Narrator

Rain ticks against the office window above the dry cleaner's, and the radiator under the desk has given up pretending. The filing cabinet has never once closed on the first try. The whiteboard still has a job from March on it in your own handwriting, crossed out. The coffee is stewed. The in-tray holds a stack of job sheets, most of them for known ghosts, and one stamped HUNT in red that you have not yet had the nerve to open.

Down in the loading bay, the van is stocked: salt, crucifix, pitch pipe, spirit box, thermal camera, and the LED trap coiled like a sleeping snake.

Then the landline rings. Once. Twice. Your pen hovers over the job sheet. Do you pick up now, or let it hang?

Sleet has been coming sideways across Carver Street since dusk, and the streetlamps buzz like they have opinions about it. It's just past midnight. The letting agency's invoice came through with a deposit already paid, which is the most reassuring thing an agency has ever done for you, and the note attached says the house on number 14 has had "some disturbances from a Poltergeist" since the last tenant left. The agent didn't say what kind. Agents rarely do.

The front door has a key under the mat, which is either trusting or lazy. The wood swells, so you put your shoulder into it and it gives with a groan. The hallway smells of wet coats and old gas. Somewhere behind you, the letterbox clacks once, as if someone was expecting you.

The hall light flickers on and off. Coats hang on the pegs, all of them swaying slightly, though the door is shut and the house is still. Through the kitchen doorway, you can see the table with two chairs pulled out, and a drawer in the sideboard is open exactly one inch.

What do you do first?

Fog has rolled in off the bog and wrapped the stone walls of the Kelleher farm in a grey that tastes of peat. It is nearly three in the morning, the kind of hour when the sheep go quiet and the wind decides to do the talking. You got the call from Maeve Doherty, who runs the post office in the village and who has never once in her life let a rumour go unrepeated. Over a pint of stout, she told you the Kelleher place has been "keening" for a month, and that the Kellehers have stopped sleeping, and that nobody has been brave enough to go up the lane since Banshee arrived at random.

The gate is open. The gravel crunches under your boots, and every stone sounds louder than it should. The farmhouse has a half-door, top open, bottom shut, and the top half is already unlatched. The kitchen beyond is lit by a single candle that nobody lit. Your breath clouds in the air, and across the fields, a dog that was barking a moment ago has gone completely silent.

You have a clear view of the yard, the byre, and the dark little window above the back door. Something up the stairs draws a long, thin breath, the way a person does before they start to cry.

What do you do first?

Snow has been falling on the valley since the afternoon, and by the time the bus dropped you at the last stop, the road up to the mountain inn was a white ribbon with no tracks left on it. It is past nine o'clock, and the only light comes from the stone lanterns along the path, each one wearing a cap of snow. The request came by letter, not email. The granddaughter of the innkeeper, Ms. Ishida, wrote in careful English with a few kanji tucked in for politeness, asking you to clear the old bathhouse before the property sale closes next month. She said her grandmother would not have wanted the building sold with a "Yūrei left to wander the place." She enclosed a fee and a train ticket home for after.

The main entrance is a sliding door of dark wood, its paper panels yellowed and cracked. There is a genkan step at the threshold, a stone platform where shoes come off. A pair of worn slippers has been set out, neatly side by side, facing inward, as if someone expected a guest to need them. The air inside smells of cedar and cold steam from the bath wing.

Down the corridor, the lanterns along the wall flicker in a rhythm that is almost a breath. Somewhere past the screen doors, water drips into a basin, once, twice, then stops.

What do you do?

The summer heat has not broken all day, and the storm clouds over the northern city have been rumbling since sundown. It is eleven o'clock, the last showing of the night is long over, and the rain is drumming on the marquee of the Regal Theatre. You read about the place in the local paper. A stagehand who spent thirty years at the Regal swore to a reporter that the owner, Gerald Vane, fell from the fly gallery "because something was pushing. A demon" The paper ran a headline about fear and bad wiring. The owner's family, however, paid for the removal to be quiet, and a friend of a friend of a friend passed your name along over drinks. Nobody has said what it's costing them, and that is usually how you know it's expensive.

The front doors are chained, but the chain has been unhooked and left hanging, as if someone meant to come back for it. Beyond the glass, the lobby is dim. The carpet is faded red, and the popcorn machine is still warm. The box office window is lit from inside, and a single ticket stub sits on the ledge, punched and dated tonight.

Above you, the marquee bulbs flicker, spelling out a word, then another, then nothing. From the dark auditorium, sounds of stuff getting knocked over was heard.

What do you do?

A sea fret has drifted over the harbour town of Saltmarsh, and the lights of the old cottage hospital glow through it like something underwater. It is nearly four in the morning, that hour when the gulls are asleep and the tide is at its lowest. The hospital closed three years ago. You were hired through a trust contract, paid in cash by an estates manager who never once gave you a full name and who asked you to park out of sight of the road. He said only that the building has been "haunted by a Wraith" and that patients have been seen in the corridors who were not admitted anywhere.

The main doors are wedged open with a brick, which someone has painted with a red cross. Inside the reception, the desk is clean, and a clipboard sits in the centre with a pen placed beside it. The top sheet has a name written in careful blue ink, a name you do not recognise, dated for tonight.

The air has the sharp, clean smell of antiseptic that has been soaked into the walls for decades. Far down the ward, a trolley wheel turns slowly, squeaks, and then goes still. Your breath is visible in the cold, and the fluorescent light overhead buzzes but does not quite come on.

What do you do?

The first frost of the year has silvered the fells above the lake, and the moon is high enough to light the road to the lakeside lodge without a torch. It is just before dawn. Your van's headlights swept over the stone wall and the gate, which was open when you arrived. The request came from a widower named Tom Ashworth, who called you himself. His voice was steady until he mentioned his wife, Ruth, who died in the spring. Since then, he says, she has been coming down to the boathouse each morning to stand at the water's edge with her hands folded, and he cannot make her leave. He wants the lodge emptied before he sells it. A classic case of a Revenant.

The front door has been left on the latch. Inside, the hall is panelled in pine and smells of woodsmoke that went out years ago. A coat hangs on the hook with a scarf still wrapped around its collar.

From the back of the house comes the sound of a kettle beginning to whistle, then stopping before it boils. Down by the water, a pale shape is standing very still.

What do you do?