The young couple wasn’t entirely sure why they were there. Sure, they were new to it all, and the rules were still somewhat unclear. But they thought they were settled.

The real estate agent assured them that this is not the case.

“Now, I know you’re new to this, and a little uncertain, but you need to come to terms with the fact that you have to move.”

The young man, whose name was Quentin, said, “But I just don’t see why we have to move?"

The young woman, whose name was Sally, agreed: “We lived in that house for four years. We made improvements to it. We established ourselves there. It’s our house. I don’t see why that changes just because we’re dead.”

“But that’s the point, Mrs. Green. You’re dead. You don’t take anything with you, and that includes ownership of your old house. Not to mention the fact that there’s a nice old couple living there now.”

The Greens had been dead for two months, at that point. They had been killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver, who nearly walked away from the accident, had he not been passed out at the time. That had only added insult to injury, and there was much the Greens were upset about to begin with. There were many things they had meant to do, including having children, and it had taken them a while to get over the fact that they were never going to do any of them. The old couple, the Christies, had understood this, so they had let them stay in their house so they could get acclimatized to being dead. But now it was time for them to move on. A fact the real estate agent, Mrs. Fulbright, had been trying to get them to accept for well over an hour. The Christies had stepped out to let them talk about the Greens’ options, but they would soon be back, and Mrs. Fulbright needed to have a decision by then.

It didn’t look like she was going to make it.

Mrs. Fulbright, who had been a mezzo-soprano in life and was used to diva-ish behavior, had experienced this reluctance before, but not to the degree of the Greens.

“You need to accept the fact that you’re dead and have moved on, and move on so the Christies can get back to living their regular deaths.”

“But this is our home,” Sally said.

Mrs. Fulbright, whose patience was considerable, tried a different tack, “I know, but things have changed. Before, you were a nice couple living in a ranch-style two-bedroom house that had previously been owned by an elderly couple, the Christies. And it was okay that you were living there because the Christies were dead, and you were alive. But now that you’ve crossed over, the house is the Christies’ again... Or rather it still was their house, and you just didn’t know it because they were a nice couple not particularly interested in haunting you. But, now that both of you are on this side of the veil, you have to move.”

“I understand that, but I just don’t see why we can’t all live there,” Quentin said, moving his jaw with his hand. His head had been crushed in the accident, and now his jaw didn’t work properly without assistance.

“Yes, that’s exactly it,” Sally concurred, who had faired much better in the accident, though every so often she had to readjust to keep her guts from falling out.

Mrs. Fulbright sighed. She had been a suicide, so her head was tilted at an angle from the noose. “You can’t live with them, as I explained. They’re an elderly couple and they have different mores than yours. They believe in sleeping in separate rooms, and they’ve only been using the one bedroom temporarily. They need to get back to their deaths, and so do you. Someplace else.”

“Okay, explain again what our options are,” Sally said.

Mrs. Fulbright, sensing weakness, quickly zeroed in, “Your options are very simple: you can choose to wander eternally, or you can allow me to put you in a nice place of your own, where you can live out your days on this plane of existence. And I can assure you that wandering aimlessly can get tiresome very quickly.”

Quentin asked, “Okay. What do we need to do?”

Mrs. Fulbright was on surer territory here, “Well, first, we have to decide what level of haunting you’re interested in.”

Sally said, “I still don’t understand what you mean by that.”

“Well, you have to decide how much you want to trouble the living. Are you more interested in quietly sharing a space with living people? Or do you want to scare the crap out of them on a regular basis?”

“Well, I for one am not entirely sure we could scare anyone,” Quentin said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure, Mr. Green. I mean, just looking at you would be enough to scare most sane people, and you will get some training in haunting should you choose a ‘haunted’ house.”

Sally said, “I just don’t know...”

“Listen, I can tell both of you are pretty attached to this place, but you can be certain you’ll get attached to whatever house you end up in. And you’ll have a great deal more privacy.”

“Okay, but like Quentin said, I don’t know if either of us would be any good at haunting.”

“Well, you don’t have to haunt anyone, but… I’ve been at this a while and my most satisfied customers are always those that choose to be active apparitions. Especially those who feel they have unfinished business on the other side, which, I assume, you both have.”

“That is true,” Quentin said.

“And besides, whether or not you’re successful at haunting doesn’t matter. The important thing is to keep yourselves busy as you wait out eternity.”

“Honey, should we do it?” Sally asked.

“You know, why not? Let’s see what kind of listings you’ve got for haunted houses, Mrs. Fulbright,” Quentin said.

Mrs. Fulbright brought out her binder containing all of her listings.

“Now, I have to ask you a few questions to get us started. How intensely do you want to haunt?”

“I don’t quite get you,” Quentin said.

“Well, for instance, I have this nice Victorian in upstate New York. The current haunters moved to Florida. You might have heard of it: the James’ Place.”

Sally said, “Of course we’ve heard of it. Wasn’t that movie, A Haunting in New York, about the house?”

