An old woman had eventually picked up, and she seemed all to glad to rent the house to him. “No deposit, no last month’s rent, none of that nonsense,” she’d said, and he’d been so relieved he didn’t even think to be suspicious. She hadn’t been there in years, she said, but her son checked in when he could and everything was in working condition. It wasn’t a particularly nice house, but it was twenty minutes from the center of the university and close enough to a bus stop that he wouldn’t hate his life on a rainy day.

A few weeks later, he exchanged his white envelope with a neat “Rent for September” on it for a small, brass, skeleton key and a slice of lemon meringue pie. The old woman – Josie, a retired professor of folklore who used to teach at the university – had been kind but hurried, her house a mess in preparation of some sort of haunted tour. She reminded him a bit of his grandmother, and the hug she sent him off with was warm.

The house could have been a lot worse, honestly.