I never thought I'd be dealing with something like this, that I would be living in a haunted house. The very idea was completely absurd to me, something of a bit of a dissociation from seeing my father long after his death, and even my wife's abilities. Most of the supernatural, if I am going to talk about it, took place during the Sauria expedition, when Marcus and Emily did not exist, when I was a seasoned young adult ready to take life by the horns. A Fox who hadn't turned gray, who flew an Arwing and lived on a ship with an eighty-year mortgage, who missed his father and longed to know his mother, a Fox inspired by MREs, a lonely heart, and active lymph nodes from the malarious riot in his veins into reveries of purple prose that would continue long after I'd saved the life of the woman who would give me children. Now I am middle aged, a paunch catching up to me, but still quite a ways away from death. In fact, Corneria was so advanced with the finest medical care that it was not uncommon for someone to live into the next century. So much so, I'd not known of anyone close to me who died. Only my father who held me tight when my mother passed, and my mother in question, who despite me never knowing her, I held onto her tight also.
The frequent sale and resale of homes in Verano was at its peak that summer. No one seemed to give it enough thought to investigate the odd phenomenon. Much of it looked like a ghost town, a small, insular, visual representation of a real estate crisis that happened fifteen years ago: otherwise beautiful homes abandoned to the mortgagers, left to the elements. Roofing tiles were shedding off, lawns overgrown with brown, thirsty grass, some homes boarded up, making Verano look like an overly-priced skid row, though that particular phenomenon was due to unruly neighborhood kids breaking into the abandoned homes. Therefore, while Verano was going through its own housing crisis, we didn't think it affected us two streets over in Valle Del Sol. Likewise, with us and our new home, and our own children, we'd initially given little thought to the discourse in our neighborhood, until we started finding reasons to abandon our own home. Outside of the motorized gate of Cataleya Estates, life went on as usual, none the wiser to the crises in our neighborhood. Our suburb of Lago Palomino was less than fifteen years old, the entirety of it was nothing but orange groves and farmland before the pit of the real estate recession, when the economy was licking its wounds. With billions at their disposal, developers bought out the original residents, the farmlands, and cleared it all out. During my research, I came across pictures depicting the past. It looked like a weapon of mass destruction had claimed the land, it was so barren at that point in time.
House hunting was fun, though, but only for the first few days. By the third day and the third house, our senses were overloaded to the point where they all became hard to distinguish from one another. I'd gotten sick to my stomach of spiels about granite counters, square footage, and how short the commute was to and from downtown. Literally, one of the reasons we picked Cataleya Estates was because we were exhausted from the whole process.
"Why are they all so big?" Krystal asked, as we toured through Cataleya Estates for the first time, to meet our real estate agent at the model home park. "Do we really need this kind of space?"
"For big families," I had answered. "We're going to have a big family. We'll be here a long time."
Krystal didn't tell me about her dream until a little time later. And with the progression of time, there became an unnatural persistence. Though everyone in our family had not spoken on anything yet at this point, we had our own vivid experiences of living in this house. Marcus still hadn't spoken to us about what happened exactly fourteen days after we began occupying the home. I'd of course seen that shade of Krystal in the upstairs window from down in the driveway that day. "Fox, we have to talk," Krystal said a week later after the fact.
Krystal's dream–when she finally told me, the assessment was chilling–was comparable to some news articles I'd found after a couple of insomniatic QueriSearch binges on my laptop. She told me exactly as she'd seen it in her head that night: that she was experiencing it from the eyes, thoughts, and sensations of their youngest daughter. She'd been tied up with the rest of her family, as their captors were preparing to do something terrible to them. When Krystal told me about the disturbing imagery of the deceased family, sounding like their very spirits were suffering, I offered a news report of an immigrant family from worlds ago, wherein they were victims of a callous and sadistic homicide. It was almost like a witch hunt, how it happened. No one liked them, the fact that they were wealthy, the fact that they owned private land and made their money off of it, the fact that they were hard-working and did nothing to bother anyone. Their worst crime was the fact that they were Venomian, corrupting the air around them with the mere presence of their scaled skin and Poikilothermy, as well as subverting the jealous expectations of those around them that they should be behaving like the scum of the planet rather than the upstanding people they were.
