Ghosting the Baker

My name is Staci, I'm thirty-six years old, and I bake pastries for a living. I'm single, never married, and I've lived alone on our block since I was twenty-four. The guy hauling a cooler across the dock at eleven that night was Ross, thirty-eight, a lobbyist who lived four houses down from me. We'd been on the same HOA committee for two years and nothing had ever happened between us, mostly because he was annoying.

The historical society had organized one of their overnight ghost hunts at the old marine biology dock on Lake Erie, and I'd signed up because I wanted to prove the whole thing was garbage. Ghosts weren't real. I was pretty sure of it. But I'd said I'd stay all night, so there I was at eleven p.m. with a phone taped to a clipboard.

Well, sort of taped. I'd duct-taped my phone to a piece of cardboard with a ghost-detector app running on the screen. It was one of those apps that picks up weird electromagnetic readings and beeps at you. Real scientific. The guy at the app store gave it four stars, so how bad could it be?

Ross rolled his cooler up the ramp and let it bang down on the planks. The sound echoed off the water.

"You brought beer," I said. "To a ghost hunt."

"I brought a cooler. It happens to have beer in it." He popped it open and pulled out two bottles. "The only spirits present tonight are in this cooler and in my flask, and I can prove both of those exist."

"Very funny."

"I thought so."

We got set up in the research shack, which was about as creepy as a shack could get without trying. Old crab traps were stacked against one wall. There was a desk with a lamp that worked on the third try. The whole place smelled like dead fish and rust.

Ross poured himself a shot from the flask and leaned against the desk. "So what's the plan, Scooby? We sit in the dark and wait for Casper?"

"The plan is you shut up and we listen for footsteps. That's what the historical society guy said. Footsteps on the dock, around midnight. A biologist who worked here in the eighties supposedly never left."

"That biologist, and I looked this up, retired to Florida in 1991 and died there in 2009. Comfortably. Of natural causes."

"That's what they'd want us to think."

"Who's they, Staci?"

"The historical society. The government. Whoever."

Ross laughed and drank his shot. "You bake for a living and you believe in ghosts."

"Baking has nothing to do with it."

"It kind of does. You spend all day waiting for dough to rise. Of course you believe in things that aren't there."

I threw a crab trap buoy at him. He caught it, which was annoying, because I'd hoped it would hit him.

Around midnight we found the tape. It was sitting in a drawer of the desk, an old microcassette, with a sticky note on it that said PLAY ME. There was even an old tape player in the drawer with it.

"That's not suspicious at all," Ross said.

"Shush. This could be evidence."

I put the tape in and hit play. There was some hissing, and then a man's voice, garbled and staticky.

"...third specimen this week... the lake is trying to tell us something..."

"See!" I said. "See, listen to that."

"...if you are hearing this... tell my wife..." More hiss. "...lemon bars... someone keeps eating my lemon bars from the break room fridge..."

Ross and I looked at each other.

"Lemon bars," he said.

"Shut up. There's more."

"...cold spots reported near dock... please investigate immediately... this message will self-destruct, ha ha..."

The tape ended with a burst of laughter that definitely had more than one person in it. We sat there for a second, and then it hit both of us at the same time.

"It's a prank," I said.

"It's a prank," Ross agreed. "The historical society planted it. That's why the note says play me."

"That lemon bar line gave it away. Nobody being haunted complains about lemon bars."

"Actually I found that part very believable. Very haunting. Chilling, even."

We both cracked up, sitting there in the grimy shack with the dead biologist's fake last words still hissing on the tape. I laughed so hard I had to wipe my eyes. Ross laughed until he wheezed. It was the first time in two years of committee meetings that I'd actually liked the guy.

OK, fine, I'd noticed he was handsome before. Two years of meetings, you notice things. But that's as far as it had ever gone.

I dug into my bag and pulled out the container of leftover lemon bars I'd brought from the patisserie. Don't judge me, I always bring leftovers on trips.

Ross pointed at the container. "What is that."

"Lemon bars."

"Is that the ghost bait?"

"It's dessert, Ross."

"No, no. The tape said lemon bars. You brought lemon bars. This is clearly ghost bait. You're trying to summon him."

"You're an idiot."

"Three hundred years of tradition say bait works. Hand them over."

He ate three in a row. I mean, he didn't even pause between the second and third. I just sat there watching a grown man, a lobbyist who argues about shipping regulations for a living, destroy my lemon bars in a haunted shack at one in the morning.

"Those are good," he said, mouth full. "Those are really good. What's in them?"

"Butter, lemon, sugar. And powdered sugar on top, which you've got all over your shirt now."

He looked down at himself. Powdered sugar everywhere. "Worth it."

"You're buying the next batch."

"Deal."

It was around then that the app went off. The beep was loud in the little shack, this shrieking thing, and the screen lit up all red. I may have screamed a little. In my defense, it was very dark and very quiet right up until it wasn't.

I jumped back and tripped over a crab trap, and