Chapter 33: Repairs and Repartee
The following morning, the house felt calm and hopeful. A thin, golden light filtered through the grimy windows of the grand salon, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air like forgotten spirits. The usual oppressive weight in the atmosphere had lifted, replaced by a curious, waiting silence. Elias stood by the large front window, drumming his fingers on the peeling sill. He was waiting on two service people. The first was Lou, from the cable company, who was supposed to install the internet infrastructure so the house could finally have WiFi. Elias figured this was a crucial first step; how else were they supposed to recruit people to energize the house if they couldn’t even send a damn email?
A beat-up van with a telecom logo pulled into the circular driveway, crunching on the gravel. A man in his late forties, average height and on the tubby side with a thinning hairline and a respectable mustache, climbed out. He hefted a heavy tool belt and looked up at the mansion with a low whistle.
“That’s the one,” Elias muttered to himself, heading for the door.
He met Lou on the porch. “Elias Thorne? I’m Lou. Here to hook you up to the twenty-first century.” Lou’s eyes were already scanning the exterior, assessing the job. “Big place. Gonna be a lot of cable.”
“Tell me about it,” Elias said, holding the massive front door open. “Just… try to ignore any strange drafts or voices. Old house.”
Lou chuckled, stepping into the foyer. “Hey, I’ve seen it all. Did a job last month in a place where the owner swore his cat was channeling his dead grandmother. The things that cat would knock off shelves…” He trailed off, his gaze drifting past Elias into the grand salon. “Whoa. Now this is a room.”
The cavernous space seemed to absorb the morning light, the high ceilings and intricate moldings casting long, dramatic shadows. The air, usually thick with the scent of aged wood and decay, carried a new, faint note—something floral and enticing, like old perfume warming on skin.
“Yeah, it’s something,” Elias agreed, following him in. “The main line needs to come in here, I think. Then we can branch out with WiFi nodes."
Lou scratched his mustache, eyeing the ornate baseboards and high ceilings. “Yeah, your plan sounds about right. Gonna need a few hours outside to run cables out to the road.” He hitched his tool belt higher on his hips. “Then a few more hours inside to hook everything up at the main junction. This old plaster and lath is a nightmare for signal.”
“Just do what you gotta do,” Elias said, his eyes darting past Lou’s shoulder.
In the far corner of the salon, near a grand piano draped in a dusty sheet, the air shimmered. Jezebel materialized first, a smirk playing on her lips as she leaned against the piano. Angelica appeared beside her, a darker, more curious silhouette. Their forms were faint, visible only if you knew to look, but their intention was clear. They were assessing the new arrival.
Elias made a subtle, sharp gesture with his hand near his thigh, a clear signal to stand down. He tried to catch Jezebel’s eye, to convey a silent plea for just a few hours of normalcy. She saw him. Her smirk widened into a brilliant, challenging smile before she deliberately turned her attention back to Lou, her head tilting in appraisal.
“Well, I’ll get started then,” Lou said, completely unaware of the spectral audience. He headed back toward the foyer and the bright daylight outside.
The moment the front door clicked shut, the temperature in the salon dropped several degrees. Jezebel drifted forward, her form solidifying. “He’s a little soft around the middle,” she purred, her green eyes glinting. “I like that. It suggests a man who enjoys his pleasures.”
“We can’t,” Elias said, his voice low and tense. “He’s here to work. We need the internet.”
Angelica floated nearer, her dark hair blending with the shadows. “He smells of fresh air and motor oil,” she murmured, a forgotten longing in her voice. “It’s been so long since I felt the sun on a man’s skin.”
Outside, they could hear Lou whistling as he unspooled a thick black cable from his van.
Jezebel let out a theatrical sigh, her form wavering like a candle flame in a draft. “Fine. Ruin all our fun.” She drifted away from the window, her vibrant red hair seeming to lose some of its luster. Angelica mirrored the movement, her lower lip pushed out in a genuine sulk. The floral scent in the air faded, replaced once more by the familiar smell of dust.
A sharp, official rap at the front door cut through the quiet. Elias opened it to find a different man standing on the porch. This one was tall and trim, with sandy brown hair and the weathered, practical face of someone who spent his life poking around in attics and crawlspaces. He held a clipboard and a heavy-duty flashlight.
“Elias Thorne? I’m Perry, the building inspector.” His voice was calm and measured, his eyes already doing a professional sweep of the foyer’s ceiling. “Here to do the full assessment.”
“Come on in,” Elias said, stepping aside. The difference in energy between Perry and Lou was immediate and palpable; where Lou was soft and familiar, Perry was all lean, quiet competence.
Perry stepped inside, his boots firm on the marble floor. “This will take several hours,” he explained, his gaze cataloging cracks in the plaster and the state of the grand staircase. “I need to see everything from the foundation to the roof. I’ll be taking notes and pictures.”
“Where do you want to start?” Elias asked, his mind already racing.
“The attic,” Perry said without hesitation. “Best to start at the top and work our way down. See what’s dripping through before I check what it’s dripping onto.”
