Grant heard the noise on the second night in the rental house. The first night, he’d been too exhausted from the move, from thinking about what had once been his marriage, and from the beer Peter had declined after helping him with the big furniture, and he’d slept like a dead man. Grant always slept fine his first night in any new place; it was the second night that always got him.

He stayed up, trying to tire himself again with putting away his clothes into his new closet and then setting up his desk in the bedroom he was going to use as an office. As he plugged in the laptop he heard something strange.

Grant went from room to room, searching for the sound: partly a shuffling, partly a light padding on surfaces too carpeted to make the proper sound of footfalls. Maybe it was the weird silence of a house without a TV chattering alone in another room, or the last two beers he’d drank instead of eating dinner. Maybe it was mice.

He found nothing, and he went to bed too late, locking his bedroom door behind him.

He heard the noise when he stepped out of his morning shower, but daylight suggested it was nothing more than the house settling or, more likely, rodents. His parents’ house had once had squirrels in the walls until his father had put down poison. For months afterward, Grant had not been able to go near any of the walls without thinking of dead squirrels rotting slowly just inches away.

The noise was louder that night but the next day was Saturday and Grant spent the morning at the animal shelter convincing the volunteers on duty that he desperately wanted the companionship that only a cat could bring. When they took him to the cat enclosure his eyes settled on a tortoiseshell named Mandy, and with a “donation” to the shelter, he had a solution to the mice.

Grant took Mandy home, showed her the litter box and the food dish, petted her on the head, and left to buy a TV center and a table. Then he bought groceries and came home to find that Mandy hadn’t taken to the litter box lesson. He yelled at her and then cleaned up.

Instead of installing the table as he needed to do, Grant bought some cheap takeout for dinner and spent the evening in his office. He’d been working on this novel for three years, and now was as good a time as any to make a fresh start on it. New life, new beginning. Yes.

He forced himself to delete the last chapter, which he knew was crap anyway. He spent the next hour staring at the blank screen and the rest of the night writing, rewriting, and ultimately deleting one long paragraph. When he finally went to bed, he shut the door, leaving Mandy out of the bedroom. An hour later she woke him with her forlorn mewling.

As he opened the door, Mandy dashed in, then jumped up on his bed and settled in, expressing with a swish of her tail the firm belief that she was doing him a favor. Grant glared at her, thinking she’d get along just fine with Donna.

Another hour, and he woke up to hear her meowing again. Exhausted, he shouted at the damned cat to shut up already, when his hand brushed her fur, rising and falling slowly with each sleepy breath. Dream, prompted his brain, and he agreed.

Sunday was properly overcast to match his mood. Grant got up automatically to get ready for church when he remembered that Donna would be there. He went back to sleep.When he finally crawled out of bed for good it was almost eleven and he needed to pee. He was in the kitchen, remembering he’d neglected to purchase any cookware, when he heard the noise again, coming from his office.

He could see the cat lounging in a spot of sunlight in the living room, and no amount of coaxing was going to convince her to investigate with him, so he grabbed the fire extinguisher and advanced alone to see what kind of infestation he had.

There was a baby playing in his office.

He was positive it was a baby. Little body, little head, little pajamas with a little zipper and a little duck pattern. Babies weren’t normally translucent, nor did they typically allow one to see chairs through them, but Grant was still convinced this was in fact a baby.

So he felt a bit silly when he yelled and dropped the fire extinguisher and ran outside.

Every hair on his body stood up and out. He wondered if his hair would turn white, if he’d start screaming, if this was what being crazy looked like: ghost babies. The sane part of his head chided him, firstly because he was already clear on the fact that this was crazy and thus that proved he wasn’t crazy, and secondly because for God’s sake, it was a damned baby.

Grant felt his pockets and found his keys. This would all make a lot more sense on the other side of an enormous omelet and some good coffee.

