The back door opened on its own with on creaky hinges, he typed.
“No, that’s no good,” he mumbled and deleted the sentence and stared at the blank screen.
She woke with a start and looked at her alarm – it was 3:00 in the morning. The witching hour.
“So cliché! Three AM?” He sighed and deleted everything again.
No one ever goes into the attic, he wrote. There was just something about it that made everyone pause on the landing just below and stare at the closed door…
“Okay, I’ve got something here…” and he kept typing.
…She reached for the door knob, but before her hand closed around the brass knob it turned on its own and the door began to open…
“Ugh, no! It’s crap!” he cursed at the screen and deleted everything and reached for his coffee mug. Taking a sip he realized it was empty. “Just great… Well, it’s not like I’ve got anything going here…” and he stood up and carried the cup out to the kitchen to make more coffee.
Unbeknownst to him, as the man left the room a ghost walked past him, eyeing him quizzically.
“Where’s he going?” the ghost said to another ghost standing by the computer. Then he snapped his fingers and pointed accusingly, “Eliot! You’re doing it again!”
“What?” Eliot stammered. “I’m not doing anything. Why do you think I’m always doing something, Jake?”
Jake crossed his arms in front of his chest and raised an eyebrow. “So, you’re just standing there right next to him while he writes and you’re absolutely not telling him his ideas are stupid?”
“Pshaw,” Eliot said with a laugh. “Why would I do that?”
“You mean why are you always doing that?” Jake sighed, “Why do you do this when he has to write his ghost stories? Only the ghost stories!”
“I don’t know…” Eliot stammered. “I guess I just feel so… exposed, you know?
“No, Eliot, I don’t know! They’re fictional ghost stories – he can’t see us! He has no idea we’re in his house – how could you possibly feel exposed?”
“I mean… he’s like giving away all our secrets…”
Jake stared at the other ghost incredulously. “What part of ‘fictional ghost stories’ do you not understand? He makes these things up!” Jake made an explosion gesture by his head, “Poof! Out of thin air he gets these ideas about ghosts and hauntings – that in no way resemble you and me haunting this house – and he writes them and people read them and they enjoy them. But you! You, Eliot, you whisper things in his ear and he thinks he has writer’s block and he doesn’t get the stories written and you know what happens? You know what happens then, Eliot?”
“What happens, Jake?”
“He doesn’t make his deadline.”
“Heh, you said dead,” Eliot tittered.
“So help me, Eliot!”
Eliot went serious again.
“He misses his due date,” Jake said pointedly, “doesn’t get paid, loses the house, and they tear this place down and build a dozen condos on the lot. Do you want that to happen, Eliot? Do you want to be a homeless ghost?”
“But we could haunt the condos…”
“No, we can’t haunt the condos! There’s nothing to anchor us there! “
“But can’t he write about something else? I mean, ooh!” he pointed at Jake, “He’s got that urban fantasy story with the assassins that—”
“It’s October, Eliot! October! It’s spooky season! Ghost time! He writes ghost stories in October – this is what he does! At least that’s what he’s supposed to do until you convince him his ideas are terrible. So stop! Stop, Eliot!”
“Okay… okay, Jake. I’ll stop.”
“I mean it, Eliot! Here he comes….”
The man came back in with a hot cup of coffee and sat down at the computer. He moved the mouse to wake up the screen, took a sip of coffee, set the cup down and started typing.
Deep in the forest there is an unmarked grave…
Eliot leaned over towards the man.
“Don’t you say a word, Eliot! Not another damn word!”