“Right. The attic.” Elias nodded, a plan forming. “I, uh, I just need to grab something from the study. I’ll meet you back here in two minutes to show you the way up.”
Perry gave a curt nod, already jotting something on his clipboard as he waited in the hallway.
Elias walked quickly to the study, not looking back. He made a subtle, urgent gesture with his hand. A moment later, Jezebel and Angelica streamed through the closed door, their forms coalescing in the middle of the room amidst the towering bookshelves.
“We saw,” Jezebel said, her earlier pout vanished, replaced by a spark of new interest. “He’s got good shoulders. And those hands look like they know how to work.”
“Please be serious for a second,” Elias said, keeping his voice low. “I need a favor. Perry is starting in the attic. Cassy is up there.” The memory of the angry, vengeful spirit sent a chill down his spine. “I need you two to go up there first. Keep her busy. Distract her. Do not let her do anything to scare this man away.”
Angelica’s dark eyes lit up with a mischievous glint. “A rescue mission? We could always let her have a little fun with him first.” She floated closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Then we sweep in. He’d be so grateful. He’d owe us.”
“No, please,” Elias said, his tone leaving no room for argument. He met each of their spectral gazes in turn. “Just distraction. No mischief. You understand why he’s here, right? The money from the trust, the repairs? We need this.”
Jezebel rolled her eyes, but it was good-natured. “Oh, we understand. Don’t fret so much, writer. We’ll keep the little ghoul occupied.” She winked at Angelica. “Come on, Angel. Let’s go see what the feral spirit is into.”
They dissolved into wisps of mist that flowed upward, seeping through the ceiling toward the third floor. Elias watched them go, sent a silent plea out into the house, and went back to lead Perry to the attic.
Elias led the inspector up two flights of stairs, the old wood groaning under their weight. He opened the soor to the attic stairs, releasing a scent of dried roses and sorrow. "It's all yours," he said, gesturing upward into the gloom. "I'll be in the first-floor study if you need anything."
Perry nodded, already clicking on his heavy flashlight and mounting the ladder with a practiced ease that left Elias feeling profoundly inadequate.
On his way back down, he passed Lou on the main staircase, the cable guy now wrestling a thick coil of wire. "Just so you know, the inspector's in the attic," Elias told him. "I'll be in the study if you run into any... issues."
"Will do, chief," Lou said with a grunt, not looking up from his tangled work.
Elias finally closed the study door behind him, the solid oak a feeble barrier against the house's humming energy. He sank into the worn leather chair behind his uncle's massive desk and opened his laptop. The blank document glowed, a pristine challenge. For the first time in weeks, a sentence formed in his mind, then another. His fingers began to move. The only sounds were the gentle tap of keys and the distant, muffled thumps of the two men working. Everything was calm. For a few hours, everyone simply worked.
Later in the morning, Lou knocked on the study door and poked his head in. "Hey, just an update. I'm way ahead of schedule. Got the house connected to the main fiber optic line out at the road." He grinned, wiping a smudge of grease from his cheek. "Now I just gotta run the cable down the side of the house and into that big room. Should be finished in a couple of hours."
"Great, that's great news, Lou," Elias said, a knot of apprehension tightening in his stomach. The sooner everyone finished, the better.
The sooner everyone finished, the better. He repeated it like a mantra, trying to ignore the faint, melodic laughter that seemed to trickle down from the ceiling vents. Jezebel and Angelica were presumably still containing Cassy, but their idea of ‘distraction’ was undoubtedly its own form of chaos. He forced his focus back to the glowing screen, the words finally starting to flow after so long blocked. For twenty precious minutes, there was only the soft tap of keys and the distant, muffled thumps of the two men working in their separate spheres. It felt almost normal. It felt like progress
A few minutes later, Perry knocked on the study door. He looked as composed as ever, though a fine layer of dust coated his shoulders and a small cobweb clung to his sandy hair. “I’m finished with the second and third floors,” he said, his voice all business. “I’ll do the first floor next, then the basement.”
As Perry spoke, Elias noticed Jezebel and Angelica lurking in the shadows of the hallway behind him. They were clearer now, their forms more substantial. Jezebel caught Elias’s eye and mimed fanning herself, giving a slow, appreciative once-over of the inspector’s back. Elias subtly shook his head, making a sharp, cutting motion with his hand near his waist. Stand down.
As Perry was about to resume his inspection, he paused, his hand on the doorframe. He didn’t turn around. “Does anyone else live in the house?” he asked, his tone carefully neutral.
“No,” Elias said, the word coming out too quickly. He forced a casual shrug. “But I do often have visitors. Why do you ask?”
Perry was silent for a beat too long. He finally glanced over his shoulder, his weathered face unreadable. “No reason…” he said, his gaze sweeping the empty hall where the two spirits hovered, unseen by him but clearly felt. He gave a curt nod and walked away, his boots echoing on the hardwood with a purpose that felt suddenly ominous.
"Give me strength," Elias murmured to no one in particular.