At the IHOP, when he finally got a table, the waitress kept looking at him funny but since he was laughing at himself and a little manic still he guessed that was okay. If he was having a psychotic break there were worse ways that didn’t involve getting a nice look at the waitress’ cleavage as she brought him extra syrup.

Fed and caffeinated, Grant bought a set of cheap cookware and then drove home, having convinced himself he’d experienced a hunger-induced hallucination inspired by the last argument he’d had with Donna before the end.

“I thought we were going to talk about kids,” she said.

“We talked,” he said. “We’ve got our careers and you said yourself you didn’t want to be tied down to something.”

It had never been about the kids, or their careers, or her photos, or his writing, but always about the fact that they’d married too quickly and wanted different things.

He pulled into the driveway, killed the engine, and ignored the hammerbeat in his chest as he unlocked his front door. He went directly to his office.

As he’d suspected and secretly, fervently hoped, it was empty but for the chair and the desk. Feeling silly, he picked the fire extinguisher up and took it back to the kitchen where it belonged.

As he went past the living room, he saw the baby on the floor, trying to pet Mandy. Mandy nosed at the tiny hand.

Grant stumbled back, falling down hard.

The baby and the cat ignored him. Mandy rolled over, letting the baby pet her tummy. Grant clearly saw the pattern of her fur through the baby’s hand.

He crawled back into the kitchen and managed to dial home. It rang once before he remembered, and he hung up just as he heard the click of Donna answering. Then he called Peter.

“Can you come over right now?”

“Grant! Hey. No, sorry. My folks are coming over, and Carrie’d kill me if I left her alone with them.”

Message received: No one wanted to be around the loser.

“Please.”

Peter sighed. “Okay. But I can only stay an hour.”

Grant didn’t leave the kitchen. He sat at his new table and watched the baby crawl around in the sunlight with the cat. Both seemed completely content. Peter knocked on the door ten minutes later, and Grant let him in, dragging him straight into the living room.

“What … what do you think?” he asked Peter. The baby was on its back, watching its own hands.

“About what?”

“That!” The baby made a noise, blowing bubbles through its lips. Peter looked around curiously, then shrugged.

“I don’t know anything about cats. Is it sick?”

Grant felt his stomach tighten. “Do you see anything on the carpet beside the cat?”

Peter walked into the room. The heel of one shoe went through the baby, who giggled. “Grant … ”

“Go home,” he told Peter. “Never mind. I … Thought I saw something. Must’ve been the light.”

“Yeah,” said Peter, and he clapped him too heartily on the shoulder. “Things are bound to be weird right now. Just give yourself some time. I’ll come over next weekend and we’ll hang out.”

“See you,” said Grant, and watched as Peter drove away. He walked back into the living room to find the baby had climbed onto the couch and was curling up for a nap.

Grant placed his face in his hands and sobbed.

He slept with the door locked. The cat was outside meowing, but the baby was outside gurgling too and Grant hid his head under his pillows all night. *** At work, Sarah told him that he looked like hell. Jorge said he just needed a break, maybe take a vacation and tinker around his new place, clear his head. Grant managed one-syllable responses to everyone.After work, he went by the church. The minister lived in the house next door with his wife and three daughters. Grant had been by their house a lot when he and Donna had still been trying to make it work, but tonight he found their doorway dark and forbidding, even as the door cracked open to spill warm light onto him. Miranda informed him her husband wasn’t home yet but Jerry could call him later. Grant thanked her, went back to his car with a smile plastered on his face, and sat behind the wheel, wondering if he should kill himself yet.

He called his therapist.

Forty minutes later, Grant had accepted that this was just a projection of his own fear of family, exacerbated by the separation. If he went home and embraced his own fears, he’d be free of his delusion. Also, the therapist had kindly called in a prescription for him.

He stopped by the drugstore on Tenth. He poked at toothbrushes while he waited for his prescription to be filled and bought a soda when he checked out.

