GRAVEHOUSE
something dead that seems to be alive. something dead that doesn't know it's dead. an
the door creaks as you enter.
- you've been here before. the bones of this place are as familiar to you as your own — maybe moreso, because you've only seen your own that time you fell out of a tree and broke your leg so bad it burst outside of itself, and it seemed alien, detached, even as you felt its pain. the house is more yourself than parts of you are.
- you're exploring it anew. you're armed with a flashlight and stories. every house has stories attached — if you think one doesn't, you just haven't heard enough whispering.
the entrance is dark.
you try the lightswitch like it'll still work, but you abandoned this place so long ago, to think the electric would still be on is foolishness — but wishful thinking was always your most valuable asset here, wasn't it? old habits, and all.
the flashlight still works. its battery buzzes in protest and its beam doesn't go as far as you wish it would, but it's enough. there's cobwebs in every corner, geometry muddled with soft thread.
you hurry past the old photos on the walls. they aren't something you want to see.
- go to the family room.
if you cut two holes in one of the sheets, you could really play the part of the ghost. it's been a long time since somebody laughed in these rooms.
- go to the kitchen.
easier to be invisible.
now, the microwave on the wall looms over you. the numbers on it flash for a moment out of the corner of your eye. there's a dent in the cupboard door.
- go to the backyard.
- go upstairs.
- go to your room.
one theory about ghosts is that they're an echo of imprinted energy. a living thing does something over and over and over in a certain space — fights, sings, weeps, gazes melancholy out the window past the encroaching tree branches and into tomorrow — and the action gets stuck.
when the living thing is no longer living, the air doesn't know what to do without their repetition. so it keeps going.
over and over.
- the action gets stuck - and stuck - and stuck -
you're five and your itty-bitty nightstand tv runs all night because you can't sleep in total darkness. you refuse to close your eyes as you wait to fall asleep. you keep them wide open until you can't anymore, and you're always so tired in the mornings, but if you close your eyes, the house will turn against you. you know that.
you're seven and your sister's room is next door to yours, for now. you look up and see the shadow of a man. he's wearing a tall, wide-brimmed hat, and he walks through her door as if it was air and not solid blue-painted wood.
"the hat man" is a documented supernatural phenomenon typically appearing to children in dysfunctional households. he's described as a solid void of man-shaped space with a wide-brimmed hat and no distinguishable features. witnesses have been separately asked to draw the hat man and come away with remarkably similar sketches.when you're nineteen, you'll hear about this in a podcast and have to sit down for a very long time. you'd nearly forgotten about him. when you're twenty, you'll mention ghosts to your sister, and she'll bring up the man in the hat without prompting.
your first memory is sitting against the front door and crying. you must be two or three. the entryway felt the closest you'd ever get to escape, even before you could conceptualize the word.
you're twelve and something is scratching in the walls and you're much too old to still be so afraid, so instead of shaking you cry. there's enough reasons for that.
you're seventeen and you're leaving and you don't shed one tear as you pack your things. this place has too many things buried in it. no one should live here.
- go to the bathroom.
but when you pull it back, there's nobody there. just houseblood falling from the faucet.
the mirror doesn't have anyone in it, either, but you blame it on the dust and keep walking.
- go to your parents' room.
you brought a lockpick with you. you're not stupid. but no matter how much you twist it and shimmy the gears, it doesn't want to cooperate.
some things should probably stay secret.
- go back down the stairs, to the entrance.
the lightbulb says: stay. it defies the laws of electricity to lure you in. it smears the faces on the framed photographs lining the walls, puts lightglare over hollowed-out eyes so you can no longer tell which one is yourself.
it isn't a flame, and you aren't a moth. keep walking.
- look at the pictures.
you can't help moving closer to the photographs. it's not a choice you made so much as something you have to do, an instinct, a reflex. easy as breathing. difficult as... as breathing.
the centerpiece is a family portrait. remember that photo studio at the old mall — the mall's been torn down now, an ikea or something taking its place where the rubble used to be, but the studio had too-bright lights and props lined neat against the wall, and the camera flash always hurt your eyes. you're blinking in the picture. you don't think they noticed before they printed it off.
your mother is smiling but it's strained at the edges.
your sister is too small to know anything's wrong, bouncing in your mother's arms.
wasn't there someone else in the photo? if you squint you can almost see it. like a magic eye puzzle on the back of a cheerio's box, an optical illusion — is he two vases, or simply a memory you no longer want to have?
you thought, maybe, coming back to a place you'd abandoned would feel something like closure. that shutting the door behind you one last time would be satisfying, with nobody on the other side of it.
instead, you slip in your haste to get away and land hard on the concrete stairs, giving your blood to the house one last time. not enough to seriously harm you, but your palms will be feeling the scrapes for days.
you sit there a while, feeling the sting of it.
- and then you leave.