OLD, NEW HOUSE

Short story from Creative Writing Class.

It is amazing to think about the concept that your home, the place you value most, was one not yours. In fact, it was someone else’s. Someone else slept in your room, called it their own, wept there, laughed there, had sex there. Have you ever thought about their bed, where it was? Was it in the middle as yours is or was it too large, forcing them to resort to shoving it against the wall to make enough space. Did they ever set your kitchen on fire, did they set off the alarm like you do? Were they good chefs, creating the finest of meals, or were they creating cheap ramen at the precipice of dawn such as you do? 

It is quite easy to get lost in this, to imagine the rockabilly teens that ran down your hundred year old stairs, how they argued with their parents and slammed their bedroom doors. Did the crown molding have to be painted from the years of smokers that resided in your home, how it yellowed and reeked. Who was the one who decided that the pink bathroom on the third floor was a good idea, replacing what was undoubtedly a beautiful original tile flooring. When did the family decide to wire up electricity, which is a decision you never thought you would even have to make. 

You paid more for the age, that’s true, but what else have you bought. Are there dead bodies in the walls like the homes in Savannah, waiting to be recovered again? Will you find one and have the government pay you off, slathering up bricks to lay over the truth? What if a killer once lived here, a communist, a spy, someone you’d detest. 

Why did people leave? 

Was it the stench of the basement wafting up through the vents, or was it the echoing wails of a wallowing mistress. Were they immigrants or were they descendents of the original settlers. Were they old money or was this home the first they bought with their newfound riches? Did laughter ring through every hall or did silence choke the family that lived here. 

Were they happy? 

Will you be happy?

The moans of the wooden floors are unsettling as most. It’s an unfamiliar sound to its new owner, afraid of intruders and scary movie villains. The chances of murder are slim to none, but the moving men walking still make you turn. The silence is loud in the large house, every noise growing. The furniture helps a bit, muffling their waves, but still the creaks will reach you. It’s not your fault that noise of old wood is the most used in horror films, the easiest sound to create a scare. Your home is safe, for it is your home, and there’s no one to worry about. 

The old couple before you didn’t leave in tears, thrashing against the ground in a fit. They left because their kids were old and they couldn’t manage the stairs. They didn’t leave with a warning, the older lady grabbing your hand to whisper there are dark things in that house. The realtor was nice, the price was sweeter, and the renovations were completely doable. 

The first night is the worst, how you toss and turn, expecting your closet to open. Perhaps this happens with every new house, every unfamiliar place. But the creak of the floors, the walls, the roof, it frightens you just a bit. 

“It’s the old house settling,” your mother tells you the next day when you’re on the phone. She’s right and you know it, but still your hair stands tall on the back of your neck. You cannot admit that the woman’s right, how your sleep was the best you’ve had in years. 

Maybe it was the old smell that came through the vents, or how the rustle of the tall, strong trees sounded like a melody. 

Maybe it was the fatigue, how heavy your bones felt at the end of the day. 

Maybe it was the fact that you were too tired to care about a body in the wall or the history in the renovations, or who has slept in the same room as you before. 

There’s a steady creak that you pick up on as you grow accustomed to the house. It’s like a sway of the frame, as if the wind dances with it. 

It is quite old, after all. The building has been around since before your grandparents, dating back before the world wars and automobiles. It’s soothing in a way, how the house has a breath of its own. 

In and out. 

In and out. 

In and out. 

A new routine has been adopted. Lately, while the weather is still nice, you like to sit on the back porch of your new, old home. It’s such a shame for a beautiful place to go to waste half a year, so you gain a couple freckles in the sun and read your book. You can hear the windchimes at the neighbor’s back door, the car door slams of other families getting home, how the wind whistles through the big oaks that mark your lot. 

A little girl wanders into your yard late one afternoon, right before the yellowed sun turns to orange. The leaves look the same, burning away as the summer does. Soon they’ll die off and you’ll have to turn back inside for the season. She wears no coat and it makes you wrap your own jacket closer around yourself. You don’t notice her until she stands before you, almost leaning over you. You were too immersed in your novel to hear her walk through the yard. 

“Hello,” you say. 

“Oh, hello,” she says back, as if she didn’t know she had trespassed at all. 

“Are you lost?” you say— she is quite young after all.

She shakes her head. Her brow furrows. 

