You stick the note on the vent with tape that has seen better summers.

Not a ghost. Wind in the vent. — You

It is not a joke at the marsh’s expense. It is a kindness to the next person who hears threes in a gale and feels their neck go cold. Folklore can stay in a scrapbook. The vent can stay a vent.

The cottage settles. Timber ticks as temperature drops. That is wood shrinking, not footsteps. You listen until the ticks are boring, which is how you know you are winning.

A text pings from the next dock over—Jonah Pike, neighbor, collector of legends: still think one ghost is allowed. You text back: allowed in stories. not in the crawl space.

You could lay the night out on the kitchen table—knocks, wind, whatever else you refused to chase—before Aunt Mara’s headlamps find the drive.

You could confirm with a walk-through, the way you check a door twice, because some fears only leave when you show them the hinge.