Forever Home

Sixteen other agents have tried and failed to sell the house at 104 Fern Street. Sixteen less ambitious agents have walked in and then immediately fled the location. All sixteen have a different horror story to tell. 

It’s not real, though. 

Stepping out of my car, I let it chirp loudly as I lock the doors. I have potential clients coming in half an hour. There isn’t really anything I can do about the dilapidated white picket fence shedding its paint and tipping forward as if it too is trying to escape the weathered house. Dried foxtails lean onto the sidewalk. They tangle with each other, strangling the life from one another as effectively as a killer smothering his final victim. 

God. I need to clear my head, paste on a smile, and pretend I didn’t hear all of the nonsense from the other people who came here. 

They don’t tell the same story. It’s not like sixteen people came here and saw a woman on the stairs in a white sheet. Some heard a door slam while they were supposed to be alone at the location. Others swear there was a face outside of a window looking in on them. A single woman refused to answer my call and instead sent me an email saying to never set foot at 104. 

Well, here goes nothing. 

I undo the rusted latch and fight back against the weeds to push open the gate. The foxtails cling to my legs as I step onto the cement walk leading up to the house like fingers of the dead trying to drag me down to the pits of Hell. They’re just weeds, though, and I kick through without much of an issue. 

The two steps up to the porch scream as I step onto them. Definitely water damage. Nobody has lived here in over twenty years. The buyers know this. They’re willing to put in the work to get this old place back to its original glory. I just have to sell it as a great place for their project. 

No ghosts, no killers, no skeletons in the closet. 

The gold key in my hand, I reach for the door. I don’t need it. The latch has been broken for some time, a cobweb dangles between the door and its frame as if to taunt me into believing this place is the crypt everyone describes. 

Rolling my eyes, I press the door forward. It swings in on creaking hinges to reveal a dark hallway. Yellow, stained wallpaper peels down from the top of the walls, curling in on the once flowery pattern. The light switch flicks and causes a thin buzzing, but the bulb in the center of the hall doesn’t flicker to life. I leave the door open behind me as I move forward. 

A door to the left pushes open into a garage right out of the 1980s. The last owners didn’t bother to clean anything out. There’s now vintage toys sticking out of cracked bins on a shelf along the furthest wall. Everything is caked in several inches of dust and debris. A vacuum three times the size of the modern model is tipped over by a car covered in a brown sheet. If it’s something classic, I bet I could add it to the owner’s acquisition to sweeten the deal. 

My fingers bunch around the dirty fabric and I pull. There’s a slam behind me. I drop the sheet without seeing the car and backtrack to the hall. 

It’s just the front door. There was a wind warning out this morning. Perhaps the storm has rolled in faster than anticipated. 

Twenty-four minutes until I’m supposed to be ready for the clients. Shutting the door to the garage, I continue deeper into the house. The hall gives way to a dining room. An oak table lays on its side in the center of the room. Old glassware is scattered around it. There’s no sign of a tablecloth. Likely looters or vagrants. Houses without locks are the best place for those kinds of people. 

I’m going to paint this room as a sunny place. Imagine a new couple dancing in this space, their dinner in the oven and new speakers sitting in the windowsill instead of this clunky air conditioning unit. A bit of elbow grease and a newly staged table and it would be a heavenly expanse for someone trying to get their first house. 

Moving past it, I step into the door on the left. The kitchen is in worse disrepair. The tiled counter is chipped. That’s definitely mold growing behind the faucet drip, drip, dripping into the soiled sink. More broken dishes litter this area. 

There was definitely lime green paint on these walls at one point. A terrible choice, but entirely normal for the era. It’s mostly discolored into a diminished brown. Some splats of a questionable liquid speckle the area closest to the stove missing its door. I’ll joke that the previous owner didn’t know how to cook and hopefully the new clients won’t ask about the possible murder in this space. 

I simply am not going to mention it. The details will be in the paperwork. Nothing grotesque. Just the facts. A woman went mad here. Police tried to intervene. She killed her husband and then herself after taking down six trained officers. It’s a story right out of a novel, but it’s in the past. 

This place has a great foundation. I know it has a brighter future. 

Clicking on the flashlight on my phone, I notice the black widows nesting in all four corners of the stove. Spiders can be scary. They’re not the end of the world. I’ll personally offer to get some spray and sweep them out of here if that’ll comfort my buyers. 

