I recently moved into a lovely two-bedroom in Carroll Gardens with a couple of roommates, Mr. Edmund Hedgeworth and Mrs. Helen Hedgeworth, along with their six children: Harry, Henry, Harold, Spatchcock, Ginny, and Bernadette. The issue is that they are all ghosts and I wanted to live alone.
I am partially to blame. I should’ve known that “prewar” is just a real-estate euphemism for “infested with the spirits of people who died at the turn of the century but whose rent-control agreements remain in full effect.”
My first sighting occurred while I was in the bathroom shaving one morning. All of a sudden, young Henry lunged through the wall and yelled, “Boo, bitch!” and then proceeded to do a dab. When I got over my sheer terror, I couldn't help but wonder, How does this translucent young man wearing Gilded Age attire know what a dab is? (Turns out the kids were stealing my iPhone to watch Jake Paul videos, so that explained the huge spike in my data usage since I moved in.) Henry now does this every time I shave.
The next episode occurred the following week, while I was making a banana-peanut-butter smoothie. I removed the lid from the blender and out popped Harold, who shrieked, “Boo, you’ve been cucked, libtard!” and then began to juju on that beat. It scared the shit out of me that this ghost boy, who looked like a child extra from “There Will Be Blood,” was already adept at jujuing on that beat and fluent in alt-right hate speech. (He had also subscribed to InfoWars.)
I thought it was just the two boys at first. Then, one night, I got home, turned on the lights, and screamed—the whole family was huddled on the couch eating Chinese food and watching “Mad Men,” which was definitely way too mature a show for the kids. I suddenly understood how I’d spent nearly four hundred dollars in the past month on Seamless orders that I had no memory of placing.
I turned off the TV and asked, “Who are you and why are you in my home?”
Mr. Hedgeworth stood up, brushed a stray grain of rice from his jacket, and said, “Pardon me, my dear sir, but who are you and why are you in our home?”
“My name is Nick. I signed a lease on this apartment three weeks ago.”
“Well, well. We are the Hedgeworths, and we notarized the lease on this apartment a hundred and nineteen years ago!” Mr. Hedgeworth replied, as he reached into the interior pocket of his frock coat and removed a folded, yellowed document. He handed it to me—it was their lease. I read it in horror. The ghost family had been paying six dollars in rent for more than a century!
“Six dollars! Do you know how much I pay for this place every month?” I shouted.
“Nine dollars?” Mrs. Hedgeworth guessed.
“Twenty-eight hundred,” I whispered.This sent the Hedgeworths into a fit of hysterics.
“You gentrifiers are really not very smart,” Spatchcock said, with a giggle.
“Pipe down, Spatchcock!” Mr. Hedgeworth said. “But you are not incorrect. This man entirely lacks real-estate acumen and sense, paying such a staggering fee. However, the true dunces are the landowners—for they all forget to add a clause stating rent-control agreements terminate posthumously!”
“But you’re ghosts,” I said. “You can live—you can reside wherever you want. Why not pick a mansion on the Upper East Side? Have you been to the Frick? I would live in the Frick. This is an eighth-floor walkup in South Brooklyn.”
“Move to the Frick?” Mr. Hedgeworth asked, angrily. “Have you ever lost your mind? Where do you suppose Henry Clay went? He’s still there, and not the most gracious fellow. Plus, we like it here. It’s cozy.”
“Boo, you’ve been cucked, libtard!” Harold shrieked as he jujued on that beat.
“Harold!” Mrs. Hedgeworth yelled. “Stop that and go to your room!” Harold obediently flew off into my room.
“Look,” I explained, “I don’t mean to sound rude, but I’ve had to share an apartment with roommates my whole adult life. I was hoping, moving in here, that I’d finally have a space to myself.”
“We are ghosts. We do not take up space. Look,” Mr. Hedgeworth said as he walked through me.
“O.K.,” I said.
“You should not have rented prewar,” Mr. Hedgeworth said. And, with that, the family receded into the wall.
To my great surprise, the Hedgeworths and I managed to share the space in near-perfect harmony for the next year. I started seeing someone, Nina, who—after a brief period of being creeped out by Bernadette’s obsession with Zayn Malik—ultimately got along great with the kids. Nina and I even babysat them when Mr. and Mrs. Hedgeworth got tickets to “STOMP.” We had become like one big family.
But, one night, Nina and I got home and gasped—the Hedgeworths had packed up all their belongings.
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
Mr. Hedgeworth, with a tear in his eye, said, “We got off the wait list to Heaven. We’re leaving.”
“But I thought you loved it here! You said it was cozy!” I replied.
“Yes, of course we do, but have you lost your mind?” Mrs. Hedgeworth said. “We just got into Heaven. This is an eighth-floor walkup in South Brooklyn!”
Mr. Hedgeworth took me aside and handed me his yellowed rent agreement. “Here,” he said. “I want you to have this, as a reminder that you’re paying way too much for this place.”
I accepted the gift, thanked him, and we all hugged goodbye. Then the Hedgeworths flew out the window, a stream of luggage floating in their wake. A tear rolled down my cheek as I realized that I’d probably never have roommates quite like them ever again—and that I’d definitely never get reimbursed for all those data overages and Seamless orders.
