We Used to Live Here

Content Warning: murder, suicide, child death, hate crime

It’s been a terrible year.

I try not to dwell on the past. I don’t have time for that now that it’s just me and Jimmy. It’s not that I don’t think of my husband. His memory is everywhere, in the pictures I took off the wall, the garbage he hasn’t brought to the curb, the bed I haven’t been able to sleep in alone, the quiet rooms of a small house that used to roar with his infectious laughter. I think about Jim all the time, but I try to lock the memories away—and the tears that come with them—for when I’m alone after my son goes to sleep, before I join him.

The memories are why we left.

The money is why we’re here.

I didn’t know my husband had a million-dollar policy. The number was shocking when they told me and took a while to register since I was dealing with the first shock—Jim’s massive heart attack at age forty-one. They said he might’ve survived if he’d been closer to a hospital, not in the woods on his annual camping trip with his college buddies. They were nothing but terribly sorry at the funeral.

So my husband left for the weekend and the rest of our lives, and now my son and I are here. From the suburbs to the city, to an almost million-dollar rowhouse from that million-dollar policy. Chasing Jimmy through the halls, up the stairs, exploring its many rooms was the first time I’d heard Jimmy laugh since…

It’s too big for us. We don’t need three floors plus an unfinished basement, or three bedrooms and an office, or a rooftop terrace—not when it’s just the two of us and I let go of most of our furniture because everything reminded me too much of Jim. But I bought it anyway because the wide-open spaces were brand new and held no memories—of ours or anyone else’s. Fully renovated, the anxious realtor had said. Not a centimeter that hadn’t been painted soft white, not a square foot that wasn’t covered in new hardwood or pristine tile. Even the kitchen boasted new cabinetry and gleaming stainless-steel appliances. Every fixture shiny from the box and dust free, right down to the outlet covers.

A fresh start.

We are new to the city. New to being able to walk to the corner market and needing movers to carry all the boxes and the furniture I ordered from catalogues to their appropriate rooms. Jimmy is four and picked out a bed shaped like a race car for his room—a room and a bed I doubt he’ll sleep in because he’s been sleeping with me ever since his dad’s camping trip. It was our special thing—our own campout—whenever Jim left. Movies and popcorn, little Jimmy in his Star Wars jammies sprawling out beside me in our giant king bed. After Jim passed, Jimmy never went back to his own room. We spent our first night in the rowhouse building a tent fort around the plain mattress on the master bedroom floor, eating delivery pizza, and watching cartoons on our iPad. He only mentioned his dad once, when he said we forgot to order Jim’s favorite pizza toppings. He gets confused sometimes and I reminded him that we don’t have to order pepperoni with black olives anymore. Grief shadowed his young features, and he curled into my side. I waited until Jimmy fell asleep before I held my new pillow—one that didn’t smell like Jim—to my chest and cried.

We’ve been here a week now. Jimmy’s race car bed is up and my bedframe arrived and was assembled three days ago, but we still sleep in the tent fort on the master bedroom floor. We’ve walked the neighborhood, venturing out a little farther each day, discovering a produce market, coffee shops, and our new favorite bakery. We’ve spent too much money on pizza slices and churros and fallen asleep too early after our sugar crashes. We’ve run through the sprawling rooms of our rowhouse, danced to silly music in the living room, played pirates through the second-floor bedrooms, explored every nook and cranny of the third-floor office and spare room built into the eaves, meandered up the spiral staircase to the roof’s small patio, and had warning talks about the catwalks connecting our roof with the other rowhouses. Jimmy promised never to go up there alone.

Despite the renovations, we discover signs that betray our home’s age—nearly a hundred years if the realtor is to be believed—like dips in the floor, cracks in the plaster I hadn’t noticed on our first walk-through, a moldy, decaying smell whenever we use the second-floor tub. Normal things, I guess. Things I would’ve left for Jim to fix, if they needed it. But there are other things too. Strange things…

Like a clumsy knocking sound on the dining room wall precisely at four-fifteen p.m. everyday. I can almost set my clock by it, it’s that consistent. We assumed it was the neighbors, and kindly asked them about it when we happened upon them on the sidewalk. The old couple was adamant there was never any knocking or pounding coming from their home, but had I bothered to ask the realtor about the previous owners? I hadn’t, and left our brief, rather terse, encounter wondering what that had to do with anything.

There’s also something wrong with the back door. It bangs and strains against its hinges, as if the wind whipping through the alley hits it just right for a few minutes every evening around seven. The wind messes with the electricity too, because when the door starts thumping, the back entryway light flashes on. I don’t know much about electricity—that was Jim’s department—so I’ve removed the bulb until I can find someone to fix it.