Another hour went by peacefully. The only sounds were the settling of the old house and the distant, methodical footsteps of Perry as he moved from room to room. Elias heard the heavy basement door creak open and shut, followed by the solid thud of the bolt sliding home. Perry was down in the foundation now, a thought that filled Elias with a peculiar mix of relief and dread.
Lou’s voice echoed from the hallway, startling him. “Just one cable left to connect, chief!” the cable guy called out. “I already set up the WiFi router in the hall, so you should see the network pop up on your laptop any second now. Gotta run this last line up to the second floor.”
“Great, thanks Lou,” Elias said, his eyes fixed on his screen.
A few minutes later, the WiFi icon appeared on his computer, a tiny, miraculous beacon of modern connection. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. They were online. The house was officially plugged into the world. He waited, expecting to hear Lou’s heavy tread on the stairs, the jingle of his tool belt, a final goodbye.
He heard none of those things.
A few more minutes ticked by. Then, a familiar humming sound began to emanate from deep within the house’s structure. It was a low, resonant frequency that felt less like a sound and more like a pressure change inside his skull, the same energy he’d felt when the spirits were most agitated. He knew what that meant.
“Oh, shit,” he whispered, pushing back from the desk so hard the chair wheels screeched in protest.
He ran out of the study and took the main staircase two steps at a time, his heart hammering against his ribs. The humming grew louder, a vibrant, thrumming buzz that seemed to concentrate on the second floor. Lou had been running the cable through the bedroom at the front of the house. He threw the door open.
He threw the door open.
The scene in the bedroom was both absurdly cliché and utterly surreal. Lou was lying on his back on the faded floral duvet, his face flushed a deep, blotchy red. Carol, the feathered-blonde spirit from the seventies, was straddling his head, her psychedelic maxi dress hiked up around her midsection. Her head was thrown back, eyes closed, and a low, continuous moan of pleasure vibrated from her translucent form. In a worn armchair in the corner, Richard watched with a placid, satisfied expression, like a man enjoying a particularly good play.
Elias stood frozen in the doorway, his brain short-circuiting. He cleared his throat, the sound dry and awkward in the humid room.
The moaning stopped. Lou’s eyes, wide with panic, locked onto Elias. He shoved Carol off him with a frantic heave. She tumbled to the side with an indignant squeak, her form flickering. “Oh, man. Oh, jeez. I am so sorry,” Lou stammered, scrambling to sit up and yank his shirt down over his substantial belly. His face was a mask of pure mortification. “I finished early, had a gap in my schedule, and then she… she appeared.” He gestured wildly at Carol, who was now smoothing her dress down with a pout. “She asked me if I wanted to… you know. And then he,” he pointed a trembling finger at Richard, “said he’d like to watch me… you know. And this is… this is literally the exact fantasy I’ve had since I was a teenager.”
Lou looked from the ethereal, pouting blonde to the watching husband and then back to Elias, his expression a desperate plea for understanding. “It’s the hair. It’s always been the hair.”
Elias stared. He looked at Lou’s genuine, overwhelmed excitement. He looked at Carol, who seemed more annoyed at the interruption than ashamed. He looked at Richard, who gave a casual, one-shouldered shrug as if to say, ‘what can you do?’ There was no coercion here, no spectral puppetry. This was just a deeply weird, mutually beneficial arrangement.
He couldn’t bring himself to tell them to stop. The words wouldn’t form. What was he supposed to say? ‘Stop having consensual, paranormal sex in my haunted house?’ He just shook his head, a slow, defeated motion. “Just… keep the noise down,” he managed, his voice rough. “The building inspector is in the basement.”
Elias started to back out of the room, his hand already reaching for the doorknob.
“You don’t have to leave,” Carol said, her voice a syrupy drawl. In one fluid motion, she pulled her psychedelic maxi dress over her head. Not surprisingly at all, she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. Her form, pale and shimmering, settled back onto the bed with a confident ease.
Richard watched from his armchair, his expression one of mild curiosity. He gave a slow, deliberate shrug of his polyester-clad shoulders, a clear gesture of approval at adding Elias to the mix.
Lou’s eyes, wide and pleading, snapped from Carol’s naked body to Elias’s face. The look he gave was pure, desperate bargaining; he would agree to any bizarre condition, participate in any arrangement, as long as it ended with him getting to fuck the spectral blonde from the seventies.
“I’m good,” Elias said, his voice tighter than he intended. He managed a stiff, polite shake of his head. “This is Lou’s fantasy. I’m... Enjoy yourselves.” He pulled the door shut, the click of the latch sounding final in the humming hallway.
The house continued to hum, a low, vibrant thrum that felt like a satisfied purr. He stood there for a second, listening to the muffled, eager sounds already starting up again behind the door. He dragged a hand down his face, the rough stubble a grounding sensation. One problem semi-contained.
Now for the other one.
He went back down the stairs, each step heavy with a new kind of dread. The basement door was still closed. He pressed his ear against the cold, painted wood. Silence. Not the empty silence of an undisturbed room, but the thick, waiting quiet of a space holding its breath. He hesitated, his hand hovering over the knob, hoping that nothing weird was happening to Perry in the basement.