He swallowed the first med in the car, washing it down with his soda. The drugstore shared a parking lot with a pizza place and a store with crystals and plastic dreamcatchers in the front window. He sipped his soda and watched the neon sign of the pizza place until he felt a little better.

When he stepped through his front door, he repeated what his therapist had told him to say: “I accept my own fears. I am not my father.”

The baby wasn’t in the living room or in his office. He let out the breath he’d been holding. In his kitchen, he prepared a celebratory meal of hamburgers broiled in his own oven, though he burned the fries. He took the food to his living room, put in a Clash CD, and started to eat.

The baby wailed.

Shaking, Grant set the food down and dragged himself to the office. The baby thrashed on the floor, face pink and scrunched tight as it screamed.

“I accept you,” he croaked. No response. The radio was too loud, and he went back to the living room to turn it down.

The baby stopped crying.

He turned it back on. More wailing. He ejected the CD. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. He put in Bob Marley. The baby stopped crying and started gurgling.

*** “Missed you on Sunday,” said Jerry, sipping his coffee. In the other room, Grant heard Miranda get the girls ready for bed. Miranda’s day job was as an accountant, and she’d been at work through most of the last months of Grant and Donna’s marriage. Having her here now was just another reminder of how the world had changed so much in such a short time.”Settling into the new place.”

“I understand. If you need anything, you’ll let me know.” Jerry was a good guy. He’d come to their church two years ago, and right away struck that perfect balance between friend and pastor. Grant liked him, and he trusted him.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I figured,” said Jerry, smiling around his cup.

“What do you know about ghosts?”

Jerry lost his smile.

*** Grant spent two hours on the phone with his therapist this time. Jerry had gently and firmly insisted.The baby cried when Grant put on Beethoven, but again, Marley saved the evening. “I accept you,” said Grant. “I accept you. I accept you.”

Mandy sprawled next to the baby and attempted to groom him.

“I accept you.”

The store was called Earth Age, and on Wednesdays it was open until seven. Grant pulled the door open then almost puked from the pungent mix of patchouli and less identifiable odors coming from inside. He took a deep breath and went in anyway.Inside, the store was cramped and a little dingy. Herbs in jars lined the back wall behind the counter. A token rack of books lined another wall. Everything else looked like refuse from a Halloween sale: gaudy, sparkly scarves; glass balls hanging from the ceiling on macramé cords; mass-produced skulls and pentagrams. The girl behind the counter smiled at him.

“Can I help you?”

His first impulse was to say no and leave. “I think there’s a ghost in my house.”

“All right.” She didn’t look like she believed him, but she also didn’t look at him like he was crazy. “What kind of ghost?”

“A small one,” he said, offering her a little smile. “Look, I just want to get rid of it, okay? Do you have any … ” he waved his hand. “Spells? Incantations? Something?” It was hard to ask for what he wanted when most of him was thinking that he didn’t believe in this stuff. He broadened his smile a bit, hoping a little flirting wouldn’t hurt his case. He made sure to keep eye contact, not let his gaze slip to the curves peeking through the low collar of her dress.

“Ghosts are often psychic impressions left by those who have lived in a place,” she said in a sing-song voice. “They can also be manifestations of the psyche, after times of … ”

“I already talked to my therapist. Let’s go with ‘impression.’ How do I make it go away?”

She walked from behind the counter. Grant was a little disappointed to realize that her figure wasn’t voluptuous so much as dependent on one too many doughnuts in her diet. The girl’s eyes narrowed as she saw his expression change, and then she went to a display rack of bound twigs. She tossed him one.

“Smudge stick. Burn it and wave the smoke around the area to be cleansed. One of these should do two rooms. Visualize the smoke chasing away the manifestation and it should leave.”

He bought three, thanked the girl, and took the sticks home.

The burning twigs didn’t smell as bad as he thought they would. He expected the baby to cry as he spread the smoke through the house but there wasn’t a peep. When he finished the house was filled with a strange fragrant haze that made the cat sneeze, but he couldn’t hear or see anything that wasn’t normal.