Perhaps the strangest thing is the smell of fire. I panicked the first time I noticed it and scoured every room for the source of the flames, but found nothing, until…until I opened the basement door. I couldn’t see any actual smoke as I peered down the dark stairwell, but the smell was as strong as if the entire basement was burning. I hadn’t been down there since we toured the house with the realtor. It was a dark and menacing sort of place I would’ve sent Jim to investigate if he was here. Since he wasn’t, I left Jimmy in his bedroom playing with Legos and descended the steps.

The string at the bottom illuminated a bare bulb too dim to brighten all the shadowed corners. I glanced around the mostly open, empty space with a stone floor and walls. This is the only place in the house I don’t want to be, I realized. My eyes sting from the smoke I taste but still don’t see, and from tears that are never more than a heartbeat away because Jim should be the one searching for fire. Jim should be here to keep us safe. I don’t know how to do that and I’m terrified that I’m getting it wrong. But in this basement…I’m terrified of something else. Something that raises the gooseflesh on my arms as I reach the doorway of the basement’s only sectioned-off space—a small room with dark red walls and a sense of dread so potent I lose my breath and stumble back against the staircase.

I was sucking in fresh air, wringing out my shaking hands on the kitchen island when Jimmy found me. I promised him I was okay. I’m not sure he believes me. It’s hard to sound convincing when I don’t believe it myself.

I haven’t been in the basement since. Now, when I smell the smoke, I open the windows for as long as I can before it gets too cold. I don’t ask the neighbors about the smell.

It’s been three weeks since we moved in. Even with most of the boxes unpacked, this place still feels empty, our voices and footsteps still echo as we move through the rooms.

More strange things have started happening, like the small, wet footprints that appeared in the upstairs hall. Then…Jimmy met the boy from upstairs.

One morning, he was putting the finishing touches on a Lego castle we had built together the night before while I made breakfast. When I came back up to collect him, the castle was gone and its place was a three-foot tall rowhouse, almost an exact replica of ours right down to window placements and the flower planters outside the front door. The castle, much smaller and much, much less detailed had taken two hours to build. This rowhouse had been erected in the twenty minutes it took me to fry eggs and butter toast.

When I asked Jimmy about it, he said the boy from upstairs helped him.

The boy from upstairs isn’t Jimmy’s first imaginary friend. Being an only child, he gets lonely sometimes. Now that I’m his only companion I’ve been trying so hard to make his life fun and exciting that it breaks my heart that he’s needed to conjure a new playmate. If I were a better Mom, he wouldn’t need one. I swallow the sting of fresh tears at the back of my throat and ask him to tell me about the boy. He says only that the boy is quiet and looks cold because he’s missing a shoe.

I don’t want Jimmy making up this friend; I don’t want him to need a boy with one shoe to build Legos with him. That’s what I’m here for. I know I should let it go and accept that my son needs more than I can give him, but if I’m not enough then what the fuck are we going to do? I feel the fragile hold I’ve had on my pain finally snap, and I do the worst thing I could’ve done—the worst thing any mother has ever done—and I fling a hand into his beautiful creation, sending Legos to all corners of the room.

Jimmy is as surprised as I am, and he screams. I scream. And I tell him he doesn’t need the boy from upstairs, and I beg him to tell me what else he wants from me. Then my sweet boy, his cheeks streaked with tears and red with his own anger, screams at me.

You can’t take the boy. You can’t take the boy away like you took away Daddy.

My hands shake and I feel like I’m tumbling down into a deep, dark pit. I can’t breathe. I can’t even think. Jimmy is seething and I…am…breaking. I don’t know what I expected, moving here. That Jimmy would forget his father? That he’d stop needing the man, the glue that held this family together, if I forced us into a shiny new life and pretended to be happy in it? That he would avoid the acute pain of loss that followed me from our old home to this one, from the suburbs to the city, from a loving marriage to an empty shell of an existence that I tried to fill with games and cartoons and pizza so my son wouldn’t realize how broken I really am?

I leave him in his room and curl under a blanket beneath the eaves in the third-floor bedroom, where I’ve been hiding more and more lately, to quietly cry. I’m losing it. I’m losing him. I’m—

Going crazy? Starting to? No, I’m all Jimmy has, and I can’t let myself fully break.

With trembling fingers I pick up my computer and schedule a telehealth appointment with a doctor who prescribes me anti-anxiety medication and a sleeping pill. I’ve never taken either. As I adjust to the medication, I spend more time alone in bed, sleeping off the side effects, and Jimmy spends more time in his room with the boy from upstairs that has become his best friend.

It’s cold in here.