Wind groans through the boards covering the large window over the sink. I hope my clients aren’t caught out in this storm. Perhaps if this old place can offer a little solace from the rain and cold they’ll feel better about being here for all the time it’ll take to fix it up. 

I try to turn on the lights. The buzz of electricity zings through the old walls. Nothing comes to life. Totally fine. That’s why I have a flashlight. 

Backtracking through the dining area, I step down into what was once the living room. I’ll have to warn my clients. We wouldn’t want any unnecessary accidents happening here. 

Dark brown carpet covers the space. A thick, tangy cloud hangs over the area. From the scratches on the wall and the smell, I can assume feral cats made this their home for a little while. Putting a handkerchief over my nose, I pull the bottle of air freshener from my pocket and start spraying. The fake scent of lilacs lingers with the acidic scent, making something I’ve never experienced before and truly hope I never have to smell again. 

There used to be a couch here. The imprints from the feet of it are still on the carpet. Couch along this wall and some kind of entertainment center on the other. The coffee table is the only thing that remains, a makeshift Ouija board discarded on its scratched surface among empty beer cans. 

Kids. Miscreants. No ghosts. 

The bathroom on this level has a functioning toilet. No mirror. No leftover decorations. Just a toilet with a smattering of rat pellets around it. I suppose that’s all that’s really needed.

I take the carpeted stairs up to the second floor. Cracked frames still line the walls. The pictures are long gone. Glass shines on every stair. We’ll all wear our shoes, so not an issue. 

I can still make this work. I’m going to make this work. If I can get this sale, I can sell any house. The promotion waiting back at the office for me… It’s worth inhaling two decades of mostly undisturbed dust. 

Stopping on the top stair, I look at the ground. Clear footsteps lead from here to the master bedroom. Bare feet. Like someone just got home and shuffled off to their room. 

Except I’m the only one here. 

I know better than to yell ‘hello’ out into the black expanse behind the cracked door. Unclipping the bottle of pepper spray from my belt, I shake the can and then ready myself. I’ve dealt with plenty in my six years at this job. No crazy person is going to ruin my sale. 

Skipping the bathroom by the stairs, I step up to the master bedroom and shove the door in. It slams against the other wall. My flashlight cuts a triangle of visible space into the room. There. Something moved. I try to chase it with my light, but it’s gone as soon as I manage to catch up to it. 

I step in, swiping my flashlight around the rest of the space. A bed. Dirty. Wet. It’s the only furniture. The closet door is open.

If there’s someone here…

I clear my throat. “I don’t want to hurt you. You should just leave.”

Plastic hangers clink together. I’m not alone. Someone is in here with me. 

“Don’t make me tell you again,” I say, trying to steady my voice as I keep my arms extended, light on the space and pepper spray at the ready. 

No answer returns. I take a tentative step forward. I can see the half dozen hangers bouncing slightly as if an invisible hand just brushed through them to search for a perfect shirt. A dirty sheet lays rumpled in the right corner. 

Closer. One more step. I angle the light into the left corner. 

Nothing. 

A voice calls out from the bottom floor. “Anybody home?”

All of the anxiety of the past moment releases in a jolt down my spine. I drop my phone and spray. Shit. Fuck. I pick up the phone first, checking it for any cracks before turning the light back towards the closet. The little canister isn’t there. 

“Hello?”

Not the voice from downstairs. Something quiet. Cold breath on the edge of my ear. I’m not alone. 

I try to turn and see it. Not it. Her. It was a woman’s voice. 

I don’t get the chance. 

The closet door slams into me. Too quickly, the floor reaches up to meet my fall. Knees cracking on patchy carpet, I let out a groan as my forehead makes contact with the back of the closet. 

I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in ghosts. The stories aren’t real. Ghosts aren’t real. 

This is a bad prank. Someone is trying to catch me on camera losing my mind. 

That’s not going to happen. 

I have everything under control. 

I repeat the words over and over again as I catch my breath and turn around. The door is ajar. There wasn’t enough force for it to knock me forward and latch shut. Deep scratches mar the interior of it. Too big to be a cat. Too high to be those of a child. Someone else was locked in here. 

Scrambling to my feet, I push out of the closet and check the room. Nobody. Nothing. 

“Hello?”

A woman. Downstairs. My clients are early. 

“Hello,” the other voice responds, a murmur that grazes my cheek. 

