Above the sword, a figure began to take shape. I stopped breathing. Over the past two days I’d seen the ghost a few times, but he was always shadowy and horrifying. I’d never actually seen what he looked like. Now, as he materialized above the sword, I could see him almost completely.

Heaven help me. He was beautiful.

Like sure, I was terrified out of my mind, but I could still appreciate his face. He looked late twenties, early thirties maybe. It was obvious that he’d been dead a long time—and I mean a really long time. His clothes were totally weird. He was wearing some sort of tunic-dress thing but the sleeves were what caught my attention. They were absurdly big. And I don’t mean billowy big, I mean you could sail a ship with them, big.

Even though he was just a few feet in front of me, he still looked kind of blurry. He was washed out, and a little see-through, but I could tell that his hair was dark brown, almost black. It hung in messy waves to his shoulders. He had a beard too, that was cut fairly short. His face was rugged, his cheekbones were positively glorious, and his eyebrow game was strong. They were settled low over his eyes, casting them in shadow. His nose was a little crooked, as if it had been broken once, and a jagged scar ran over it.

For a long time I could only stare. Here I was, face-to-face with a man who had lived centuries ago! He looked like a warrior that had just stepped out of the pages of a history book. His dark eyes bore into mine and I shivered. I couldn’t let myself get carried away. I had a purpose here tonight. I needed to get him to stop haunting me.

He tilted his head ever so slightly. “You claim to not fear me?” he asked.

My eyes widened. His voice wasn’t actually audible. That is, I wasn’t hearing it with my ears, but I could hear the words in my head. They were distinctly different from my own thoughts, because the voice wasn’t mine. I could, however, easily recognize it as the voice that had been muttering in my head for so long.

Oh heaven help me again. He had the most incredible accent I had ever heard.

It reminded me of a Scottish accent, but it seemed a little off. It was more ancient somehow, like it was from an older dialect. Whatever it was though, it was amazing.

Then it hit me that he’d asked a question.

“Uh, I—yes, I mean—” My brain shut down. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. “I’m not afraid of you,” I said at last. Opening my eyes, I saw that a grin had stretched across his mouth.

“Is that so?” he asked. He almost sounded amused.

“Yes,” I said, holding my head a little bit higher. For the past few days I’d been terrified out of my mind. But now, finally seeing the ghost, seeing just how human and beautiful he was, really did make me less afraid. If he’d intended to hurt me, he would have done it by now. There really wasn’t anything to be afraid of. I shrugged as I stared at him.

“Even the scariest stuff can get old when you see it too many times,” I said. “You freaked me out really bad for a couple of days, but now I’ve seen you. You’re not scary anymore.”

The ghost narrowed his eyes and I felt a sudden chill. Maybe I’d said the wrong thing.

“You do not fear me?” he asked again. The air seemed to get heavier. I’d really said the wrong thing.

“No,” I whispered, my voice weak. What had I been thinking? This was supposed to help the ghost move on, not goad him on further!

The candlelight sputtered as the ghost’s image contorted. I fell back, closing my eyes as I terrible laugh filled my head. The feeling in the room was getting creepier by the second. I’d made a very big mistake.

But then, as suddenly as it had come, the feeling disappeared. Hesitantly, I opened my eyes and looked around the dark room. The ghost was gone. For a whole minute I sat there, frozen in place as I waited for something more to happen. There was nothing. Rising to my feet, I crossed the room and turned on the light. I squinted in the harsh brightness.

Returning to the center of the room, I knelt down and blew out the flame. Even though I’d successfully contacted the ghost, I knew I was far from solving my problem. If anything, I’d just made it worse. Stamping out the smoking sage, I carried it and the candle over to my nightstand.

It was time to get ready for bed, but there was no way I was going to change into my pajamas in a room where I knew there could be a ghost lurking. Grabbing the clothes I needed, I headed to the bathroom and locked myself into a cramped bathroom stall. As soon as I had changed, I returned to my room. To my relief, there was still no sign of the ghost.

Now came the hard part—trying to fall asleep. It took every ounce of my courage to turn off my light and then dash to my bed. Lying down, I threw my blanket over me and waited. I knew something was coming. It was only a matter of time.

The light flickered on. With a start, I sat up and looked around. The ghost was nowhere to be seen. A few seconds later, the light went out again, but I remained sitting up. Sure enough, just a moment later, the light came on again. I folded my arms and frowned as the light went off and on again a few more times.

“That’s not going to work,” I said, glancing around the room. “Flickering lights is a little bit overdone, don’t you think? It’s not scary anymore.”

There was no verbal response, just the light going on and off, like clockwork. I furrowed my eyebrows. The flickering wasn’t scary, but it was incredibly annoying. It would be impossible to sleep like this. Pursing my lips, I climbed out of bed and pulled one of the boxes over to the middle of the room. Climbing on top of it, I reached for the light bulb. I could barely reach. It was difficult to unscrew because one moment I would be blinded by light, and the next, I would be blinking in the darkness. When I finally felt the bulb come loose, I gingerly climbed down from the box, the warm bulb still in hand. Picking my way through the darkness, I set the bulb down on the nightstand next to the candle.

“There,” I said, feeling satisfied, “try to beat that—”

As I turned to climb back into bed, I jumped in surprise. There, lying stretched across the middle of the mattress, was the ghost. His hands were resting behind his head and his eyes were closed, as if he’d been there all along. I stared at him for a long time, unsure of what to do.

“You’re in my spot,” I said when nothing else came to mind. As soon as the words escaped my mouth, I knew they were useless. This ghost was trying to drive me crazy. He knew exactly where he was laying.

