I have approximately one billion follow-up questions. “So then—”

“Nope!” she interrupts in a faux chirpy voice. “I’m suuuper busy, so let’s not. What is Hall’s location?”

Where is his location? My mind blanks. “He’s a holiday spirit? So maybe—”

“Hold, please. Connecting.”

The lights hiss and dim, digital numbers on the cable box blinking as they rearrange. I think it’s supposed to read BOOT, but the T is missing.

“Somebody call for me?” a voice over my left shoulder booms. I turn, and there is a man in my living room. But this might be even more bewildering than the last time it happened, because instead of a cheerful, grinning Hall in an ugly Christmas sweater, there’s a tall strange man with shoulder-length black hair that is halfway between Rod Stewart and The Rachel, in white face paint and heavy black eyeliner. He spreads out his arms to show off the costume bat wings attached to a bright silver jumpsuit, the lights in my ceiling fixture flashing orange and purple. Dry ice fog curlicues out of the carpet, swathing his lower half, which includes thigh-high platform boots with sparkly spiders sewn on. “BOO!” he thunders. Lightning flashes.

“Who the hell are you?”

He spits fake vampire teeth into his hand. “I’m Hall,” he says jovially, giving me a wave that brings his fright factor down a few pegs. His Party City bat wings flap. “Who’re you?”

I rear back, aghast. “You’re not Hall.”

“Am so. Hall O’ween. I’m the Holiday Spirit!” He peers around. “This is a large bathroom.”

“It isn’t a bathroom. This is my living room.”

“Did you not summon me? Go into a bathroom, lock the door, switch off the lights, spin around three times in front of a mirror while chanting ‘Bloody Mary’?”

I smack my forehead. “She sent the wrong one.”

“It’s the lemon poppy seed muffin part that most folks forget,” he goes on. “That’s your sacrificial offering! Never forget the muffin. Now my pal Bruce is totally different, he only accepts cranberry, but you don’t want to summon Bruce. He has six heads and his skin is transparent, so you can see all the blood lava.”

The information that someone can beckon this particular Holiday Spirit merely by presenting a muffin to a mirror while chanting “Bloody Mary” opens an endless stream of doors in my head. The way I’ve been accessing holiday magic has been through the record player, but it’s staggering to contemplate how many other methods might be out there. What if someone in Tallahassee is watching a VHS tape of Weird Science that they stole from a Blockbuster in 2002, then pause it at 4:44 a.m. exactly, and due to the rules of National Science Fiction Day, I am teleported to that person’s bedroom so they can obtain the perfect woman? There are hundreds of holidays, each probably with their own weird trip wires and access points. It’s only down to sheer coincidence (and Mariah Carey) that I met my Hall.