“I don’t think so,” she says, “ Are you lost?”

“No,” you say, “I am home.” 

She smiles at that. She doesn’t say anything else, the odd child. She sits in front of you, watching. You go back to your book, occasionally looking up to see her still there, still staring. She smiles each time and you smile back. At the end of one chapter, you look up and she has left. Still, you grin to yourself. Something about the house, the yard, the crisping air, the reddening leaves. It leaves you with a hope that threatens to bubble up out of you. You return to your book. 

You use a leaf next to your chair as a bookmark. 

The holiday season comes faster than you would like. The old radiators are doing better than you would have thought, though they kick and pop with fits of defiance on the colder days. You are the one to bring dessert this year, which normally annoys you enough to just buy a dish, but this year you welcome the challenge. The smell of spices-- one quite familiar to the season-- seems to match with your new home, like it’s a husband settling into bed with his wife after a long night. It’s welcomed, routine, and you wonder again, for the first time in months, about how others before you had done the same. An ache builds inside you, a need and a want for the house to be full. The covered walls seem barren and the rooms seem hollow. 

A noise in the front hall breaks you from your daydream of bountiful parties of extravagance. 

“Hello?” 

You call after it. The familiarity of the house fades back into the quick-trigger feeling of fear and unsettlement. 

You follow it, wiping the remaining flour from your hands. It’s the girl again, the first time you’ve seen her in weeks. Her chubby cheeks are pink with happiness and exertion. 

“Hello again,” you say, relieved.

“Hello,” she blushes. 

  You invite her in to watch, in too good of a mood to send her away so early. Whether it’s the fact that the holiday season makes you more benevolent or the fact that her lace dress seems too thin, you want her to stay. 

She watches as you finish the lattice on your pie, a trick you learned from a video online. You have her attention as you finish it off with a milk wash, explaining how it will crisp the dough just right. The words sound so sure as they come from your mouth, as if you had done this many times before, like those who preceded you were along to guide.  

“My mommy likes to sprinkle brown sugar on top,” she tells you. So you do so. And she beams. It fills your heart, your home, your toes. Some kind of belonging takes hold and you know that you made the right choice for once. 

“Your mommy knows best, doesn’t she?” 

You pick her up off of the counter to let her down and she’s cold. 

The weather has been awful lately, but she’s been inside for too long for that to be the case. When you retrieve the pie, you will keep the oven open to warm the kitchen against the winter weather that threatens to come in. Until then, you stay in front of it, soaking up what leaks out. Your skin prickles from the heat of it, sweat beading in your armpits. 

But she’s cold. 

“My mommy doesn’t let me do things like this. Mommy doesn’t let me do anything fun.”

You swallow before you reply.

“Where is your mother?”

“Dead.”

The house is too large, too wide and vast. It swallows you whole. It eats you up. It leaves you alone, so alone, like you were completely forgotten about. It’s massive and suffocating and you feel alone, so alone. And the feeling is cold, so cold.

And she smiles, holding your hand. Her pudgy fingers, pink with youth, feel cool, like they have been pruned by the summer pool. 

You walk her to the door. 

And you tell her to go home. 

And she smiles and waves at you. 

And you close the door. 

The door grounds you as you lean against it, the old weathered wood rough and real. Your fingers linger, dragging over every object as you walk back to the kitchen. 

Your pie is soon to be ready. 

You focus on the smooth feel of the molding on the walls, how the dried matte paint feels, the warmed metal of the radiator. The timer in the kitchen goes off, the shrill ding of it breaking through. You manage to make your feet go faster, skimming past all the other things, the real things, the things to root you to the house. 

You grab the pie, almost forgetting oven mitts because it smells delicious, mouth-watering swells of apple and cinnamon. You manage not to drop the scalding dish when you turn to put it on the cooling rack, finding the girl next to it. She sways her feet as she sits again on the counter. 

“It looks good,” she says, beaming at you. 

The oven is closed. 

It is not the reason for the tinge at the back of your spine. 

She looks at you, a look of content on her face. The pie gets too hot in your hands and you have to reach past her to place it down. You’re close to her now, seeing the hollow of her cheeks, how the pudge of youth has faded. The dark smudges under her eyes are not from the lack of sleep. Her lace nightgown sways with every kick of her feet, letting her bare heels hit the cabinets. 

Thud, thud. 

Thud, thud. 

Thud, thud.