Cold air whooshes by me. It rattles the closet door as I step further from it. The bedroom door swings haphazardly, promising to seal me in here for the foreseeable future. I grab the copper knob and tug it open, staggering around it before I can become just another story to tell about house 104. 

There’s an explanation for all of this. I should have ignored the stories before. Old houses echo and creak and groan and shift all of their own accord. Things aren’t built today the same way they were before the turn of the century. This place just has a bigger personality than the condos I’m used to selling twenty miles from here. My mind has gotten frazzled from the overload of information and it’s playing tricks on me. 

Nothing is going to happen to me. 

Ghosts aren’t real. 

Houses aren’t really ever haunted. 

I’m going to walk downstairs and sell this place. 

“Is anyone there?” A man this time. The husband. They’re going to get impatient with me very soon. 

I’m halfway down the stairs, my eyes on my watch as I curse about their punctuality and the way I seemed to have lost fifteen minutes up in the bedroom. “Here,” that other voice answers, an invisible hand resting on my shoulder as if she is clinging to me in order to move down the stairs. 

I jerk back. The weight on my shoulder disappears. It reappears on my lower back. I don’t have time to yelp. She pushes. The rest of the stairs meet me, biting into my forearms, my ribs, and raking splintered fingernails across my spine. 

I’ve hit my head again. Not good. Definitely not the recipe for a perfect sale. Pushing up from the hard floor, the acidic scent of the living room washing back over me, I hold a hand out in front of my face. Fuzzy. Five fingers, but they’re fuzzy around the edges, blurring as I move my head from side to side. I probably have a concussion. I’m sore and winded, but, otherwise, fine. 

The show must go on. 

Distantly, I can hear the couple call out to me. I must have made quite a lot of noise tumbling down those stairs. They’re good people. I can just make out their trepidatious footsteps down the hall to my position. 

Up. I have to get up. They’re here and this is not so easily explained away if I’m still sprawled across the floor like one of the bloody victims of the past. 

They round the corner from the dining room as I manage to make it to my feet. Smile. Smile wider. This has to be real, professional, a silly misunderstanding. 

The woman puts her hands over her mouth, her brown eyes widening as she takes me in. “Are you alright?”

“Alright,” the apparition growls beside me, sinking fingers into my arm as she sidles up to me like an unapproved lover at a society ball. 

I ignore her. This isn’t important. I need to sell this house. 

“You know old homes,” I start, chuckling mildly as I dab a smear of blood from my forehead with a tissue from my pocket. “They should come with warning signs. I wasn’t paying attention to my footing on the stairs, so we’ll all have to be most careful managing these when we go to the upper floor.”

The husband murmurs something to his wife. She seems unconvinced by my explanation, but pastes on a polite smile. Good. We can move through this place together, then. 

Us and the pressure on my arm. 

I try to shrug it off as I motion for them to head back towards the kitchen. The couple turns away as I glance to my side. My mouth goes dry. I don’t feel my heart beating. The hand isn’t invisible. 

The deaths happened in this house over twenty years ago. I should be face to face with a corpse. I should see a skeleton with worms wiggling through the eye sockets. That’s what happens in the movies. Instead, I see the woman whose picture was pasted across every newspaper in the state. A teacher, a wife, a good woman. A redhead with blue eyes and a smattering of freckles across her straight nose. She smiles at me. Her lips move, pinning up on either side, but it doesn’t touch her gaze. 

“Who are you?” I ask, already well aware of the answer as I try to tug my arm away and she holds with all the might of a wolf fighting for the last morsel of food in a decaying forest. 

“You.”

Very funny. I didn’t realize ghosts could be a nuisance and comedic. Grumbling more to myself than her, I pull again. 

“We have clients to see.”

“See,” she echoes back, less terrifying and more annoying. 

I would say more. I would continue to argue with the deceased, but she finally budges, gliding along beside me. 

Fine. I can make this work. 

I’ve sold plenty of houses with metaphorical skeletons in their closets. I’ve mentioned ghouls to clients. There have been police reports to go through and scary stories to skim over. I’ve held the hand of skittish buyers and painted pictures of how beautiful their home would be filled with love and a few layers of fresh paint. 

I’ve never done any of that with a dead woman on my arm. 

