by Ellen Datlow
Yesterday, Hannah said, her recently divorced sister in California had broken her back falling off the roof of her house. She was in the hospital. Hannah was flying out tomorrow to take care of her two young nieces. All of her sisters’ friends were unreliable assholes or too overwhelmed with their own catastrophes. Her sister’s ex was in Australia. What Hannah needed was for someone to take over her housesitting gig in Vermont for the next three weeks. That was what she said.
“It’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s outside of town, and the nearest town really isn’t a town anyway, you know? There’s not even a traffic light,” Hannah said. “There’s no grocery store, no library. There’s a place down the road where you can get beer and lightbulbs and breakfast sandwiches, but I don’t recommend those.”
“I don’t have a car,” Andy said.
“I don’t have one either!” Hannah said. “You won’t need one. There’s a standing grocery order, so you won’t need a car for that. I get a delivery every Tuesday from the Hannaford in St. Albans. If you want to make changes, you just send them an email. And I’m leaving a bunch of stuff in the fridge. Eggs, milk, sandwich stuff. There’s plenty of coffee. I have an Uber coming tomorrow at five p.m. Can you get here around three? I went ahead and mapped it, it should take you about seven hours to get here. I’ll send directions. Show up at three, we can catch up and I can go over stuff you need to know. But don’t worry! There isn’t a lot of stuff. Really, it’s just a couple of things.”
“You’re not giving me a lot of advance notice,” Andy said.
“What’s your Venmo?” Hannah said. “I’ll send you nine hundred bucks right now. That’s half of what I’m getting paid for three months.”
Andy gave her his Venmo. The most he’d ever been Venmoed was, what, around forty bucks? But here it was immediately, nine hundred dollars, just like that.
“So,” Hannah said. “You’ll be here. Tomorrow, by three p.m. Because promise I will hunt you down and remove the bones from both legs if you don’t come through. I’m counting on you, asshole.”
* * *
He was googling one-way car rentals when Bronwen wandered into the kitchen. She had Lester’s old acapella T-shirt on (Quaker Notes) and a pair of Lester’s even older boxer shorts. She got a Yuengling out of the fridge and popped it open, then stood behind Andy, looking at his screen.
“Going on a trip?” she said. She sounded wistful. “Cool.”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Kind of? I agreed to take over a housesitting gig in Vermont for the rest of the month and it starts tomorrow afternoon. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, and even if I took a bus I’d still be over an hour away, so I guess I’m renting a car.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” Bronwen said. “Car rental places will just rip you off, especially in summer. I’ve got a car and I’m off work the next couple of days. Lester and I’ll drive you.”
“No,” Andy said. He had spent most of the month trying to avoid being in the same room with Bronwen and Lester. Hadn’t she noticed? “Why? Why would you even offer to do that?”
“I’ve been trying to get Lester to get off his ass and go somewhere all summer,” Bronwen said. “Just say yes, and I’ll tell him it’s a done deal. Then he can’t weasel out. Okay? We’ll drop you off and then camp somewhere on the way home. A lake, maybe. Lots of lakes in Vermont, right?”
“Let me think about it,” Andy said.
“Why?” Bronwen said.
There really wasn’t anything to think about. “Sure,” Andy said. “Okay. If you’re okay with it and Lester is okay with it.”
“Great!” Bronwen said. She seemed truly delighted by the prospect of doing Andy this favor. “I’m going to go home and get my tent.”
* * *
He spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding Lester—who despite Bronwen’s reassurances was clearly sulking—and going through his piles of reading and research material. In the end he had a backpack and three canvas bags. He stuck his laptop and printer and a ream of paper in his gym bag, wrapped up in underwear and socks, a sweatshirt, his last two clean T-shirts, running shorts, and a spare pair of jeans. A waterproof jacket and a pair of Timberlands and his weights. There was a guy down the street who made regular trips up to various weed dispensaries in Massachusetts to buy merchandise which he then sold on locally at a healthy profit, and after perusing what was on offer, Andy spent a hundred dollars of Hannah’s money on supplies. After some thought he also purchased a pouch of Betty’s Eddies Tango for a Peachy Mango gummies for Bronwen as a thank you.
