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Honestly, Cisco’s week couldn’t have been going much worse.
It hadn’t started that way. Eddie’s grandmother was going into a nursing home (very reluctantly, according to Eddie), and she’d given him her house. Which wasn’t the suburban detached house Cisco was expecting when Eddie mentioned it, it was a huge manor house. He could have just sold it.
Except he couldn’t, because the rest of Eddie’s family were watching like hawks, or maybe vultures. And Eddie knew his grandmother didn’t want any of them to have it since she hadn’t even waited for her will to give it to Eddie, whose main aim in life was to avoid his family as much as possible.
So instead they’d gone to have a look and see how viable Eddie’s vague hotel idea was.
It needed work. A lot of it. Eddie’s grandmother hadn’t exactly been keeping on top of renovations in her old age. It would have been easier to sell it.
But no. Instead, Cisco had fallen out a window on top of Eddie and nearly died. Had died briefly, according to the first doctor he’d seen, who was a ghost.
Hence the worst part of this week: the ghosts.
The very annoying ghosts.
First, there was the caveman who insisted on jumping out at every opportunity. The witch who spent hours telling him to get out. The solider with a uniform Cisco was guessing was from World War Two who sang annoying songs on repeat. The lady who kept telling him what was and wasn’t proper, the young man and the Scout leader who kept trying to start conversations with him, the writer who was now composing poetry about Cisco’s hair, the really young looking guy in green pyjamas who-
Actually, he’d mostly been ignoring Cisco, thank goodness for small mercies.
He’d tried ignoring them. Didn’t work. The doctor couldn’t help. Cisco had even tried hiding in the basement, but there were more ghosts down there.
Honestly, he was surprised he hadn’t snapped earlier.
“Just shut up!” he yelled at the ghosts now surrounding him and Eddie on the driveway. “Just shut up, all of you.”
“You can see them too?” Eddie asked. “Thank goodness, I thought I was still hallucinating from that concussion.”
“We’re not hallucinations,” the Scout Leader said. “We’re ghosts.”
“Yeah, we got that,” Cisco said. “What do you want?”
“You gone,” the soldier said. “This is our house.”
“Well, it’s Eddie’s now.”
“His family stole it,” the Lady (capital L) said. “As if that thieving husband of mine didn’t take enough, it should have gone to the West family.”
“There is no more West family,” the witch said. “How could it go to the Wests when the last two Wests have been dead for over a hundred years?”
“And you invited the Thawnes here!” the writer protested. “How could you betray me like that?”
“You died seventy years before I was born, how was I to know the charming man I was to marry came from a line of thieves and murderers?”
“These ones are all the descendants of your brother,” the witch said.
“I disowned him after he killed me, it doesn’t count," the writer said. "He was raised a Thawne anyway.”
“Eddie,” Cisco said. “I think your family history is not great.”
“Yeah, that probably tracks,” Eddie said.
“Look,” Cisco said to the ghosts. “Eddie’s nice, and we’re not leaving, so we’re going to have to co-exist somehow. Barring us leaving, what else do you want?”
“Can you play chess?” the caveman asked. Cisco blinked.
“Yes? Anyone else?”
“I would like to apologise for pushing you out the window?” the pyjama guy said. “I may have taken the ‘get rid of them’ request slightly too literally.”
“You pushed me out the window?”
“I didn’t mean for it to hurt.”
“We said we were going to try haunting, Hartley,” the writer said. “Not murder.”
“Harry did suggest that first,” the witch said.
“Harry always suggests murder,” the young man said. “I once asked him how I get Iris to stop bossing me around and he suggested that.”
“It’s the best solution,” the caveman said.
“We’re already dead!”
“That’s your issue with that?” the Lady said.
“There are other, less frowned upon, ways of dealing with things now, Harry,” the Scout Leader said. “Like talking. Hi, I’m Ralph.”
“Hi,” Cisco said. Eddie waved. “Do you want something?”
“Oh, no, I just wanted to say hi.”
“Aren’t you Hartley Rathaway?” Eddie asked. “I think I remember you, there was a big party or something back when I was a kid and you came with your parents and vanished during the night. I thought they said you ran away?”
“I don’t know, I just woke up with that lot standing over me,” Hartley said. “Oh, I remember you, you’re the boy who played with my sister.”
“We could try introductions,” Ralph said. “You know Hartley, the caveman is Harry, this is Caitlin, she’s not actually a witch.”
“I was simply studying herbs and poultices and how to cure the sick and relieve pain and was accused of witchcraft by a man I refused the advances of,” Caitlin said.
“I’m related to him, aren’t I,” Eddie said.
“He wasn’t a Thawne, but I believe distantly, yes.”
“I’m Wally,” the young man said. “This is my sister, Iris.”
“Lady West, Wallace, he is a Thawne.”
“Eddie’s ancestors again?” Cisco asked.
“Yeah, Iris’ husband was a right ratbag,” Wally said.
“I was making a decision to help us-”
“I still don’t see why you couldn’t have waited-”
“You’re too young to understand-”
“I have been nineteen for almost two hundred years now, I understand-”
“I’m Captain Julian Albert,” the soldier said. “They have this argument a lot, please ignore them.”
“Nice to meet you,” Cisco said.
“And this is Barry.”
“The writer,” Cisco said.
“He died before he could publish anything,” Caitlin said. “Probably for the best.”
“How dare you, I was an artist,” Barry said. “Poetry was just a hobby.”
“Sir Jordan liked it,” Harry said.
“Shut up,” Barry said.
“And we’re related,” Eddie said.
“My name is Bartholomew Henry Allen.” He stressed the surname. “I am not a Thawne, and I will not stand for-”
“I’m sensing a theme here,” Eddie said. “I guess I should ask if someone can reopen Hartley’s case, and Ralph-”
“I drowned,” Ralph said. Cisco and Eddie looked at the arrow stuck in him. “I’m joking, I had a troop out who were supposed to be doing archery, and they picked up the bow and arrow before we finished the safety briefing and there was a slight accident.”
“I’m sorry,” Cisco said. He nodded. “There are more ghosts.”
“Ronnie and Tracy prefer the basement,” Caitlin said. “Ronnie’s been fascinated ever since they introduced indoor plumbelling.”
“Plumbing,” Hartley said. “You mean plumbing.”
“Right,” Cisco said. “But now we’re all acquainted, do you think you could stop trying to get rid of us?”
“Because if we leave, my family will show up,” Eddie said. “And that just means more Thawnes who I know you won’t like.”
“Fine,” Julian said. “A temporary alliance.”
The ghosts started moving back into the house.
“I own a haunted house,” Eddie said.
“And we can see ghosts,” Cisco said. “This is going to be interesting.”