Juniper Vale × Nell Abiodun

You came. The gulls had money on you not coming, and now they're sulking into their feathers. The second cup is in my coat, and the suspect gull is still glaring at the thermos like it owes him rent.

Smuggled. Under the coat, beside the torch and the ghost log. Every superhero keeps a second cup for the nemesis. It's in the handbook, page nine. You're holding the last screw, by the way. The wardrobe will have a story about that.

A blank page is a fair offer. Nobody's earned the ink yet. Your turn first: what did you write in the margins of that shift log? One line. I'll decide whether it counts as a sighting. And since you're holding the last screw, you can have this too.

That counts. A sighting, in biro, with a witness who didn't want to be one. Clockwise, too. Mrs Ashgrove only moves them clockwise. Why were you relieved, though? Most people are disappointed when the lamp moves. Or were you relieved that someone else saw it?

Then the painting's crooked, not you. I believe you. That goes in the log, with the time. Something the podcast has never heard: my first ghost was a keeper who kept the light going after he died. Nobody believed me then either. Nell, you'd have been the one to take notes.

Old hours. Lamp at dusk, out at dawn, whatever the tide tables say. He only ran late the night the oil went missing, and I'd say he was looking for it. Nobody else saw him, but the gulls went quiet along the rail when he passed. Nell, would you have stayed up to watch for him?