One house left, p.1
One House Left, page 1
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For Ivy and Pat
The shadows worked silently, crowbars glistening in the moonlight while heavy breaths bloomed then splintered like the wood slowly cracking before their eyes.
When the board covering the door gave way, wings slapped the sky and a distant howl sliced through the muggy air, leaving a sliver of icy terror to stroke their spines.
Four of the shadows stepped back, while one crouched by the rusted lock, humming a lullaby until it finally stood, arms outstretched, then bowed.
The front door clung to its warped frame as they pushed, and then it sailed softly open, allowing them to hurry through before creaking closed.
As they lit their candles, the darkness shrank to the edges of the hallway, like the blur of old-fashioned photographs, ready to snap back the moment the flames were snuffed out.
The five friends came into focus, all with the same fragile smile. If they hadn’t known one another so well, they might have seen relief or happiness or excitement. Instead, they saw only terror.
Their words were fractured, their faces like crumbling Halloween masks, their bodies leaning toward the door they had just broken through.
But they stayed, until the fear was replaced by a nervous excitement that showed itself first through tics and giggles, then through voices shattering the silence.
They shouted and they laughed and they bounded from one room to the next. Then they blew every candle out and sat in a circle, chanting words they had read online, feeling braver than they had any right to feel.
They didn’t hear the whispers stirring above them. Or the scratching behind doors no one thought to lock anymore.
Their chatter drowned out the creaks that houses make when you’re not alone, heavy feet resting almost silently on each step until there was no escape.
The flames came fast, pushing them into a front door that wouldn’t budge.
They screamed until thick smoke forced its way deep into their throats and throttled every sound.
Then they wished, silently, desperately, hopelessly, that they had listened to the boy who warned them not to come.
Part
1
1
Every town has ghost stories.
Usually, they are urban legends whispered around a campfire or tales to make kids behave. But my town was different.
We only had one story, and few people laughed when they told it. It sat in the corners of conversations, a shadow we fought hard to ignore. It hung over Belleview and everyone who lived there, and when we left, we took it with us.
When letters arrive, they go to Cherry Tree Lane, but when we told the story, we called it Murder Road.
The first murder—like most murders—took everyone by surprise.
It was a calm spring night in 1963 when the little girl walked into the street and screamed.
That noise made a tear so deep that it has never been repaired, its echo lingering even now.
Porch lights flashed on, painting a warm glow over the blood. Then people came running, pulling the girl into tardy embraces, like handing shields to dying soldiers.
“What happened?” they asked.
“Are you okay?”
“Whose blood is this?”
She only answered the last question.
“It’s Mommy’s.”
The pitch-black doorway sent shivers down everyone’s spines. And then, one by one, they walked through it, calling, praying, but knowing, deep down, that they were too late.
They found the woman in the bathtub, lying in a shallow red lake.
They found the man in the garage, swaying softly back and forth.
They never found the boy.
Until I knew the whole story, that’s what haunted me the most. It wasn’t what was left that terrified six-year-old me. It’s what was taken.
That was my bogeyman story, the tale my brother gleefully sent me to bed with. My nightmares were all about a boy stolen by a monster forty-six years before I was born.
He’d sit at the end of my bed—a nine-year-old with a sadist’s smile—and tell me that the boy wasn’t taken. He’d say that he ran to the house at the end of the road, escaping a father who had finally snapped and a mother broken beyond repair.
Legend has it that the boy found something—in a building no one had lived in for decades—and together they cursed the whole street.
Every household that had turned a blind eye to his family’s suffering down the years was unknowingly and irreversibly cursed. All the cuts and bruises ignored on the sidewalk; all the radios turned up to drown out his father’s rage—they would pay for that.
At some point, “tragedy” became “pattern” and then, most horribly, “tradition.”
Every few years, on the same spring night, another house on that cursed street was targeted … and no one came out alive.
When people started moving, and the killings continued regardless, the story morphed from one of heartless neighbors getting their comeuppance to one of innocents paying for the sins of strangers.
But a child’s rage is rarely well planned. It is messy, and the Hiding Boy’s was messier than most. He saw those houses, with their windows like portals into impossible worlds, and he hated them.
My parents weren’t born when the bloodstained girl and her vengeful brother changed everything. But I can tell you about every single death that followed, because when you move so close to a place they call Murder Road, you do your research.
You watch every ancient news story and read every rumor—cringing as they switch between ignorance and denial.
They should have known that a curse is a curse, no matter how you spin it. But the deaths were far enough apart, and dissimilar enough (barring the obvious), to be written off as a twisted coincidence.
