The house was old. Its thick walls held out the cold while the brick and iron wood-burning stove provided more than enough warmth. The old hand-pump in the kitchen still worked to draw up water from a well, although there was also a more modern looking sink and faucet that had been installed some years previous. In fact, the signs of previous owners’ attempts at modernization were evident in the hodgepodge of exposed plumbing, electrical conduits, and mismatched fixtures that were scattered throughout the house.

From the very first moment she saw the house, Neeka knew it was the one she wanted. Now, having just come from signing the mountain of paperwork, she stood in the front doorway, keys in hand, as the newest owner of the house. She shivered a bit and closed the door to keep any more of the winter’s chill from seeping inside. Plenty of light shone in through the large windows in the living room and she was surprised to see a stack of wood placed beside the fireplace. She figured it must have been Todd, her realtor, who left it as a literal housewarming gift. Neeka wasn’t exactly an expert when it came to making a fire but it felt like the proper way to really settle into her new home. It took her a few tries of stacking and re-stacking logs and kindling but eventually she was able to get it to light and stay lit. Immediately, the heat emanating from the fire began to spread throughout the room and Neeka spent several minutes just sitting on the floor by the fire.

She checked the time on her cellphone and saw that she still had some time before the movers were scheduled to arrive with her belongings. She’d originally assumed the signing process would take much longer but had finished sooner than anticipated. After she was sufficiently warm, Neeka got up and began walking through the house. It was built in a square, with the living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom each fitting into one of the four corners of the house. The rooms weren’t all the same size, of course, with the living room being the largest, followed by the kitchen, then the bedroom, and smallest being the bathroom. The three smaller rooms were each connected to the living room and so there were no hallways in the house, which Neeka loved. She’d always hated hallways, feeling like they were almost always a waste of floor space.

Decent sized windows in every room let in a wonderful amount of natural light, and she found herself running her hands along the polished wood surfaces in the kitchen, watching as the light highlighted the various contours while she walked. Normally, she would have been wary of a kitchen with wooden counters but the ironwood that had been used in its construction was unbelievably sturdy. After all the years of use, the wood was still good and strong. She turned the knobs on the sink and clear water flowed out of the faucet. It looked, like all of the newer additions to the house, somewhat out of place and just a bit tacked on when compared to the rest of the house. Still, things like that could be fixed with a bit of time, effort, and money. She would need to sit down and budget out the different projects she wanted to get done and figure out the best order to do them in.

The house creaked and the familiar, almost popping sound, echoed through the ceiling as the heat from the fire continued to spread throughout the house. The creaking, however, didn’t stop. As soon as it reached one side of the house it turned and went back the way it had come. She would have begun to worry about the structural integrity of the house had she not been distracted by the hand-pump inexplicably starting to work itself. Cupboard doors also began to open and shut all on their own and the faucet she had been inspecting shut itself off, the knob turning of its own accord.

Neeka stood there, amazed and bewildered at the scene unfolding before her eyes. As suddenly as it had started, it was over and the house was quiet and still. Moments later, a knock on the front door jolted her out of the stupor she had fallen into. Her mind was so full that she hardly remembered going to answer the door. The movers had arrived and she managed to give them sufficient directions that they were able to get everything moved in. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred while they worked and before she knew it, the movers were done and gone and she was alone in the house once more.

She sat herself down in her armchair beside the fireplace and waited. It was difficult to be sure what she was waiting for, exactly, perhaps another spectacle like the one she’d seen in the kitchen, but she felt deep down that something more was soon to happen. As the minutes stretched out before her, Neeka used that time to think. She’d heard of haunted houses before but had always assumed they were nothing more than fabrications. While the movers had been busy unpacking, Neeka had checked the kitchen to see if she could find any sort of mechanisms that would explain what she had seen but as far as she could tell there wasn’t any such hidden devices.

Daylight was beginning to wane and Neeka was growing impatient with waiting.

“Um, excuse me,” Neeka began uncertainly, “but I think I’d like to discuss what happened earlier today in the kitchen.”

Nothing obvious happened, and yet, Neeka could have sworn that she felt something about the room change. The air felt dense and she could sense something else, a weight of emotion filling the space around her.

“I’m new here and don’t want to upset anyone,” Neeka pressed on when nothing else seemed to be happening. “I really like this house and would like to live here, but I’m confused by what happened in the kitchen. Is that just your way of saying hello? Was there something I did that upset you?”

