy shoulder pads made her look like she was ready to fill in for the linebacker at the local college football team. The string of pearls around her neck looped down to her slightly protruding navel and looked well-suited for strangling someone. Her boots were heeled and witchy looking with long and narrow points.
Rose-colored glasses perched on her hawkish nose, not completely concealing the pair of beady black eyes that stared over the rims. Ophelia Ponsobby’s bio on the Hallowed Realty website said she was around my mother’s age. If so, she hadn’t aged half as gracefully. My mother was sixty-eight and her wrinkles looked artful, her age spots few and far between, her hair settling into a fluffy, cotton white after she’d given up dyeing it.
Ophelia looked like time had hit her with a two-by-four. More than once. The lines were deep cracks in her face, carved by an eon of misery. Had this woman ever smiled a day in her life? I doubted it.
“Get off the lawn this instant, you charlatan!” Ophelia shrieked, turning around to face a man who stood just below her, on the stairs. There was a basket of what looked like spa products sitting next to her, and the man below her was holding another gift basket, almost twice the size of hers.
“I’m hardly a charlatan, Ophelia,” he muttered, the gift basket obscuring his face.
She flourished a menacing black-polished nail at the stranger. “You’ve been warned once already, Mr. Zach!”
“Don’t get your granny panties in a bunch, Ophelia, I’m just here to be a good neighbor.”
She threw her hands on her hips and scowled at him. “Well, how about you be a better neighbor by going home this instant!” She narrowed her already small eyes as she added, “And it’s Mrs. Ponsobby to you!”
“Okay, but before I go, I have one question for you.” His voice was deep and had a happy quality about it. Like he was used to laughing. I could just make out his profile behind the clear wrap of the basket.
“What is it?” she demanded.
Then he glanced up at the plop of velvet sitting atop her head. “What is up with that hat?”
It looked like steam was going to come out of her ears and her face took on a purplish-red hue. I couldn’t help my smile.
“This is a Victorian Chenille Hat!” she insisted as she stomped her foot on my porch and I half-worried she was going to go right through it. “Though I don’t expect you to have the mental capacity to reason that out, you philistine!”
“Okay, okay,” I said, feeling the need to play peacemaker, not that that was anything new. “What in the world is going on?” I asked, looking between them both. The man lowered the basket slightly so I could see his eyes, which were smiling.
Then they both looked at me and were quiet for two seconds before they opened their mouths and a litany of angry words emerged, each defending his or her reasons for being on my front porch.
And then there was the hat. My God, the hat.
Maybe I was the philistine, because it didn’t look like a hat. It looked like a flock of birds had built a nest on Ophelia’s head and an overstuffed crow had settled in to die on it. The beady black eyes of the crow almost matched its owner’s.
Ophelia brandished a cane, again topped with a raven. She was wielding the cane like a shotgun at the stranger. I half-expected the metal tip to roll back and reveal it was really a small-caliber handgun.
The man she was pointing it at, in comparison, appeared pretty… normal. I mean, handsome normal. He was tall—maybe six-two, six-three, and good-looking, even as he held up the gift basket to avoid the swipe of Ophelia’s cane.
He looked like he was in his early forties, his hair and the stubble on his face peppered with gray. He wasn’t just a tall guy, but he was also broad-shouldered with really long legs. He looked like he’d give good hugs…
As he shifted the gift basket, I was able to see his black T-shirt. What appeared to be a dust bunny (as in a bunny made of dust) was being swept up by a faux proton pack, and there was a vague knockoff of the Ghostbusters logo beneath that. In white lettering, it read: ‘Hallowed Cleaners: Exorcise Your Dust!’ The utility belt strapped to his waist didn’t make the t-shirt any less odd.
“Why are you shouting at each other?” I asked, frowning at them both.
They started speaking at the same time again, a jumble of defensive syllables and high-pitched accusations.
“This charlatan is attempting to…”
“I was just coming to be friendly and welcome you to our town, but she…”
“Stop, stop, stop,” I muttered, holding up my hands. I pointed at the less conspicuous of the pair. Mostly because he wasn’t so intimidating. “You first...”
“Marty Zach,” he mumbled and held out his hand, which I shook. My hand was completely lost in his enormous one. His skin was calloused and roughened with work, but it was warm. Just like his smile.
“Holly Morton,” I answered, giving him my full name. No one really called me Holly, though.
“I know what you’re thinking... Don’t ever trust a man with two first names, right?” Then he laughed.