The Mysterious Man was not, in actuality, a spirit. He was a living, breathing man who was hungry.
Every now and then, his stomach got the better of his pride, and he would make his way to her house. She would yell at him a bit, give him food, and then he would linger until past dark. It reminded him of his own home when his parents had still been alive, when he was a boy and the smell of warm bread lingered for hours past.
It was a cold, wet day in early spring. The only thing he'd had to eat for the past two days was the full amount of berries he could pluck from an early-blooming bush. When he knocked on the door, he was surprised at how quickly she opened it.
"You!" Granny exclaimed, as if his cheap ass didn't regularly show up here when he had nowhere else to go.
"Have any spare food for a weary traveller?" he asked hopefully.
"Weary traveller! Hah!" she snorted, letting him in anyways. "If you would just set your nose to the grindstone and get a proper job, you wouldn't need to come and bother me now." She brought down a second mug from a cabinet, muttering all the while. "I'm old, and the last thing I want to be doing is looking after you. Why can't you just leave me alone?"
He knew she didn't really mean it, though, in the way she smiled slightly as she poured him a cup of tea.
"While at first I may seem delirious, I am nothing serious."
"Serious! That's the last thing I'd accuse you of."
"Do you have any scones?" he asked, not listening.
"No," Granny said, thumping a plate of biscuits in front of him.
"Thanks," he said, beginning to eat. "So, what are you working on now?"
"Don't eat with your mouth full," she said absent-mindedly, picking up her sewing again. "I was thinking of a nice afghan."
When the Mysterious Man had finished eating, he reclined back in his chair. "Wonderful. Fancy a game?"
"If you promise to play honest," she warned.
He did not, in fact, play honest.
They set up a checkerboard, and the two stared at each other across the board with narrowed eyes. Granny's hands were knobbly and wrinkled, but they moved with precision as she neatly shifted her checkers from square to square. The Mysterious Man just pushed his across the board with his thumb, often keeping the rest of his hand open to conceal what he was doing.
Granny was no fool, however. She knew what he was doing, but figured that she could beat him anyways. The third time her pieces turned up on the other side of the board, she stood and flipped the board with great force.
"Eating my scones and wasting my time!" she proclaimed, with all the authority of an empress. "I shall not tolerate such behaviour in my home!"
"Ow," Mysterious Man said, rubbing his eye where a wooden checker piece had struck him. "Can I have some more tea?"
"No," Granny said, beginning to pour another cup anyway.