I walked into the rental agency, past the receptionist, and marched directly into Hans Edgar’s office. He saw me coming towards the door and said to the person on the phone, “I’m going to have to call you back..” and abruptly hung up.

“Ms. Tanner, everything okay?” he asked, knowing from my demeanor and the look on my face that everything was not alright.

A thousand things flashed through my mind to say. Finally I just said, “You were right,” and dropped the keys on his desk.

I was already walking out of the office with nowhere to live when I heard him sigh and say to my retreating figure, “I’ll refund your deposit and first and last month’s rent…”

A week ago he paused before handing me the keys on the stoop of 346 Sycamore St. I was elated to get this place. Walking distance to downtown, it was a gorgeous little bungalow that should have been renting for twice what Hans Edgar was asking – for good reason.

“Now, Ms. Tanner, I know I’ve already warned you that this place is haunted—”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” I said dryly for about the fiftieth time.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply and then continued, “I know I’ve already warned you that this place is haunted. Before I hand you the keys I want to tell you that if you want out of this lease because,” he held up a hand to forestall me saying again there’s no such thing as ghosts. “If you want out of this lease for any reason, you have two weeks and I will refund your deposit and first and last month’s rent, no questions asked – this is the only property I do this for.”

“Thank you, Hans, but I’ll be just fine.”

He gave me a dubious nod, dropped the keys in my open hand and said, “Have a good night, Ms. Tanner.”

That first night the footsteps started. I put in earplugs and slept like a baby in my new place.

The second night the lights in the bedroom came on intermittently as I tried to sleep. I was grateful I had my sleep mask on the nightstand.

After that, cabinets opened and slammed when I was in the kitchen. In the fogged-up mirror when I was getting out of the shower “LEAVE” was scrawled by an unseen hand.

By that point I was out of logical explanations. My pat “There’s no such thing as ghosts” felt more than a little like fading bravado as whatever it was played on my nerves one by one.

And then the morning of the seventh day I woke up to my alarm as usual, but I was surprised to see my phone screen unlocked and open to the camera app. I flipped to the pictures to see dozens of pictures of a dark room… this dark room. With my sleeping figure in the bed. The pictures kept getting closer, and closer until the camera was right up in my face. The last picture was my blurry face, eyes wide in terror.

And I don’t remember a thing.

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!”

I was desperate.  

I’d moved into my new apartment in a new city without a friend of family member within hours, and the cable company told me it’d take them two weeks to install my internet connection. 

My first thought was, okay, I can run on my phone’s internet connection for the time being. New job starts on Monday and then I’ll be too busy to worry about slow internet, right? 

Wrong.  

I don’t know if it was the pre-war, they-don’t-build-them-like-they-used-to construction of my ancient building, sunspots, or my moon sign conflicting with my sun sign, but my phone was barely able to place a call at all inside my apartment. The cable company breaking my heart telling me two weeks? I had to go up to the roof to make that call.  

Two weeks.  

On my phone I pulled up the list of Wi-Fi networks available from my apartment, hoping beyond hope that maybe there was Starbucks near enough to glom onto their network. No such luck. I have to say, though, my neighbors had some really creative names for their networks: “Drop it like it’s Hotspot” and “The LAN Before Time” and “It Burns When IP” were among the highlights along with the nondescript “NETGEAR-1234” and “Linksys_5GHz.” 

All of them had the telltale padlock icon next to them indicating they were password protected. I was coming up with a scheme to bake cookies to make friends with my neighbors in an attempt to get them to let me use their networks when I spotted an unsecured Wi-Fi name called “Whispers.” 

Let me state again: I was desperate.  

And I had a really strong VPN, so I experimentally chose the “Whispers” Wi-Fi network. The little spinny circle thing moved next to the name before “Whispers” moved up below my Wi-Fi switch with full signal and a blue check next to it indicating I was in. I waited for the dreaded redirect indicating it was some sort of a captive portal like you find in hotels or coffee shops, but… no. Nothing. 

I experimentally turned my VPN on and after it connected, I started surfing. The connection was really fast and there didn’t seem to be any issues whatsoever. A few days later, I was enjoying the access and I started connecting some of my other devices, like my computer, my TV, and my smart speaker. Everything connected fine.  

I used my computer to try to poke around on the network a little bit – looking to see how many other devices I was sharing Wi-Fi with. The only devices on the same network were my own devices. How could I be alone on this open network? I did start to notice some odd things, like when I left my apartment, the signal cut out completely – like gone. That didn’t make sense, but I’m not looking a free Wi-Fi gift horse in the mouth. 

But soon enough, the whispers started.  

I quickly realized where the Wi-Fi hotspot got its name. I was making dinner one night and I thought I heard a voice in the main room. There was nothing. Then the voice, just a whisper, came from my smart speaker, “Can you hear me?” 

“Oh, hell no!” I said and quickly unplugged the speaker.  

Shaken, I started moving back towards the kitchen when my TV came on to a screen of static – which made no sense because my TV was digital and had no antenna hooked up that would produce static. But there it was – black, white, and gray snow-like static and the accompanying white-noise hiss. But listening to the static I could hear a whisper again. “Ava, I need to talk to you.”  

How did this static know my name?  

I unplugged the TV.  

What the hell was going on?  

My phone buzzed in my hand, causing me to let out a squeak and jump. I looked at the screen – it was a FaceTime audio call… from Whispers. 

I was being hacked. It was stupid of me to join an unsecured Wi-Fi network and now hackers were calling me and they were going to try to extort bitcoin from me or something. 

I declined the call, and turned my phone off. 

The voice whispered from the smart speaker again: “Ava, please talk to me.” 

I stared dumbly at the device… and the unplugged power cable sitting on the floor next to the table the speaker sat on.  

“What’s going on?” I said aloud. 

“You don’t need…” it trailed off.  

“I don’t need what?” I asked. 

“You don’t need… cable internet.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“You’ve got this connection now… I just want someone to talk to,” the voice whispered.  

“Who are you?” 

“My name is Julie. I used to live in this apartment,” she said. “I died in this apartment.” 

“Julie, you died?” I repeated, then said under my breath, “the landlord neglected to mention someone dying here…” I sighed and asked, “How did you die?” Seemed logical enough, right? 

“Ruptured appendix,” Julie whispered back.  

“Appendix? You’re in the middle of the city – how did you die from a ruptured appendix in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the country? Did you die like in the 1800s?” 

“I died last year.” 

“How?” 

“No Wi-Fi.” 

I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly. “Come again?” 

“I just moved in… like you. I was waiting for the cable company to install my internet. I couldn’t make a call.” 

“Goddamn cable companies and goddamn shitty signal,” I cursed. 

“So, after I died, I created this Wi-Fi connection to screw them over,” she whispered.  

I chuckled. “Okay, clever,” I said. Then asked, “Julie? What’s with the whispering?” 

A cough came over the smart speaker and then Julie spoke in a normal voice, “Sorry, had something in my throat.” 

“But you don’t have a throat…”  

“Have you heard of a phantom limb? Similar…”  

“Huh,” I nodded thoughtfully. “So, free internet?” 

“Yeah, just keep me company.”  

“Can do, Julie.” 

“Ava?”  

“Yeah?” 

“Can you plug the speaker back in. It’s a real ghostly heavy-lift to talk through it powered off.”  

“Oh, sorry,” I said, plugging the speaker back in. “Boss move, though – that was super creepy.” 

“You don’t think it was too much?” 

“Oh no, spot on creepiness.”  

“Thanks, Ava.” 

That night I watched the final season of Succession with Julie (she died at the end of season 3). The next morning, I cancelled my cable account. Screw those guys.