Short story: This house is haunted

Micro-fiction of suburban dread.

Photo by Ryan Stefan on Unsplash

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We’re on another short story week, so pull the curtains, lock the door, and settle in. Or maybe don’t, because…

This house is haunted

It is a sturdy, everyday 1930s terraced house in an unremarkable neighbourhood, and on first seeing it you think: ‘This house is haunted.’ You do not want to stay here. You want to cancel your booking. It looks normal, but vision is only one sense and your bones beg you to leave.

When the front door closes, it kills the street’s bustling sounds. You place your single piece of luggage in the hallway.

The air is still, and the beats of silence are deepened by the steady tick of an unseen grandfather clock. The walls hold their breath between the ticks. Despite the summer heat outside, the hallway is cool.

In the living room, a modern pale green sofa squats across from a wide-screen TV. A sofa cushion bears the imprint of the previous sitter. The foam padding slowly flattens, filling the dent. Behind the room’s door, there’s the faint swish of moving cloth, like someone shifting their weight. You lean to squint through the gap at the door’s hinges, but the space is empty.

At the rear of the building, a kitchen overlooks a walled garden space. There is no grass or flowerbeds, only poured concrete. Cracks meander through it but no moss or weeds thrive there. A peculiar stain surrounds the cracks, like rainfall dredges up something that refuses to remain entirely buried.

Beside the window, knives gleam in a wooden block. There is nothing odd about them, but you keep them in the corner of your eye at all times. When you leave the kitchen, you fight the urge to slam the door and instead jerk it shut, still faster than you intended. Chiding yourself, you consider peeking inside again, to reassure yourself the knives have not moved, but why would you do that?

There is a small dining room. Glass-fronted cabinets hold whiskey tumblers, wine glasses, and porcelain figurines from the mid-twentieth century. There must be a hundred of these pale forms: doe-eyed children and coy milkmaids and grinning farmhands with wide-brimmed hats and three crows and a man riding a goat and a women cooking stew in a giant pot and a scarecrow and—easy to miss among the throng—a thin figure made of sticks and dirty string, with tarnished copper beads for eyes. Sunlight pours through room’s windows, which are wide and run floor-to-ceiling, but still it remains cold.

Air stirs against your neck, like someone passed in the hallway behind you. The kitchen door is still closed, the front door is still closed. In the living room, a new dent on the sofa seat slowly rebounds.

The stairs to the upper floor creak, exactly like the stairs in the house you grew up in. Exactly exactly like them, the sound stirring tactile memories. You stop, unwilling to take another step but not wanting to walk down. Your gaze falls onto your hand on the banister. It is a normal banister, white paint so thick it has almost filled the curves carved into the wood. For a moment, your hand feels too large, like it should be the size of a child’s. Your wriggle your fingers, making sure they are your own, then tiptoe up the few remaining steps, hoping somehow this will make you lighter and stop the too-familiar creaks in this unknown house.

In the cramped upstairs hallway, the grandfather clock’s ticks fade into the distance and only the faintest sound of traffic penetrates the gloom.

A sunlit bedroom calls to you. There is only a single-sized bed and a 1960s wardrobe made of dark-stained wood. The wardrobe is plain and blocky, and on one door there are three gnarled knots in the grain: two round ones the size of a large coin, almost parallel to each other, and the third is a long near-black smear below. Without meaning to, you sit on the bed, making its springs ping and squeak, and stare at the three knots.

Your do not shift your eyes when the floorboards groan. They tense and unfurl like the room is inhaling your scent.

Pushing yourself up, the floor is solid and unmoving underfoot, but—perhaps—it trembles like tensed muscle, like it could relax and swallow you between living planks.

The bathroom is spotless. Halfway across the long the edge of the bath, a chocolate-brown shower curtain hangs limp. It is cold to the touch. You freeze. There is no sound from the concealed space behind the fabric, no rustle or drip or breath or sigh or sob or any sign at all that something looms there. Tugging the curtain back would confirm or dispel the illusion. Your hand hesitates. Malevolence leaks through the cloth. A cloud spreads across the sun and the room instantly chills yet further. Something is there. You feel it there. If you pull the curtain, you will see it.

It can stay unseen.

You back away and inch the bathroom door closed, turning the handle until you feel it latch shut. Feeling for the stair’s handrail, gaze not leaving the bathroom’s handle, you re-tread the path down. Halfway down, the bathroom handle shivers, just once, but the door doesn’t open.

Rushing to the bottom, your foot jars into the floor where you expected an additional step and your knee buckles. You slam into the ground, smack your head against your suitcase, air bursts from your lungs.

You lie still, recovering, listening to the grandfather clock’s tick. It occurs to you there was no clock in any of the rooms.

The sun has not come out. At the top of the stairs, the hallway is pure shadow. In the rooms above, something small and metal squeals and a thin wooden door bounces on its hinges—the wardrobe has opened.

Ignoring the throbbing pain from your fall, you push yourself up against the wall and grasp for the front door’s lock. Your fingers flail across the smooth and empty wood: there is no handle, no latch, no lock to undo. Glancing over your shoulder, the top step of the stairs is now lost in darkness.

Were you checking on the wrong side of the front door? On the other side there are only sturdy, paint-clogged hinges.

In the kitchen, a knife clangs onto the counter. That door is still closed, but the stairs are half-enveloped in night.

Returning your attention to the front door, the handle is back where you first checked. Flinging it open, you topple headfirst onto the front garden path. A howl of wind slams the door behind you.

Sitting on the path, plucking gravel from the torn palms of your hands, you take heaving breaths and stare at the innocent, plain front door.

The front door clicks and sways open, just a few inches, revealing your luggage just beyond arm’s reach across the threshold.

The end.

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I hope you enjoyed reading that, because I had a blast writing it!

Next week I’ll be back with an analysis of some of the choices I made while writing this story—including sharing what I planned to write and how it quickly turned into something else.

As always, likes or comments and sharing these newsletters is always much appreciated.

Cheers, and I hope you can fill your week with kindness to yourselves and others,

Mata

xxx