He cracked one eye open and glanced at me. “No, I’m not quite,” he said. “I’m scarcely here at all. I’m dead, you see, and my body turned to dust long ago. Besides, you don’t fear me.”

I clenched my hands into fists. Stepping over to my bed, I pulled back the covers and before I could let myself think about what I was doing, I lay down and squeezed my eyes shut. I felt like I had voluntarily jumped into an ice bath. I was lying in the same place the ghost was. A shiver ran down my spine.

“Are you finding yourself quite comfortable?” he asked, his voice ringing through my head.

With a yell of frustration, I sat back up and glanced at him. He was still laying there, a smirk on his stupid, beautiful bearded face.

“Please move,” I begged. He didn’t respond. His eyes were closed. “Please,” I said again. “I’ve got work in the morning and I can’t sleep like this.”

Still no response. How I wished I could punch him.

“Fine,” I hissed through gritted teeth as I grabbed my pillow and blanket and pulled them off the bed, “be a butt-face.” Turning around, I made a bed on the floor.

As I lay down, I let out a deep breath. So this was his new plan. He couldn’t scare me to death, so he was going to annoy me to death. Well, two could play at that game.

***

The next morning I woke up feeling sore, but at least sleeping on my bedroom floor was better than the bathroom floor. Glancing up at my bed, I saw that the ghost was gone. My mouth twisted into a frown. I would kill him if he weren’t already dead.

I went to work that morning feeling like crap, but honestly, that was nothing new. As I was in the middle of cleaning my first room, singing suddenly erupted in my head. It was the ghost, obviously, and though I couldn’t see him anywhere, his singing was a definite sign that he was close. He was belting out a song in the weird gibberish language. After hearing his accent last night, I assumed it was some form of Gaelic. That, or whatever language was spoken in Scotland when it was still cool to wear knee length dresses with sleeves the size of China.

His singing went on endlessly, growing louder and louder until it drowned out all my other thoughts. After my lack of sleep the night before, it gave me a splitting headache. And on top of that, the electricity kept shorting out, making the vacuum not work and the lights flicker endlessly. My cell phone kept lighting up too, blasting a range of ringtones at full volume. Eventually, I had to leave it in my room.

For six days this continued. Six. Days. I couldn’t even gather enough of my frazzled mind to come up with a counter attack. Every single night the ghost would show up on my bed, taking up all the space. The second night I tried again to sleep on my bed despite his presence, but it was impossible. It was so cold and awkward. So, the floor it was.

Frankly, I was at a breaking point. The first few days here had been pretty bad. Being scared was no picnic, but now it was so much worse. The ghost was literally making me go insane. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a full night’s sleep.

On the seventh day, just as I was finishing up one of my last rooms, a lady in a long, cream colored dress ran down the hall to catch up with me.

“Excuse me for a minute,” she said. She did not look happy. My heart sank. Looking up, I tried to smile, but it was hard with the Scottish ballads still echoing through my skull.

“What can I do to help you?” I asked.

When she came to a stop in front of me, she folded her arms. “Are you the one who cleaned this room yesterday?” she asked.

My heart sank a little deeper. For the past few days I’d been working without Shelly’s help. Apparently I wasn’t doing a very good job. “Yes,” I whispered.

“Good,” she snapped. “I need you to reevaluate the effort that you put into your job. When I checked into this room today, I found some items in the dresser drawer.”

“I am so sorry,” I said in a rush. “A lot of the rooms have different furniture and sometimes I forget where I’ve looked and where I haven’t—”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses!” she said. Her voice was irritatingly shrill. The ghost’s singing had ceased and I was almost sad for it. I wished he was singing loud enough to drown her out altogether.

“I’m sorry,” I said through gritted teeth. “I can go through and clean your room again, if you’d like, and clear out all the drawers.”

“It’s too late for that,” she said with a derisive laugh. “I already emptied them. Do you know what I found in those drawers?” She was talking down to me like I was five. Leaning forward, she cupped her hand around her mouth as if she were telling me a secret. “There were adult items,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide as she stared at me. She waited for a moment, like she expected me to react with the same horror she obviously felt. When I gazed back at her expressionless, she grew angry. “What if one of my children had found that stuff? What would I say to them?”

I shrugged. “I guess you’d have to give them ‘the talk’ a few years early? I don’t know.”

Her face grew red as she stared at me. Honestly, I didn’t see what the big deal was, but this lady looked like she was about to explode.

“Excuse me?” she hissed. “Did you seriously just talk back to me like that? Is this how you treat all of the guests?” I took a step back as she advanced on me. I should have just kept my mouth shut. She was a guest, it didn’t matter that she was being rude and self-centered; I was still supposed to treat her like she was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

“N-no,” I stammered, “I’m sorry—”

“You will be sorry,” she interrupted. “If I have one more issue with this room I won’t hesitate to go to your manager and see that you’re replaced with someone remotely competent at their job. Do you understand, pumpkin?”

Pumpkin?! Who the freak did this lady think she was? I could feel my face burning red as I stared down at the floor. There was no way I could meet her eyes. If I looked at her face, I might be tempted to hit it. “Of course,” I muttered. With that, she turned around and left me alone in the hall.

My hands were shaking as I held onto the handles of my cleaning cart. I wanted to yell back at her and tell her off for being a self-centered jerk who had no clue about the crap I was already going through. I was furious! Getting a job here was supposed to be amazing and instead it was turning out to be the biggest mistake of my life. My eyes stung with unshed tears as I shoved my cart. Leaving it in the hall, I stormed away.