To whom it may concern

Ready for the unholy terror of opening a letter only to find Tobey Maguire's horrible face inside? Tonight, we're rewatching the Dead Letter.

Andrea Fantucci stood in the alley that ran along the back of the Dragon of the Black Pool Cantonese Restaurant, staring up at the moon.

The moon, fat and yellow and hanging low over the spiny defences of City Hall, did not look back. It didn't scream, or shower the streets below with blood, or drive men to madness and fear at the very sight of it. It was just a glowing ball of reflected light, and sometimes a big rabbit who made rice cakes.

"I like it here," Andrea said, speaking to nobody in particular. For once, nobody responded.

Ongoing Verse: Andrea/Marisea

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Andrea Fantucci did not look up from the stack of newspapers in front of her when she heard the noise. In a house this haunted, there was always something rattling or moaning or scratching about the place, and she'd learned to tune out the noisy dead some time ago.

When she spotted the tumbling blur of yellow-brown plush, however, she shot out of her seat. Reaching out with an arm that seemed to become just slightly longer than usual as she moved, she caught the little bear right before it hit the ground.

"Whoa," she said, turning it right-side up and placing it on the table in front of her. "Probably best not to have any falls until we can figure out what the deal is with you, little man."

The little bear wobbled on it's hind legs, then sat abruptly. It wiped a fat little paw across it's brow, and a scattering of tiny pearlescent beads scattered like droplets of sweat.

"Incredible," said Andrea, folding the newspaper into quarters and setting it aside. She rested her chin in her hands, staring at the living toy in front of her.

"What are you?" she said.

The little bear looked confused.

Ongoing Verse: Andrea/Marisea

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At the first mention of a fake world Marshall had felt a rushing sensation of icy coldness, as though someone had thrown freezing water on him. Now, as the rest of the conversation ebbed and flowed about him, he remained stuck, tangled in the sudden sick feeling that knotted in his stomach.

A hand touched him lightly on the shoulder, and he turned to see Andrea watching him.

"Hey," she said. "You doing okay?"

He forced a smile.

"Fine," he said weakly.

"It's alright," she whispered. "I see them too. The gaps. Places where edges don't meet, and reality frays."

Ongoing Verse: Andrea/Marisea

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"Oh good," said Marisea, crunching across the dusty floorboards to join her. "You found the ghoul's trash heap."

"I don't think there's anything here," said Andrea. "It's just discards left over from the party. No signs of a haunting."

She used the thigh bone to lift a crumbling section of jaw out of the nest of hair, her torchlight gleaming against the silvery fillings.

"Looks like they ate most anything a ghost would be able to bind itself to," she continued.

"Good," said Marisea. "Leftovers pose such a risk at a revenant feast. Cleaned plates makes my job much easier."

Ongoing Verse: Andrea/Marisea

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The skeletal organist whose bony fingers hovered above ivory keys in an arthritic snarl was made of plastic. An after-market paint job in faded yellows and decay-dark browns gave the impression of weight and authenticity, but up close the flimsy ribcage and the strangely flattened feet marked it for an obvious fake.

Marisea gave the artificial corpse a slight tug. It didn't budge from it's seat, empty eye sockets staring fixedly at mould-speckled sheet music.

"Glued in place," she said. She glanced up again, feeling the weight of the soil that pressed against rotting roof beams. "Illegal ghoul rave, maybe?"


Ongoing Verse: Andrea/Marisea

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Andrea surveyed the stacks of wooden packing crates with something very like horror. The huge white moving van was still parked on the curb outside, an endless stream of sweating men and splinter-edged boxes emerging from the dark maw at it's back.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked Marisea, who was cross-checking the delivery against a frighteningly long inventory list attached to her clipboard.

Marisea looked up.

"Not really," she said. "A haunted merry-go-round is a lot of work. But Marys J-12 and N-3 live in apartments and I'm the only active Mary with a garden, so..."

She shrugged.

Ongoing Verse: Andrea/Marisea

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The spirit she'd captured in the brandy bottle was singing sea shanties again.

Marisea was almost certain it hadn't lived a life on the open waves before it wound up haunting a grandfather clock in a junk store run by leprechauns, but that hadn't stopped it manifesting in a blue and white striped shirt, a red neckerchief and a costume shop-level "Sea Captain Hat" the moment she'd brought it home.

"It wasn't even a rum bottle," she complained over the noise. "At least then it would be thematically appropriate!"

"Threaten to beat it with the cat-o-nine-tails," suggested Andrea. "Keel-hauling. Scurvy?"

Ongoing Verse: Andrea/Marisea

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Ongoing Verse: Leprechaun

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The harsh light of a single unshaded bulb illuminated the bare concrete floor, where chalk outlines in the shape of fallen bodies warped and flexed against the dull grey surface. The tape deck hissed and clattered, the static all but drowning out the signal to Radio WERD's Jazz Hour.

Andrea Fantucci glanced at her watch, hoping to hide the movement by simultaneously turning a page in the battered paperback she'd brought along for the evening. It didn't work.

"Seven minutes," said Marisea.

"To go?" asked Andrea, hopeful but not expectant.

"Since we started."

"Oh."

Andrea sighed. Her shadow, forty feet high and black as the void between worlds, sighed too.

"We could just leave the radio down here," she suggested. "No need to play compère at the Eerie Mob Massacre Warehouse and Speakeasy every Friday and Saturday."

"You know ghosts can't work a radio dial," said Marisea. "How well do you think they'd take music they couldn't choose or turn off blaring at them day and night?"

Andrea shrugged.

"Staff at the Eerie Mall seem to manage okay."

Marisea laughed.

"They're like, one can-I-speak-to-a-manager away from snapping and eating the eyeballs of every customer in the place," she said. "I'd like to think my spectral community outreach is at least a little better than dealing with the general public for eight hours at a time."

Andrea reached out to rest a hand on her girlfriend's knee.

"A million times better," she said. "More, even. One of those sideways-eight Foreverware symbols more."

She leaned over and pressed a kiss into Marisea's long dark hair.

Around them, the spirits danced on.


Ongoing Verse: Andrea/Marisea

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Ready for the unholy terror of opening a letter only to find Tobey Maguire's horrible face inside? Tonight, we're rewatching the Dead Letter.

Ready for the unholy terror of opening a letter only to find Tobey Maguire's horrible face inside? Tonight, we're rewatching the Dead Letter.

The screaming face trapped in the dishcloth wailed, howls of pain and misery reverberating through the small kitchen. Andrea Fantucci sighed, set down the liquid soap and turned on the faucet.

“Okay, okay,” she said, holding the face beneath the stream of warm water. “Calm down!”

The face, bone-white against a diamond-patterned grid of pale blue, continued to shriek. Andrea frowned, moving the mixer tap to direct the flow right into the gaping mouth. The screams stopped, replaced by outraged gurgling.

“That’s better,” said Andrea. “And the next time you manifest a haunting, don’t do it while I’m washing up.”

( Read the rest of the Andrea/Marisea series here )

Eerie Indiana headcanon #6: unlike her aunt, Mary C. Carter is actually a totally awesome girlfriend, to Andrea Fantucci. Poor Mars was completely barking up the wrong lesbian in that episode.