The Frighteners by Michael Jahn Read Free Book Online Page B

return to their original shape. Stuart wobbled backward off the driveway, tripped over a pile of bricks, and fell into the bushes that Bannister let grow wild on all sides of the house.
    “You clowns left me high and dry tonight,” Bannister said angrily. “I arrive at the house and there’s nothing happening. You guys are just sitting around watching. I couldn’t believe it.”
    “We actually strained our backs lifting the bed, Frank,” Stuart complained.
    “All I get is complaints,” Bannister replied.
    “And if you think that was rough, you should try to create the magic-carpet effect yourself,” Cyrus said. “It’s hard enough lifting a bed. But it’s a bitch and a half making the damn blankets go like Aladdin was cruising the Persian Gulf on top of them.”
    “You could have swung some more cupboards open,” Bannister sad. “You could have flashed a few lights. It looks like Martha Stewart’s kitchen in there, for Chrissake. Dancing knives and forks—gimme a break.”
    “Our backs were hurting by then,” Stuart protested, rubbing his own for effect.
    “I’ve gotta have something I can work with if I hope to get money out of these people,” Bannister said.
    He fished his keys out of his pocket and walked up to the front door. Bannister unlocked it and flung it open, even as Stuart was struggling back to his feet. Cyrus jived in the door behind Bannister.
    “Frank!” Stuart yelled. “I didn’t go to college to spend the rest of my life haunting people.”
    He picked himself up from the bushes, nervously brushing imaginary leaves from himself. He said, “Frank . . . you gotta check me for tick bites. I think I got Lyme in there.”
    Stuart ran toward the door, which Bannister slammed in his face. At first, the emanation was flattened against the door, as flat as a pancake, then he passed straight through the wood and began chasing Bannister down a hallway filled with antiques and memorabilia collected from what might have been a thousand haunted houses.
    “I’m pretty sure a tick bit me on the leg,” Stuart continued, hiking up a pants leg and hopping down the hall after his boss and friend.
    Frank turned and faced him, saying, “You’re dead, you hypochondriacal nut. If a tick could bite you, it would choke on the ectoplasm.”
    “Humor me. I don’t feel as dead as I look.”
    Sighing, Frank bent over and inspected the emanation’s ankle. Stuart’s leg got thinner as the man looked at it until at last Bannister was able to make out the umbrella stand he had picked up at that ranch-style house in Portland.
    “You’ll live, so to speak,” Bannister said.
    “Thank God.” Stuart shook his leg to get the pants to fall back into place, but in so doing banged his foot on the umbrella stand. “Jesus, this place has too many knick-knacks.”
    “The man likes to collect junk,” Cyrus chimed in.
    “Sometimes people pay me in furniture,” Bannister said. “The problem with convincing them that a ghost is making their umbrella stand do triple axles in the hall is that a lot of the time they don’t want it around anymore. So they give it to me in lieu of money. Did you know that umbrella stand once sat by the front door of a Newport mansion?”
    “I don’t care, Frank,” Stuart said. “I can’t go on like this. We haunt a house. You chase us out of the house. You collect. And nobody gets any respect.”
    “We ain’t gettin’ any younger,” Cyrus added.
    Bannister said, “Listen, guys. I got a lot of creditors knocking on my door. If I go under, you go under—six feet under, back in the cemetery.”
    Stuart looked horrified. “You wouldn’t send us back!”
    “Don’t say that, even kiddin’ around,” Cyrus said. “I mean, I been there and done that, y’dig?”
    “No,” Bannister said. “The gravedigger dug. I dug you up and have been supporting you ever since. And all I ask is a little help.”
    “You can’t send us back to the cemetery, man. It’s a jungle down