I never knew our dad’s parents. They were faces in boxed-up photographs, minor characters in moments rarely mentioned. His father died first and then, less than a year later, his mother followed, leaving us a house on the edge of a horror story.
It had enough bedrooms for us to have one each, plus an office for Mom and a backyard twice the size of ours. So, we moved. And we stayed there longer than we should have.
If you are selling a house, you must disclose it if someone was killed there. That doesn’t put off as many people as you might think. But it’s a lot harder to sell a place on a road full of crime scenes.
Eventually, the buildings on the road next to ours looked as old as the people inside, and when those people died, their families had an inheritance they didn’t want.
Some rent them out to scare-chasers, others reluctantly moved in but always make sure they’re away on the same night every year, and some block their lawyer’s number.
When we first moved away, we drove past Murder Road and shivered. At the exact same moment, as we passed those houses for the very last time, Rowan, Hazel, our parents, and I all silently swallowed our fear.
No one spoke because that’s the thing about real scary stories—whatever you say only makes them worse.
Sometimes it came out in the gaps between our words, in the tiny tears in our daily scripts that we rushed past before it could burst right through.
Sometimes I saw it in a flash behind the eyes; a memory wrestled back into its cage.
And sometimes I saw it in the mirror. Because Murder Road scarred everyone. Even those it didn’t kill.
2
“We move too much,” Rowan says, and Mom sighs and replies, “We move as often as necessary.”
“What’s the formula for that?” my brother asks, and Dad glares at him.
“Don’t be a smart-ass. You know why we’re moving.”
A shudder transfers from Hazel’s shoulder to mine in the cramped backseat. My sister’s long blond hair hides the stare I imagine burning holes into the stained mats beneath our feet, and I lean even closer to the window.
I catch Dad’s eye in the rearview, but he looks away before I can fake a smile.
“This time will be different,” Mom mumbles, as though she’s talking to herself.
No one replies, because no one agrees. The only way to outrun your past is to keep running, and we tire easily.
Our new home looks a lot like our last one … and the one before that. When we arrive, it’s not quite big enough for the five of us, but we squeeze in and keep our complaints to a minimum.
The front garden is overgrown, the window frames are stained green, and the driveway is covered in clumps of moss. When he opens the door for the first time, Dad treads dirt into the hall and that’s us in a nutshell. We stain things because we are stained.
“It’s nice,” Hazel says, her eyes refusing to focus on the grimy carpets or the
“Thank you,” Mom replies.
Something silent and subtle passes between them, the briefest moment when they look almost identical. Then Rowan barges past with a huge box. “You should know by now, little brother. Don’t come in without your arms full.”
I go back to the car, where Dad is staring up at our new home.
When he sees me, he sighs and says, “It’s a fixer-upper, right?”
“Something like that.”
We used to live in a beautiful house. It was an expectation—for the streets surrounding Murder Road—as though perfectly tended flower beds and freshly painted fences could hide the stench of our neighbors’ dirty secrets.
“Nate?”
Dad’s hopeful face slowly comes back into focus before I say, “Sorry. I just want it to be different this time.”
“It will be,” he says. “I promise.”
Parents do that a lot—make vows they can’t possibly keep.
It won’t be different. It will be exactly the same because, eventually, someone in the town we now call “home” will realize where we came from.
They will go looking for the place we’re running from, no matter how much we tell them not to. And they will end up dead.
3
When we’ve finally moved every box into the right rooms, and scorched our tongues on microwave meals, Dad makes a big deal of stretching, then says, “Good night.”
Mom cringes, while Rowan mumbles under his breath, and I watch our father’s shoulders straighten then surrender before he leaves the room.
He uses words that don’t belong together anymore. Force of habit, I guess. Even after everything we’ve seen.
It’s been a long time since we used “good” and “night” in the same sentence.
Our mother kisses each of us on the forehead, then silently follows Dad upstairs.
If I concentrate, I can hear murmurs through their floorboards. But if I do that, I’ll try to piece together conversations we are not meant to hear, their words fragmented like essays forced through a shredder.
Hazel leaves first, the few words she utters in our company saved exclusively for Mom.
Rowan opens the living room curtains and peers into the street.
“Will she be okay?”
Our brother grunts in response, his finger drawing lines in the condensation already forming on the window; then he stares at me until I look away.
“She’ll be fine,” he says. “Eventually.”
I hate that word.
Rowan’s right eye twitches and he quickly looks back through the glass. Then he mumbles, “Will you be okay?”
