“No ghost,” he said. Just like he used to, as a kid, sitting up in bed, shaking his head no. “No ghost, no ghost, no ghost.” He wiped snot from his nose, licked his lips. “And you will not be scared to death, you will not!”

Halfway through the living room he was able to see some of the inside of the tub.

Were the lights strong enough to show him the bottom? Could he be certain what he saw and what he didn’t?

“Look in the tub, Walter. Go on up to it and look inside.”

Taking tiny steps, he advanced.

“No no no! Slow and feeble is how someone gets scared to death. Run to the tub, Walter! Run!”

His big feet thundered across the wood boards, and the piles of drywall shook with it. By the time he reached the porcelain edge he was moving too fast and when he tried to stop himself he slid, shins-first, against it.

“Owwww!”

But he was above the tub now. And he looked, wide-eyed, to the stained bottom before him.

“Nothing.”

There was nothing.

“Nothing!”

Then, a memory, a replay of the sound that woke him.

His face lit by the hanging holiday lights, Kamp crossed his rooms again, floating, it seemed, to the secured window overlooking Neptune Street.

Below, on the closer side of Neptune, he saw a car idling in the rain. A Dodge Dart. From this height Kamp could see a man sitting behind the wheel, but no more.

“A car door,” Kamp said, smiling. The anxiety broke, scattered, and looked so harmless now. “A passenger got out of the car!”

It was unlikely that anybody stepped out of the idling Dart, given the incredible rainfall they would have had to endure, but Kamp knew he was right.

The soft slam. The distant click.

It was a car door indeed that had woken him.

And yet, as relieved as he felt, he jumped at the sound of Mrs. Doris in the hall outside his front door.

“Waaaaaaalter?”

“Good God!” he cried.

“Waaaaaalter…are you okaaaaaaay in there?”

Kamp brought a sweaty hand to his chest.

Yes. Yes he was okay. No ghost in the tub. Just a Gobliner in the street.

“I’m fantastic, Mrs. Doris! And I apologize if I woke you! Now go back to sleep and don’t worry about little ol’ me!”

Silence from the door. Kamp recalled his own footsteps thundering toward the tub. The way he’d been hollering in here.

“Okay,” Mrs. Doris finally said, unseen, beyond the door. “Good night, Waaaaaalter.”

After she’d gone, Kamp gazed out the window a beat, then carried his blanket back to his Plexiglas bed, where nothing could hide beneath.

He sat upon it and looked once to the breadth of his illuminated rooms.

Then he fell upon his back, making one final loud thud before closing his eyes again.

Now he would sleep.

For now, the apartment was ghost-free.