"Hey Lil', free nail!" shouted Marshall gleefully.
"Score!" yelled Lily from the other room. Robin laughed as Marshall hung the picture on the wall. She walked to the counter to set down their house-warming wine. It would warm them up after navigating the rainy New York streets moments prior.
"Huh," he said behind her. "That's weird." The picture had tilted to one side. He righted it, but it repeated the action. "Oh, now this is ridiculous. Is the nail broken? Is the wall slippery?"
A feeling suddenly overcame her as she stood before the counter, looking into the kitchen. She had been glad for Lily and Marshall on moving into their new apartment, but now she felt… Sad? Cold. Like she was underwater and couldn't rise to the surface. Robin had never had any anxiety about drowning. But that's what now made her heart seize. Her arms clasped around her middle. She hugged herself tightly, but it was of little comfort.
"Marshall…" Robin started. "Do you feel that?" Her voice rang out into the empty apartment, but there was no reply. She turned, expecting to see Marshall. He was gone.
"Is the wall slippery?" Marshall asked himself, righting the picture frame one more time. As his hands made contact, there was a pop sound and he found he was no longer in his living room.
He examined his surroundings. He stood atop a building overlooking a street. It was strung with lanterns and behind him, he saw two water towers. The sky was clear and the sun was setting which alarmed Marshall. It had just been nighttime. And raining buckets.
"Sorry 'bout that, bro," said a voice behind him. Marshall zipped around. There was a young man.
"Who are you?" Marshall stuttered out. "Where are we?"
"I'm Rich. You're in the painting you just put up."
"Hey, guys. I have something to tell you. Um…" Lily hesitated, looking behind her into the bedroom. She shook herself and marched down the hallway. "I don't know how else to say this. There's someone else… living here, sorta," she said. "Her name is-"
She stopped, mid-motion, for Robin was on the ground, nursing the whole bottle of wine, sobbing her eyes out by the fireplace.
"Robin! Are you okay?" Lily blurted.
"Y-yeah…" she hiccoughed. "I just- The rain makes him so sad I have to cry about it too."
"Who? It makes who sad? And where's Marshall?"
"Gil. He died in the bathtub. And the r-rain reminds him." Robin pointed to a flickering form to her left. It materialized into the form of an old man. He was as transparent as he was wrinkled (which was a lot). Lily was not as surprised as Robin thought she would be.
"That's kind of what I was saying earlier," she started, gesturing behind her toward the rest of the apartment. "I met a little girl in the bedroom. She called herself Rosie Racecar, after the race car she was playing with when she died downstairs in the elevator."
Robin's tear-streaked eyes widened. "So, you have two ghosts to deal with?"
"Three, actually," said Marshall. Lily and Robin screamed.
"Marshall!" Lily shouted. "Where'd you come from? And where'd you go?" Robin nodded her head, wondering the same.
"I was in the painting you made," he gushed, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder at said piece of art. "I met a ghost, Rich- he was a painter like you. He died in a faulty elevator a couple years ago."
"So did Rosie." Exclaimed Lily. "The ghost I met in the bedroom."
"Baby, we have a family of ghosts!"
"I know," she groaned. "Hand me that bottle, Robin."