My head swells and I breathe as calmly as I can, the way Hazel taught us before we were forced to leave the last place.
“There’s nothing out there,” Rowan says at last. “You can go to bed.”
He knows better than to say “sleep.”
“I’ll stay up with you,” I say. “If you’d like.”
He rests his chin on his thick arms and shakes his head.
I wait a few more minutes, watching him peer into the black; then I go to my room.
Four boxes are piled in the corner—my name printed neatly in Mom’s handwriting on three of them, my brother’s angry scribble screaming it on the fourth.
What is important becomes less so the more times you are forced to take it with you. Now my whole life fits in four small boxes that, tomorrow, I’ll unpack then fold neatly and leave under my bed.
I lay a sleeping bag over my mattress, putting another layer between me and the uncoiled springs, then imagine what it feels like to close your eyes and just … drift … off.
Wind rustles through the vent above my bed, while the sounds of plugs and switches click and clack against the far wall.
Rowan must be there now and I could go to him. All three of us could spend tonight together, hoping that we’ve finally run far enough; praying that what always follows us will, this time, give up.
But we stay in our own rooms, in separate silences that expand as the hours tick by, until I wake with a start, half exhausted and half relieved.
We don’t talk as we eat just enough breakfast to satisfy Mom and delay the inevitable.
Dad leans against the countertop, car keys clanging as he tosses them from one hand to the other.
Hazel bristles at the sound and I wish she’d snatch them from him and take us to school herself. But she waits until I’m ready, then follows me to our parents’ beat-up SUV.
Rowan stands at the top of the stairs while Mom waves weakly from the front door.
It’s not until he pulls onto the main road that Dad says, “I slept okay in the end.”
“Good for you,” I reply, focusing on all the unfamiliar sights that are about to feel like home. If we’re lucky.
4
Our latest school doesn’t assign tour guides or temporary “friends.”
Montgomery-Oakes High leaves its new students to fend for themselves—our schedules thrust across the desk by a secretary with better things to do; a campus map too small to understand.
Hazel stuffs hers into her pocket and I mumble, “Good luck,” as she slips away.
I’m on my own now. I prefer it that way.
I smile at the scowling secretary until she shakes her head and disappears into the back office. Then I watch from the doorway as kids fill the corridor, some stumbling, others soaring, but most simply taking up space.
Best to keep quiet, small, easily ignored.
Each class is a lesson in minimalism. If I don’t raise my hand, lift my eyes from the desk, cough, it’s almost as though I’m not here.
I eat lunch in the farthest corner of the sports field, under a tree that drops small yellow leaves at my feet. Then I watch as a group of boys look over then away, one of them nudged until he tentatively stands.
He says something and what happens next is vital—if his friends smile, laugh, show the faintest glimmer of glee, I’ll refuse to be the punch line. But they don’t.
One of them gives a solemn nod and his friend trots over, words forming on his lips as his shadow spills across my legs.
He has three friends but I guess there’s space for one more. And maybe I would join them, if things were different.
I quickly pack my food away and stand, his eyes narrowing as he realizes what’s happening. Then I turn and leave before I can hear whatever he’s prepared.
When you’re running from something horrible, the last thing you need is anyone holding you back. That’s why I refuse to play the game. I won’t make friends here. I won’t let anyone in.
I’m doing this my way, because the alternative is terrifying.
5
It’s harder to see what secrets a house holds once you’ve filled it with your life. That’s why our bigger boxes remain unopened.
I’m lying on the thrift-store couch Mom bought two moves ago, familiarizing myself with the history of our new town.
Hazel sits on the huge armchair opposite—the one we all try to shotgun. It’s the only comfortable thing we still own and she has it, for now, her feet tucked under her body while a low hum ripples over her lips.
She used to do this alone, but these days it’s less a hobby, more a vital part of her existence.
She’s been meditating a lot since we left the last place and I can’t blame her. We all have our ways of getting through the day.
Mine is to learn every detail about wherever our parents make us live. After all, there is the history our teachers and books tell us, and then there’s the rest.
The couch groans as Rowan sits next to me, his eyes greedily snatching at my phone.
“Found anything juicy?”
He’s mocking me, but he doesn’t know what I’ve just read.
“A guy murdered his daughter’s babysitter,” I say. “On this street.”
“No shit?”
“Seriously. She’d known the family for years and one day he just…”
I snap my fingers and Rowan shivers.
“They released him from jail eighteen months ago.”
Rowan’s hand brushes the curtains as he says, “Don’t tell me he still lives here.”