It’s the middle of winter, and it gets colder inside every day. No matter how many buttons I press on the high-tech thermostat on the wall by the dining room, I can’t seem to make this place any warmer. It’s gotten so bad I’ve had to stop opening the windows to air out the smoke smell from the basement. It’s been six weeks since we moved in; I’ve been on my new medication for a few weeks and I’m not crying as much and I’m ready to make the call to get our furnace fixed. I try three different repair shops before I find one that can come tomorrow. If I’m honest, I was afraid to make the calls. Jim always arranged home repairs. The stress of it leaves me feeling dizzy. Jimmy doesn’t feel well either. He complains of a headache, and he doesn’t want to play with the boy from upstairs, so we go to bed early. The neighbors on our other side—ones we haven’t met yet—have been having a heated argument about a woman named Cheryl for the past few days. It comes and goes, and I’ve thought about asking them to stop but they sound so angry I don’t have the courage to knock on their door. I wish Jim was here so he could take care of it. I take two of my sleeping pills to make sure they don’t wake me up tonight.

We both have headaches in the morning. It’s colder yet in the house. Too cold to stay if the furnace can’t be fixed. I mean to follow up with the repairman that’s supposed to come today, but I can’t find my phone. I put a sign on the door to knock loudly and Jimmy and I huddle under the covers inside our tent and sleep for most of the day.

It’s dark outside when Jimmy starts vomiting. We don’t make it to the toilet the first time and it splatters on the wood floor just outside the opening of the tent. When I get him to the bathroom, I hold him while he retches over and over again. He hasn’t been sick like this in a while. I wonder if I should call someone then I remember I still don’t know where my phone is. He doesn’t feel warm so I don’t think it’s the flu. Maybe just something he ate. Meals have been patchy since I started my pills. Jimmy figured out how to order food for delivery so he’s been getting pizza and burgers and whatever else he’s wanted without any argument from me, but I don’t actually know what the last thing he ate was, and I can’t tell from the brown slurry coming out of his mouth. If I was a better Mom, if I paid more attention, I could’ve prevented this. I blink and tears roll down my cheeks and onto Yoda’s green, wrinkly head on the back of Jimmy’s pajamas. I’m failing him. The pills were supposed to help but I’m still failing. I promise myself that from this moment on, I’ll do better. I won’t sleep so much and I won’t cry in the corners and I’ll cook every meal and I’ll play Legos on the floor and I’ll hug him all the time and kiss his little cheeks and finally be the mom he deserves.

By the time he’s done throwing up, we’re both shaky and I hobble on weakened legs with my exhausted little boy in my arms, back to the tent. I forgot about the puke on the floor. I lay him down and grab some paper towels from the bathroom and wipe it up as best as I can. The small bathroom garbage is now full of puke rags, and I’m about to go downstairs for a new trash can liner when the floor goes out from under me. I haven’t realized how dizzy I am. I don’t think I’ve taken any sleeping pills yet today, but something is very wrong since I can’t even make it down the steps to the kitchen. More side-effects from the anti-anxiety medication? I dump the vomit rags into the tub and bring the empty garbage can into the master bedroom to put beside Jimmy in case he needs to puke again. It’s all I can do before I collapse on the blankets beside him and close my eyes against the spinning room and the pain in my temples.

I rest a hand on his side and feel the shallow breaths huffing from his lungs. Huff, huff, huff. I move my hand to the center of his chest and pull him closer, feeling the hard thumping of his heart against my palm. Is that right? I remember listening to his heartbeat in the womb when that erratic thumping was a relief that he was still alive and growing, but this seems fast for a kid. Too fast. I try to sit back up and get a better look at him but it’s so black in this room. There’s a nightlight on the wall but it isn’t reaching me tonight. I’m passing out, I think. There’s ringing in my ears and my lips are numb and cold and I can hardly think.

Tomorrow. If he’s still sick tomorrow, I’ll take him to a hospital. That’s what a good Mom would do.

It’s my last conscious thought before the blackness consumes me.

There’s knocking in my head. In a dream. At the front door.

My headache is gone and when I crawl out of the tent I don’t feel dizzy. The knocking continues. Whoever it is, is pounding now. I rush out the bedroom door, stumble down the staircase, and throw myself down the hall to the front door. By the time I make it, the pounding has stopped. I try opening the door but it doesn’t budge. My groggy fingers grasp for the locks, fumbling and clumsy as if they’ve never worked a deadbolt. When I think I’ve gotten through them all, the door still won’t open. I must’ve missed one, but I’m not sure which. I pull aside the curtain and peer out the window. The furnace repairman is standing on the sidewalk in front of his service van parked at the curb. I holler and knock on the glass. He’s on his cellphone, arms waving like he’s telling whoever is on the other end that he tried and no one answered.

“I’m here,” I shout, slapping the glass. He’s shaking his head when he waves his hand a final time and gets in his van.

“No!” I scream. “Come back!”

My palms sound hollow on the windowpane. If I shatter it, then I’ll have two repairs to manage, and nothing will stop the cold from getting in.

The van drives away. It’s only then that I realize I don’t feel cold—not the way I did when I first called the repairman. Maybe the furnace is working again. I re-lock the door, still unsure of what lock I missed, and set out to find my cellphone. It’s usually plugged into the kitchen wall beside the toaster, but it isn’t there. Jimmy must’ve used it to place a take-out order—whatever he ate that made him sick last night—and set it…where?

