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What were we doing? Was this really ours?
Walking across the overgrown lawn of the house I’d always thought of as haunted felt a lot like trespassing, or tempting fate, at least. As we wound our way up what had once been a flagstone path to the front steps, the sun slipped behind gray clouds overhead and a distant rumble of thunder rolled in warning.
“Shit,” Michael breathed, and his voice was so low, I wondered if he’d meant to speak out loud.
“Dude,” Daniel practically sang with glee. “This is so effin’ creepy!”
“Language,” came Michael’s stern reply.
“Dad, I said—”
“We heard you. I don’t want to hear it again.”
I smiled, despite the creepy ambiance. Michael was clearly a good dad, and Daniel obviously respected him. I envied them a little. Like home ownership, I had kind of thought I was destined for parenthood at some point. I didn’t think people left children in trusts though, so my chances were probably pretty slim.
You could almost hear Dan’s eye roll at his dad’s reprimand, but he was too busy creeping his way up the front steps, wisely testing each to see if it might be rotted, to reply.
“You think this place is safe?” I asked, eyeing a hole in one of the risers skeptically. It was so shadowed beneath the overhang of the broad front porch that it was dark as night. I glanced back toward the iron gates behind us, part of me longing for the sunlight and open spaces of the town that felt centuries away now. A little chill ran through me.
“Wouldn’t they have had to check it before she could pass it on? Make sure it shouldn’t be condemned instead?” Michael asked.
I thought about that. He was probably right, it must be at least structurally safe. But could I actually live here? I was scared just standing on the front porch—I’d always been a little on the jumpy side. I did not see myself living here for six months just to sell the place. Though it would be a relief to get out of my mother’s house. I loved her, but Lottie Tanner had a way of suffocating people with attention. It was one of the reasons I’d gone to New York in the first place.
But my life in New York seemed to be over for now. Since Luke had sold the apartment, I was homeless, and though I had a bit of money saved up, it wasn’t enough to buy a place, or even put down the deposit on a rental.
We stepped carefully across the dusty old porch, which was scattered with pine needles and fallen leaves from the trees that grew dense around the upper floors of the house.
“Ready?” Daniel asked us, key poised in the lock of the enormous front door.
An ominous dread swept through me, and something made me swing my gaze to the front window. As soon as my eyes hit the darkened glass, I thought I saw something move just behind it, but it was so shadowy and dim it was impossible to tell. “Did you see that?” I asked Michael, my voice a whisper now.
He looked at me, his eyebrows drawn low over those blue eyes, and then turned to follow my gaze to the window. “Oh yeah, the crack there? That’s leaded glass, too. It’d be expensive to replace.”
I decided not to let him in on my paranoia and nodded my head. Yeah, that’s right. I was talking about the cost of repairs. Not the creepy thing I saw move in the window of our new house. Our hundred and fifty year old haunted new house.
“Go ahead, Dan.” Michael put a hand on his son’s shoulder.
The lock turned and Daniel gripped the handle, pushing the front door open with a low grinding sound as the bottom of the door departed the debris-strewn threshold.
“Holy,” came Dan’s voice as he stepped inside.
The entryway was a wide low space, with a stairway at one side just past a door, a long hallway extending before us, and a fireplace on the other wall. The old wood floor was covered in dried leaves and dirt, and the walls were dingy and smeared. Still, you could see the grandeur beneath—the high dark wood moldings, the built-in bench that might have held visitors as they removed outer things and came to warm their hands at the entry fire.
“Who puts a fireplace by the front door?” Daniel asked, shaking his head as if those old Victorians were just too stupid for words.
“I guess they wanted to give guests a warm welcome,” Michael said, grinning.
Dad jokes. Huh. I smiled at Michael behind his son’s shaking head. I hadn’t heard one in a long time, and something about the boy’s feigned disgust at the corny joke was charming. They were cute together, this man and his son. And despite the tension that I figured was natural whenever a pre-teen was in that stretch for independence while still under the guiding thumb of a parent, I could tell there was a deep fierce affection between them.
A tiny spark of excitement filled me as I gazed around me. I’d always loved old houses, and especially loved seeing them decorated and shined up. I collected design magazines and had even fancied myself a bit of a decorator, though Luke had taken charge of decorating our New York place. And his taste, if you asked me, was essentially non-existent. He mixed centuries and styles, creating a mess that he referred to as eclectic. For a split second, before I recognized that the entire idea was ludicrous, I imagined myself getting to decorate this house. But I was not going to go through with this. It was crazy.
We turned right, into the room that occupied the rounded sweep of the turret we’d seen from the front. Another fireplace sat in this room, and though there was a terrible jagged hole in one wall, the space was charming. I could picture it repaired and glowing with a warm fire, someone wrapped up on the couch, sipping tea by those big windows.
“The parlor?” Michael mused.
Wallpaper hung from the wall in tatters, and one low upholstered chaise sat in the middle of the room. There was a wooden door at the back of this room that hung at a diagonal—meant to slide into the wall around it to reveal a dining room behind. We walked through, each of us quietly gazing around us. Something about the air was thick and heavy, and whatever it was forestalled conversation or commentary for now. The sun seemed to have come back out, and light streamed in through high windows on one side of the room. A massive dining table sat in the center of the space, no chairs around it.
As we entered the space, a long low screeching whine came from the back of the house, and my heart gunned out a machine-gun rhythm as my breath caught in my throat. I turned my head in the direction of the sound.
