The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

damp hands on a checkerboard dishtowel, I followed Seymour’s fast-striding mailman legs out of his newly inherited retro kitchen and down the long hallway that led to the foyer.
    The party guests were long gone. As I’d promised Sadie, I remained behind to help clean. I was in no condition to drive myself home anyway. Not that I was seeing double, but things were definitely fuzzy around the edges, and I figured I could use the time to sober up.
    I also wanted the chance to look around. While Seymour was still entertaining the last remaining guests, I’d poked through the first-floor rooms, opening closets, rummaging drawers. I found grocery lists, recipes, batteries, pens. The closets held mothballs, vintage clothes, and hats upon hats from the ’40s and ’50s, all preserved in their original round boxes.
    So this is where haberdasheries go to die, Jack quipped.
    There were no easy answers. No clue to Miss Todd’s living sister, the alleged haunting, the magic circle, or anything else beyond an old woman who’d lived in this house for many years.
    I had another drink.
    When the last of the guests were gone, I began helping Seymour clean—until this one A.M. arrival.
    “Be careful!” I called. Ben Kesey’s phone call was fresh in my mind, even if Seymour didn’t want to remember it. But then, he hadn’t been the one to put his foot down on a brake pedal and feel nothing but spongy impotence.
    Waving off my admonition, my mailman snapped on the porch light. Without even bothering to check through a window, he yanked the front doors wide.
    Standing on the small, columned porch was a short man in his midtwenties. The prominent Adam’s apple was the first thing I noticed; then sunken cheeks; long, skinny sideburns; and sleepy, half-closed eyes. He wore neon-green overalls with a fully-stocked pocket protector. A matching baseball-style hat was turned backward on his brown hair, and a clipboard was tucked under his arm.
    “Are you Mr. Tarnish?” the stranger asked.
    I poked my head around Seymour’s bulky form. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
    “Easy, Pen. Take a chill pill.”
    I threw the dishtowel over my shoulder and folded my arms.
    Seymour faced the stranger. “What’s up, dude? Who are you?”
    “My name is Kenny Vorzon. And you called us, remember?” He jerked his pen toward his backward cap.
    Seymour’s brows knitted. “Huh?”
    Kenny frowned a moment, then realized. “Oh! Sorry!” He reached up and turned his hat around. The cap’s brim sported a glowing yellow lightning bolt with two words on either side of it: SPIRIT ZAPPERS ! Below the logo, a motto was scrawled in small embroidered script: Your entity eliminators .
    I froze in semiterror. “Jack, go away!” I shouted in my head. “Now! Before he sees you!”
    Why? Who is this Alvin?
    Beside me, Seymour clapped his hands and grinned at the newcomer. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re one of the guys from the Alternative Universe network.” He extended his hand and pumped the man’s arm. “Great show! Never miss it.”
    Kenny nodded. “Thanks.”
    Seymour stepped forward to scan the driveway. “Where’s your van? The ghost-busting crew? The cameras?”
    “Whoa, dude, you’re a long way from seeing any of that. You have to pass the audition first. And this is it.”
    Thank heaven, I thought, praying the Spirit Zappers needed more equipment than a clipboard and a pocket protector to “eliminate” an “entity” as stubborn as Jack.
    Kenny raised his clipboard, pen poised over paper. “First question—”
    “You want me to answer questions now?” Seymour scratched his head. “At one in the morning?”
    “Apparitions tend to manifest between midnight and four. That’s one of the two reasons we work between those hours.”
    “I see,” Seymour said. “And what’s the other reason?”
    Kenny shrugged. “We all have day jobs.”
    “Right.” Seymour folded his arms. “So where’s your posse working tonight?”
    “Millstone.” Kenny jerked his pen over his shoulder. “Their high school’s supposedly haunted.”
    “No kidding,” Seymour said, eyes wide. “What’s the story?”
    “A deceased lunch lady in a hairnet’s been seen floating through the hallways carrying a chafing dish full of Sloppy Joe meat.”
    Seymour glanced at me. “Sounds like a scary enough vision even without the ectoplasm.”
    “Anyway, since we were right down the highway from you, they sent me on over to check