The Haunts & Horrors MEGAPACK®. Lawrence Watt-Evans

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      The Murray Leinster Megapack

      The Second Murray Leinster Megapack

      The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack

      The Talbot Mundy Megapack

      The Andre Norton Megapack

      The H. Beam Piper Megapack

      The Mack Reynolds Megapack

      The Rafael Sabatini Megapack

      The Saki Megapack

      The Robert Sheckley Megapack

      OTHER COLLECTIONS YOU MAY ENJOY

      The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany Megapack”)

      The Wildside Book of Fantasy

      The Wildside Book of Science Fiction

      Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

      To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

      Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

      Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

      More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

      X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries

      SURREAL ESTATE, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

      Wendy Renault was almost forty, and she had been living in apartments ever since she moved away from her parents at age nineteen. With her husband’s life insurance money, she finally had a chance to buy a dream.

      Her dream home. A place where she could build her dream life, with her dream companion.

      But real-life details kept getting in the way.

      “Okay,” said the whole house inspector, kneeling beside the house. He chewed tobacco with his mouth open, and squinted up at her. Late afternoon sun shimmered in the beaded perspiration on his forehead. “This ain’t a big thing, but you’re gonna wanta put some caulking in around that hole drilled through the siding. Don’t give pests any avenue into your structure here.”

      Wendy scribbled on her steno pad, under the notes she had made about the v-shaped cracks in the foundation, the standing water under the house, and the untempered glass in the window next to the front door. She scratched at the sunburn she’d gotten the day before while strolling around the neighborhood to see if she might like living here, even though she and Malcolm had already pretty much fixed on this house. After closing her eyes for a second, she glanced anxiously at the siding. Inside she was wearing a big frown, though her face smiled. How many more pinholes could this guy punch in her dream? All the helium was escaping.

      “See where the mulch is mounded up here above the foundation line? An open invitation to pests,” said the inspector. He spat, spraying nicotine on a weed. “You had the termite guys in here yet?”

      She shook her head, dreading it.

      “Tell ’em to check over here. Now, I’m not an expert on that stuff, I don’t check for it. You might have your dampwood termites or worse, your subterranean termites, or your fungi, carpenter ants, wood-boring beetles…house could be riddled.”

      She wished he wouldn’t characterize all these pests as hers.

      “Another thing,” he said, dusting off the knees of his pants as he rose.

      Wendy groaned inside. Then she wondered what these groans would do, bouncing around inside her with no outlet. Build up ricochet momentum and punch a hole in her?

      “You got your ghost turds. Mostly inside.” He patted the wall.

      “What on earth is a ghost turd?”

      “Evidence,” he said. “Eck-toe-plas-mick evidence.”

      “What?” asked Wendy, slightly panicked, keeping that inside too.

      “They’re hard to examine, being kinda slippery,” he said. “I did not discover if they was fresh or if the old lady is not much of a housekeeper and they’ve been around a while. But you got your ghost turds in a couple corners. Now I have not hit on a surefire method for exterminating ghosts. If there’s much trouble, though, you give me a call. I got a couple guys I can refer you to.”

      “Trouble?” said Wendy. She licked her upper lip.

      “Now some ghosts will respect your privacy and only haunt and such when you’re out of the house, but others will make a nuisance of themselves, and you don’t want that. Let me know how it goes. Here’s my card. Call me if you have any questions.”

      “But—” she said.

      He smiled, spat some more juice, and nailed a dandelion. “I’ll get that report to you by Friday, barring accidents. You want any of this work done, I can recommend independent contractors to you. Only if you want me to.”

      “Thanks,” she said, still smiling, and shook hands with him. She didn’t wipe her hand off on her jeans until he had driven away in his truck.

      Malcolm was waiting in the hotel room for her, since she had left the locket there. It was so much easier for her to deal with real-life situations without him there to distract her that she had done it deliberately.

      She could tell he was going to kvetch. She sighed.

      He changed his mind. “So what happened?”

      “Fifteen more things wrong. Look at this list. You really, really want that place?”

      He looked surprised. “I thought you did.”

      “Yesterday I did,” she said, “enough to overlook that red plaid rug and those terrible fifties light fixtures. But today…what with the foundation cracks and the standing water and the pest super-highways.…”

      Malcolm flickered a little, the way he did when he was feeling uncertain. “Wendy, the psychic climate in the house.…”

      “Oh, yeah. That’s another thing. He says there’s a ghost there already.”

      “What?” He solidified and stared at her.

      “Apparently ghosts leave debris the way termites do,” she said, and grinned. After a moment she lost her grin. She looked around the floor, wondering if Malcolm had left any signs; but the carpet looked fairly clean except for a few cigarette burns near the bed.

      “I wish I had been there,” he said wistfully.

      Of all his tactics, she hated wistful the most. He had never been wistful when he was alive, but it was something his mother had done quite well. The fact that he had adopted it since dying made her wonder what other unpleasant surprises might be in store in their relationship’s future.

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