He jumped out of bed (his big body could move fast when it needed to, had always been limber) and he went to the small television set against the wall. Before it rested a Glasgow mixing console, the multicolored knobs making it very easy to rewind, fast forward, play, stop, and record.

Kamp pressed stop and rewound the tape.

“Nothing’s gonna sneak up on me,” he said. Again he brought a hand to his chest.

His greatest fear, of course, was being scared to death.

He pressed the play button and, placing his powder-blue rimmed glasses upon his nose and ears, watched with wide-eyed apprehension.

What woke him?

Five video cameras monitored his rooms, nowadays a single room, due to his removal of the walls (a task that had worried Mrs. Doris greatly, Kamp with a sledgehammer next door). Even the toilet could be spotted from where he stood. The cameras covered what used to be the bathroom, the kitchen, the front door and living room, his bedroom, and the hall connecting them all.

“Come on, show yourself.”

The screen flickered, reflected in his big glasses. Standing in only his underwear and a Goblin High Marauders tank top, Kamp gripped his baby-blue blanket.

“How can there be nothing?” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing doesn’t make noise! Nothing doesn’t wake you up! You know what does that?” He looked down the length of his booby-trapped rooms. “Something!”

He rewound the tapes again, the Glasgow humming under the power of the falling Goblin rain.

“What’s that?” he asked, bending at the waist, gripping his blanket tighter.

It looked like something, a shadow perhaps, may have shifted in the bathtub.

Kamp turned to face the tub. The holiday lights strung above it gave him a good enough view to see if someone was crouched in it. But what if they were lying down?

“Oh…fuck.”

Kamp felt pressure at his bladder. The sudden need to piss.

There was a ghost in his tub. He was sure of it. There was a ghost in his tub and it had knocked the shampoo over or struck the faucet or something, but whatever it did do, it woke him.

He was already sweating through his Goblin High tank top and now he felt a gripping in his throat. Was this what panic felt like? He never could remember. That was, after all, the wily nature of panic. Was he going to freak out? He lifted up on his tiptoes and looked over the drywall rubble to where the tub stood, as if this half inch of height might show him something lying flat in there.

He held his breath.

He stepped from the static of the television screen, then stepped over the drywall pile that was once the doorway to his bedroom. His big flat feet tested the floorboards beneath him.

Adjusting his glasses, gripping his blanket, Kamp approached the tub.