Elijah awakes with a start; a jolt so intense he at first believes someone had grabbed the front of his nightgown and yanked him upright. With a sharp gasp he frantically eyes his room, searching for the perpetrator, only to find himself alone. The boy glances towards the window, yet it remains just how his mother had left it before tucking him in hours earlier. The sheets of his bed are now sticking to his limbs, which are coated in a thin layer of sweat.
The boy steadies his breath. With two small arms crossed over his ribcage, he licks his parched lips. Water would surely do the trick, the boy thinks to himself in the dead of night. The only task now was to crawl himself out of bed to go retrieve it. The boy thinks for a moment about waking his parents up, so he could feel less alone in the inky unlit house. He listens, but he cannot hear anything but the shifting of his bedroom curtains as the sultry summer night’s air drifts through the creviced window.
It surely was warm, the boy thinks. The aging house had not come with an air conditioner box of any sort, and his father had insisted that opening the windows at night, when the weather cooled off, would be sufficient. The boy thinks his father is wrong, but does not say so.
Enough, the boy tells himself. He is distracting himself from the task at hand. He is nearly eleven now, and recalls his father’s words last summer: “You’re fully double-digits now, Elijah. You cannot be the baby of the house anymore. We have George to take care of, too. You may do things on your own, such as ride your bike and play outdoors without me or your mother.” The boy remembers the shadowy circles under his father’s eyes when he said this. The once soft and adorning lines in his face were deeper now, more severe. The house had taken a toll on his father, although for what reason Elijah couldn’t place.
The boy drags the damp sheets off his bed. The wood flooring is not as cold as the boy had predicted, and rather felt a bit adhesive. He did not bother putting on shoes; he was only to go downstairs for water and back to bed. The clock in the lingering hallway chimes exactly four times. The boy counts each chime on his fingers as he pads down the hall.
He passes his parents’ room, the door tightly shut, and then his younger brother’s. George hadn’t been sleeping all that well since the spring. He claimed to have terrible nightmares that kept him screaming all hours of the night, and left him exhausted throughout the day… wholly unlike a kid of his age. Although Elijah himself could not recall hearing the screaming at night, he did recall his mother talking on the landline to many people across many days, bringing up the newfound nightmares and asking for remedies. Use a nightlight. Drink milk before bed. Read a good, gleeful story to him. The boy’s mother tried them all, yet the screaming had apparently continued. Elijah wished he could understand George’s dilemma, but with no proof came no solution.
There was one day specifically that Elijah had asked his younger brother about the nightmares. It was very soon after Mother had begun to yell at Father, blaming the house and the sudden move for the terrors.
“They’re real, not fake,” George had said, his voice low so only the two brothers could hear. “These people… they live in this house. From the past. They’re all here for us, watching us.”
“Here for us?”
“Yes, like, telling us not to be here. Some of them are nice, some of them are scary, but all of them tell me the same thing: we need to leave.”
This simple exchange was impossible to understand. Who were these people, and how has Mother and Father failed to notice them?
George’s door is partly open as Elijah continues down the hall towards the kitchen, and Elijah does not believe this to be a good sign. Maybe George had gone downstairs? But as Elijah peeks into the dimly lit room, he finds his younger brother curled into a tight ball in the center of the bed, sheets splayed around the child as if the wind had blown through. The older boy backs himself out of his brother’s room and continues down the hall, content that George is not, indeed, screaming.
The stairs took some time, as the boy had to make sure they didn’t make noise. On each step he pauses, shifting his weight as to silence the squealing of the floorboards. The house is old, very old. A few weeks back, Elijah had found the scrapings of numbers on the side of a wall: 1879. Father boasted that this number was the year the house was built, yet Elijah didn’t bother to comprehend how long ago that year was. His father called the house antique; his mother called it a dump. It does need work, the boy thinks, and he can’t truly figure out why they had moved in the first place. The boy remembers the first time he had seen the house in the fading light of the setting sun, that orange glow thick against the frame of the looming house. Elijah thought the house looked like a boney grandfather, worn down by life and tragedy itself. Lonely.
