Chapter 17: Murder House Rental Contract!
Snap.
The neck of the last earthbound spirit who'd dared to fight back broke cleanly under Rango's fingers. A warm pulse of energy rippled through him — slow, steady, and deeply satisfying — as it seeped into his body and settled somewhere deep in his chest.
He let out a long breath. Then he lifted his wrist and glanced down at it.
The system progress bar was nearly half full.
And all he'd done was put down a dozen or so spirits who'd made the mistake of coming at him.
Figures. Slaughtering packs a bigger punch than poking around.
Meanwhile, the remaining twenty-odd earthbound spirits were huddled in the far corner of the basement, packed together and trembling like they'd been caught in a freeze frame. Some were on their knees. Others had their arms wrapped around themselves, shaking. In their eyes, the man standing across the room had stopped being a person entirely. He was something else now. Something worse.
It had started fast.
Rango had come through that chopped-open door swinging Moore's axe like it weighed nothing, and for the first few seconds, he'd just moved — cutting through the crowd with brutal, efficient speed, hitting anything that tried to run, anything that tried to fight, anything that so much as flinched in the wrong direction.
But the axe alone wasn't doing enough damage. The wounds closed too fast. The spirits reformed too quickly.
So he'd stopped. Reached into the pocket of his shorts — still half-damp from the bath — and pulled out the brass knuckles he'd found in the wooden box at the cathedral. The Holy Cross Brass Knuckles. His grandfather's.
The moment he'd slid them onto his right hand and thrown his first punch, the difference was immediate.
It wasn't just damage anymore. It was obliteration. Every spirit that got within reach of that fist lost a piece of itself — a clean, smoking chunk carved out of their spiritual body like a knife through butter. No healing. No reforming. Just gone.
In the space of a few minutes, Rango had put down every spirit in the basement who still had the will to fight. Every single one of them had been the strongest, the most aggressive, the ones most willing to throw themselves at him.
The ones who were left?
The old. The weak. The ones who'd already decided there was no point in resisting.
They sat on the ground — some cross-legged, some curled up, a few just staring at the concrete floor — waiting for whatever came next. Waiting to be judged.
Rango rolled the brass knuckles in his palm, watching the faint blue glow pulse along the engraved cross. He looked down at the last wisp of spiritual light from the final spirit he'd put down, drifting apart in the air like cigarette smoke.
He'd be lying if he said entering the basement hadn't caught him off guard.
He'd expected maybe a dozen spirits, tops. That was already more than he'd anticipated for one haunted house. But when he'd actually stepped through that door and seen the room — thirty-plus ghosts, packed in wall to wall, staring back at him with wide, terrified eyes—
He'd almost dropped the axe.
How many people had this house actually killed?
But the saving grace — and it was a big one — was that not a single one of them had evolved past the earthbound stage. No demons. No malevolent spirits. No supernatural powers beyond basic illusions and the ability to phase through walls.
In other words, they were fast, scared, and completely outgunned.
So Rango hadn't hesitated. Axe in one hand, brass knuckles on the other, he'd gotten to work.
They were all malevolent ghosts. Spirits that haunted and terrorized and hurt living people. Putting them down wasn't murder. It was pest control.
But now, looking at the ones who remained...
His gaze drifted across the huddle of survivors. An old man with wire-rimmed spectacles and the bearing of someone who'd once considered himself important. A woman in a sleek, form-fitting dress with red lips and a fur stole, watching Rango with sharp, calculating eyes. A young woman in a nurse's uniform, clutching her own hands in her lap. And there — Moira, the red-haired maid, sitting quietly with her back straight, expression unreadable.
None of them had malice in their eyes. Not really. What Rango saw instead was fear, exhaustion, and something that looked a lot like grief.
These weren't killers. These were victims. People who'd died in this house — probably violently — and gotten stuck here, with no way out and no one to help them.
He knew that feeling. He'd seen it before, back in Africa. Souls trapped in places they never wanted to be, haunting because it was the only thing they had left.
So what did he do with them?
Exorcise them? He could. He was good at it — better than good, actually. But his version of exorcism was blunt-force spiritual destruction. The souls he put down didn't go to Heaven. They didn't go to Hell. They just... stopped existing. Scattered into nothing.
That seemed a little harsh for people who hadn't actually done anything wrong.
Kill them outright? Same problem. Worse, even. These ghosts hadn't hurt anyone. Sending them into oblivion felt wrong in a way Rango couldn't quite articulate, but felt clearly enough to pause on.
He stood there for a moment, brass knuckles still warm in his palm, thinking.