Because, really, it was Lester that Andy bore a reasonable grudge against. There was, for example, the time Lester had been complaining about Andy at top volume to Bronwen, not realizing Andy had come home and was right there, next door in his bedroom. “It isn’t that he’s a terrible person. He’s so fucking smug. Has to map every single thing out, but only because he won’t let himself think about whether or not he wants any of it. What does he want? Who knows? Definitely not Andy. No interior life at all. You know how people talk about the unconscious and the id? The attic and the basement? The places you don’t go? If you drew a picture of Andy’s psyche it would be Andy, standing outside of the house where he lives. He won’t go inside. He won’t even knock on the door.”
Which was rich, coming from Lester. That’s what Andy thought. And anyway, Lester wasn’t a psychologist. That wasn’t his area at all.
He texted a couple of friends he hadn’t seen in a while and went out, leaving Lester and Bronwen to fight about Vermont or fuck or watch Netflix in peace. It was good to be out in the world, or maybe it just felt good to know that tomorrow he was going to be in Vermont with all the time and space he could possibly need to get some real work done. To all of the questions about the house and its owner, he just kept saying, “No idea! I don’t know anything at all!” And how good that felt, too, to be on the threshold of a mysterious adventure. It wouldn’t be terrible, either, to see Hannah again.
As if this thought had summoned her, his phone buzzed with an incoming text. You’re still coming right?
All packed, he wrote back. So I guess I am.
You’re going to love it here. Promise. See you tomorrow. BE HERE BY 3!!!!
* * *
The plan had been to leave no later than six a.m. They got a late start, because Lester needed to find his spare inhaler, then bug spray, then a can opener, and then he wanted to make a second pot of coffee and take out the recycling and trash and check e-mail. By the time they were in the car it was eight a.m., and of course they hit traffic before they were even on the 676 ramp. Lester fell asleep as soon as they were in the car.
Bronwen, checking the rearview mirror, said, “We’ll make up the time once we’re on 87.”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Okay, sure.” He texted Hannah, on my way hooray, put his airpods in and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were stopping in New Jersey. It was 10.30. According to his phone, they were now five hours away.
Andy paid for gas. “I could drive,” he said.
“Nah, buddy,” Lester said. “I got it.” But he took the wrong exit out of the rest stop, south instead of north, and it was five miles back before they were going in the right direction again.
Bronwen, in the passenger seat, turned around to inspect Andy. “One time I missed an exit on 95 going down past D.C. and so I just went all the way around again. It’s a big ring, you know? Turns out it was a lot bigger than I thought it was.”
There were a lot of trucks on 87, all of them going faster than Lester. No cops.
Bronwen said, “You got any brothers or sisters?”
“No,” Andy said.
“Where you from?”
“Nevada,” Andy said.
“Never been there,” Bronwen said. “You go back much?”
“Once in a while,” Andy said. “My parents are retired professors. Classics and Romance Languages. So now they spend a lot of time going on these cruises, the educationa
l kind. They give lectures and seminars in exchange for getting a cabin and some cash. They’re cruising down the Rhine right now.” No, that had been December. He had no idea where they were now. Greece? Sardinia?
“That sounds awesome,” Bronwen said.
“They’ve had norovirus twice,” Andy said.
“Still,” Bronwen said, “I’d like to go on a cruise. And once you’ve had norovirus, you’re immune to it for like a year.”
“That’s what they told me,” Andy said. “They were actually kind of psyched after they had norovirus the first time.”
“This friend,” Bronwen said, “the one in Vermont, what’s her name?”
“Hannah,” Andy said.
“Did you ever date?”
“No,” Andy said.
“Yes,” Lester said.
“It wasn’t really dating,” Andy said. “We just kind of had a thing for a while.”
“And then Hannah went off to teach at some cow college,” Lester said. “And Andy hasn’t gotten laid since.”
