Move-in Day

The real estate agent had not lied, exactly.

She had said the house had a complicated history. She had said the price reflected that history. She had pushed the contracts across the table with the practiced efficiency of someone who wanted the signing done before too many questions could form.

What she had not mentioned was the smell.

Not a bad smell — that would have been something Ren could have categorized and dismissed. This was a smell like the inside of a stopped clock: old metal, and something sweet underneath it, and a faint electrical charge that sat at the back of the throat.

The smell was strongest in the hallway.

Ren set down the first box and looked at the wallpaper. Original, the agent had said. Circa 1920. The pattern was geometric at first glance — diamond repeats in dark burgundy on cream. At second glance, Ren wasn't sure what the pattern was. The repetitions didn't quite repeat. Each diamond was slightly different from the one beside it, and the differences seemed to form something, some larger shape that kept resolving and dissolving at the edge of perception.

A door at the end of the hallway was closed.

It had not been closed during the viewing.

Ren walked to it and tried the handle. Locked. Except there was no keyhole. The handle turned freely but the door did not move, and when Ren pressed an ear against the wood, listening for pipes or wind or anything ordinary, there was nothing.

Nothing, and then: a sound.

Small. Patient.

Like something that had been waiting in a very small space for a very long time, and had just heard footsteps it recognized.