Halloween Boo Read online

  Halloween Boo

  Sarah Spade

  Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Spade

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Sarah Spade

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Author’s Note

  Coming Soon

  1

  Dani

  So, I think my apartment is haunted.

  It sounds crazy. I know it does.

  If anyone else told me they thought their new place was haunted, I’d laugh and then google the number of a local shrink before backing away slowly. Ghosts don’t exist.

  Right?

  Wrong.

  They’re definitely real—at least, my Casper is.

  It all started with a rose petal.

  I work for a marketing firm that’s based in Massachusetts. Having been born and raised in California, it was a shock for me to relocate to Salem at the beginning of this year. Even though the money and the promotion were totally worth it, it meant I had to leave my family and friends back in Palo Alto.

  Thing is, apart from weekend business trips into Boston, I knew nothing about living in the Northeast. So my bosses partnered me with another girl in my department.

  Allison Shaw.

  Like me, Allison was stationed out of the Salem offices and, having grown up in the area, she was tasked with helping me find an apartment to live in since it was pointless to stay in a hotel year-round.

  I don’t know why exactly she recommended my place. It’s in a nice part of town, on the outskirts where it’s easy to avoid all the witchy tourist nonsense. Having never been a big fan of Halloween—and a firm non-believer in the supernatural—moving to Salem was a way bigger culture shock.

  And let’s not even talk about my first Massachusetts winter. I was lucky to survive that.

  Anyway.

  The rose petal.

  I moved into the apartment in the end of January. Apart from Allison, I never had any company though, looking back on it, I think I always sensed that I wasn’t exactly alone.

  The apartment never seemed empty, even when it was just me, my e-reader, my television in the background, and a mug of hot chocolate to keeping me from freezing my tits off.

  Did I mention that winter in Massachusetts sucks?

  And, okay. Maybe I’m not the best housekeeper. I’m used to living on my own. I haven’t had a boyfriend in years, so who’s there to impress?

  That’s why, when I found the single, solitary rose petal lying flat on my coffee table next to my empty mug, I couldn’t understand it.

  Where did it come from? What was it doing there?

  Vivid red, the edges gone dark as if it was starting to wilt, the lone rose petal stuck out at me. I know it wasn’t there when I left for work.

  Ten hours later, there it was.

  I picked it up, started to throw it away, stopping when I felt a gentle breeze. A touch of sentimentality that I never could’ve explained kept me from tossing it. Instead, I slipped the rose petal beneath an upside-down glass and pretended it was a keepsake from Beauty and the Beast or something.

  I don’t know.

  It wasn’t until much later that I remembered the breeze and realized that all of my doors and windows were closed. It was April when I found the petal, still super chilly in Salem, and I needed heat. No way the petal blew in, no explanation for the breeze.

  I shrugged and let it go. I didn’t think of a ghost then.

  Then something really weird happened.

  It was the middle of summer, like the beginning of July, when I decided to bake a peach cobbler. And, yeah, so I’m not the world’s best baker, either. I like to think of recipes as more like guidelines, and random substitutions and additions are surprises.

  Should’ve remembered that that’s not how baking works.

  After three hours of peeling peaches, slicing, sautéing, and trying to figure out how to make a crust when I was missing two key ingredients, I ended up with a kitchen that looked like a tornado had blown its way through and a cobbler that managed to somehow be both burned and raw in certain places.

  I ate two of the corner pieces anyway before shoving the whole thing in the fridge. Frustrated at the mess, I decided to leave it until the morning.

  I regretted it when I woke up, of course, since the gooey peachy mess was stuck to the pan and there was a disaster everywhere I turned.

  You think I would have let the dishes soak, right? Nope. I went through two Brillo pads and half a bottle of dish soap to clean it all up.

  The dry ingredients were left out, used measuring cups and peach peels everywhere. After the dishes were done, I focused on cleaning up the counters.

  At first, I didn’t see it. It was only as I was about to wipe up a pile of sugar scattered near the oven that I paused, staring at the spill. I couldn’t understand it. It didn’t make any sense.

  That didn’t change what I saw.

  Somehow, someway, someone got into my apartment and drew a heart in a pile of spilled sugar. A flippin’ heart.

  I added a deadbolt to my door that afternoon. Because I might have joked later on to Allison that my apartment was haunted to brush the whole thing off as silly, but I was seriously afraid that a real alive person was in my home while I was sleeping.

  A ghost I could handle. A creeper? I was gonna protect myself.

  Then, in the beginning of September, something so inexplicable happened, I finally gave in and accepted that Casper was here.

  I was feeling kinda lonely, a little vulnerable, and—not gonna lie—pretty horny when Jim from accounting asked me out to dinner. Something told me not to do it, but sometimes I let my libido take the lead rather than my brain.

  Besides, he was pretty cute.

