The *** House

I didn't know what footage of the house had actually made it into Billie Dean's pilot, nor did I really care, but it brought a frightening amount of traffic to the house. Whether they were potential buyers, wannabe psychics, or teenagers out for a good scare, they all wanted to catch a glimpse of some kind of paranormal activity inside these walls. It was three full years before things seemed to have a semblance of normalcy. As normal as it could be, anyways. We were all dead, after all.

Billie Dean herself had come back at irregular intervals throughout the years. She didn't try any more exorcisms, but she checked in on us and treated us as old friends. Constance always followed her on these visits, ensuring that every ghost in the house would still remain here when the medium left again. Constance herself seemed to have aged terribly as of late. She no longer told Tate anything about Michael, though I did overhear her telling Travis once that the boy was growing harder to control by the day. After I had backed out of the attempted exorcism, Constance seemed to appreciate me even more. Though we hadn't spoken in months, she smiled at me every single time she came around.

Moira eventually came to terms with her entrapment inside these walls. She spent more and more of her time with the Harmons, as Vivien was her best friend. I, on the other hand, began to spend less and less time with them. Tate felt out of place in their company, and I felt like his well-being should have come first. I still had the occasional day with Violet, but I gave up on my therapy completely. It wasn't helping anyways. Tate now trailed behind me almost all the time, so that if I lost my head he could hold me back. He did so willingly, putting up with my insults and putrid language until I calmed down and returned to myself. He kept me safe. In turn, he also kept the rest of the house safe. It was really too bad that the others would likely never forgive him for his past deeds. He really had changed.

We sat in the study, playing Scrabble and talking. Halloween had rolled around once again, and the house was quiet. It was a nice break from feeling so smothered all the time. For the past two years, Tate and I had stayed in the house on Halloween. It was the closest we would ever come to being alone. During the daylight, it was easy to forget that we were prisoners here, and that within hours the walls would once again be packed full of vengeful spirits. When the sun went down, however, we had work to do. Teens often flocked to the building after their costume parties were over. The first year after the TV show had aired, when Tate and I had spent the night wandering the streets and commenting on what had changed since we'd lived there, we'd returned home to find a small group of thrillseekers going through the ancient jars of canned goods in the basement. Before the others had arrived home, we'd lured Beau downstairs and sent him off to play. It had only taken a moment for the kids to run screaming from the house. Though at the time it had seemed like the smartest idea we could come up with, it had since given the house an even worse reputation. Now it was a popular Halloween prank for teens to dare their friends to go down into the basement. After sunset, Tate and I would head down there to keep watch.

For now, things were simple. We were usually left to our own devices now, so long as we avoided the basement, so most of our days were spent like this. Despite the fact that our limited selection of board games often grew repetitive and dull, I had to admit that I was getting really good at Scrabble. Tate used to beat me every time without fail, and now he only claimed victory about half of the time.

"Triple word score. Read it and weep," I smirked, laying down the last Scrabble tile in my word.

Tate frowned lightly, causing a small ridge to form between his eyes. "I let you win, you know."

I nodded skeptically. "Right, sure you did. Just like you did last time, huh?"

He began cleaning up the letter tiles and replacing them in the box. "What can I say? I like the way you smile when you think that you win."

"What a coincidence; I like the way you pout when you lose."

"I do not pout!"

I handed him the top of the board game box. "You pout. You're doing it right now. That's how I know that you didn't let me win," I waggled my eyebrows at him.

He finished packing up the game, ignoring my pointed comment. The late afternoon sun slanted in between the Venetian blinds in the study, casting several horizontal shadows across his face. There was a playful smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. He was happy, and that fact made me feel good about myself. I had no idea where the two of us would have been if I'd really tried to go through with the exorcism. Likely, Tate never would have forgiven me. Both of us would have been absolutely miserable. Still, I often found myself daydreaming about where I would have been in life if I'd never gotten mugged that one night.

"It's weird to think that I should be almost done college," I mused, looking away from Tate and staring out the window.

"If it means anything, I'm sorry that you can't experience that stuff. It was never for me, but I could see you liking it."

I rested my chin on the palm of my hand, drumming my fingertips against my cheek to a tuneless beat. "How old would you be?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tate shrug. He gathered up the game box and put it away on the nearest bookshelf. "Does it matter? Neither of us is getting any older."

I cleared my throat, snapping out of my stupor and watching the flecks of dust dance in the fading beams of light. As odd as I sometimes found Moira to be, I was eternally grateful that she was constantly cleaning this place up. "Right," I agreed with him, sitting up a little straighter. "I wasn't ready to grow up, anyway."