He slept with his door locked anyway, burrowed under sheets that smelled of herbal smoke.

*** The morning was bright and cold and Grant didn’t see or hear the baby as he went through his morning routine. He managed to stay pleasant at work, even crack a few jokes, and by the time he went home, he’d told himself that the meds had kicked in, that he was in a better mental place now, and that he’d just needed a symbolic cleansing of his life to make the transition.The baby sat in the hallway when he turned on the light. It looked up with an expression Grant could only think of as “betrayed,” and began to cry.

Bob Marley didn’t help. Neither did anything else Grant could dial up on the radio. The baby screamed all night, pausing only to take an imaginary breath now and then. At four a.m., Grant dragged himself out of bed, went into the hallway and said, “I’m sorry. Go to sleep, will you?”

The baby kept crying, and ready to cry himself, Grant started to sing, “Rock-a-Bye Baby.” After a few verses the baby stopped howling and started sniffling. He kept singing, too tired to do anything else. Eventually, the baby closed its eyes and fell asleep.

Without thinking, Grant went to pat it on the head, only remembering when his hand went through and went cold. He hadn’t tried touching it before. He was suddenly wide awake. He placed his hand on the baby’s back, feeling the demarcation between air and whatever the baby was made of, felt the change in temperature and sensation.

Mandy hit the floor in the bedroom with a thump, came out, and curled up on the floor next to the baby. She had always acted like she could see it. She wasn’t afraid.

Grant went back to bed. He didn’t shut the door.

*** “Your sticks didn’t work.”He hadn’t said hello. It was the same girl. She looked at him, confused at first before she placed him.

“They’re a first step. They get rid of a lot of nasties. So your ghost is still there?”

He nodded. Then he tapped his hand on his leg. “How do you communicate with ghosts?”

“Well, you could use a Ouija board,” she said. “But I’d make fun of you behind your back. Why don’t you just talk to it? Most ghosts that are actual manifestations stay around on this plane in order to resolve something. Ask what it wants and it might leave you alone.”

Grant looked around the little store, but there was no one else. “It’s a baby.”

“What?” She stared at him in polite confusion.

“Baby. The ghost is a baby.”

“You’re screwed.” She shut her book.

He sighed. “How bad?”

“You can’t ask a baby what it wants. Babies want food and comfort. Bottles. That sort of thing. You can’t give that to a ghost.”

“Great. So what do I do?”

“Move. Or just be grateful ghost babies don’t poop.”

“You don’t think I’m crazy.”

She shrugged. “There are two ghosts in my house. They’re pretty common, if you can see them.”

“Do yours bother you?”

“Not anymore.” But she wouldn’t say anything else about them.

Her name was Sally. She lived with her girlfriend, and apparently two ghosts as well, and she sent Grant home with some incense free of charge. Also, she asked for his number, though after the comment abut her girlfriend he wasn’t sure why.

The baby woke him up with a weird, barking cough. It sounded like he was having trouble breathing. Grant tried talking to him, singing to him, but nothing helped.Grant looked up the symptoms on the ‘net. It could be croup, though he certainly couldn’t call a doctor and check. The site recommended a steamy room, so feeling a bit stupid, Grant ran his shower until the bathroom was thick with steam. The biggest flaw in his plan materialized when he went to pick up the baby and couldn’t.

He eventually coaxed Mandy into the room, and the baby crawled weakly after her. A few minutes later the baby’s coughs stilled.

In the morning, Grant was stiff from having slept on the bathroom floor.

*** There were no middle of the night feedings. There were no diaper changes. Sometimes the baby wanted music. Sometimes he cooed in front of Sesame Street. On a whim one evening, Grant bought a plush Elmo and was curiously pleased to watch the incorporeal hands try to grasp the toy.The baby was in a permanent sleeper, but sometimes Grant went through his rusty memories and touched the cold not-there toes while counting: “This little puppy went to play.” The baby laughed and laughed.

