SPECTRALICA (ONE)

Capt. Buckmaster is in charge. It is, after all, his house. It says so right outside on the wall and on a plaque across the street. Some people come to town just to read these plaques and explore the different layers of architecture in the city; the way the town developed, not so much in a natural way, or at least in any way that could be associated with things in nature, other than the strange whims of humans attempting to make a life out of nothing in a new world, New England of the 18th century.

He maintained his distance from the others, rarely spoke and even then only to have the final word on one of the rare disagreements among the group. He never had any conversations. There were those who remembered a time when he discussed things and took a more active role in the life of the house, but they refrained from gossiping about him, how he was, or speculating on why he was now so quiet now, such was the degree to which he was respected and thus, "in charge."

The house itself was respected almost as a person itself. At this stage of existence you came to understand that souls were not exclusive to humans; that everything had one, in one way or another and a house as old as this one surely was 'alive' as much as anything else was, including the human souls stuck here for the whole range of reasons that might happen. But while the house never 'voted' in any dispute, never complained or got moody when one of the temporally 'living' humans did something stupid or just annoying the way the others did, it made its presence and its feelings known when it wanted to. And at those times, only Capt. Buckmaster could calm it down, although that calming 'process,' for lack of a better word, always happened in private.