The Gatekeeper

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"Hi, I'm Robert, your next door neighbor. I heard someone bought the old funeral home and I..."

"Shhhh! Not so loud, the kids don't know!" she interrupted, her eyes darting over her shoulder to the front yard, ensuring her two children hadn't yet run back out for more boxes.

The moving truck was almost empty, and its glaring company name and logo pasted across the side had announced their arrival to all the neighbors.

"Sorry," he whispered in chagrin. "Let me try that again. I'm Robert, Doctor Shaw, but you can call me Robert. I live just across the street. I thought I'd come over and welcome your family to the neighborhood."

"Thanks," she replied then stood there not knowing what to say next as an awkward silence fell between them. "Um, sorry. I'm Anne. Sorry, it's just...it's been a long day. We're all pretty tired."

"Would you like a hand?"

"Uh, no. No thanks. I think we can manage. The kids are still riding the high of moving into a new place. We've never had a house this big before, so they're excited to help."

They both jumped at the sound of a loud crash and turned to see that her gangly ten-year-old son had handed an overly-large box to his much younger sister, only for her to drop it on the sidewalk.

"Sorry!" he shouted. His little sister just stood there frozen as she stared down at the box which had burst open and dumped the family's shattered dinner plates all over the ground, before bursting into tears.

"Kids, I told you to let me move the heavy boxes! I'm sorry, I gotta go. It was nice meeting you."

#

Anne served a slice of store-bought lasagna onto Benjamin's paper plate with a flimsy plastic spatula.

"I'm sorry about the plates, Mom," he apologized for the fortieth time that day.

"Me too, Mommy," Patty mumbled as she slowly chewed her lasagna, her nose red and covered in flakes of dry skin from where she cried herself into a sniffling fit.

"It's okay. Let's just eat our first dinner together in our new house. So, what do you think?"

"It's awesome!" Benjamin enthusiastically proclaimed. "I want a room for my trucks!"

"Me too!" added Patty, despite not having any toy trucks.

Anne smiled. This was the first time her kids didn't have to share a room together, and she could tell the excitement was getting to them. This old house had five rooms upstairs, and an unknown amount downstairs.

"Let's not get too crazy. I'm going to rent those rooms as soon as we get this house cleaned up."

"No you're not," Benjamin said as all the excitement drained from his face. "Nobody wants them."

"Why would you say that?" his mother asked.

"Because our house is haunted. That's why nobody wanted it before we came here. They kept dead people here. Andrew said so."

Anne clenched her hands together beneath the table and ground her teeth as she watched her daughter's face grow pale and her eyes widen in fear. Andrew was the twelve-year-old son of the doctor from across the street. After she excused her kids from helping that afternoon, they had run off to have some fun when the Doctor's son rode up on his bike, introduced himself, and asked her son to play.

The thought had crossed her mind that perhaps he was as big-mouthed as his father, and apparently, he was, and she struggled not to audibly groan.

"Are we haunted?" her daughter asked as her bottom lip trembled.

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