The ghost doesn’t speak again as I step out of the living area and pass the tipped over table in the dining room. My clients are in the kitchen. The woman is glued to her husband’s side, a few shades too pale to look healthy. They’re murmuring between themselves. She wants yellow curtains. He thinks he has a guy who can put in a stained glass window over the dripping sink. 

Neither of them seem to notice the man at the oven. 

Not man. 

A shadow. Something composed of black silk and despair. It presses dark hands onto the rusted burners. Turning over its left shoulder, it opens its mouth wide, wider, far too wide for a regular man. It screams. 

I can’t clap my hands over my ears fast enough. The sound vibrates through my clenched teeth, loosening the fillings put in last July. The ghost at my arm releases me and I find myself on the ground once more, pinned between torn up tiles and the sound of Hell unleashing on a guilty soul. 

Eyes shut, hands on my ears, knees pulled to my chest, I wait for what could only be thirty seconds yet feels like an eternity as the grating scream moves over me with the ferocity of a thunderstorm. Then, nothing. Silence. Not a drip in the sink. Not a patter of mouse paws. All is deathly silent in 104. 

Not yet trusting the change in noise levels, I slowly peel my eyelids apart and look around. The man is gone. The ghostly woman is gone. My clients are gone. 

Dammit. 

I’m going to lose the sale. 

Scrambling back to my feet, I stagger out of the kitchen. I push myself to jog through the dining room, past the door to the garage, and into the hall. There. The man, shadow, monster with hideous vocal cords. He seems to glance at me over his shoulder as he pries open the door and steps outside.

Who? What? Why?

Questions plaster themselves to the front of my mind as I stumble forward, my sweaty left hand leaving a smear across the wall with every step. Outside. I just need to make it outside. I think if I could feel the sun on my skin and that raging wind on my face, I’ll be okay. 

It seems to take forever, but I’m finally at the end of the hall. My fingertips wrap around the flimsy piece of wood. I pull. 

Nothing happens. 

Again. 

The door wobbles, but moves no further. 

Trapped. Entombed. Sealed off from the rest of the world. 

I can’t get air into my lungs. Sweat gathers at my hairline. It burns as it passes through the gash on my forehead. There has to be another way out of here. 

Garage. 

There was a car in there. The door should open. I didn’t receive a clicker for it, so it should be manual. 

I can lift a garage door. 

Retracing my steps, I pause at the entrance to the garage. The woman is back. My red-headed ghost. She stands with her hands folded in front of her, watching from the end of the hall with disappointment clouding her gaze. 

Palms slick, I manage to get the door open and squeeze through it without breaking eye contact with her. It slams behind me, severing our visual connection. I don’t care. I’m getting out of here. I still have more questions than answers, but I have a plan and I’m going to follow it through before fully contending with anything else here. 

More cobwebs guard the footpath to the garage door. I stomp through them without hesitation. A spider bite is the least of my concerns now. 

My fingers wrap around the cold, metal grooves of the garage door. I tug. Nothing. 

It doesn’t budge. It doesn’t rattle or shiver from my aggrieved movements. It’s simply as stuck as the front door. 

Whirling back around, I look around me. There’s a solid metal mechanism attached to the ceiling. There’s a way to automatically open this door. I just have to find the key. 

Sixteen other agents came here and walked right back out. None of them mentioned a garage door clicker. Some of them didn’t make it past the hall. 

I did, though.

If they didn’t have the key, then it should be around here somewhere. My eyes move quicker than my frazzled mind. 

Car. 

If it was up to me, I would keep it in the car. 

Lurching forward, I dig my fingers into that dusty sheet and pull. There’s no slamming door to stop me this time. I tug again. Nothing is getting in my way of breaking into this car. The sheet snags on the front fender. I pull again. 

It gives way. 

My clients are underneath. Not the passive woman with a shy smile and a firm grip on her husband that I met in the living area. Just her corpse. 

Her hands are still wrapped around his bicep. Eyes blankly staring ahead at the garage wall, they sit with their temples pressed together. Dust has gathered in the creases of their decaying skin. Their wedding bands have dulled with the passing of time. Nothing and no one can take them away from each other now. 

My feet finally pull me back. I’m still holding the sheet. I can’t get my fingers to unclench.

Someone else put this sheet on the car. People have come to this house. Yet, these bodies weren’t discovered. 

“How…?”

I’m asking myself. I’m asking the greater powers of the universe if they’re any out there showing pity on my current situation. I’m asking because my mind is cracking and if I’m trapped forever like these poor fools I want an answer. 