Only certain rooms remained fully intact, the others missing furniture or boarded up in a way. The edges of the arching doorways have chips along the sides; dust lined each hallway. The aging chandelier in the dining room was so heavy that the boy’s father had hired a group of men to take it down, fearing it might fall if the two young boys were to run by. Elijah feels generally indifferent to the place, as if he were passing through a sort of dream. He does not imagine his family would stay too long in this sort of place. In fact, his mother had said so.
“It’s temporary, Eli. Do you know what temporary means?” he remembers her saying. She was sitting on the large back porch, not on a rocking chair or a recliner, but on a cardboard box. She was crunched over, elbows on her knees. Elijah couldn’t see what she was staring at, but she looked worn out.
“Yes. Only for a little.”
“That’s right. Soon enough, we’ll be out and moving onto something much more… permanent.” As Mother said this, Elijah hoped they would go back to how things were in his old town. He didn’t know if that was possible at the time, but he trusted his mother’s words.
That was four months ago.
The boy recalls all this as he tiptoes his way around the bones of the house and to the plentiful kitchen, where the light above the sink casts a shadow on the space. The boy’s breath is shallow, as one would be at an age such as his, shallow with a child’s fear of the dark. His heart rocks around in his chest, echoing along the ridges of his thin rib cage. The sky is still that dark purple, the boy thinks, as he peers out the window. He fills a cup with water from the sink, and gulps it down. He fills the cup again.
Just as he’s ready to head back up, a slight creak in the floor catches his attention. It was not the creak that wind would make, but rather one a footstep would. A shadow looms in the depths of the entrance towards the living room. The boy blinks twice, making sure it is, in fact, a shadow, and not some hallucination. It is only when he sees the dark boots attached to shadow that the boy lets out a little yelp.
“Now you mustn’t wake anyone,” a voice croaks, and Elijah’s own voice catches in his throat. He is frozen stiff in the searing heat of the night, one hand gripping the water cup and the other stuck to the sink. The shadow steps forward, revealing not just legs but a torso and head. Elijah wonders if he’s dreaming.
“Who…” He tries to say anything, but the unknown has set in and comprehension is now a blur. It is a man taller than anyone the boy has seen before. He is slender, with heavy clothes covering all his limbs. His face, now closer to the light, is angular, his eyes pressed deep into his skull and as dark as the night itself. The man looks old enough to be bald, but the young boy cannot tell, for an earflap hat adorns the man’s head. The boy, despite the shrieking fear bubbling up inside, cannot help but wonder about the man. Why is he dressed for winter?
“I will admit I was not expecting to see you here,” the man says, running his long fingers down the side of his own face. His skin looks like the assortment of papers in Father’s study. “It is usually George who accompanies me.” George? The boy thinks, furrowing his eyebrows. What does George know about this man?
“George is asleep,” the boy replies, his voice small. It is the only thing he can think to say.
“Yes, I believe he is. Will you join me instead?” The tall man pulls a cane out from behind his long peacoat, using it as a crutch as he settles into one of the kitchen chairs. The man does not seem to wait for an answer, instead running his eyes over the recent remodeling and pursing his lips in disapproval. Elijah hesitates, not sure if he is unstuck from his spot just yet. He wiggles his toes, then puts a foot forward. The tall man pats the chair next to him, signaling a warm welcome. The boy is not sure why, but he sits down, just as he is requested to. Spacious silence fills the room as the two look around at the new and the old. “This used to be my house,” the tall man says softly, deeply.
“Yours?” The boy runs his finger down a crevice in the chair, just so he can keep his shaking hands occupied. He does not look at the man.
“Oh, indeed. A long while ago. I did not build it, but it was very new.” A floorboard creaks horrifically under the man’s boot, and he winces. “It was a lovely sort of home back then. New neighbors, new lives to be lived. Now, though, this place sits like a corpse.”
The thought of a dead body scares the young boy. Scares him more than the possibility of the one next to him, in fact. He hasn’t seen a real dead body before, but he knows dead eyes. Those same eyes Father holds, day after day. “It is not dead. We live here,” the boy suggests, “and we are not dead.”
