Write To Rank 2022 | Contest Entries

the house that was a home | purple belt

The house has been misplaced during the last Big Shake.

It doesn't really belong here, just like me.

And yet we somehow made it work.

I got a ladder, I fixed the roof. I took care of the cracks in the walls and the unsteady floorboards. I worked until my hands were rough and my knees all scraped up.

I cried and sweated and bled for this house.

I never expected anything, other than to be able to run from my demons for a while.

But I shouldn't have forgotten.

The Big Shakes don't just misplace objects, they only shake up things with a soul.

So when, half a year into my repairs, a deep voice rumbles, "thank you," I jump more than I probably should, my heart immediately racing.

I haven't heard anything; had not expected to, with the house nestled in the crown of a tree, in the deepest part of the woods. Humans usually don't wander here, after all. (Not after so many did, and failed to come out alive.)

"Who's there?" I ask, like a bad actress in an even worse horror movie. I don't move, but I strain my ears.

"It's me," the voice replies, "Jim. Who are you? You never told us your name."

"I'm Esther," I answer, because, well, it probably can't hurt to play along. The voice doesn't sound familiar, at least.

"Hello Esther!" another voice says, sounding higher-pitched and more excited than the first one. "I'm Clara! It's so nice to meet you!"

I take a deep breath, and don't smell anything unfamiliar. Just the house, the damp wood, the rust of the pipes. I change my grip on the wrench I used to fix some screws under the kitchen sink, straighten out of my kneeling position into a crouch, all my muscles tense.

"Hello," I say. "It's nice to meet you too." I'm not about to be impolite. Not when the voices have come from behind me, and I don't know who they belong to, what kind of creatures crept up on me.

But I turn around, and there's nothing there.

That doesn't concern me as much as it maybe should.

I've been waiting for over a hundred years, and to finally go insane may even be a blessing.

But then there's movement, like a spider skittering across the floor, if spiders were the size of housecats.

I blink, and focus, and the empty space isn't all that empty after all.

Faint outlines appear, two shades of something that maybe used to be human.

The shade with flowing black hair and pale pale skin waves at me. The seams of her long white dressing gown and the bare skin of her feet are drenched in blood. It looks like it's still wet, and it makes my stomach grumble. 

She's oddly beautiful.

I close my mouth and wave back, for lack of anything else to do.

Clara beams. Jim grins.

(I don't focus on how Jim looks.)

(Clara looks like the caricature of a horror movie villain. Jim looks— too real.)

"Are you haunting this house?" I ask.

"Yep!" Clara pops, and freckles dance on her nose (or maybe they're blood-spatters, it's hard to tell).

"Oh." All of a sudden, it's nausea that swirls in my stomach. This is yet another place where I'm intruding, then. Yet another home I'll have to move on from.

I try to force a smile on my face, but it feels shaky. I feel shaky. I grip the wrench tighter, and make my hands stop shaking.

Clara tilts her head to the side, watches me with sharp, intelligent eyes. Jim frowns.

"Oh," I say again, because for all I know, they won't let me leave.

It scares me only a little, that my first reaction to that is relief. Still, I ask, "are you going to kill me, then?"

They both rear back as though I slapped them, or maybe bared my teeth.

"What?" Clara exclaims. "Never!"

"Did you not just hear us thank you?" Jim asks, in a more reasonable tone, but his eyes (or, the remaining one) are as wide as Clara's.

"I—" I stop, reconsider. "Ah, no. But I can't imagine what you'd thank me for." Because if they were here, all this time, unheard as well as unseen, then they have to have seen me—

"Oh, so these six months of doing everything you can to fix this house were nothing?"

They are sassing me, I realize. The ghosts living in this house in the tree are sassing me.

"I didn't do that for you," I retort, before I think better of it.

"But you still did it," Jim says, gently.

"And it's not like you're gonna exorcize us now that you know, right?" Clara states it like an ungentle truth, and well. She's not wrong.

"No," I say, "and I don't regret it. Everybody deserves a home." I have to close my eyes, take a breath. "I'll leave as soon as the weather lets up."

The looks on their faces have me reconsidering. I'm not exactly a fan of stumbling through the woods in a thunderstorm, but... it's not like it would kill me. The ghosts would probably have a better chance of it, and be more creative with it too.

"I'll get my things and leave now, then." I nod to myself, and carefully place the wrench on the kitchen counter, stretch my fingers to work against the cramp and don't look up for another few moments.

"She's not getting it," Jim says. He's not talking to me.

"No kidding." Clara sounds way less happy than before.

I'm just about to offer to jump out of the window if the way down the ladder takes too long for them when warm fingers touch my hand.

I startle, not having heard anyone approach, again, and look up to see determination written plain on Clara's face, but she's not looking at me.

She's even more breathtakingly beautiful up close.

I hiss through my teeth, breathe in sharply at the smile on Clara's lips, can't breathe at all when her eyes meet mine (not that I need to).

She lifts her hand to cup my cheek, and instead of wondering whether she'll snap my neck I only notice that her hand isn't warm at all, and it isn't cold; it has the same temperature as the room, and the ghosts are as alive as the house.

"Let me spell it out for you, Esther," Clara says, or maybe she whispers it. "You saved our lives. We'll be forever thankful for that. If you want to leave, we'll be sad but we'll let you go. If you want to stay, though, we'll make this the best home you've ever known."

She wasn't lying.

They don't judge, when I go out and come out with blood dripping from my fangs. When I have to close my eyes for a while and pretend they're not there, because Jim reminds me too much of a past I did my best to run away from.

They're there when I need to talk, or sit in silence.

They make the house come alive, and me with it.