There are no more videos on display. No more Arnold, no moreShort Circuit 2poster.
It’s a bookstore.
Maybe it’s juststartingto be a bookstore, but that’s worth something.
The bookstore is fine—gosh, that feels good to think—with no poltergeisty games like Cherry Plank Pick-Up Sticks or Boxed Video LEGO-splosion. Everything is exactly like Hunter left it. I head out the front door, leaving it unlocked in casehe gets here before me. I can’t believe I’ve become the kind of person who would leave the door to their business and apartment unlocked, but, well, it’s Arcadia Falls. The most expensive thing I own is a parrot cage, and I’m fresh out of parrots. The Unsafe Safe is stuffed with cash, but it just looks like an old table under a tablecloth. And if anyone tries to steal anything else, maybe the poltergeist will scare them away.
As soon as I’m on the street, I see it:
My flyer, plastered everywhere. There’s one taped to every Chamber business, the backs of stop signs, and the blue metal mailbox, which I think might actually be a federal crime. There must be dozens of them. Shelby really is magical.
The bakery is still closed when I get there, but there’s a light on in back and the scent of warm bread fills the air. I knock on the door, and an employee tells me Shelby isn’t in yet. I don’t know her well enough to burst into her apartment before I know she’s awake, so I shoot her a thankful text with lots of prayer hands and head back to the store. As a family friend, I am allowed to buy two hot ham-and-cheese croissants before they open. I owe this girl more than I can express.
My next task is the sort of thing I’ve been dreading. It’s not difficult, and it will yield excellent dividends, but it’s going to take some work.
I grab a trash bag in the apartment and make a beeline for the Unsafe Safe. I feel like a cartoon character as I sweep armfuls of crumpled bills into the trash bag. There are so many I have to shove them down to make enough room. I briefly wonder why there are no coins, and then I remember the huge jug upstairs in a corner of the apartment, filled with silver and topped with feathery plant fronds, and wonder how hard it will be to roll up all those coins.
Let’s just start with paper.
Back upstairs, I put on my audiobook and sit at the kitchen table, pulling out the dollars one by one and straightening them as best as I can. It’s tedious work, flattening bills that have likely been crumpled for months or years and counting them out into stacks, which I wrap with rubber bands from Maggie’s junk drawer. I’m somewhere above twelve hundred dollars when I hear a bang from downstairs.
“Hunter?” I call.
There’s no answer.
“Ghost?”
Still no answer, but that makes a lot more sense.
I creep downstairs with 911 pressed into my phone, hoping I’m not about to find an actual problem. Instead, I find…the opposite of a problem.
The office door is open, and sitting on the floor is the fishbowl full of cash that until recently sat by the boiled peanuts. I’d actually looked for it earlier and couldn’t find it.
“Thank you?” I say to the empty room.
This ghost must’ve inherited Hunter’s former tendency to run hot and cold.
I kneel and pick up the fishbowl. It’s icy cold—the whole room is, actually.
It becomes even colder when the door slams shut.
“Not again!” I put down the fishbowl and hurry to the door, twisting and tugging the knob. It doesn’t budge. “Ghost, did you just catfish me into my own office? What do you want?”
The chair in front of the desk slowly, creakily rolls to the side of the room.
“You want me to sit?”
The chair falls over.
“Okay, no, then. Do you know charades?”
There’s a loud thump on the floor, like someone has stomped their foot.
“Are you angry?”
Another stomp.
“Is…is one stompyes?”
