He walked back to the truck wiping one gloved hand on his trousers.

‘Anything?’ Erica said after he got into the back seat and slammed the door.

He shook his head. If there had been something in there, it wasn’t something he could save.

I put the truck into gear and switched on the high beams. All the invisible trees were suddenly there, white and panicked, waving their arms. We ignored them. I put my foot down and kept on driving.

The One You’ve Been Waiting For

Our neighbours thought we didn’t know we’d bought the murder house. But we knew. The discount we’d received on the place was in proportion to the horror that had happened there. Meaning: it was so cheap even we could afford it. And suddenly, as Tate put it, we were ‘in’.

‘In what?’

‘In a good area. With good people.’

‘What does that mean? “Good people”?’

‘Don’t be obtuse.’

‘I’m not.’

But Tate was right; I was being obtuse. I too felt thrilled to be living in the kind of area where someone might have a wine cellar or a panic room. But the thrill was accompanied by a certain trepidation. I felt I should approach the house with humility; with my head bowed and a preparedness to genuflect. That way, if it contained any restless spirits, they would be assuaged. Or at least, they’d direct their rage towards Tate instead of me.

Tate sensed that I was treating the house with a certain reverence. But he mistook it for a fear of the house, of what had happened there.

‘It doesn’t bother you, does it?’ he’d asked before we put in an offer.

‘The murder thing?’

‘Yeah. The murder thing.’

‘It should bother us. Don’t you think?’

‘It won’t make us more likely to be murdered, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Tate said. ‘If anything, we’re less likely to be murdered in that house. How often would murders happen twice in the same house?’

My reckoning of the probabilities was different. But I didn’t demur.

‘Besides,’ Tate said, ‘you know what I think about being a victim.’

Tate had a genuine belief that it was impossible for anyone to murder him because of his mindset. He didn’t have the attitude of a victim; therefore he wouldn’t become one. Tate stopped short of articulating the corollary of this theory – that murder victims had somehow brought their misfortune on themselves – but it was implied nevertheless.

Murder, however, was not the cause of my concern. Something Tate didn’t know was that I believed in ghosts, genuinely and wholeheartedly. It was the potential ghosts who both worried me and attracted me to the house.