“Exactly.”

“But the house is supposed to be haunted by the original owner, who killed all those Indians with smallpox-laden blankets,” Quentin commented.

“Yes, and don’t forget the Indians themselves,” Sally added.

“Yes, they did haunt the place originally, but that was several ghosts ago. Since then, I alone have placed the house with three different sets of ghosts, and now it’s on the market again. It’s perfect for a young, angry, dead couple, such as yourselves.”

“But I don’t see how it’s supposed to work. We aren’t the original ghosts.”

“Don’t worry about that. To the living we all look alike anyway. No, the point is to do spooky things on a regular basis to keep the breathers happy.”

“Like what?” Sally asked.

“Well, blood oozing down the walls is always good. Insect swarms... Intermittent manifestations... You know, that sort of thing.”

“I see...” Quentin said thoughtfully.

The young couple looked at the house, which was a brick affair built in a Victorian manner. It had three stories, plus a cellar, and in the notes it had supposedly been built on the grounds of an Indian burial ground. It wasn’t particularly well cared-for, but for ghosts a “fixer-upper” meant completely different things. It was big and imposing, and it did look perfect for driving people mad with fear.

However, Quentin did have a reservation. “It seems perfect. What’s the catch?”

“Oh, nothing two young people, like yourselves, couldn’t handle. You see, the previous tenants just got wore out. Hundreds of people visit the place during the year, and that doesn’t include any possible living occupants. It is landmark, and that movie didn’t help things. Frankly, all the haunting exhausted them, but this was their third haunting, so they really bit off more than they could chew to begin with. And it is currently vacant of living people. Frankly, I think you’ll really only have to make an appearance every couple of months for the ghost hunters. The rest of the time, you’ll have the place to yourselves.” Mrs. Fulbright didn’t mention that she had no control over the living people who moved in and that she couldn’t guarantee that the Greens would have the house to themselves. But she tried to be as honest as she could beyond that fact.

“I don’t know. Upper New York is really cold in the winter...” Sally said.

“If it’s a warm-climate you’re looking for, I have a gothic plantation in Louisiana with several voodoo curses thrown in that would be fun.”

“I’m just not sure we’re ready for such a big house, and we really haven’t had any time to learn how to haunt properly,” Quentin said.

“Oh, you’ll pick it right up,” Mrs. Fulbright said, fearing the sale would go south.

“I think you’re right, honey. Do you have anything smaller, or at least not so intense?”

There goes the big sale, Mrs. Fulbright thought as she paged through her binder.

“Of course... Here’s a murder-suicide, two-bedroom, one-and-a-half bathroom apartment. And it’s fully furnished.”

“Anything else?” Quentin asked.

“I do have a nice little cottage that’s a portal to another dimension, but I wouldn’t advise it. In my experience, old ones from beyond tend to make lousy neighbors.”

“How much time do we have to decide, by the way?” Sally asked.

“Not long. The Christies are eager to have their place to themselves again,” Mrs. Fulbright said, knowing that she was just as eager to make a sale.

She tried another tactic. “Listen, I know the bigger places seem pretty ominous, but you have the rest of eternity ahead of you. Do you really want to spend it in a small apartment? And, I can assure you, the big places may look hard. But imagine trying to be scary in a modern closet filled with shoes and clothes. No, the big houses have an ambience that can’t be beat. What’s more, it’s not like someone is grading you. You don’t scare anybody, fine. Just work on it. You’ve got plenty of time, something you didn’t have when alive. So, live a little. You’ve got the time to do so.”

Quentin seemed to appreciate this, and he went back to the James’ Place, “These intermittent appearances... What’s involved in that?”

“That’s quite easy actually. You just allow the people to see you out of the corner of their eye, and then you sneak up on them. And Boo! Easy as pie. I really think the James’ Place has potential for you.”

“You really think so?” Sally asked.

“Yes, and as a bonus, you can sublet the basement out to demons. They’ll take care of most of the scary stuff, and you’ll be left to relax.”

The Greens looked at each other, silently conferring. They made a decision.

“I think we’ll take it,” Quentin said as he grasped his wife’s hand.

“Excellent. I’ll draw up the paperwork, and I think you can move in by the end of the week."

Sally was still a little nervous, “But we won’t have to get into the hard-core haunting until later, right?”

Mrs. Fulbright wanted to completely reassure the young couple, “Of course. You’ll probably have a couple of months before anyone comes by, and at first it’ll only be teenagers on a dare. No, you won’t have to do anything serious until Halloween.”

“Okay,” Sally said, reassured.

“Great,” Mrs. Fulbright said as she got up to leave. She knew the young couple would have good times ahead of them, but she also knew that they had some harder times ahead, too. Regardless, part of her envied them just getting started out in death because it had been a long time since anything novel had happened to her. Death was like that. They would learn that hard truth, as well. But for now they were moving on to something exciting and terrifying at the same time.

Dead or not, they had their whole lives ahead of them.