I feel dizzy again. The room sways and I clutch the counter to keep from falling over, using it and the walls to make it back to the stairs. My feet grow heavier with each step as I climb. At the top of the steps, something in Jimmy’s room catches my eye. In the middle of his floor, spelled out in blue Lego’s, is the word WELCOME.

Jimmy can only spell three letter words, like rat and cat and bat and hat, and he’s never used blocks to write them. Does that mean…is someone else here?

No. That’s crazy. I tilt in the doorway as another wave of dizziness threatens to knock me off my feet. There’s no one here, besides me and Jimmy. It would only ever be me and Jimmy for the rest of our lives.

I find him in our tent bed, still asleep, and I nestle around him, feeling the room steady. His breathing isn’t coming out in shallow huffs and his heartrate is slow like mine. Maybe I imagined it all last night, like some kind of sick hallucination from the sleeping pills. I’ll make another telehealth appointment later to see about changing the dosage.

I nuzzle my nose into Jimmy’s brown hair and close my eyes. It’s dark outside already so I go back to sleep.

In the morning I feel like I’ve slept a month.

It isn’t cold. I’m not dizzy. And Jimmy hasn’t thrown up again. I know I’m not supposed to stop taking my pills all at once, but I don’t feel like I need them anymore. I want to be a good Mom. And a good Mom can’t live in that kind of fog.

I smile at my son, who rubs his eyes groggily from a stool at the kitchen island while I hunt for something to make for breakfast. I barely notice the empty refrigerator shelves when there’s a knock at the door. I leave Jimmy in the kitchen and run to the front entrance where I see a repairman through the side window. I grasp the top deadbolt and attempt to twist, but I must be so weak from being ill—how long have I been ill?—because it won’t budge, and Jimmy calls my name from the kitchen. I shout over my shoulder that I will be right there, only to be interrupted by a voice I don’t recognize from the back of the house.

I look away from the door as Jimmy dashes up the stairs and a woman in a teal suit and heavy gold jewelry marches in high heels up the hall, talking on a cell phone.

“Hey, who are you?” I call out to her. “What are you doing here?”

“I have to call you back,” she says into the phone. “The repairman is here again.”

“Hey!” I holler at the woman who doesn’t so much as look at me as she passes and starts turning each lock on the door, ushering the repairman inside.

Realtor: “Thanks for coming today. We’re expecting heavy foot traffic and I’d like to be able to tell them the whole…issue…is taken care of. By the way…were you the one that found them?”

“Thank goodness you’re here,” I follow at the repairman’s heels as he follows the woman in teal with the gold jewelry down the hall. “It’s been so cold. Every day it gets worse—”

Crew Cut: “Excuse me.”

I’m startled by someone grabbing my arm, turning me away from the repairman and the woman who shouldn’t be in my house that is leading the way to the basement.

“What? Who are you?” I demand, ripping my arm away from a stout woman with a crew cut and serious face. Terror floods my body and I think she must be here to rob me. “What are you doing in my house?”

Crew Cut: “Are you Morgan?”

“There’s nothing here to steal, or can’t you see that?” I shriek, and it’s only then that I realize there’s nothing actually here. From where we stand in the hallway, I can see into the living room where there should be a sofa on the right and a TV mounted on the opposite wall. Both are gone. The room is empty.

“What the hell?” I breathe, spinning into the room that spins around me so fast I clutch the sides of my head to slow it down. When was the last time I took my anti-anxiety medication? The sleeping pills? I can’t remember. The last few days have been such a blur and I’ve slept so long I’m not actually sure what day it is, but I do know that this isn’t right. My TV should be here. My couch should be here—right here. Right where I’m standing in the spinning room. I try to remember the side effects of my medication. Drowsiness. Confusion. Nausea. Dizziness. Operating machinery without memory of doing so. Scary, ridiculous things that I decided were worth the risk when I agreed to take them. But outright hallucinations? I need to call my doctor, then I remember that I haven’t seen my phone since…

Crew Cut: “You okay?”

I scream as I turn and find Crew Cut beside me. Her sharp features have softened with what looks like understanding, but I don’t even understand. Should I know who she is? Should I know why she’s here?

Morgan: “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Crew Cut: “I’m here for the open house.”

I’m staring at her, mouth gaping, not sure which one of us is the crazy one, when I hear voices down the hall. Two women are admiring the staircase, running their fingers over the spindles and commenting on the sturdiness of the railing.

Morgan: “Hey! What are you doing? Get out, this is my house.”

They continue past the staircase to the other side of the hall, tittering about restored crown moldings before disappearing into the formal dining room.

“Hey!” I chase after them. “Stop! Where do you think you’re going?”

Crew Cut: “Come sit with me for a minute.

