The séance has not been a success. Irene the medium keeps saying that she senses something. Someone is trying to say something.

The dead are here, but also not here. They’re afraid. That’s why they won’t come. Something is keeping them away. There is something wrong here.

“Do you feel it?” she says to Meggie, to the others.

Meggie says, “I feel something. Something is here.”

The demon lover extends himself outward into the night. Lets himself believe for a moment that life goes on. Is something here? There is a smell, the metallic stink of muck farms. There is an oppressiveness to the air. Is there malice here? An ill wish?

Meggie says, “No one has ever solved the mystery of what happened here. But perhaps whatever happened to them is still present. Irene, could it have some hold on their spirits, whatever is left of them, even in death?”

Irene says, “I don’t know. Something is wrong here. Something is here. I don’t know.”

But Who’s There? picks up nothing of interest on their equipment, their air ion counter or their barometer, their EMF detector or EVP detector, their wind chimes or thermal imaging scopes. No one is there.

And so at last it’s time for ghost stories.

There’s one about the men’s room at a trendy Santa Monica restaurant. The demon lover has been there. Had the fries with truffle-oil mayonnaise. Never encountered the ghost. He’s not somebody who sees ghosts and he’s fine with that. Never really liked truffle-oil mayonnaise, either. The thing in the bungalow with Meggie wasn’t a ghost. It was drugs, the pressure they were under, the unbearable scrutiny; a folie à deux; the tax on their happiness.

Someone tells the old story about Basil Rathbone and the dinner guest who brings along his dogs. Upon departure, the man and his dogs are killed in a car crash just outside Rathbone’s house. Rathbone sees. Is paralyzed with shock and grief. As he stands there, his phone rings—when he picks up, an operator says, “Pardon me, Mr. Rathbone, but there is a woman on the line who says she must speak to you.”

The woman, who is a medium, says that she has a message for him. She says she hopes he will understand the meaning.

“Traveling very fast. No time to say good-bye. There are no dogs here.”

And now it’s the demon lover’s turn. He says: “A long time ago when Meggie and I were together, we bought a bungalow in Venice Beach. We weren’t there very much. We were everywhere else. On junkets. At festivals. We had no furniture. Just a mattress. No dishes. When we were home we ate out of take-out containers.

“But we were happy.” He lets that linger. Meggie watches. Listens. Ray stands beside her. No space between them.

It’s not much fun, telling a ghost story while you’re naked. Telling the parts of the ghost story that you’re supposed to tell. Not telling other parts. While the woman you love stands there with the person you used to be.