In his head, Grant called him Stephen.

“This little mousie went to town! This little mousie fell right down!” Grant made tickling motions with his fingers, grinning as Stephen giggled at the not-touches.

*** Jessie worked in another office in his building. A month after he’d moved into his new place, he asked her out and to his delight, she agreed. Dinner, drinks, and a bit tipsy, she slipped her arm into his, asking him to take her back to his place.They kissed on the front step, a little sloppy, a little breathless, and he unlocked the door with one arm still holding her. Donna hadn’t touched him in six months; Jessie seemed to have just been waiting for him to be single.

Stephen crawled on the floor as they hurried inside. Out of habit, Grant tried not to step on him. Jessie didn’t notice, kept kissing Grant, and grinned against his mouth as he steered her away from Stephen. “Let me use your bathroom,” she said. He pointed her to the door.

Stephen looked up at him and then burst into tears.

“Sh!” Grant hoped the noise wouldn’t carry. Jessie seemed as oblivious as Peter, but still. The baby kept crying, and Grant hunkered down beside him. “It’s all right,” he soothed. “Time to be quiet. Go to bed. Whatever.”

The bathroom door opened, and Jessie came back out, wearing considerably less than she had going in there. Grant’s throat closed. She was a fine-looking woman.

Jessie said, “I think we were right … here … ” as she slipped back into his arms. Stephen kept crying.

Grant pulled her towards his bedroom, trying to ignore the noise from the hallway. They sat on his bed kissing as his hands roamed over her bare skin. The wailing continued.

He broke the kisses. “Jessie, I can’t.”

“Sure you can, baby.” She pressed her lips against the pulsepoint in his neck and he groaned.

Mandy began to yowl in tune with the baby’s cries.

“No. I really can’t.” He wanted to, but there was absolutely no way he would be able to perform with the noise. Even if he booted the cat outside, he couldn’t get rid of Stephen without smudging the house again, and even as he considered that, he knew it wasn’t an option.

“Grant,” her voice was firmer, and a touch cold. “Don’t push me away. This is going to be good for both of us.”

“Go home, Jessie.”

She stared at him, her hurt expression just visible in the dim light coming through the blinds from outside. Silently, she stalked back to the bathroom for her clothes, dressed without looking at him, then marched through the hallway, walking right through Stephen as she did.

After the door slammed, Grant glared at the cat and the baby. “I hate you both.” Neither stopped. Grant went back to his bedroom, undressed, and slept with his pillow over his head.

*** “How’s the ghost baby?” The voice on the phone was unfamiliar.”What?”

“It’s Sally. From Earth Age? You wanted to get rid of your ghost?”

“Oh. Yeah. Um. Fine, I guess.” It felt strange talking about Stephen to someone else. He turned to see Stephen and Mandy napping together on his office floor. Grant had been in here writing something new, and they’d followed him in, then played a little before falling asleep.

“I did some research on your ghost,” she said “Your house, 1978, seven-month-old died of crib death. I found it in the microfiche.”

“Why did you look it up?”

“I like ghosts. Want his name?”

“Wait, how do you know where I live?”

“Reverse telephone search. It’s on the internet, hello. Do you want his name?”

“I … guess. No,” he said suddenly. If Grant had the name, he’d want to find the parents, to tell them, and that would probably be enough to get him committed after all.

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Well, anyway. I’ve got the info. Drop by the shop sometime if you want it.”

“Thanks.” He hung up.

Sally had said ghosts generally wanted something, and Grant’s explorations on the ‘net had told him the same thing: resolve what needed resolving, and the ghost would pass on or just fade away. The baby could want anything, a favorite blanket or a toy. If he did find the parents, assuming they were still alive, they might not even know.

He watched the tiny movements of the child’s breaths. What did Stephen want? Why had he stayed?