Before I answer, Crew Cut takes my arm in her beefy grip and hauls me toward the kitchen. A woman in a pantsuit is coming out of it, taking a video on her phone and muttering things like lovely, and simply gorgeous.

Morgan: “Who is—”

Crew Cut: “Relax and come sit.”

Crew Cut’s heavy hands push me onto a stool at the island, and I grasp the marble, steadying my voice as much as my frayed nerves will allow.

Morgan: “I don’t know who any of you are, but you shouldn’t be here. I’m going to call the police.”

Crew Cut: “Oh yeah? Where’s your phone?”

I won’t meet her gaze when I say, “I’ll find it.”

Crew Cut: “Sure you will.”

Morgan: “It should be on the counter, beside the toaster—”

I stop when I realize the toaster isn’t where it should be next to the stove. Come to think of it, the counters are completely bare when there was supposed to be soap by the sink, a roll of paper towels in the holder, and a Keurig on the coffee bar.

I stand and Crew Cut pushes me back down.

Crew Cut: “Save it. The cops aren’t coming.”

Morgan: “Are you—are you holding me hostage?”

Crew Cut (laughs): “Am I holding you hostage?”

Morgan: “Why is this funny?”

Crew Cut: “Oh honey, I wish it were that simple…No, I’m not holding you hostage. I’m like you.”

Morgan: “What do you mean?”

Crew Cut: “I used to live here.”

Morgan: “What? When?”

More people—what look like two couples under forty—pass by in the hall.

Crew Cut: “Long enough to see many people come and go.”

Morgan: “What are you doing here now?”

Crew Cut (shrugs): “Same as you.”

Morgan: “No. No, I don’t know you. I didn’t invite you.”

She scoffs and I spring from the stool and run toward the people—the outright strangers in my home—and am stopped by a petite woman who appears in the kitchen doorway.

Lyla (cheerily): “Oh, hello.”

Morgan: “What are you doing here?”

Lyla: “Oh, me? My name’s Lyla, and I used to live here, too. I had to come and see how much has changed.”

Morgan: “But this is my home. What gives you the right. What gives any of you the right?”

Crew Cut is directly behind me, squeezing my shoulder. Her touch is friendlier this time, but still infuriating.

Crew Cut: “Better take that seat, sister. Wait for the traffic to die down.”

Morgan: “The only one who should even be here is the repairman. Where the hell did he go? He needs to fix the heat—"

Lyla: “Oh dear.”

Crew Cut: “Come. Sit.”

Morgan: “Get your hands off of me! I need my phone. I need the police.”

It’s hard to think, hard to breathe with one particularly strong woman at my back insisting I sit, and another at my front blocking the way. This can’t be happening. Maybe this isn’t happening. Maybe I am going crazy.

Morgan (cries): “Why are you in my house?”

I see a glimpse of the repairman heading down the back hall to the basement. With a mighty heave, I shove aside the petite woman—Lyla—and chase after the repairman. He’s the only part of this—whatever this is—that doesn’t feel completely insane or like some kind of terrible nightmare. I’m sure he’s the only one who can help me.

I don’t think about the basement, the fire. I need to get to him, to ask him what’s going on, as if he’ll know. Lyla catches up with me at the top of the basement stairs and twists my arm.

Lyla: “You don’t want to go down there. Morgan—”

I don’t ask how she knows my name or why her eyes are wide with terror. Answers are in the basement, with the man who is finally here to fix the heat. I pull away from Lyla and plunge into the darkness that swallows me whole the second I descend the steps.

Morgan (calls out): “Hello? Sir?”

My voice falls flat, as if smothered by the darkness around me. When I reach the bottom, actual smoke creeps up so suddenly and so fiercely, it clogs my throat as I feel around for the string for the lightbulb. I cough, calling out to the repairman again. There’s no way he can navigate this darkness; no way he can breathe when my own lungs ache for fresh air. Where is he? And where is the string for the light? My fingers finally brush against it, and it takes another few tries to get a grip on it. Then I pull…

There’s a woman standing beside me, her features taut in a horrifying mask of fear and desperation. I see the whites of her bulging eyes, lips curled back from her yellowed teeth in a snarl, cheeks smeared with soot. But it’s the sounds she’s making that steal whatever breath I have left. From between her clenched teeth, guttural moans escape, as if she’s sobbing or screaming around a clamped jaw.

I stumble away from her, toward the room I previously refused to enter. Heat pours from the claustrophobic space, the red walls seeming to pulse and bulge, as if reaching for me. My cheeks flush with more than heat. Fear is thick here. Terror coats my body like an oily, viscous second skin that doesn’t just weigh me down—it pulls me into the small room. The moment I cross the threshold, I’m fully engulfed in smoke, and through the haze I see flames along the walls, spreading toward the center of the room, toward me just inside the door. The heat sears my arms, my face, my legs beneath my pajama pants, and I see two small figures within the flames. Two iridescent balls with flailing limbs that reach for me—

A hand on my shoulder pulls me out. The air is instantly cooler and I can breathe without choking on smoke.