  Handsy, too, I discovered. So maybe it wasn’t a brilliant idea to invite him back to my place. He was supposed to drop me off, since the two glasses of wine I had left me feeling a little tipsy and hesitant to drive.

  A little loose and relaxed, too. At the entrance to my apartment building, Jim offered to escort me up, and I let him. Then, at my door, I stupidly invited him in.

  I realized my mistake about twenty minutes later when we were necking like a couple of kids. I could taste the beer on his breath, his hands roaming all over me. And I was into it, too, until he suggested we take our impromptu make-out session into the bedroom.

  Now, I like kissing as much as the next woman. But I wasn’t about to jump into the sack with a co-worker the first night that we went out. I wasn’t even sure that I liked Jim all that much. I definitely didn’t want to sleep with him.

  He definitely didn’t want to take no for an answer.

  Jim had his hands slipped under my blouse, his body nudging me backwards as if guiding me toward my room. I might’ve been tipsy, but I still knew what I was doing—and what I wanted.

  I started to tell him so and that’s when my front door creaked open. An instant later, it slammed shut.

  A chilly breeze rushed into the room, tousling his formerly perfectly styled blond hair.

  He yanked his hands back as if my bra burned his palms. “I thought you said you lived alone.”

  “Technically, I do,” I told him. Inspiration struck and I added, “I didn’t think you’d want to hear about my roommate.”

  “R
oommate?” Jim glanced behind him. “There’s no one here, Danielle.”

  “Of course, there is.” I straightened my blouse, careful to keep a bright smile on my face. I wanted to pick up my remote and chuck it at his head. I settled on messing with it instead. “You just can’t see him.”

  “And… and you can?”

  “No, silly. Because he’s a ghost.”

  As if on cue, the breeze whooshed through the living room again. I didn’t have to look toward the windows to know they were all closed like normal.

  I swear, you never saw a man run so fast. Either he believed me when I said it was a ghost—the slamming door finally convinced me—or he decided I was nuts. Either way, I never heard from Jim the accounting perv again.

  Pity.

  Anyway, after that, I decided me and my ghost buddy were friends. Casper must have agreed. The whole aura of the apartment got even homier. Cozier. I might not have really felt alone before, but now it kinda seemed like I had a friend.

  The apartment was finally starting to feel like a place I could live in instead of just sleeping in.

  It’s crazy. I know it sounds absolutely nuts.

  But my apartment is definitely haunted.

  And I’m surprisingly okay with it.

  Zack

  I’m in love.

  The only problem?

  She’s alive. And me?

  I’m kinda not.

  I’ve got to be a ghost. That’s how it works, right? I mean, no one can see me. No one can hear me, either. When I reach out to grab something, my hand goes right through it. I float about eight inches off of the ground.

  I don’t remember how I died. I… I don’t remember much about my life before I was a ghost. I know my first name—Zackary—and that’s about at all.

  Oh, and I know that there’s no way I can leave the apartment I’m haunting. No matter how many times I try, I can’t pass through the front door. Any other door inside? Sure. I can drift out onto the balcony, but there’s an invisible wall whenever I try to reach over the decorative railing. I’m stuck here—and I have no idea where here is.

  It was like, one day I woke up here, and then it seemed like I’ve always been.

  A haze of time, a stretch I can’t describe, and then the movers came. Everything that made the apartment feel like a home was taken from me. It might not have been my stuff, but lingering in an empty apartment was my own personal hell.

  Lost and alone, I haunted the dark rooms, plotting my escape, endlessly questioning my existence here.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been trapped inside. A while, I think. Long enough to know every single inch of the three rooms that make up my cage.

  I can tell you how many tiles are on the bathroom floor—1,693—and where the seams in the shag carpets meet. I know every water stain on the ceiling, the faint cracks in the peeling paint, the empty nail studs that held pictures long gone.

  Sometimes, I drift in the living room, and imagine what used to hang on the walls. I don’t remember, but sometimes I think I can.

  I met another ghost once. Lydia. She was an elderly spitfire who claimed the floor above me. In the years since she died, she gathered enough spectral energy—at least, that’s what she called it—to move between floors and, sometimes, she would visit me.

  She always asked me why I lingered and I could never get the old dear to understand that it wasn’t my choice. I didn’t want to be here. I always thought that when I dropped dead, that was it. This waiting around in limbo was for the birds.

  Especially since I had no idea why I couldn’t move on.

  Lydia was stubborn enough in life that she refused to move on without her Charlie, she explained. She purposely haunted their place, anxiously waiting until he passed away so they could be together again.

  Last Halloween, I guess she got tired of waiting. She told me, ghost to ghost, that Halloween was the one day of the year when the veil between the dead and the living was thin enough to cross over.

  And she did.

  I remember the scream of holy terror, the blue and red flashing lights, all the people storming the complex. I floated out on the balcony, watching it in morbid curiosity.

