———————FOREWORD———————
The first town I lived in when I arrived in Brimstone County was a place called Ashwater. It was located in the middle of the woods, near a large lake of the same name as the town.
I lived in a small home on the edge of the town, not as close to the center of it as some houses but not as far away as some of the others. My house was on a small one-way road, with three other houses. Two on my left, one in my right.
The house to my right was always empty. There were never any cars in the driveway, never any lights or shapes in the windows, never anything happening.
The neighbors never talked about it, so I assumed it was just that nobody lived there. There was no “for sale” sign, so I thought maybe it was abandoned or condemned, but it looked perfectly fine from the outside.
I lived in the house in that street for years. The neighbors and I became good friends, and we would talk or visit each other often. Still, the house to the right was never inhabited. The driveway remained empty, the windows remained dark.
I asked the neighbors about it once, and they simply told me the house was “waiting.” I was curious, but they seemed uncomfortable about the topic. The house still never showed signs of disrepair, as though someone were caring for it in the night when we slept.
In fact, I had this theory at one point. I stayed up one night, out of sheer determination to catch whoever was maintaining this house in secret. It was a ridiculous theory, but at the time, it made the most sense.
Nobody came that night. Or the next. Or the next week of nights that I stayed awake. Eventually I caved in and had to sleep, but for the next three months I would stay up all night on occasion, waiting for the house’s caretaker to reveal themselves. It probably took far too long for me to be convinced my theory was false.
After that, I went back to ignoring the house for a while. I had no clue what could be maintaining the house, but it had already caused enough damage to my psyche. After another year, though, I got curious again.
I decided I would go and see if I could open the door, to see what was inside. I don’t know what I expected, but I did not expect what I found.
I steeled my nerves and walked over the street towards the house. Considering I knew there would be nobody inside, I was unreasonably nervous, but that anxiety was more justified than I thought.
I knocked on the door, hoping maybe someone would respond and it would turn out the house’s resident was just a severe recluse. But of course, that wasn’t the case. It couldn’t have been. I tried the doorknob, and surprisingly it opened easily. Like a brand new door. The inside of the house was empty.
I do not mean that there was no furniture inside the house. I mean it was empty. It was like when you clip through something in a video game, and you see the textures from the inside.
The exterior walls appeared just the same, a white siding with a stone base. There was even a ten foot drop into the ground directly in front of the door, the right depth for a basement, with concrete walls.
It was here that I ran. I shut the door behind me, and I ran back to my house. I don’t know why, there was nothing malevolent about the shell house, it just felt so grossly off, so out of place, so wrong in the most unnatural way, like some facade acting as a placeholder.
Like it was waiting.
I didn’t sleep that night, even though for once I actually tried to. I couldn’t rest with that thing just sitting twenty or so feet from my own home.
The next morning there was a moving truck in front of the house. Confused and very much still afraid, I went to confront whoever was moving in. It was a family of three, a mother, father, and their son. He looked about ten. They kindly introduced themselves, and I gave them my own name in return, alongside a quick welcome.
I was about to warn them about the shell house they had just bought when I saw someone from the moving company carrying a box into the house. Before I could run and warn him about the ten foot drop, he opened the door and stepped inside. There was no scream of terror and realization, so sound of a man and a large box hitting the ground.
Only more footsteps. I went up to the door, and the family began to stare at me. Inside the house there was an empty room, with four beige plaster walls and a wooden panel floor. There was a door in the back of the room, which must have led to the rest of the house.
I stared through the doorway for a while, until the father came up to me and asked if there was any problem.
“No, sir, I… I’m sorry, I’m not usually so rude. I just… nobody has lived in this house for a long time, is all. I figured it was abandoned. It’s just a bit shocking to see someone move in all of a sudden.” I told him.
He seemed confused still, but he apparently seemed my explanation reasonable enough. I apologized again and went home. The house has apparently finished waiting.
I didn’t talk to the family again for a while. I struggled to understand what could have happened to the house overnight. I never heard anyone working on it, and even so they couldn’t have built the entire interior in a single night.
Eventually I accepted that I would never quite understand it. I would later live in many other parts of Brimstone County, and I would see many other impossible occurrences. I was never able to reasonably explain any of them.
Instead they will go here, alongside a comprehensive guide to the county I call home, and the county you will no doubt become very familiar with, whether you read the rest of this guide or not.