“I’m just really, really trying to concentrate on my dissertation,” Andy said. Sometimes, avoiding Lester, he forgot exactly why he ought to avoid Lester. It wasn’t just Bronwen, and sex. It had a lot more to do with just Lester.
“Yeah,” Bronwen said. “That makes so much sense. Sometimes you have to keep your head down and focus.”
She really was very, very nice. Unlike Lester. “You have any brothers or sisters?”
“Nope,” Bronwen said. “Just me. My parents are over in Fishtown.”
“Fancy,” Andy said. Fishtown was where all the nice coffee shops and fixed-up rowhouses were.
“Yeah,” Bronwen said. “My mom’s mom’s house. But they’re saying they’re gonna put it on the market. The real estate tax is insane. But, you know, I think my mom is afraid if they sell the house they’ll end up getting divorced, and then she’ll have no husband and no house.”
“I’m sorry,” Andy said.
“No,” Bronwen said. “I mean, my dad’s kind of a dickhead?”
“I can vouch for that,” Lester said.
“Shut up,” Bronwen said. “I can say it but it doesn’t mean you can.”
“Whatever,” Lester said. “You love me. It was love at first sight. Coup de foudre.”
“I like you a lot,” Bronwen said.
“She doesn’t believe in love,” Lester said to Andy. “She’s only with me because I’m ghost repellent.”
“Believe it or not, he isn’t my usual type,” Bronwen said. “I’m actually more into girls.”
“Go back a minute,” Andy said. “To the thing about ghost repellent.”
Lester said, “So we met at the Wawa, remember? There was only one six-pack of Yuengling in the cooler and I got it. And Bronwen came up while I was at the counter to ask the guy if there was more, and there was, but it wasn’t cold. So I invited her over and we hooked up and she ended up spending the night but she said that at some point she’d probably have to split because everywhere she goes eventually this presence, this ghost, shows up, and unless she’s at work or something and can’t leave, she’ll just take off again. But the ghost never showed up. It never shows up when she’s with me. So, you know, we started hanging out a lot.”
“What do you mean a ghost shows up?” Andy said.
“It’s just something that happens,” Bronwen said. “Ever since I was a kid. Just after my fourteenth birthday. I don’t know why it happens, or why it started. It doesn’t bother anyone else. No one else sees it. I don’t even see it! I don’t even really know if it’s a ghost or not. It’s just, you know, this presence. I’ll be somewhere and then it will be there too. It doesn’t do anything. It’s just there. My mom used to tell me that it was a good thing, like a guardian spirit. But it isn’t. It’s kind of awful. If I leave a room, or if I go somewhere else, it doesn’t come with me right away, but eventually it’s with me again. If I stay in one place long enough, like if I’m asleep long enough, then when I wake up it’s there. So, yeah. I’m a terrible sleeper. But I went home with Lester and I fell asleep in his bed and then I woke up and it wasn’t there.”
“Ghost repellent,” Lester said smugly. There was a car in front of them that wasn’t even doing sixty-five. Lester just stayed there behind it.
“I thought maybe it was gone for good,” Bronwen said. “But I went home and took a shower and it showed right up. So, not gone. But any time I’m with Lester it stays away. So, yay.”
“Incredible,” Andy said.
Bronwen was facing forward again. “You probably don’t even believe me,” she said. “But, you know. There are more things than are dreamt of.”
“I don’t not believe you,” Andy said, equivocating.
But this didn’t appear to satisfy Bronwen. She said, “Well, whatever. I bet you’ve had weird shit happen that you can’t explain. Weird shit happens to everyone.”
“Except me,” Lester said.
“But that’s your weird thing,” Bronwen said, patting him on the arm. “If nothing weird ever happens to you, then that’s pretty weird.”
Andy said, “Once a kid knocked on our door, and when I went to answer it, he didn’t have a head.”
“Right,” Lester said. “Last Halloween. We gave him some Tootsie Rolls.”
