About ninety minutes before I normally get up in the morning, the buzzer to our apartment went off. This sent Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund, into a frenzy of dog shrieking. Like she\u2019d fallen into some horror movie panic. Centuries of murder manifest. I don\u2019t know. It was loud and then louder and then louder and louder. Dazed with a head cold, I staggered out of bed. Wearing underwear that had shrunken in the wash and with a Breathe-Rite strip still attached to the bridge of my nose, I picked up the still squirming and shrieking dog and opened the front door. A middle-aged couple stood there before me just as hopeful and optimistic as missionaries.<\/p>\n

The man looked like a retired astronaut <\/a>and the woman like she gave up her career some years ago and had now dedicated herself to traveling the world and running a marathon to fight breast cancer in each city she visited. She spun away and covered her eyes when she saw me, \u201cSweet Jesus, Anderson,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n

I stood there blinking.<\/p>\n

Giving them a \u201cthis better be good\u201d look, I asked, \u201cWHAT?\u201d<\/p>\n

The man stepped forward, one arm back to steady his traumatized wife, \u201cWe\u2019d like to buy your house!\u201d<\/p>\n

He said this like I had just won a game show.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t own the house he wanted to buy. Rachelle and I rent the bottom floor of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not for sale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is for sale,\u201d he responded like an Alpha Male.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s obnoxious, \u201c I said.<\/p>\n

He laughed. He\u2019d handled my type before. Hell, he\u2019d been in space. What was I to him?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou haven\u2019t heard our offer, \u201c he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, the place is haunted.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

He laughed. There were ghosts in space. He feared no ghosts.<\/p>\n

His wife was turned half way away from me and half way toward me, her eyes fixed on the floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll pay you two million dollars for this house, which I think you\u2019ll agree, is far above market value.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you like ghosts?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

The wife now sighed heavily through her mouth, \u201cCome on Anderson, this man is clearly insane, let\u2019s go!\u201d<\/p>\n

But Anderson liked a challenge. Where others saw a roadblock, Anderson saw an opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me about the ghosts, I\u2019m interested,\u201d he pressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re unpredictable, sometimes the energy is poltergeist in nature and others times it feels like a human presence. It\u2019s hard to explain. We could do a quick Ouija board and you could ask them yourself, if you like?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe later,\u201d he said, dialing it down a notch, \u201c we can see we\u2019ve caught you at a bad time and I\u2019m sorry for that, but here\u2019s my card. If you want to talk about the supernatural or maybe selling your home, give me a call, I\u2019m interested in both.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then they left, two people determined to buy themselves the life they wanted, regardless of what it might cost anyone else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About ninety minutes before I normally get up in the morning, the buzzer to our apartment went off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[480,488,492,490,399,484,485,483,491,489,181,400,487,96,482,481,50,486,38],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2499"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2573,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions\/2573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}