With barely a graze of his hand, the door slowly opened wide with a screech. Now, this often happened in the summer, which typically lasted from March until mid-November. During the cold of winter, however, Abe usually had to throw his shoulder into the door to open it.

Knowing this did little to ease Abe's nerves. The place was cool, bordering on frigid. Nothing unusual yet. The faint giggle of a child drifted to his ears.

Come on, guys," Abe said, throwing up his hands. "Do we have to play this?" Abe turned to close the door, only to see a spindly figure in the doorway with translucent flesh and a thin dusting of long, unkempt hair. The being opened its mouth wide, gaping and shrieking.

Abe fell to the ground and screamed. The door slammed, and the figure dropped to the ground, doubled over and laughing. Abe pulled himself up and watched the figure blur and return to a familiar form.

Still tall, but now clad in an old NBA jersey, the name on the back long washed away, the figure appeared as a normal, albeit translucent, person. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but admit it," he said. "I got ya!"

"Fuck off, Michael," Abe said.

Michael was pale, his hair eternally bleached at the tips. Michael, like Abe's other roomies, was dead. A woman stepped into the living room through the wall. She appeared to be in her early thirties, wearing a matching grey pantsuit and cropped hair, a trail of blood on her lip. "Hey, can you keep it down? I'm trying to watch. My. Stories."

"No, you're not," Michael said. "You're watching the couple in 237 wail on each other."

"Yes, exactly!" she said, throwing her hands in the air. "Shirley just smashed Kyle's cell so he can't call the cops. We're definitely going to some dark places tonight, so keep it down."

Abe gave a half-hearted wave and sat back down on the floor. "Hello, Diane."

"We'll talk later," she said through clenched teeth.

"Good to see you, too," Abe said as she faded once more into the wall.

The first time Abe met his roommates, he was unpacking a box of plates in the kitchen. The apartment was cluttered with boxes, but actually felt homier than it did now. Currently, the place offered visitors a prison-like, or possibly asylum-esque, aesthetic, with a single living room poster advertising the town's annual Ice Cream Social and Civil War Reenactment, a faded blue couch covered in hair from the previous owner's cat and a TV sitting atop an entertainment center with peeling wood grain contact paper.

A tingling sensation traveled the length of his spine, like an insect racing along his backbone as Abe put down the plate he'd just unwrapped from newspaper. He glanced to his right, where he saw a young woman with long dark hair and deep-set laugh lines. It was Kaitlin. Thinking back, Abe wasn't sure he ever heard her laugh. Maybe chuckle once, a light snicker or two–typically at Abe's expense–but no laughter.

She wasn't taking a horrible form or trying to scare him, but between the translucent quality of her skin and the depression in the back of her head forever pooling with blood, Abe felt true fear in the form of something warm running down his leg.

Actually, Abe did hear Kaitlin laugh once.

Although not sure how long he spent on the floor screaming while Michael, Diane, and Kaitlin stood over him, he still remembered pieces of their conversation. Michael was thrilled someone could finally see them. Diane lamented that this someone was an overweight man in his mid-thirties with the scream of a twelve-year-old girl, while Kaitlin simply waved her hands around and yelled "Ghoooosts! We're ghooooossssts!"

Since then Abe had become harder, but not impossible, to scare.

"Your heart slow down yet?" Michael asked.

"Not today, okay?" Abe said, removing his work shirt.

"Kaitlin said you can't strip in the living room. She said we've suffered enough."

"This isn't Kaitlin's apartment," Abe said. "Besides, I'm not in the mood today."

"What's today?"

"Her birthday," Abe said.

Neither spoke for several seconds. Apparently, being dead didn't automatically make you better at dealing with death.

"Sorry about that." Michael said with a shrug.

"It's fine," Abe said, forcing a smile. "I might just lay down, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah that's good. Hey, before you go, would you mind...?" Michael said, with a slight lilt on the last word.

"Michael." Abe rested his hands on his hips.

"Abe." Michael imitated him.

"I'm going to bed," Abe said. Michael followed him, reminding him in a childish whine that the sun was still out, and his request could be fulfilled in seconds.

A few days after Abe completed his initial piss-filled meltdown upon meeting his new roommates, he laid down a few ground rules. The first: no requests. No telling the family they were okay. The second rule: no revenge. The third and final rule? No solving crimes.

This created a tense atmosphere in apartment 239.

"Just a few seconds, what could it hurt?"
"Fine. But I'm not stealing Internet just so I can Google shit for you guys all day." Abe sat on the couch and pulled his laptop out from under it.

"No," Michael stood watching him. "You're stealing it to masturbate to porn. Kaitlin told me. Full disclosure: we've been watching you. You just get in the zone, man. It's almost mesmerizing."

Abe did the rounds checking every one of Michael's acquaintances' forgotten blogs with broken images. Then every social media site he ever had an account on, where he could see his loved ones become experts in epidemiology. Then every corner of the web where people exchange inane chatter and engage in petty flame wars. "Nothing."

Michael shook his head. "Has it been that long?"

"Sorry." Abe closed the laptop, stood up, and returned it to its space under the couch. "See you later."

"Yeah," Michael said before vanishing.

Abe didn't mind the small favor or two. Michael and Diane seemed to accept his ground rules. Michael only asked for a weekly social media scan, while Diane wanted Abe to help her enjoy the little things vicariously, such as food.