Lyla has me by the arm, yanking me step after stumbling step up the stairs, cursing at me all the way.

Lyla: “We don’t go in the basement. Damnit, we don’t go down there.”

Morgan (coughing): “What was that? What was that?”

At the top, I think I see the desperate, soot-covered woman step into the small circle of light at the foot of the stairs before Lyla slams the door and shakes my shoulders.

Lyla: “That’s Miranda’s place. We don’t disturb Miranda. Do you understand?”

Morgan: “No, no, I don’t understand. Who are you? Who is she?”

Lyla: “She used to live in your house. She lost her children in that room.”

The flailing limbs looked a lot like small arms, I realize.

Morgan: “How? When?”

Lyla: “We leave her alone. She’s gone through enough.”

Morgan: “But why is she in my house? Why are any of you in my house?”

There are so many people here now. I bump into them. They don’t notice me. They’re admiring the molding, the floors, the staircase. They’re eating cookies and reading off pieces of paper. I burst into the kitchen, scream at a couple opening my fridge—my empty fridge—and put my hands on the counter beside the stocky, crew cut woman and yell in her face.

Morgan: “What the fuck is happening here?”

She looks bored, but a hint of sympathy colors her face.

Lyla: “Just tell her.”

Crew Cut rolls her eyes and holds the paper she’s been reading up to me. It’s a picture of my house from the street with a list of specs beneath it.

Morgan: “What is this? Why do you have a picture of my house?”

Crew Cut: “They all do. Look around.”

She’s right. Every person poking through my home does so with one of these papers. They read, compare, write notes. I look again at the paper in Crew Cut’s hands.

It says FOR SALE at the top.

Morgan: “No. No, it can’t. I—I just bought this place. We still live here. We—”

Jimmy.

My heart leaps from my chest as I leap away from the women—the only ones who seem to notice me—and past two biddies admiring the staircase as I throw up myself up it. How could I have forgotten my boy? My precious Jimmy. He’s probably terrified in this house with all these strangers. I am a shit mom. What if something’s happened to him? What if one of these people has hurt him? I can’t let myself imagine it. When I find him—and I will—I will hold him and kiss him and love him until he knows it's going to be OK.

A young couple is skirting the edges of my bedroom, stopping to check out the view from the window.

Morgan (screeches): “Why are you in my room?”

I don’t wait for their answer before I pull aside the sheet to look inside the tent in the middle of the floor.

It’s empty.

I call out his name and rip through the blankets because sometimes he likes to hide underneath them, but he isn’t there. Where else would he be? Maybe someone has hurt him. Oh god…What if….

What if someone took him?

I push through the terror to the hall where I am almost run down by a small, naked girl scampering from the bathroom, leaving wet footprints on the floor.

I holler after her, chasing her into Jimmy’s room. His racecar bed isn’t pressed against the wall where we set it up. The boxes of toys in the corner are gone, and the latest Lego creation, the one that spelled out WELCOME, has also disappeared. There’s no sign of Jimmy or the sopping wet child I followed in here.

A naked child. Why, with all these other people, would there be a naked kid here? What if she’s not here and those pills really are making me hallucinate? It makes more sense than anything else—certainly more than naked kids in the hall or two fully-clothed men sitting in my bathtub, laughing and pretending to sip from imaginary glasses of wine.

If I’m hallucinating, why are there still footprints on the floor? I reach down and touch one and my fingers come away wet. I’m not imagining them or the child that made them, and that’s a problem. And I still haven’t found Jimmy.

I throw open doors until I’ve searched the entirety of the second floor and make my way up the next flight of stairs. There isn’t any furniture on the third floor—never had been. I’m spinning in the center of the empty office space when a new kind of terror strikes.

The roof. The pathways between buildings. The three-story fall to the ground.

“Jimmy!” I scream and rush up the spiral staircase and out the rooftop door. I brace myself for a gust of winter wind that never comes. It should be freezing. The last time I came up here, the cold was blistering. Now—

Now my mind trails past the weather as I turn in a circle, sweeping the roof for any sign of my son. There’s an elderly couple at the front edge, looking down. My god…have they found him?

“Jimmy,” I breathe. When I make my way to them, I’m too afraid to look down. They smile—at each other, not me—and turn to head back inside. They aren’t disturbed as they should be if my Jimmy had fallen. I look over the side and see only the sidewalk and the street lined with budding trees and the first blades of green grass.

Green grass, as if it’s spring.

No, it’s impossible. It’s—a dream. Of course. It must be. It was the only thing that explained the people and the weather and everything else. Women like the soot-covered Miranda weren’t real. Flaming bodies of small children certainly didn’t exist outside of nightmares. I think night terrors was one of the side effects of my sleeping pills, and that’s what this is, and when I’ve exhausted myself here, I’ll wake up in the tent beside Jimmy and I’ll flush every last pill down the toilet. It’s the only thing that makes sense. The only—

Roof Woman: “It isn’t a dream.”