“Both of you are utter and complete assholes,” Bronwen said. She put Ariana Grande on the stereo, tilted her head back, and closed her eyes. Apparently she found it easier to ignore assholes than a ghost.
* * *
They stopped at a McDonald’s just off the highway around three p.m. The map function now said they’d get to the house around 4.15. Andy sat at a table outside and texted Hannah. She called him back immediately. “Cutting it close, asshole,” she said.
“Sorry,” Andy said. “But it isn’t my car, so there isn’t much I can do.”
“Whatever, I owe you for agreeing to do this at all. It sucks, you know? Having to take off like this. This is such a sweet job. Please don’t fuck it up for me, okay?”
“How’s your sister?” Andy said.
“She’s okay, sort of? Doesn’t want to take the good painkillers, because she has a history with that stuff. So that’s going to be fun for everyone. Oh, hey. She’s calling. See you soon.”
Bronwen came outside and sat down on top of the picnic table. She was dipping French fries into the remains of her chocolate milkshake.
Andy said, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you guys driving me.”
“Not a big deal,” Bronwen said, tilting her head up and back toward the sun. She was a tawny golden brown all over, hair and skin. There were little golden hairs all over her forearms and legs. Andy could almost understand why a ghost followed her everywhere. Hannah was long and pale and freckled and sort of mean, even when she liked you. She was funny, though. She changed her hair color when the mood struck her. In her last Instagram post her hair was brown with two red-pink streaks, like a Porterhouse steak.
“Oh,” Bronwen said. “Oh, that was quick. Much quicker than usual.”
She’d dropped her milkshake. Andy picked it up before much could spill, but when he tried to give it back to her, Bronwen ignored it. She was watching a space on the sidewalk a few feet away.
“What?” he said. “What is it?”
Bronwen said, “I’ll go see if Lester’s done.” She jumped off the table and went back inside the McDonald’s.
Did Andy feel anything? Some kind of presence? He went over to stand, as far as he could gauge, in the place Bronwen had been staring at. There was nothing there, which probably meant that Bronwen had some kind of mental health issue, but also she’d just driven him most of the way to Vermont. “I don’t actually think you’re real,” he said, “but if you are, maybe you could go away and stop bothering Bronwen. She’s a nice person. She doesn’t deserve to be haunted.”
Saying this seemed the least he could do. When he went inside to check on the situation, Bronwen was in a booth, slouc
hed down with her face in her arms and Lester rubbing her back. Andy went and got her ice water.
Eventually, she sat up and took a sip. “Sorry,” she said.
“No worries,” Andy said. “But we’d better hit the road. I need to get there before Hannah’s ride shows up. I don’t want to cut it too close.”
“Dude,” Lester said. “Give her a minute.” He actually seemed to be irritated with Andy and did that mean he believed Bronwen? That there was a ghost?
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Of course.” He went and used the bathroom and when he came out again, Lester and Bronwen weren’t in the booth. They weren’t at the car, and eventually he realized they had to be in the family restroom because there was no one else in the McDonald’s and the lock was engaged. It was another good twenty minutes before they emerged, and apparently the ghost had gotten tired of waiting and left, because Bronwen seemed much more cheerful getting back in the car. Lester too, for that matter.
Shortly after that, Andy’s phone lost all reception, which was probably for the best, because although Bronwen drove at least ten miles above the speed limit the rest of the way, they didn’t reach the address Hannah had given him until well after five.
* * *
The place Hannah had been housesitting was off a two-lane highway, the kind they’d been following for the past two hours. There were two stone pedestals on either side of the dirt drive, but nothing on top of them. There were a lot of trees. Andy didn’t really know a lot about trees. He wouldn’t have minded if there were fewer. It was the first turnoff in maybe half a dozen miles, which was what Hannah’s directions had said. If you kept going, you got to the store where you could get sandwiches and gasoline. That would have meant they’d gone too far. But Hannah’s directions had been clear, and they hadn’t gotten lost once. Nevertheless, they were late and Hannah was long gone.