"What movie were you watching that got you thinking about ghosts?"

Oops. I hadn't quite thought this plan through. I'd figured if I could start a conversation on the topic, then drop in that odd things had been going on in the house, I might be able to gauge Tony and Jeannie's opinion on whether I was, you know, crazy. But now that I'd gotten a suspicious reaction on my first foray (which, admittedly, had been clumsy), I instinctively backed off.

"Um . . . what's the name . . . ?" I had no idea where I was heading. From somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I was hoping to conjure up a nonthreatening ghost movie, but I really didn't want to use Casper if I didn't have to. "You know, the one with the really benign ghosts. A man and a woman." Why not? It would make the lie easier to remember.

"Topper?" Tony asked.

"That's right!" I pointed at him like a game show host. "It was Topper." Had I ever seen Topper? "It got me to wondering why ghosts are usually supposed to be so dangerous. I mean, not all dead people are going to be pissed off and violent, right? Some of them might just like hanging around the old neighborhood for a while."

Jeannie laughed. "Only you would see things that way, Alison. Ghosts are scary."

"So you think there are ghosts?" My best friend was leaving the door wide-open for me, the dear girl.

Jeannie almost spat out a mouthful of soy-covered noodles. "Of course not!" she said. "I'm talking about in movies, books, stuff like that." She swallowed and chuckled low. "Do I think there are ghosts? You kill me, Alison." I could have, at just that moment.

"Oh, I don't know." Tony was looking thoughtful, which he does better than most, because he's actually thinking. "I've heard some stories that make you wonder. Friend of mine swears she heard the voice of her husband on the day of his funeral. And she says six friends of hers called her that night to tell her they'd heard it at the same time."

"It's silly," Jeannie gave back. "People just don't want to let their loved ones go. When someone they love dies, they don't want to admit the person's gone forever. So they comfort themselves with a story about spirits and ghosts hanging around, giving them a chance to have a conversation with a loved one who can't say anything except what they want them to say." She waved a hand to declare the whole subject absurd.

"Well, what if it's not a loved one? What if the person thought they saw, or heard, someone they'd never met before?" I had no emotional stake in seeing Paul Harrison or Maxie Malone, after all.

Tony cocked an eyebrow. "Did this *person' have a big ol' bucket of joint compound fall on her head recently?"

I stuck out my lips in rebellion. "What did I say when you asked me that question the last time?" I asked.

"Name one actor who was in Topper," he countered.

"Oh, Tony, seriously," I folded my arms across my chest. "I'm not playing this game." Not when I didn't have immediate access to IMDb, I wasn't.

This time, Jeannie did rescue me. "Stop it, honey," she told her husband. "Alison's had a rough couple of days." She had no idea. "Don't tease her."

"Look, fortune cookies!" I said, reaching for the five cookies we'd left in the center of the table and trying hard to change the subject.

"Just take one!" Jeannie warned. "It's bad luck for someone else to hand you your fortune."

"Oh," Tony teased. "So you don't believe in ghosts, but fortune cookie luck is scientifically provable, huh?" Jeannie didn't answer.

Melissa must have heard our conversation, because she turned her head toward me and narrowed her eyes. Wendy kept talking about getting wigs that matched.

To change the subject, I took one cookie and gestured that everyone else should do the same. Wendy walked over to get one, and Tony and Jeannie were reaching as I opened the little plastic bag with my teeth. Jeannie always orders from Golden Sun because they have the chocolate fortune cookies we both adore.

"Hey! *Your smile illuminates the lives of those around you.' " Jeannie grinned beatifically. "What do you think?"

"I think you got my fortune cookie," Tony answered, and read from his own. "This one says, *You are a good and stalwart friend.' Now, how is that a fortune? That's just a compliment." He shook his head. "How about you, Alison?"

I broke open the cookie and pulled out the little slip of paper.

It read, "New acquaintances need your assistance."

I looked at Melissa. "Would you mind if I took your cookie?" I asked.

Six.

Wendy's mom, Barbara, had invited Melissa for a sleepover on a Saturday night because Barbara thinks I'm a single mother who needs time off to have a social life. Silly Barbara.

So, on my second night in Jeannie's guest room, right before exhaustion won the battle with anxiety, I decided I'd go to the house the next morning and confront my fears.

Mostly, that meant I'd be tackling the furnace to see why the heating system was so sluggish. But if there happened to be some out-of-focus imaginary people who claimed to be dead on the premises, well, as the owner of a respectable guesthouse, I'd certainly have to confront that, too.

That morning, after a decent amount of sleep and homemade pancakes (Tony is a good cook when he sticks to the basics), I thanked everyone yet again, hopped into my trusty Volvo station wagon around nine a.m., and drove to my home away from home-HouseCenter-where I dropped even more of my money. Then I stopped for some coffee. Then I drove to Oceanside Park and sat on a bench drinking the coffee. Read the paper. Did the crossword puzzle. Went and got some lunch.

But it wasn't like I was avoiding my responsibilities at the house. I got there about two, I'd say.

I took an extra-deep breath before unlocking the back door leading into the kitchen. And when I walked inside, I exhaled with relief.

There was no one there.

I took off my old denim jacket and dropped it on the floor. There was no point in looking for a clean spot-every surface downstairs had the same coating of dust. The jacket was used to it.

Okay. The nightmare was over. I could start in on the furnace (probably another nightmare in the making). But maybe I should get my feet wet with something a little less complicated. There was still that wall-to-wall carpet to pull up in the living room, and the woodwork was certainly dry enough by now.

It felt like-and I know this is a cliche-an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I was downright jaunty as I ambled into the living room, hammer and screwdriver in hand.

And there were Paul and Maxie, actually floating about a foot off the floor. Just as transparent as they'd been yesterday. And the day before.

