Home Improvement: Undead Edition

stairs so fast Rick wouldn’t have thought their feet touched the wood if he hadn’t heard the noise of it.

The big guy backed away from the ghost, his hands raised, and Rick jumped to his feet, realizing even as he did that it was too late. The ghost had almost reached the stairs. It would be blocking his way in another second, and he didn’t particularly rate his chances on getting past it. It would attack him, kill him, try to steal his life for itself . . . Every hair on his body stood on end. It was like he could feel each individual air molecule hitting them.

“Ain’t can hurt you less’n it gots a weapon,” the big guy muttered as he kept backing up.

The ghost’s hands were thankfully empty, but the chances of them staying that way were pretty impossible. Shards of wood littered the floor, and the ghost would probably spot them—and lunge for them—in about two seconds.

Funny how something so ephemeral, something that looked like nothing more than a person-shaped blob of light, could be so full of hate. So terrifying. Especially when it was so clearly female, tall and slender in a long gown, hair piled high upon its head. It had been a lovely woman once, he thought—he guessed, because the expression on her translucent face was so angry and contemptuous it made him shiver.

She stood there, looking back and forth between Rick and the big guy. Probably trying to decide which of them to kill first. And with Rick’s luck, it would probably be him.

Sure enough, she lunged for him. Rick stumbled in his haste to jump back, fell to the floor with a teeth- rattling thud.

She advanced toward him; he crawled back, an awkward crablike movement over the slippery pile of rotted floorboards. He didn’t want to die like this, didn’t want this dilapidated husk of a house to be the last place he saw—

Something black swung through the ghost. She shrieked—she didn’t shriek, no sound came out, but her mouth opened and her entire form wavered and expanded.

The big guy stood with a bar in his hands like a baseball bat. Not just a bar. It was the curtain rod from the window, and it must have been made of iron, because when he swung it again the ghost stepped back.

He glanced at Rick again. “Get up. Take this. Gotta make me a call.” A call? Like on the phone? Was he crazy? “Shouldn’t we just get out of here, I mean—”

“Think it ain’t gonna chase us? Take this. Now.”

The sweat on his skin didn’t help him grip the thing. Nor did the growing idea that if he slipped up the ghost wasn’t the only one in the room who might kill him.

“Don’t quit on the swingin’, dig? You quit swingin’, we both of us die.”

“No pressure,” Rick muttered, but he did as he was told, ignoring the frantic pounding of his heart.

Behind him the big guy started talking. “Hey. Naw, gots us a problem. Naw, naw, I’m right, but us got a ghost here. Guessing—aye. Aye, no worryin’. Got an iron bar, keeping it back. Aye.”

Rick’s shoulders had already started to ache by the time he heard the phone click shut. The ghost, infuriated now, grew bigger and looser, in some horrible way that he couldn’t let himself think about, every time the bar sliced through it. The bar itself started to burn his hands, heating further with each pass through the ghost.

“Got somebody comin’ help us out, dig. You need a rest-up?”

“What?” Swing. Swing. “No. I’m fine.”

“You sure? Them arms lookin’ shaky.”

“I’m sure.”

If he were honest, his shoulders were killing him, and the burning iron bar threatened to slip out of his grasp entirely. But nothing in the world could have induced him to admit it. Not yet, at least.

He didn’t know how long he kept at it. Ten minutes, fifteen? Long enough for the loud, clattery music from the street outside to change a few times. He found a rhythm; swipe at the ghost, wait until it almost re-formed, swipe again. But he couldn’t deny that his arms felt as if they were about to fall off, and finally when the big guy asked again if he wanted a break, he nodded.

Of course, the girl arrived about thirty seconds after that, just as Rick was letting cold water splash over his face and down the front of his shirt to rinse off the dust and sweat. Great. Who didn’t want to look like a drool- covered baby in front of women?

She was slim—almost too slim, as if she didn’t eat much—and pale, with thick black hair cut like a pinup model and thick black eyeliner to match. Despite the heat she wore skinny black jeans over a pair of battered Chucks, and the red of her T-shirt peeked through little holes in the gray cardigan covering her arms. A canvas bag, faded green like an antique army bag, hung off her shoulder. In her hand was a canister of some kind.

What was a girl doing here?

He stumbled to his feet. “Hey, um, miss, you shouldn’t be—there’s a ghost here, you should—”

She cocked an eyebrow. What was it with people looking at him like that? “I can see that.”

“That’s Chess,” the big guy said. “She get rid of the ghost, aye?”

“How hot’s that bar?” She walked toward the ghost, inspecting it; her thumb flipped open the top of the canister.

“Ain’t cold.”

She smiled. “No, I guess it wouldn’t be.”

“Is that normal, for the bar to get hot?” Yes, it was dorky. But so? He, Rick, had done most of the ghost- swatting, and now Mr. Greaser was getting all the credit. In front of a girl who, okay, maybe she wasn’t the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen, but she was pretty.

And despite the holes in the sweater and the ratty shoes and makeup, he didn’t think she—no. She didn’t talk like them, that weird patois, so she must not live in Downside. So who knew, right? Why not talk to her? “Because it wasn’t when I started using it, but by the time I handed it over to him, it was.”

“Yeah, that’s normal. It’s the energies mixing.” Her bag sank to the floor with a sort of crunchy thud.

“Your name is Chess?”

She nodded.

“I’m Rick.” He started to get up and extend his hand, but she was already moving away. She whispered something under her breath and upended the canister, dumping something white onto the floor. Salt, he realized, when she started creating a circle around the ghost.

“Little faster, Terrible,” she murmured. “I don’t want it to notice.”

Oh, wait. The guy’s name was Terrible? Really? Didn’t anyone in Downside have a normal name? An adjective and a board game. Sure. Why not?

Terrible kept swinging at slightly shorter intervals, checking his backswing while Chess walked around behind him. Her head was down, watching the line as it poured into place; when she was finished, Terrible and the ghost stood within a circle five feet or so around.

She whispered something else, then looked up. “Okay, get out whenever you’re ready. Just don’t—well, you know.”

Terrible nodded, glanced down, and started backing up. Oh, right. The salt line would—wait. Normal people couldn’t do that, right?

Sure, just about every house had a jar of Church-salt in the cabinets; like a copy of the Book of Truth, it was practically given to people at birth. Well, no practically about it, really. Copies of the Book of Truth and jars of Church-salt were standard gifts for baby Naming ceremonies. Rick had one of each himself. And supposedly if you ever saw a ghost coming for you, you could throw the stuff at it and it would give you a few seconds to make a getaway if you could.

But normal people could not create binding circles like the one Terrible was now stepping carefully out of.

Who the hell was that girl?

“Okay.” She knelt and started marking the floor with what looked like a piece of black crayon or something, scrawling an intricate little symbol just outside the salt circle. The ghost re-formed inside it, its outlines clearing and defining again. When the girl leaned over and started drawing the same symbol inside the circle, the ghost swiped at her head with one long-nailed hand.

Rick gasped, then immediately regretted it when she just kept working. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Not really. It doesn’t have the energy to make itself solid, and nothing like a weapon or anything to solidify