"Describe it," Diane would say.

"Um, it's just a pot pie," Abe would reply.

"I don't care! Describe it!" she would say through gritted teeth, her eyes taking on a red glow.

"Fine. It has a rough texture. There are carrots..."

"Salt it," Diane would say.

"What?"

"Salt it."

Abe would reach for the shaker and gingerly coat his food.

"Fuck yeah. Salt it. Oooh! Grab the pepper!"

Only Kaitlin refused to accept any little favors, gliding from the room whenever Abe searched for reminders of Michael online or described the weather or food to Diane.

Abe retired to his bedroom, a continuation of his "I'm serving five to ten" interior aesthetic. The room contained exactly three pieces of furniture: a bed, a TV tray acting as a nightstand, and a dresser. The dresser was empty. The contents were spread across the floor and rarely washed or deposited back into the drawers. The bed was actually from the spare room of his previous place. A three-bedroom brick home just north of the Marble Springs' city limits.

Near the end of a small cul-de-sac, his old home offered everything a lower-class-pretending-they're-middle-class family could want: quiet streets, manicured lawns, and neighbors you have to assume are friendly because you've never once spoken to them.

Abe missed his home. Not the building, but the people who lived inside. Cliché, but there you have it. After the accident, the house changed. The quiet became oppressive. Every scuff on the hardwood, every stain on the carpet, a reminder of what was lost and what was never coming back.

Abe went back once after taking this apartment and shortly after meeting his roommates. He figured if he could see them, what if he could see Rebecca, or Gus? What if they were there?

The realtor's sign was still standing in the tall grass on the front lawn. "Hart & Sons' Realty." Abe knew the code and knew the realtor was too lazy to have changed it. He let himself in, and when he shut the door behind him, the blinds bounced off the door and the sound carried into the empty living room. The only thing that greeted him was silence: oppressive, blaring silence.

He stayed there for six hours, leaving just after sunset. He called out their names, opened every cabinet, threw open every closet door. Even after meeting Diane, Michael, and Kaitlin, it was only standing in the empty house that Abe ever felt truly haunted.

Prior to setting down his ground rules, Abe decided to bring his ghost friends there. Maybe they could see them if he couldn't, but they saw nothing.

Planning the funeral was rough, particularly because Abe was out of his mind with grief. Literally. For his son, he planned what was essentially a birthday party. Everyone would wear hats. There would be cake. The funeral director finally stepped in when Abe was actually checking bounce house rentals on his phone.

"I apologize for the wait," Silas Restin said, slipping into the office where Abe was sitting. He was a tall, gaunt man. His hair was white, but his skin was perpetually flushed. His eyes were like tiny dark orbs in the middle of his face. "We recently dismissed our apprentice embalmer, so I'm wearing multiple hats at the moment."

Abe actually met the funeral director's former apprentice that day after his mother died. He checked on Rebecca and Gus while Abe signed papers and selected a casket. He later offered his condolences to Abe, patting him on the back and calling him buddy, like he was an old friend.

"Mr. Barrett," Silas wheezed, sitting on the side of his desk. "Different people deal with grief in different ways. I know, I've been doing this a long time."

"Then how am I doing?" Abe asked, barely concealing his impatience. Since he learned of the death of his wife and son, Abe had been struggling with an urge to hurt someone. A longing to inflict pain that he had never experienced before.

"You're losing your damn mind, son." Silas smiled. He placed a hand on Abe's shoulder, giving a slight squeeze. "Go home. I don't usually do this, but why don't you let me take this one. You remember your mother's service?"

"Yes." Abe's voice was a whisper. "It was nice." Abe's mother departed this world two years prior, drained of life by a vampire in the form of a malignant tumor, leaving behind a wasted shell whose last meal was administered by a hospice nurse: a dose of morphine and a sponge soaked with water.

Silas roused Abe from his fog. "I knew Rebecca. I knew her family. Your boy, very bright from what I heard."

Abe nodded, training his eyes on the carpet as the tears blurred his vision.

"We have the clothes, we have the date, I'll call you if I need anything."

Silas led Abe to the door, never removing his hand from Abe's shoulder. Mr. Restin suddenly became a tall, elderly bouncer, escorting Abe from Restin Hart (A new acquisition of Hart and Sons' Liquor and Liquor) Funeral Home.

Abe didn't want to go home, of course. So, he went to the mall and, an hour later, found himself in the back of a police car after assaulting the cashier at a pretzel stand.

* * *

The funeral was beautiful. Flowers. Mounds of flowers. Wonderful words. Abe declined to speak. The bill was substantial and, soon thereafter, Abe found himself looking for a new home. Believe it or not, the stucco and plaster castle theme wasn't what drew him to Camelot. No, it was the rent. Cheap. Unbelievably cheap. Recently, Camelot had made the national news following the epic explosion of a meth lab in apartment 426. The official report said that only two people died in the fire, but the residents claimed the toll had to be higher since many people in the surrounding incinerated apartments were never heard from again.

The police disputed this claim. "For all we know," a police spokesperson said, his forehead coated in a sheen of sweat in front of the cameras, "they just moved to Dallas."

Cheap rent and a tragic past. Abe was home.