"Alison!" Paul shouted, sounding worried. "Where have you been?"

"You are not there," I said. I decided that would be my mantra. "You are not there."

"Of course we're here," Maxie said disgustedly. "What we want to know is where you've been."

"They are not there." I changed the mantra to make it even more definitive. If I didn't acknowledge them, they weren't there. It was that simple.

"This is hopeless," Maxie said, presumably to Paul. I wasn't looking. Instead, I began pulling at a loose corner on the carpet near the door.

"Alison!" Paul shouted. "I know you can hear me. Stop it! We need your help!"

"You're not really there." Oops. I'd forgotten not to answer.

Paul sounded irritated with me. "Oh, we're really here," he said.

"You're not. I read about you in the paper. You're dead. So clearly, you're not here, and I'm not going to talk to you anymore." I had the cutout by the door almost entirely carpet free, and started pulling up the padding beneath it. After all the carpet was up, I could go around the perimeter with the screwdriver and hammer and pull up the tackless molding that had held the carpet in place. I bent down.

Paul walked over to me and knelt, or dropped, down so that he was looking directly into my face. "We know we're dead," he said calmly. "But we're here."

It was just too much. I was biting my lip so hard I tasted blood. But I wouldn't look.

"Look at me," he said slowly. "I'm here."

My eyes started to tear. My jaw was quivering. I couldn't look. And then there was a strange sensation, like a warm breeze, right in the vicinity of my chin. I looked down and saw his finger trying to raise my chin up to face him.

"Look," Paul said.

I couldn't hold it in any longer. "No!" I practically wailed. "Don't you understand? If you're really here, then I'm either crazy or I'm hurt much worse than I thought, and I can't face that now. I have too much . . . my daughter needs me, and I . . . you can't be here."

And then I did the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life. I looked Paul straight in the face.

He was there. He was fuzzy and kinda see-through, but he was there. And my stomach dropped to the floor. He looked so terribly sympathetic, like he wished he wasn't there, just so I wouldn't be so upset.

"I'm sorry," was all he said.

But with those words, with that tone, with that accent (Canadian? English?), came a terrible, terrible truth-these two people were here, they were dead, and they were in my new house. So this was what a concussion could do to you.

"I am crazy, or seriously hurt," I said. "I have a brain injury."

"No, you're not," Paul told me quietly, in a soothing tone. "There's nothing wrong with you. There's something wrong with us. We're dead."

"I don't understand . . . anything," I said.

"Neither do we," Maxie responded. That wasn't much help.

"It's true," Paul said. "We don't know what happened to us. We don't understand what's going on. But we've been stuck here in this house for almost a year. And when you started in last week with the repairs and the construction, we thought you might be able to help us."

I closed my eyes. "So one of you dropped a bucket of compound on my head to get me to help you?"

There was loud knocking on the kitchen door, and through the window I could see Tony standing on the back stoop. Paul and Maxie both turned and looked.

"Who's he?" Maxie asked. She grinned, which was kind of scary. "He's cute."

"He's taken," I answered reflexively. "Besides, you're dead."

"Doesn't mean I can't look."

"Get rid of him," Paul hissed. "We need to talk."

"What do you mean, *get rid of him'? He's here to help me." I figured Tony could also prove my sanity-if he saw the two ghosts, then I wasn't crazy.

I walked to the door and unlocked it. "Thank goodness you're here," I told Tony.

"More self-crumbling plaster?" he asked.

"He's better than cute," Maxie said.

"Calm down," I warned her.

"I'm perfectly calm," Tony said. "I was just joking about your plaster."

"He can't see or hear us," Paul told me, hovering next to Tony. "Only you can."

I stared at him. "Why?"

"Because you asked me to come here and look at some wall with a big ol' hole in it, and this time, I'm happy to say, you're awake and not bleeding," Tony said. "That's why."

"How am I supposed to know?" Paul answered. "You think they give us a handbook? We died, and when we woke up, we were here. There's no welcome wagon."

"What?"

"Is your head okay?" Tony asked. He looked at it like a large neon sign reading "INJURY" would present itself. None did.

"Tell him you're fine and to come back later," Paul said. "Or I'll let Maxie loose on him." Maxie looked very interested. She walked right up to Tony and ran her finger down his spine. He shivered, turned to look, then turned back to me. "Chills," he said. "Maybe you need to fix the furnace first."

"I was thinking that, too, but I can look at it myself," I told him. Paul was right-I had to get Tony out of here before Maxie did . . . something. Oh, damn: I was thinking of my two apparitions as real.

Maxie licked her lips in a way that suggested something other than hunger. For food.

"You'd better go," I told Tony.

"What? Don't you want me to look at that wall for you?"

"No! I mean, yes, I want you to look, but not now. I . . . have to go pick up Melissa at Wendy's." Yeah. That was it.

Tony chuckled. "So go. I can't look at a wall by myself?" He started toward the living room. Maxie was following him. Closely.

"No," I told him. "I don't ever want you left in this house by yourself."

Tony turned and considered me. "You're serious."

"You bet. Insurance. Anything happens and I'm liable. So come back later. I'll call you."

"If you hadn't stopped me to tell me to go away, I'd be gone already." Tony turned and, not waiting for a response, walked into the living room despite my protests.

Maxie tried to follow, but I held my ground in the doorway and hissed at her. "Step back."

Surprisingly, she did.

"Wow." I could hear Tony from the next room. "You weren't kidding about this wall. The plaster just fell down by itself?"

Maxie picked up a small rubber mallet from my toolbox and stroked it. She grinned at me nastily.

"Yeah," I said. "Spooky, huh?" I snarled, and Maxie put the mallet down.

"Could be trouble," Tony said, walking back into the kitchen. "All the best plasterers are dead."