Then he glanced down at his wrist. The progress bar pulsed faintly, a soft blue glow under his skin. And an idea — bold, maybe a little unhinged, but practical — started taking shape.
He pointed at the group of spirits on the floor. His voice was flat, businesslike, and carried zero warmth.
"You. All of you. Clean yourselves up. Wipe your faces. Then go upstairs to the living room and line up. You're seeing me."
He turned and walked out without waiting for a response.
Behind him, twenty-three earthbound spirits sat in stunned silence, exchanging bewildered looks.
Line up for what?
Half an hour later. Upstairs, in the living room.
An office desk had been set up near the front window — pulled in from somewhere in the house, covered in a clean cloth, with two chairs behind it. M3GAN sat in one, a tablet in front of her, posture immaculate. Ted sat in the other, slouched back with a pen balanced between his paws, looking like he'd rather be literally anywhere else.
A long line of ghosts stretched from the desk toward the hallway. Nervous. Quiet. Some fidgeting. A few whispering to each other, then immediately shutting up when one of them glanced toward the front of the line.
The first ghost stepped up to the desk.
M3GAN's optical sensors fixed on her with mechanical precision. Ted, pen ready, didn't even look up.
"Name?"
"Moira O'Hara."
"Occupation?"
"Maid."
"Cause of death. Date and circumstances."
Moira — black maid's uniform, hands folded neatly in front of her — hesitated for just a moment. Then she took a breath and spoke, her voice quiet but steady.
"April 20th, 1976. The man of the house — the husband — he wanted to... be with me. I tried to say no. But he was so much stronger than me. He tore my clothes and held me down on the kitchen table..."
She paused. Touched the front of her dress, just above where her heart would have been.
"And then the wife walked in. And she shot us both."
A beat of silence.
Ted's pen hovered over the paper. He glanced up at Moira — took in the way she was holding herself, the careful tilt of her chin, the way her eyes didn't quite meet his.
Could've been the other way around, he thought. Could've been her idea. Hard to tell.
He shrugged internally. Not his job to figure that out.
"Last question. Have you ever harmed a living person?"
"No!" Moira shook her head quickly, her expression crumbling into something genuinely sorrowful. "I'm a victim myself. I could never—"
"Okay." Ted waved his paw. "Next."
Moira stepped aside, and the line moved forward.
Behind her, ghost after ghost filed up to the desk — each one nervously, hesitantly sharing their name, their life, their death. Under M3GAN's hyper-efficient processing, every piece of information was logged, cross-referenced, and organized in real time. Names, occupations, dates, causes of death, any known violent history — all of it captured in minutes.
Twenty-three spirits. Twenty-three stories. Twenty-three reasons they were stuck in this house.
When it was done, Rango sat on the couch with the compiled files in his hands, flipping through them one page at a time. M3GAN and Ted flanked him — Ted with his arms crossed, M3GAN standing perfectly still with her hands clasped behind her back.
Rango read. Slowly, carefully.
The picture that emerged wasn't pretty — but it wasn't what he'd expected, either. Most of these ghosts hadn't been killers. Hadn't been monsters. A few had been murder victims. A couple had died in accidents. One or two had taken their own lives after something in this house had broken them.
None of them, as far as he could tell, had actively gone out of their way to hurt anyone while they were alive.
He closed the folder and looked up.
Twenty-three pairs of eyes stared back at him from around the room. Hopeful. Terrified. A few of the women had subtly adjusted their posture — leaning forward just slightly, chins tilted, presenting themselves in the way that spirits instinctively did when they wanted to appear sympathetic. Or appealing.
Rango noticed. Didn't comment on it.
He stood up from the couch, and the room went dead quiet.
"Alright," he said. His voice was calm now. The fury from the basement had burned itself out, replaced by something cooler and more deliberate. He even smiled — small, easy, and almost genuinely warm. "Don't be scared. I know what happened down there probably gave you the wrong idea about me. But once you get to know me a little, you'll figure out I'm actually a pretty reasonable guy. Easy to work with."
He let that land for a second.
"Everything I did in the basement tonight was to weed out the bad ones. The ones who were actually dangerous — the ones who would've kept hurting people. They're gone now. The threat is over." He held up both hands, palms out. "You're safe. I'm not going to touch you. Not unless you give me a reason."
A few of the ghosts visibly relaxed. Shoulders dropped. Someone let out a breath they'd been holding.
Then Rango shifted his weight, and his expression changed — just slightly. The warmth didn't disappear, but something sharper slid underneath it. Something businesslike.
