The three of us haunt a house. We can do it because we're three. When we work together, they can hear us: we creak a floorboard, we slide a cup off its saucer, we disarrange the flowers in a vase. But it's not a proper haunting. They're not afraid. The old woman thinks we are a relative trying to send her a message. She lights candles to us and whispers questions in the night. She begs for our help. We can't haunt her—she loves us too much. The young woman ignores us: she brushes us aside as she goes through the house, she closes doors we open. Sometimes we annoy her, but mostly we don't faze her at all: she's too busy to be haunted. We spend most of our days between these two, not getting what we need from either. Only the maid, when she comes, seems uneasy: she shivers when she feels us near and every creak and rattle turns her head. She seems a perfect specimen. But we can't haunt properly when she's in the house: the old woman and the young woman are always there too. Three of them and three of us. Who knows what power they possess between them? Three of us with all our energy can move the dangling pans so they rattle in the night; what could three living beings do to us? We don't want to find out.

So when the maid is there we keep our distance, we tread lightly, afraid to catch her notice, afraid to unite those three against us, afraid they'll all turn toward us at the same time and catch us in the hot, wet prisons of their cavernous eyes.

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