Rules of the House

You do what any reasonable person would do. You swing the pry bar.

It goes through his shoulder.

Not past it. Through it. For half a second your arm is inside the shape of him, and it feels like plunging your hand into a river in March, cold enough to ache at the bone. You yank back so hard you stumble into the doorframe.

The man at the piano looks down at his shoulder, then up at you, with an expression of deep personal offense.

"Well, that was rude," he says. "Accurate, I'll grant you. Good swing. Rude."

"Who are you?" Your voice comes out higher than you'd like. "How did you get in here?"

"I've been in here since Coolidge." He stands. He's tall, taller than you expected, lean in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, a gray waistcoat unbuttoned, a dark tie pulled loose like he just finished a long set. Silver garters on his sleeves. His hair is dark and slicked back except for the piece that won't stay, which falls over one gray eye. "Rex Fairweather. Piano. I'd shake your hand, but you've already found out how that goes."

He's beautiful. That's the stupid thing your brain offers you, standing in a dark house at three in the morning with your heart trying to climb out of your throat. He's the most beautiful man you have ever seen, and you can see the garden window through his chest.

"I'm dreaming," you say.

"Sure. Dream says you're about to tell me you've had a long drive and a big shock and you're seeing things." He tilts his head. "That's what I'd say. So let's not waste the night arguing. Watch."

He sits back down and plays three bars of something bright and ragged, his long hands flying, and the piano answers him with real sound, hammers on real strings. Then he stops and nods toward the hall.

The telephone rings.

The dead telephone with the cut cord. It rings like a fire bell, old and shrill, and keeps ringing while you stare at it through the doorway.

"Make it stop," you whisper.

It stops.

He crosses to the tall window, and the glass fogs over under nothing, as if someone is breathing on it from inside. A fingertip you can't quite see writes in the fog, slow, in a neat old-fashioned hand.

Ava.

You sit down on the floor. You don't decide to. Your legs just stop being interested.

"Hey. Hey, easy." He crouches in front of you, careful to keep a little space, and his voice goes gentle. "I'm not going to hurt you, kid. I couldn't if I wanted to, and I don't want to. Breathe for me. In. Out. There you go."

You breathe. He smells like nothing, but the air near him is cold and faintly, impossibly, like cigarette smoke and rain.

"You're a ghost," you say.

"That's the industry term."

"How do you know my name?"

"Lawyer read the will in this room three weeks ago. Sat right there in that chair with his briefcase on his knees and said, 'The property passes in its entirety to Miss Ava.' I've had three weeks to practice saying it." The crooked smile again. "How'd I do?"

"You died here."

The smile doesn't go away, exactly. It just stops reaching his eyes. "December twenty-first, 1926. Bottom of those stairs out there. Twenty-nine years old, and I'd just bought a new pair of shoes. That's the part that still gets me. Never broke them in."

"How?"

"Police said I was drunk and I fell." He looks at the doorway, toward the hall and the dark curve of the staircase, and something moves in his face. "I don't drink when I'm playing. And I was always playing."

"So what happened?"

"Don't know." He says it simply. "I remember going up those stairs. I don't remember coming down."

You sit with that. The house ticks around you. Somewhere a pipe knocks.

"Did you know her?" you ask. "Octavia?"

He gets up and goes back to the piano before he answers, running a hand along the lid she polished every day for decades.

"She was a fine landlady," he says. "We kept out of each other's way."

There's a beat after it that you don't know how to read. Later you'll remember it.

By four you've moved to the kitchen, because the kitchen has an overhead light and you need one. He leans in the doorway, a little fainter under the bulb, watching you make tea in a dented kettle with the expression of a man watching a magic trick.

"You don't have to stay," you tell him. "I mean. You're not obligated to keep me company."

"Sweetheart, I've been talking to the furniture since Eisenhower. I'm staying."

"I'm going to sell the house."

He goes quiet.

"I can't afford it," you go on, faster. "There's a notice on the door. Two hundred twelve thousand dollars in ninety days. I have eleven hundred. I'm a carpenter. I just lost my job. I can't fix a roof that size, let alone pay off a bank, so I'm going to call a realtor in the morning and sell it to whoever wants it and go home."

"Where's home?"

You open your mouth and nothing comes out. Your apartment is month-to-month. Your mother's gone. Your stuff fits in a hatchback.

"Pittsburgh," you say eventually.

"Swell town. Never been." He studies you. "Bank takes it December twenty-second, you said?"

"That's what the notice says."

"Funny." He doesn't sound like he thinks it's funny. "That's the morning after."

"After what?"

"My anniversary." He pushes off the doorframe. "Get some sleep, Ava. Sun's coming, and I'm not much company in daylight."

You look at the window. The sky over the garden wall is going pale gray at the edges.

"What happens to you in daylight?"

"Nothing interesting. I get thin. Cold spot in the hall, maybe a note on the piano if I'm feeling chatty." He's already fading, the edges of him going soft as smoke in the gray light. "Don't worry. I'll be here tonight. I'm always here."

"Wait..."

And then you're talking to an empty doorway.

You don't sleep. You lie on Octavia's bed with all the lights on until the sun is fully up and the birds are going crazy in the live oak, and then you go to the bathroom to splash water on your face and convince yourself you're sane.

The bathroom is all white tile and a claw-foot tub and a big old mirror with the silver going spotty at the corners. You run the hot tap until steam rolls up and fogs everything.

You look up from the sink.

Letters are writing themselves across the fogged mirror, slow and careful, in that same neat old hand, from left to right, as if someone is standing just behind your shoulder in the bright morning light.

DON'T SELL TO A PENDLETON. R.