“Do you know what you are?” he asked, leaning even closer again, and whispering as if people were listening outside. “You’re a Grouch, yeah, but more importantly, you areMould-bound. You’ve got a vengeance thread coiled around your soul. Until you face–Mark, was it–you’re stuck as a Mould-bound Grouch forever.”
“I don’t just want to face him,” I said. “I want to ruin him.”
Grumble’s grin split wide. “Nowyou’re speaking my language.”
Grumble was the first thing resembling a friend I’d had since dying. Crass, greasy, unfiltered. But he listened.
“I want him to pay,” I told him as we sat shoulder-to-shoulder on a mound of damp cardboard under a flickering security light. “I want him to remember me every time he breathes.”
“You’re not the first ghost to crave a haunting,” Grumble said, picking his ear with a chopstick. “But most never get the chance. All most can do as Bin-Spirits is move trash around, and that doesn’t exactly make people run for the hills. They just think we’re low-level poltergeists. Fucking Nullers will ruin this world. There will be no revenge if Mark doesn’t know it’s you, right? You need help. Lucky for you, I know a guy who can help. He does recon for the Spilled Spirits.”
“Spilled Spirits?”
“They’re a network of bin dwellers and drain creepers, like us. We exchange gossip and trash intel.”
“…You're joking.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” he grinned, his blackened teeth making another unwelcome appearance. “We’ll find your Mark. And then? We take our time.”
Chapter 11–Revisited
Grumble arrived back with flair, slipping through the crack in the bin like a ribbon of shadow and popping up in the bin beside me. He was wearing a crown fashioned from a coffee cup lid and holding a damp envelope in his teeth.
“Mail for you,” he chirped. “Took me a while, but I finally found a route to Mark’s house that doesn’t require you to litter hop. One soul-scented target gained express delivery.” He spat the soggy paper onto my lap with exaggerated ceremony. “Your murderer's got curb appeal.”
I wiped bin juice off the envelope and read the scribbled details. Mark’s address was scrawled in psychic ink, visible only to the vengeful and the dead. It was two suburbs over.
“Chirpy doorbell too,” Grumble added, peering over my shoulder. “One of those that sings when you press it instead of ringing. Like a dying bird trying to smile.”
I groaned. “Of course he’d have a singing doorbell.”
We rode the waste stream like sewer tourists until we popped out of a storm drain across the street from Mark’s house.
I finally had the chance to see more, unlike my fleeting time with the empty soda can. Everything about this place made my ghostly skin crawl. He lived on a quiet street with a cream-brick house. The front lawn was trimmed like a dollhouse garden. The flower beds were lined with polished white stones. A wooden welcome sign dangled from the porch that read ‘Home is Where the Heart is’.
I was thrown out like rotting takeaway, and here he was with hydrangeas and happy endings.
Grumble leered at the garden as if it owed him money. “Wife. Two kids. Son and daughter. A golden retriever named Muffin,” he muttered, picking up and licking a cracked yoghurt container that must have made its way here during a storm. “Also, he composts.”
“I fucking hate him,” I say.
After this visit, the haunting began subtly.
I started by watching. In silence. In the shadows. Now that I knew where he lived, I could follow him, learn his routine. I would perch with judgement in bins outside his office, curled in discarded lunch wrappers at his gym, hiding in the pedal bins in the change rooms.
It wasn’t just about fear. It was about knowing him. Knowing who he’d become after killing me. If he even remembered me?
He walked around as if nothing had happened. He was confident, clean-shaven. Faintly smug. A man who wore leather loafers without socks.
He joked with the baristas. Called his coworkers “mate.”
I imagined shoving him into traffic every time he smirked. Grouches don’t get intrusive thoughts. Weareintrusive thoughts.
Grumble scaled rooftops like a demon squirrel–if he had a big bushy tail like one, it would be twitching. He’d watch himfrom a distance to see if I missed anything. When he came down, he told me everything he could. “He’s a surface-scratcher. No depth. Everything’s performative. Watch him.”
We did. For days.
Mark left Post-it notes for himself like ‘Buy milk!’ and ‘Tell Lisa I love her!’’