"But here's the thing." He pointed at the floor. "I paid a lot of money for this house. Like, several hundred thousand dollars a lot. Legally, I own it. And eventually, my family is going to move in here too." He paused, letting the weight of that sink in. "Which means... your being here makes things complicated for me."
The ghosts exchanged uneasy glances.
Elizabeth — the woman in the black dress with the fur stole, the one they called the Black Dahlia — spoke up first. Her voice was smooth, practiced, the kind of voice that had once commanded a room full of people just by entering it.
"We want to leave too, believe me. But we can't. We're earthbound spirits. This house is where we died. We're stuck here — permanently. We don't have a choice."
Rango nodded, like he'd expected that answer. "Right. And I figured as much." He held up a finger. "Which is exactly why I've come up with a solution that works for both sides."
He clapped his hands once.
M3GAN stepped forward immediately — smooth, silent, efficient — and produced a stack of papers from somewhere. She moved down the line of ghosts, handing one to each of them with mechanical precision.
Rango watched them take the documents, watched their eyes move to the bold header on the first page:
MURDER HOUSE RENTAL AGREEMENT
He let them read the title for a moment. Then he spoke.
"Here's the deal. You sign this contract, you become official tenants of this house. The landlord — that's me. You pay rent on time, you can stay here as long as you want. No one touches you. No one bothers you. You just... live here. Same as you've been doing. Except now it's legal."
A young male ghost — nervous, slight, barely out of his twenties even in death — raised his hand tentatively. "Um... what's the rent?"
Rango smiled. Walked over to him. Extended his hand, palm up, in a casual, almost friendly gesture.
"Give me your hand."
The ghost hesitated — just for a second — then placed his hand in Rango's.
The moment skin met skin, Rango's wrist flared with light. A deep, pulling sensation — like a current dragging something out from the inside — surged through the ghost's body. He gasped, his eyes going wide, his spiritual form flickering like a light with a loose connection.
It lasted maybe three seconds.
Rango let go.
The young ghost stumbled back a step, breathing hard — or doing the ghost equivalent of breathing hard. He looked down at his own hands. They were slightly dimmer than before. Paler. Like someone had turned down the brightness on him.
Rango turned back to the group, brass knuckles visible in his palm — not threateningly, just... present. A reminder.
"The energy inside your spiritual bodies. That's the rent. Once a week. Every week." He let that settle. "And before anyone asks — I'm not going to drain you dry. I'll let you rest between collections. And whatever you want — entertainment, activities, company — I'll do what I can to make it work. This isn't a prison."
He paused.
"But I don't like being told no."
The room was very quiet for a very long time.
Then, one by one, the ghosts looked at each other. Helpless glances. Resigned sighs. The kind of silent conversation that happened between people — or spirits — who had run out of options and knew it.
One by one, they signed.
Rango watched the contracts fill up, a small, satisfied curl at the corner of his mouth. He'd felt it — the moment the first ghost had paid. A faint tick upward on the progress bar. Slow, yeah. But with twenty-three spirits paying weekly? The math was simple.
The bar would fill. It was only a matter of time.
He was just starting to think about what the next summoning might bring — what the system might unlock at 100% — when two ghosts peeled away from the group with a kind of synchronized grace that could only come from years of practice.
Elizabeth glided toward him from the left. Moira from the right. Both of them moved like they'd choreographed it — slow, deliberate, each one closing the distance with an ease that suggested they'd done this kind of thing before. Many times.
Elizabeth reached him first, leaning against his left side with a languid, effortless elegance. The fur stole draped over her shoulder brushed against his arm. She tilted her head, red lips curving into something that was less a smile and more an invitation.
"Boss," she said, her voice low and honeyed. "There are a lot of clauses in this contract I don't quite understand. Would you mind walking me through them?"
Before Rango could respond, Moira was there on his right — pressed close, her chest grazing his arm in a way that was almost certainly deliberate. She looked up at him with wide, earnest eyes and a smile that contradicted them entirely.
"Same here," she said sweetly. "Some of these words are really confusing. Maybe... we could go somewhere more comfortable? And you could explain them to us properly?"
Rango felt the contact from both sides. Registered it. Didn't react — not visibly, anyway. His expression stayed perfectly neutral.
But his eyes flicked, almost imperceptibly, down to his wrist.
He checked the time.
Forty minutes until his shift started.
He looked back up at Elizabeth. Then at Moira. Both of them watching him with matching expressions of patient, expectant interest.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
Time seems... quite ample.
[Milestone: 500 Power Stones = +1 Chapter]
[Milestone: 10 Reviews = +1 Chapter]
Enjoyed this chapter? Leave a review.
10+ advanced chapters on P1treon Soulforger