No one seemed to know what happened to them, as their home stood empty for nearly two months with the impression that the family simply abandoned the home, the land, and the hostility of the people around them. It wasn't until an unassociated internet celebrity (whose video channel is dedicated to scuba diving in various places to see what's there) went into the lake on their property (the very one behind our house) and discovered bones on the lake floor. He knew they were people because the remains were garbed in sleep clothing.
After I told her that, Krystal walked around the island counter from the kitchen range, holding a skillet. She scooped the smoked salmon frittata onto my plate and walked back around to run water onto the pan in the kitchen basin. With her back turned as she squirted dish soap and began scrubbing the detritus from the cookware, she'd made a pronouncement. It was loud and clear enough for me to hear, but I was… really surprised by the statement, to say the least. To hear it with words.
"...I–I'm sorry. Krystal, what did you say?"
She turned off the tap and picked up a dish towel to dry her hands. Turning around, she faced me, leaning against the counter and placing her hands on the beveled edge. "Our house. It's haunted, Fox," my wife repeated.
"How the hell do you know that?"
She simply pointed at her head emphatically, then turned around to finish cleaning the skillet.
I did marry a psionic, after all.
I thought I was going crazy on the previous day, the one leading to the night of Krystal's dream. Nothing seemed too out of the ordinary at first. The day started as per the norm. I'd gotten up to go to work, descending the kitchen staircase, fully dressed for my day, to find something to cram into my barely awake face for breakfast. I imagined Krystal scooping instant oatmeal into a bowl for Emily and fishing a two-pack of toaster pastries out of the walk-in pantry for Marcus, while she intermittently picked up her glass coffee mug to sip on her morning brew, sugar, no cream. Our single-serve coffee brewer still has hot water. I load it with a fresh capsule of Caffe Eccellenza Breakfast Roast and a fresh mug.
"...Fox?"
I smile at the sound of my wife's voice. "Morning, my love," coo as I watch the steaming coffee drip into the cup.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure." I open the overhead cabinet to retrieve the turbinado sugar. The heavy creamer was in the refrigerator.
"How come Marcus didn't die?"
I furrowed my brow at the strange question. Removing the cup from the drip tray, I set it on the counter and began pouring sugar into the coffee directly from the resealable bag. I'm still pondering this question as I pull the silverware drawer to retrieve a teaspoon to mix the crystals into the hot liquid. I open and shut my mouth a couple times, swallowing thick saliva. "...Why would you ask that?"
"I don't want him to suffer."
This was very strange, and completely out of character for my wife. Never in all my years of knowing her would I have imagined that something like this would come out of her mouth. This was so weird and jarring, I had to look into the windows of her soul. "Krystal, what are you talking about?" I whirled around to meet her gaze, only to find… Nothing. No one.
"...Krystal?" I called out.
My voice echoed through the house. Then silence.
The deadbolt to the garage door began rattling, like someone was trying to come through. Somewhere between freaked out and angry, like this was some elaborate prank, too serious and disturbing to be funny, I marched to the garage door, situated in the alcove with the pantry, unlocking the door from my side and pulling it open.
Krystal seemed surprised at my expression. "Hey! Um… Are you okay?" She was holding a couple of shopping bags. Behind her, I could hear the ticking and pinging of the Revla's engine cooling off. Telltale signs that Krystal had just pulled in after dropping Marcus and Emily off at school and running a couple errands.
I stared at her for a moment that seemed to stretch to an eternity.
"I'm late for work," I said, brushing past her to get into my truck. She turned around and watched my strange behavior, and I didn't make eye contact with her when I pressed the HomeConnect button on the sun visor to raise the garage door. Dropping the vehicle into reverse, I gassed it, backing into the cul-de-sac before practically flooring it in the direction of my office.
Krystal closed the bay door and went into the house with the few groceries she had in her hand. Setting the haul on the counter, she turned around placing her hands on her hips, her eyes landing on something sitting on the counter. She sighed.