“You may be right, but emptiness seeps into every inch of the property. You feel this, don’t you?” The tall man leans towards the boy, waiting. The stench of the man (a mix of flesh and mud, Elijah thinks) noses its way towards Elijah.
“It’s old,” the boy says. He does not know what else to say.
“As am I.”
“Are you dead?” Elijah looks down and finds himself still clutching his glass of water. He does not bring the cup up to his lips, despite the sour taste his mouth has now conjured.
“I don’t believe so,” the tall man replies. He rests his cane on his knees. “But I pay my respects to this place, and the life that grew inside it. It is not a home anymore, but I treasure it nonetheless.” The boy is upset by this. Even if he prefers his old house with the fence in the backyard and the swings, this is a home.
“How did you get here?”
“Where?”
“Into my house.”
“Ah. The front door.” The tall man smiles briefly, his mouth full of decaying teeth. The man stands slowly once again, his bones groaning from the movement. “I must explain to you, Elijah,” he says, “I would not recommend walking this house at night, as you’ve done.”
“I…”
“Listen. This house may be far gone, but that does not mean there aren’t voices inside. They’ll walk these halls just as I have. They’re paying their respects, you see.” The man pulls his hat down tight over his head. “You might not understand, but it’s better if you stay upstairs. Would make things… less complicated. Your brother...”
“George?” The boy asks, confusion smeared across his face.
“Yes, George does not listen. I hope you will. He’s seen things that are not meant for him. It frightens him, Elijah.” The boy tries to remember what George had said when he would describe his nightmares. At the time, it did not make sense. People in the house, he would tell Mother.
The clock chimes, five times this time. It makes Elijah jump, but he does not count the number of chimes on his fingers. The man is gone, his shadow with him. The boy had more questions.
He climbs the stairs, this time not as careful. The hallway to his room is not lit, but it did not matter all that much anymore. He leaves his door open, but only halfway. The boy steadies his breath as he falls back in bed, his sheets only up to his waist. He listens, but he cannot hear anything but the shifting of his bedroom curtains as the sultry summer night’s air drifted through the creviced window.
...
In the morning Elijah comes downstairs for breakfast. All is bright in the sizable kitchen and dining area, with long lines of sunlight pouring across the floor. Mother is busy at the table, assembling plates of food for her children and husband not as a favor, but as a motherly and wifely duty. Father stands in a wide stance, stretching his legs as he gazes out into the backyard. Elijah briefly looks out too, but nothing is there for him to see other than the massive oak trees on the backside of the property. The land is spacious and antique, just as the house is. For some, it looks like an opportunity for something greater. For others, it’s a project not worth the time and money.
Elijah takes a seat in the same chair as he had earlier, running his fingers down the same crack in the wood seat. His mother places a plate in front of him, then calls out for George.
“I saw someone in our house last night,” the boy tells his mother as he picks up his fork. Mother does not react, tending to the bread that had sprung itself out of the toaster. She comes back to the table, ponders, then begins applying butter to the bread.
“What a mad dream that must have been,” his mother says, just as George turns the corner into the kitchen and takes a seat across from his brother. His pajamas seem awfully large on his thin frame, now that Elijah takes a close look at him. George slouches deeply into his own seat, rubbing both eyes with closed fists. Tell them what you saw.
“It was not a dream, Mother. I was really sitting right here with him.” He tries to sound as convincing as Mother had when she told him they wouldn’t be in this house much longer. Father yawns, still peering out to the backyard and unaware of the conversation at hand.
“Now Elijah, that’s enough.” Mother says, eyeing George.
“I’m serious, he was--”
“Who?” George interrupts sleepily, picking up the glass of water Mother had placed in front of him moments before.
“A man. A tall one. Dressed like it was winter. He was here with me at this table just last night, George!” Elijah watches as George’s eyes grow very, very wide. George puts down his glass.
“Nonsense, Elijah,” Mother scolds. “Don’t scare your brother like that. He’s already having awfully frightening dreams, and this make-believe story does not help.”
But Elijah doesn’t hear Mother. He stares at George, who had turned a disgusting shade of green. George slowly turns his eyes up to meet his brother’s. They do not say anything. They do not have to. Silence fills the room.