He was putting ideas in her head, she believed, and the sight of his rooms was enough to cause even the most staunch realist alarm. Yet as she was locking his door behind her, after the first time she let herself in, she had to wonder why a man so smart, a man so kind, could let himself be turned around like this.

Scared to death!

The way Walter was carrying on, he was liable to scare himself to death!

With his year of rent in hand, and the continuation of his monthly visits to her rooms, where they drank wine and he spoke adoringly of Goblin past and present, Mrs. Doris decided to let it slide.

For now.

After all, being a Gobliner herself, and having let rooms to so many others, she’d seen her share of odd. Walter could paint the walls black and hang goats’ heads from the ceiling and he might not surpass some of the people she’d known. Neal Nash, the now brash, rich, and famous hunter, used to fire his guns into the walls. Jonathan Woodruff had commanded unseen employees about and acted as if Mrs. Doris’s building was the hotel he would one day build and own.

Perhaps Walter Kamp was simply the logical extension of such personae. The next Gobliner in line. Maude used to say it was in the water. And it always made Mrs. Doris laugh because she knew her sister wasn’t talking about the tap. She was referring, of course, to the endless rainfall outside, and the fact that nobody ought to be tasked with maintaining their sanity forever in a city that never stopped crying.

3

Every other member of Kamp’s immediate family had seen a ghost. His mother, his father, his sister, Carol, and brother, David, too. Even a couple of cousins and an uncle had stories that took place in the periphery. Stories that chilled Walter through the years. Once, at a family reunion in Perish Park, a cousin’s husband told Walter that he’d been on the toilet when a tongue sprouted from the water and lapped at his thighs. Telling the story, the husband laughed. He added that he smoked a lot of grass and would Walter like to try some? And yet even this story, with its obvious detractions, caused Walter to worry. What would he do if a tongue rose from the water between his legs? Would he survive long enough to laugh? Long enough to tell himself he’d been seeing things…and nothing more?