“How,” the woman whispers from the doorway, grief etching hard lines into her features as the hall door creaks open and comes to a gentle stop on the opposite wall. 

The sheet falls out of my hands as I raise them to her. “What is happening?”

Her thin shoulder shrugs. “Happening,” she responds, only ever an echo of the present. 

The lights flicker. She’s there, looking like a woman who never met her end except for the odd way she floats around the floor, and then she’s not. Gunshots ring out. Blood gushes down her plain, yellow dress. She holds her hands out to me, her mouth forming a silent cry for help just before her head whips back. 

A faceless ghoul, she steps into the garage. Blood drips onto the concrete flooring. It drips and drips and drips, creating a trail from her to me as it curdles on the ground. 

The past and the present are fast friends. They collide more often than we know. 

I have nowhere to run. I have no way to escape. I lose my footing as she floats ever closer, one hand extended. 

She doesn’t swipe at my face. She doesn’t come at me with a weapon. She beckons me forward while my spine continues to press into the hard, dusty shelf. 

I let my fingers slip through her cold, wet ones. Bound together, she drags me back to the rest of the house, away from the door I cannot use, and into the dining room. 

My supposed clients are back, they’re standing by the stairs as we linger by the table, guilt crinkling their brows. I think the man tries to offer a silent apology. I’m not paying attention because I’m counting us. Me, the red-headed teacher who plays my host, and the couple. We’re all here except for the shadowy man from the kitchen. He’s vanished completely while the rest of us congregate here. 

My ghost host squeezes my arm. She needs me to focus instead of puzzling through this situation. There’s something more important than the whereabouts of the shadow. 

My gaze follows her finger.

I barely recognize myself. That’s my body, though, with the suit I put on this morning. My phone is cracked, forgotten closer to the middle of the living room as the flashlight burns a red circle into the old carpet. I didn’t make it down from the master bedroom. 

Or…I did, but not in the mortal realm. 

The woman at my side holds up her other hand. My can of pepper spray materializes and then drops to the floor. We can’t leave, she says with her actions more than her mouth as her regular features squelch back into place, but we can do things within this house. 

Right. Okay. I wipe my free hand over my eyes. 

That’s still me. I haven’t just given myself a concussion I’ll laugh about at the office in a few days. Three ghosts keep me company as my mind works through this predicament. 

“So, we can’t leave?”

The husband and wife look to the woman at my side, respecting her response as her murmur fills the room. “Leave,” she echoes, shaking her head. 

“But we’re not trapped forever?”

The other man traded me spaces. I know now why he so aggressively came after me. He wanted out a little bit more than these other souls trapped in 104. 

“Forever…” she trails off, shrugging a shoulder as if to suggest it’s easier to stay and accept our fate than to fight to leave. 

That’s not for me. I’ve never laid down and accepted anything. I was the agent who was going to sell this house. 

“We’ll have to hide my body or else others will be scared off too quickly.”

The ghosts don’t argue. Whether grief or time has lessened their sense of urgency, they listen silently to my plan, the way my voice rambles off as I try to stay focused on one step after another. Someone is going to come looking for me. A friend, a coworker, a curious agent from the office. When they do, I’ll be more than ready.

I settle on the edge of the tipped over table and squeeze the cold hand still clinging to me. I won’t be the agent that sells 104 to its next owner, but I’m more than prepared to make it someone else’s forever home.

Author’s Note

Happy Friday readers! Is it ever too early to start making spooky stories?

This particular story I wrote for an anthology competition. I got the rejection letter this Tuesday. Which is fine, great, expected. It’s one more to pin to the wall and celebrate. My work is out there, it’s being read, and it’s not going to be forgotten.

I’m still incredibly proud of this piece. As typically a romance and fantasy writer, shifting to horror and studying the genre was a big leap for me. I had a great time reviewing old Stephen King and staring at macabre setting aesthetics online.

I got some great feedback from my first readers, so I want to share it here as well to see what the rest of you think! Let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this piece, if it hit the ‘spook’ factor for you, and if there’s anything else you would have wanted from it.

A writer can’t live in an isolation tank. They just stagnate then, creating the same things over and over again in a vicious cycle. We need feedback and opposing views and challenges to help us become the best version of ourselves.

Keep writing. Keep reading. Stay spooky, readers.