My frantic gaze snags on a woman sitting on a folding chair, her back to me, huddling underneath a blanket.

Roof Woman: “It isn’t a dream. I wish it was.”

I back away from the edge of the roof and she slowly turns to me. She’s not old but not exactly young, with a tired look about her and a deep sadness in her eyes as she appraises me.

“Who are you?” I whisper, but I’m terrified of the answer because deep in my bones, in a place I won’t acknowledge, I already know what she’s going to say.

Roof Woman: “I used to live here…Just like you.”

Morgan: “I—I live here now. My son—have you seen him? I can’t find him.”

Roof Woman: “This is all a little much for the kids. This house is not a great place for children. You’ve heard about the basement?”

The flaming arms reaching for me in a burning room are forever seared into my brain. I realize for the first time that if the basement really was on fire right now, everyone would be leaving. I would be leaving. Why didn’t I try to run outside when Lyla brought me back upstairs? If that fire was real, this whole place would be up in flames by now. It’s just more confirmation that the woman in front of me is wrong and this is a very bad dream.

“I’ve heard about the basement,” I manage to say with a suddenly dry throat.

Roof Woman: “Good. But have you heard about what happened on the roof? The little boy who ran too fast and fell over the side before his mother could catch him?”

My own eyes press out of my skull. She can’t really mean—

Morgan (chokes out): “Jimmy—”

Roof Woman: “His name was Dale. My son was six when he got away from me. Six and so fast. So…fearless.”

Her eyes gloss with tears and she turns away, her gaze lowering to the edge of the roof beside her. There’s a small child’s shoe on the ground beneath her chair, as if it slipped off of Dale’s foot when he went over.

Morgan: “I didn’t…I didn’t know.”

Roof Woman: “How could you? You have your own son to be concerned with. Your own precious boy to keep safe.”

Morgan: “Please…do you know where he is?”

Roof Woman: “We have one job as mothers. When we fail, we never get over it.”

Morgan: “That’s why I need to find him. All these people... It’s not safe here.”

Roof Woman: “No, it’s not.”

She narrows her weary eyes and pulls the blanket tighter around her. For a moment, her sleeve slides up her arm and I see a long, deep scar on her left wrist.

Roof Woman: “Try the closet. For some reason they all like the closets.”

Something has shifted in my body while talking to her. Some of the hysteria has settled. And I’m certain I will find Jimmy in a closet, but…

But I don’t know if finding him will be enough. I wonder if I’ve kept him safe, or if I’ve missed something, some crucial detail that damned us to some terrible fate.

I’m turning down the spiral stairs when I notice two teenagers huddling underneath it, reading something off a piece of paper I assume is the listing of my home that all the other people have.  

Teenage Boy: “Okay, okay, so we did the beams in the dining room where that guy hung himself, we got the master bedroom. We got…we got everything except the roof where that kid fell and…the basement.”

The boys are arguing about who should go down to the basement, when their mother—looking frazzled and annoyed—takes the paper from their hands and scolds them for what she calls despicable rubbish, before shoving them out the door. Shaking her head, she balls up the paper and tosses it behind her.

As soon as they leave, I descend the spiral stairs, collect the paper, and open it.

It’s a list with checkmarks down the left side. At the top, in big, bold letters, it says Death-Rowhouse. On the list, in seemingly no particular order, are rooms with a brief description of what has happened there.

Dining Room – January 1, 1930, at approximately four-fifteen in the afternoon, stockbroker James Hollis hung himself from the rafters.

Upstairs Bathroom – September 21, 1990, MaryAnn Wilson, four years old, drowned in the bathtub while her parents had a party downstairs.

Back entrance – May 5, 1983, Dawn Fields was strangled by an unknown attacker just outside the door in the area’s first homophobic hate crime.

Kitchen – February 23, 2019, Lyla Henderson—

Lyla. I stop reading and head for the stairs in the hall. It couldn’t be the same woman who yanked me out of the basement. Despicable rubbish the boys’ mother had said. That’s all this is. A terrible joke.

There are so many people coming in and out of rooms that I don’t notice the wet, naked child running down the second-floor hallway until she almost collides with me. I move out of her way and into a hushed conversation between the same old biddies I saw downstairs. One tips her head until her neck fat collects in a pile under her throat, claiming this house is so reasonably priced because of all the death, while the other tsks and asks her co-conspirator if she really believes all that garbage.

I don’t wait for the other to reply before I push through a family headed for Jimmy’s room and make it to the top of the last flight of stairs. Above the casual din of many conversations I hear shouting—voices I recognize but I’m not sure how. My socks slip on the wood floor at the bottom of the stairs and I trip into the living room where I find a couple screaming the most terrible obscenities at each other. None of the other people touring the room pay the raging couple any attention—not even when she pulls a gun out of her purse and flat out accuses the man of sleeping with someone named Cheryl—

Cheryl. I know that name. I’ve heard it before. But…where?