My coffee was sitting on the counter, still hot.
Another week passed for a short period without another incident. Twilight began to descend as the street lanterns came on all up and down Camino Court. Like many homes during the evening, lights were on as we wound down while late afternoon transitioned into nightfall. The insects came to life in their hiding spots. It was seven o'clock, and we were preparing to have dinner. That morning, I'd put beef tips and vegetables in the slow cooker, letting it stew in vegetable broth and gravy all day on medium heat so that we'd have beef stew around this time. As we walked up to the front door, thinking of whether to do steamed white or brown rice with the beef stew, I was vaguely aware of the insect world as it came alive in their hiding spots all over, vibrating the moment I turned my back, but I'd never seen any in the sprayed bushes or aerated lawns. If not for QueriSearch, I'd have no idea what they looked like. They were merely a sound that came from just above our heads, or just below, with the suggestion that the insect world is more alive than we are. As we walked up the brick path to the porch, I found myself spellbound by the crickets' hymns.
The contrast between the hot, humid, late-summer atmos and instant chill of conditioned air was a little jarring. As we stepped inside, I'd gone upstairs with Emily to get her bathed and in her pajamas, and to prepare myself to retire for the evening as well. Marcus sat at the casual dining table we'd gotten from Renovation Hardware to finish his homework, while Krystal went to the kitchen, opting to steam some brown rice with the beef stew.
I'd poured a cup of bubblegum-scented bubble bath into the cascade of hot tap water for Emily, making a point to turn off the valve when the basin was full enough. I'd also dumped the bucket of bath toys in for my daughter (random dolls, McSmiley meal toys, etc.), and let her know the her bath was ready before going to my own bathroom to strip down and get into the shower. I thought about everything and nothing as I stood, letting the stream of water saturate me, thinking of all from the excitement of moving into our first home to the scare of finding Marcus in the bathtub, to the strange but fleeting occurrences happening lately. Krystal did say the area was tainted, and her assessment did line up with my research, but I tried not to think of it as anything to worry about.
I don't know how long I'd been in the shower before the smoke alarm downstairs went off. That was also when I noticed that burnt smell wafting into the bathroom. Quickly, I turned off the water, dried, and wrapped myself in a bathroom towel to go downstairs. There was no one to be found, but the pot of rice was burnt to a crisp by this point. I swore exasperatedly, removing the rice from the heat and turning off the heating eye, and opened the patio doors to air out the room. Then, I stood between the dining table and the breakfast island, wondering: What the actual hell?
"Krystal?" I called out as I walked up the kitchen staircase to the upper hallway. I stepped onto damp carpet.
The fish jumped out of the water again, breaking the surface once more before slipping back into the deep.
Stalking towards the bathroom, I burst in and my heart sank. The bathtub overflowed with water again.
"Oh, God!" I bolted over to rescue my child, practically diving into the bath headfirst, only for my hands to touch the bottom covered in a centimeter of dirt. Then I stared at the water for almost a minute, letting the water flood the bathroom as I wondered what the hell was taking place right now. I turned off the tap after I found my senses.
I turned around to notice something I hadn't when I walked in: a trail of mud leading out of the bathroom. Scared, curious, confused, I stepped out of the wet, steamy room and back into the hallway, recognizing where the filthy footprints lead to: my daughter's bedroom.
"Krystal? Emily?" I called out. But my son answered instead.
Marcus opened his door to peek out of his room. "Dad, is everyth…" He froze, seeing what I saw, that the footprints lead around the corner of the L-shaped hallway to his sister's bedroom. The room was dark and cold, so cold, I could see my breath. Wind rippled through the bedroom from the wide-open window, ruffling the curtains and Emily's bedspread. For whatever reason, I immediately bolted over to close it, stilling the air.
"Fox…" Krystal sobbed quietly, prompting me to turn around. She was sitting in the corner chair of the room, Emely wet, naked, face buried in her mother's chest, enfolded in Krystal's safety and warmth to protect her from some unseen and not-at-present threat.