  And there was Lydia, holding tightly to the hand of her newly deceased husband while waving at me with the other, as the two simply vanished into the black of night.

  Whispers through the wall and all around me said it was a heart attack. Yeah. If I was alive and I saw the ghost of my dead wife on Halloween, I might have had a heart attack, too.

  Not like I had a wife when I was still kicking. At least, I don’t think I did. I don’t remember much of when I was still alive. Hell, I don’t even know how I died. I just woke up one morning and I was here.

  A ghost.

  I can’t leave, but after Dani moved in, I stopped trying.

  Dani.

  Ah, Dani.

  Can a ghost fall in love with a mortal?

  Don’t know. Never really thought about it until she came to stay in my apartment and I fell head over heels almost immediately.

  She’s beautiful. She’s kind. She likes to watch comedy sitcoms late at night, and we laugh at all the same cheesy jokes, so her sense of humor is amazing. She talks to herself—I can almost pretend she’s talking to me—and she sings with her soul, even if it’s terribly offkey. She cries at those sad puppy and kitten commercials, then calls to pledge a donation more often than she probably can afford to.

  She reads a lot. Dani’s a smart girl.

  Mmm. I’ve always had a thing for smart girls.

  Oh, and she’s got no shame. Her smile makes me think impure thoughts, and her ass… Whoa. Lucky me. Dani’s got this habit of walking around naked to dry off after she showers. I learned that one by accident a couple of days after she moved in. For once, I thought I might’ve found my way to Heaven.

  Holy hell, does she have a body that would tempt a saint to sin.

  I’m definitely dead. Even an accidental glimpse like that should’ve been enough to give me a raging cockstand. Nope. Little Zack didn’t so much as even twitch. He’s as dead as the rest of my ghostly body.

  I’m careful to close my eyes whenever she gets out of the shower after that. It’s not right. Bad enough that she doesn’t even know she’s sharing her apartment with a dead guy. I refuse to take something from her that she doesn’t even know she’s giving me.

  Even if I really, really want to.

  2

  Dani

  I’ve just walked out of my apartment and into the hallway when my cell phone rings.

  Digging in my purse, my heels clack loudly as I scurry toward the steps. Call me a chicken, but I have this thing about elevators. My imagination when I was a kid left me with a couple of things that make me uncomfortable as an adult.

  You see, I have these oddball phobias that most normal people don’t.

  I’m afraid of tripping and falling into an open grave at the cemetery.

  Getting trapped in a pottery kiln and being cremated alive.

  Being eaten by a giant lobster.

  Walking into an elevator and falling to my death because I didn’t notice that the room was missing.

  Yeah. My brother used to tease to me, but that never stopped me from being careful. I’ve made it almost three decades doing things my way, and since I’m still kicking, I figure I’m doing something right.

  Besides, I live on the third floor. Running down two flights of stairs because I got a late start isn’t me being silly. It’s good cardio.

  I find the phone at the bottom of my purse just as the ringtone dies. Pulling it out, I see that it was Allison calling. I wonder why. Since it’s still before nine, I’m technically not late yet so I doubt she’s checking up on me.

  Except this is Allison. That’s probably exactly what she’s doing.

  I hit her name, pressing the number for her cell instead of her office line. She answers on the first ring.

  “Hey, Dani. Did I wake you?”


  Jeez. You oversleep once your first week on the job and your trainer never lets you forget it. It would be easier to hate her if she had an ounce of snottiness in her body. Since she sounds honestly sincere, I shrug it off.

  I still roll my eyes, though. “I’m up, and I’m almost at my car. What’s up?”

  “Two things. You got a sec?”

  Now that I’ve got my phone tucked between my ear and my cheek, I use my free hand to start searching my purse for my keys. “Sure.”

  “I got into the office a little early this morning—”

  Of course, she did. This is Allison. I might stay at the office all night because I don’t know my limits, but my new pal is up at the crack of dawn every morning. I don’t know how she does it.

  “—and I thought I would take a peek at the Sanderson account. I found a couple of discrepancies that I thought we could iron out before the holiday. On the first page—”

  I’m listening to her. I really am. But I’m also trying to figure out what the hell I did with my keys because they’re not in here. I had to have them, though, right? How else did I lock my door?

  Wait.

  Did I lock my door?

  “Ah, crap.”

  Allison stops in the middle of her report. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Keep going.”

  She does. And I’m trying really hard to pay attention as I clack-clack-clack my way back up the stairs. I grab my door handle and turn. It’s not even a little bit locked.

  I pull up short when I enter the apartment. My keys are sitting on the floor.

  As I ran up the stairs, I remembered that I left them on my bedroom dresser.

  Swooping down, I scoop them up and call out, “Thanks, Casper,” before leaving my apartment again. I pause only long enough to lock up this time, then I’m running for the stairs again.

  Allison’s laughter echoes through my phone. “You still making nice with your ghost?”