Tate sat down beside me. He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him. I leaned my head against his chest. "Now you'll never have to," he murmured.

For a moment I felt like dwelling on the topic. There was so much that I would never get to do in life. But there was no sense holding onto all of those imagined losses. It was stupid, really. I'd already mourned the loss of my family, comforting myself with the idea that they were better off without me. Now there was no way that I could burden some innocent guy, or bring poor unsuspecting children into this world. I would just stay here with Tate, and I knew that he could handle me.

The front door - which had warped over the past few years from a lack of upkeep and now had swelled too big to fit properly into the door frame - flew open from what seemed to be a well-thrown shoulder. I looked up, hardly surprised by the intrusion.

"They're early this year," I muttered, pulling gently away from Tate and getting to my feet.

"It's not even dark yet," Tate grumbled. His tone implied that maybe these particular kids weren't as brave as they were pretending to be. In a few moments, they would be even less so.

I watched from the archway between the study and the main foyer as three kids, who couldn't have been older than fourteen, crept into the house. One of them was dressed as some kind of superhero that I didn't recognize, but he seemed to be the most fearful of the bunch. He was visibly shaking and kept reaching out as though he wanted to cling to the boy who walked directly in front of him. He always stopped himself just before making contact. The small group of boys inched their way toward the basement door. I folded my arms, sighing audibly as the one leading the queue reached for the doorknob.

The superhero looked back, surprised by the sound of my heavy breath. His eyes were wide and seemed to pop out from his tiny face. I didn't think he had even hit puberty yet.

"What are you doing here?" I asked casually.

The boy fought for words. "We, um, came to see the, um, basement?" His timid voice rose at the end, turning his statement into an uncertain question.

"And you didn't think to ask the people who live here if it's okay for you to come into their house uninvited?" I countered, using my most authoritative voice. I could feel Tate's presence as he came up behind me.

"N-nobody lives here," the boy stammered. The other two in front of him had stopped dead, and were simply gaping at me.

I raised a hand and gestured between myself and Tate. "We do."

The boy who had first reached the stairway let out a disbelieving chortle. I wondered how he could possibly sound so cocky when he had appeared so stunned only moments before. "No one can live in this house more than a night. That's common knowledge."

"That's funny," I retorted. "Because I've been here... what is it now, three and a half years?" I asked, looking up at Tate. He nodded in response, and I continued. "And Tate here, well he's been here for about a quarter of a century. And that's not including the years he lived here before the shooting."

"What?" The boy didn't look so confident now. His face had lost all of its colour, and his complexion looked chalky.

I disappeared from their sight and reappeared on the other side of the stairs. The pale boy was now right in front of me. I leaned in close, hissing in his ear. "If you're afraid of us, you should see the ghosts downstairs."

He squeezed his eyes shut, whispering reassuring notions under his breath to calm himself down. "Ghosts don't exist, this is a trick. They're not real, they can't hurt you."

I grew impatient, pushing the boy aside swiftly and opening the door to the basement. "Be my guest, really. There is nothing I love more than getting some new dead bodies stinking up this place on Halloween."

Despite the contact that I'd made with him, the boy kept talking to himself. His eyes remained closed. He had somehow managed to effectively blind himself to what was going on. Tate crossed the room quickly, picking the boy up by the front of his old-fashioned jacket. The kid looked like he was dressed as a Civil War era soldier for the holiday. I couldn't stop my mind from wandering; hadn't kids dressed as much cooler things than that when I had been alive?

Tate shoved the boy up against the banister of the stairs behind him, his voice low and dangerous. "If you don't leave now, you'll die." After his chilling words, he vanished from them, letting the boy fall hapharzardly down to the floor. When he picked himself up, his brave facade had disappeared as well. His breathing was rapid and laboured, and I thought I could see the shine of tears in his eyes.

I waved at them in a patronizing manner. "Bye bye now," I said.

Finally, after a moment of complete shock, the young boy screamed. The trio fled, leaving the front door wide open in their wake. I walked over and closed it behind them. Sunset had arrived, and the air outside was cooling rapidly.

"That was easier than I'd anticipated," I said.

"The braver ones always come later. Then we'll have our work cut out for us."

I nodded my agreement. "Just like every other year."

Tate smiled. The gesture was small, and exposed how content he was. He wasn't taking any kind of glee from this, he was simply doing what he had to in order to protect people. "And just like every year down the road."

We settled back into the study, waiting for the next batch of high school kids to show up looking to prove their worth. When they showed up, we would be ready. And until then, I was quite alright with just sitting with Tate the way that we always did. The way that we would continue to every night.

Forever.