*** Jessie gave him another chance. Grant took her out to a nicer place than last time and then drove her back to her apartment. He sat on her couch for over an hour, enjoying the feel of her head resting against his shoulder. Then he gave her a soft kiss good night and left despite her protests. He wanted to stay, he intended, eventually, to stay. But he didn’t want to leave Stephen alone all night. He might get scared or lonely.He wondered how hard it would be to convince Sally to come over to babysit. *** Grant looked at the proof in his hands. On a whim, he’d written down the stupid little rhymes he made up for Stephen, and Sally had drawn him a couple of simple pictures, and now “This Little Mousie” was about to hit children’s bookstores. Sally had dedicated her part to her girlfriend Heather. Grant had just written: “For S.”Stephen grinned at the pictures as Grant turned the pages and read to him. Stephen liked a lot of children’s books. Peter had commented on Grant’s collection of primary-colored tomes when he’d come over last month. Grant had told him it was market research, and had sighed only a little as Stephen had chosen that moment to crawl right through Peter’s legs in search of something on the floor.

Sally and Heather could see Stephen, though not very well. Heather had an easier time picking out where he was, while Sally had to keep asking. They’d brought a set-up toy as a present, with black and white things to look at on one side and a mirror on the other. Stephen kept crawling around it to see where the baby in the mirror went.

The adults split a bottle of champagne to celebrate the book’s publication, and then the girls went home. They’d only laughed at him a little for asking them to watch Stephen next Friday, and he was pretty sure that made them his best friends just now.

*** The bookstore at the mall had said they’d buy Grant lunch if he’d sit for two hours and sign copies on a Saturday. That sounded like a perfect arrangement to him.”Hey,” said Donna. Grant looked up, shocked.

“Hey.”

She picked up the book beside him. “I … Diane was telling me she’d seen your book.”

He rubbed his hand through his hair. “It was just something I did. You know.”

“I know. Grant?”

“Donna, I … I mean, it’s …. ” He didn’t know what he meant.

“I just wanted to tell you, I’m glad you’re doing okay.” The look on her face was one he knew well, part gorgeous smile with just a touch of frown creasing her forehead.

“Thanks,” he said.

“So, who’s ‘S’?”

He shrugged. “Little boy I know.”

*** Grant was typing at his computer at work when his right arm went numb. His right eye went blurry, and he fell back in his chair.”You okay?” asked Jorge, who shared the cube with him.

“No,” he managed to say. He fell forward on his desk, dizzy.

A few moments later, everything passed. No more numbness, no more blindness, no more dizziness.

“I’m okay,” he told Jorge and the three people who’d come in to check on him at Jorge’s shout. Grant went to the bathroom and ran water over his face, and then decided to take the rest of the day off. Sarah offered to drive him., but Grant declined. He was just a little tired, was all.

A block from his house, the dizziness came back, but he was almost home and he could go lie down.

As he reached the front door, he found that he couldn’t swallow. His right eye dimmed, went dark. Grant’s right leg collapsed beneath him and he fell to the floor, thinking he had to call 911, thinking he should have gone to the ER, thinking he could smell oranges.

He heard the baby cry.

*** There were people in his house, people he didn’t know. Grant got to his feet slowly. The weird dizziness was gone. EMTs. The people were EMTs. Peter was there. He must have called them.”Hey, I’m okay,” said Grant to Peter, but Peter, looking very pale, ignored him. Everyone was standing around.

Stephen was crying in the corner at all the noise and bustle in the house. Grant rolled his eyes at Peter, and went to check on the baby. “Sorry, kid,” he whispered, reaching to pat the insubstantial head.

His hair was soft like wisps of down, and Stephen looked up at him, grinning toothlessly at the touch.

Grant went still, and then he picked up Stephen, or whatever his real name had been. He was small and soft and warm, and Grant knew without having to ask that he’d just wanted someone to hold him and love him best of all.

*** Sally lied to Grant’s friend so he’d let her and Heather in the house, saying she’d lent a book to Grant But even though they looked high and low, all they found was the cat, mewling and alone.