Neeka waited, and slowly, so painfully slowly that it was hard to tell at first if she was imagining it or not, a form began to take shape. For a while it looked like nothing more than an amorphous fog. Eventually she could make out the form of a person sitting in a wooden chair. They were situated across of Neeka on the other side of the fireplace as if they, too, were warming themselves there. The apparition wore trousers, held up by suspenders, and a plain, long-sleeved shirt. Worn and heavily patched boots covered their feet and a wide brimmed hat rested in its lap.

“This is my house,” the specter said and its voice was thin and airy. “I built it with my own hands.”

There wasn’t any malice in its expression or voice but Neeka still felt chills running down her neck and spine when she met its gaze.

“Did I upset you in the kitchen?” Neeka asked.

“I built this house,” it repeated. “Yet others have come and spit on my hard work.”

It didn’t seem to be fully aware of Neeka. Sometimes the specter looked right at her whereas at other times it didn’t seem to notice her and instead stretched out its hands as if warming itself by the fire. Whenever she spoke it seemed to only half pay any attention to her and might as well have been talking to itself whenever it spoke.

“What did they do?” Neeka asked.

“They come in here and slap their ugly metal bits all over everything, that’s what they do,” it grunted. “I work to bring the well pump inside and they all think they know better than I, running pipes and everything all over the place, no concern for breaking through my walls and floors.”

“So, you didn’t like it when I turned on the faucet?”

For the first time, the specter seemed to fully see Neeka and he scowled.

“Why isn’t my pump good enough for you?” he grumbled. “What’s so fine and wonderful about that little faucet?”

“I didn’t know it would upset you,” Neeka admitted. “Now that I know, I’ll be sure to use the hand-pump instead,” and then, thinking quickly, she added “I quite agree that your hand-pump is much lovelier than the faucet.”

She wondered briefly about what she would do if and when she needed hot water but figured that, for now, she should try and keep the specter calm. Maybe she could get to the point where she could explain to it why she might sometimes need to use the faucet rather than the hand-pump.

“Is there anything else I should know?” Neeka asked. “I don’t want to upset you again, especially if its over something I didn’t know.”

“Yeah,” the specter replied and his scowl softened somewhat. “They ripped out all the fixtures I built to hold lamps and now there’s just those things,” It gestured up towards the light fixture in the ceiling. “They’re too bright and clutter the walls with their mess, like a great, ugly spider web.”

“I see,” Neeka nodded her head as she considered how best to handle that problem. She wasn’t about to give up electricity all together. “Lamp oil,” she began, “isn’t easily found anymore. People use the electric lights instead now.”

The specter didn’t seem to have heard her although the ceiling did begin to creak.

“There are lights that aren’t so bright,” Neeka said. “I can’t bring back the lamps, but I could use those, um, those better lights instead.”

She didn’t want to live in darkness but figured swapping out the bulbs for some that were a bit on the warmer side to mimic the light of a lamp, and somewhat dimmer than a usual bulb, might be enough for the specter to be satisfied.

“Hmm, yeah, I suppose that’d be better than nothing,” the specter mused.

“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you before,” Neeka said, “but I don’t even know your name. I’m Neeka, by the way.”

The specter nodded its head respectfully.

“My name’s Joe,” it said.

“Nice to meet you Joe,” Neeka said.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Joe replied.

Neeka hadn’t intended to buy a haunted house, and she wondered what the previous owners had known about Joe, but she didn’t want to waste her time or energy pestering them over it. She’d make this work, one way or another. She loved the house, and if living here meant making some adjustments, well then she would do what she could. Who knows, maybe she could get Joe to help out around the house. The specter could obviously interact with the physical world. Maybe she could get it to handle making and tending to the fire? Although, perhaps having something like Joe lighting fires in the house was a bad idea since it might mix things up and just light the house on fire.

The darkness outside was deep by the time Joe faded away from the fireside, disappearing right along with his spectral chair. After a while longer, the room felt normal again and Neeka was confident that whatever passed for the specter’s consciousness was no longer focused on her. She added another couple of logs to the fire and then went to get ready for bed. It was tricky to do without turning on any lights but she managed things alright. That night as she slipped beneath her blankets she wondered at how she would explain Joe to others once she started having company over. In the end she decided that was a worry for another day and she let herself drift off into a contented sleep in a house that she loved.