She has a gun and that should scare everyone. It should scare me. We should all be running for an exit in this house that should’ve burned down from the fire in the basement, but everyone is strolling around like this isn’t madness, like I really am dreaming, and none of it feels real right now so I turn away from the living room—even as I wince at the gunshot that sends no one in a panic—and hurry back to the kitchen where I find Lyla at the counter with Crew Cut.

They look up at me and I slap the paper down between them, smoothing it so they can see what I’ve been reading.

Crew Cut (sniggers): “Death-Rowhouse. Clever.”

Lyla (groans): “Ugh, not this again.”

Morgan: “What is this? What the fuck is happening here?”

Crew Cut: “Just another open house.”

She shrugs and for the first time I notice the purple bruises around her neck.

Morgan (mutters): “It’s the pills. It’s got to be the pills.”

Lyla: “The pills?”

Morgan: “I’ve taken too many. Or they’re too strong. Or…or…”

Crew Cut: “Or it’s the carbon monoxide.”

I stop muttering and look across the island at Crew Cut. At Dawn Fields and the strangulation marks above the collar of her flannel shirt. At Lyla whose blue lips are smiling softly at me, her eyes glistening above dark, haunted circles and gaunt cheeks.

Lyla: “Same thing happened to me. In this very room. Only, mine was intentional.”

I can’t speak. Lyla pushes the paper across the marble countertop to me and I look down.

Lyla in the kitchen. Miranda and her children in the basement. Dale on the roof and his mother Jane in the third-floor bedroom. And then I read…

Master Bedroom – February 28, 2024, Morgan and Jimmy Fraser were found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning when a furnace repairman called in a welfare check.

Morgan and Jimmy Fraser found dead. The coldness in the words seep through my body, through blood and bones and a heart that isn’t beating. For the first time since waking up I’m not dizzy or confused or feigning hallucinations. I can see Lyla and Dawn for the ghosts they are, the dullness that surrounds them compared to the vibrance of the people who move around us like we aren’t even there.

Because we aren’t.

Lyla’s blue lips crack with another try at a smile.

Lyla: “Welcome Morgan. You’re with us now.”

I slowly back away from the island, from Lyla and Dawn, from the sudden smell of natural gas in the kitchen and someone’s comment about the stove being electric now—for safety reasons. I turn down the hall, past a woman shaking her head, telling her husband that something is wrong in the living room. That it just feels off. And it should. There’s a man bleeding out on the floor from a gunshot wound to the chest and his wife is piled on top of him after swallowing her own bullet. As I round the stairs, I catch a glimpse of James Hollis dangling like a worm at the end of a hook from a rope tied to the beams to the left of where the dining room table should’ve been.

On the second-floor landing, a couple is speaking to the woman with the gold jewelry. The realtor. She’s assuring them—and everyone within earshot—that the furnace is being fixed and what happened a few months ago will surely NOT happen again.

A few months ago…when Morgan and Jimmy Fraser were found dead.

There is a boy in the doorway of Jimmy’s room. He’s wearing a winter coat and missing a shoe. When the wet, naked child—MaryAnn—bolts down the hallway again, he catches her and shakes his head. She glances up warily at me, slumps her shoulders, and heads back to the bathroom. The boy retreats into Jimmy’s room and I follow him. He stands a few feet from the closet, staring at the closed doors with his dark, vacant eyes. I pull the doors open and find Jimmy in his Star Wars pajamas on the floor. He looks up at me with dark circles under his eyes, his skin too pale, his lips too blue. My heart shatters because I’ve failed him in the most absolute way, at the only thing I was ever supposed to do: keep my son safe.

He stands as I fall to my knees, and he wraps his thin arms around my neck while I cry. I tried to be a good mom. I tried to protect him from the pain of his father’s loss, from my pain about it. I tried to give him a good life. And here we are…surrounded by—

Ghosts.

I look up and see the boy with the missing shoe—the boy from upstairs whose name is Dale. Behind us, near the bedroom door, Dawn and Lyla wait holding hopeful breaths, Lyla with a tentative smile. I don’t see couples taking notes and photographs of my home, the old biddies gossiping, the teenage boys obsessing over heinous deaths. Our deaths.

The living have gone, and I’ve got Jimmy, and suddenly it hits me. I’m free. We’re free. I don’t need pills anymore. I don’t need to grieve. I’m relieved. Relieved from trying so hard to hold it together and be all things to my son. Relieved from trying so hard to live.

I kiss his hair and promise him that it’s going to be okay, and this time I mean it. We can spend the rest of eternity in this big, beautiful house together, with the other mothers and children, and the women and men who met tragic ends, just like we did, here—in the place where we used to live.