They say the houses on this street were haunted.
I didn’t believe it of course; halloween was around the corner and surely AirBnB owners were just using that old legend as a marketing ploy to get people to stay at their “haunted” houses. Regardless, I just needed the cheap place for a quick stay for a few days. Supposedly this one was haunted by a demon who drew in victims, but could only come in if invited.
There was a lockbox in front of the address I was to stay at, holding the housekeys to the AirBnB inside. Swiping in the lock code, I clicked it open to receive the keys and a note printed in bold red, stern letters: ONLY USE THE PROPERTY THAT YOU ARE ASSIGNED TO. FAILURE TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN INJURY.
I’m guessing “Injury” meant “financial injury”. Harsh, but understandable. The property was a duplex with a guest home in the back. Maybe the owner had too many residents trash up areas that they didn’t pay for.
The AirBnB duplex that I had hastily chosen looked old; the paint was dull and faded by the sun, dirty and peeling a bit. Underneath where paint had peeled, some of the wood was cracked and slightly splintered from decades of enduring the weather but mostly it still looked like your average house that was about forty to fifty years old. The other duplexes and houses on the old street looked roughly the same, though some looked better than others depending on how often the homeowner gave the house a fresh coat of paint.
At least this duplex looked structurally sound. Despite being a single building, it was clear that the two different owners of each side of the duplex cared for their own half with different levels of care. One side was much dirtier and worn. Even from a distance, I could see that the window screens behind the glass were torn and shredded, probably from years of use and never replaced. The blinds on those windows were broken and missing a few panes each, making that half of the duplex look like an abandoned den. One of the windows had spiderweb pattern cracks all over it, like someone had thrown a baseball at it but didn’t quite throw it hard enough to straight-up blow out the window. It was meticulously glued back together.
The other side of the duplex looked normal. There seemed to be a significant amount of dust on the door and window sills outside, but as far as I could tell, at least on this one the windows, window screens, and blinds were intact and whole. Basically, it just looked less like a creeper house. I was so glad that I was staying in this half of the duplex and not the other sketchier half.
It still felt a little creepy to be staying next to the more worn-down duplex half, but at least there’s a wall between us. I took out the set of keys that had been given to me by the owner with the tag of the house number on it. 1606. I guessed that the other keys might lock the back door or the fence door.
I walked up to the door of the nicer half of the duplex and stuck the key into the door’s lock, but it refused to go in cleanly and jammed itself. I pulled it out and tried again with a little more gusto. No good. I jostled the key back and forth, up and down, trying to get it to click into the keyhole. With still no luck, I tried forcing it even harder, then tried a gentle hand. Maybe it was just rusted inside from lack of use? I yanked the key out and examined it– perhaps the key was mislabeled. This is 1606 right?
I took a step back and looked again. The big lettering on the side of the door proclaimed that this half of the house was 1605.
I backed up some more to the front of the whole duplex to take a look at the other half of the house. Sure enough, it was the worn-down half that was 1606.
This had to be a mistake.
My heart was beating fast. Just to check, I went to the other side and tried the labeled key in the door lock.
It slid in like butter. I turned the key, and with a clean click, the bolt snapped open to unlock the door. No way.
I cautiously cracked the door open and peered inside, almost afraid that something might jump at me from inside the house at any moment. Or an eye would appear from the dark room within.
The inside of the house was dark, but I could see the outline of a torn up couch, a living room lamp, and a dirty rug. The doorway to the kitchen was pitch black. The floor, as far as I could tell, looked clean like someone had swept up though.
I was incredibly creeped out by my impression of this half of the duplex by this point and immediately shut the door and locked it back up. There had to be a mistake. There was no way that 1606 was the AirBnB that I was supposed to stay at. My mind started to wander away for a second and I imagined myself staying in 1606; I pictured myself washing up in the bathroom and seeing a shadowy figure in the mirror or walking around the house and suddenly the lights shutting off and doors closing behind me. Sure, this was just paranoia planted by watching too many horror movies, but staying in what was clearly the creepy half of the house is one of the foolish ways that characters in horror movies die in the first place. I wasn’t going to star in my own horror movie.
Thinking quickly, I hurriedly pulled the set of keys out again out to examine them. They were all the same shade of dirty brown in different shapes and the rest of the keys were unlabeled, but there was one key that looked very similar to the labeled key.
What if…
I ran back over to the other side of the duplex to 1605. Taking a deep breath, I gingerly put the unlabeled key into the lock and tried turning it….
Click.
It went in without resistance. Success! I couldn’t believe it actually worked. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was just an oversight by the owner. In hindsight it would make sense if the owner had possession of both sides of the building. He probably just forgot to take the extra key off and make sure to give me only the keys that I needed so that way I couldn’t access the whole house.
Satisfied, I lifted my luggage and made my way into the house.
I flicked on the lights. The inside of this half had intact furniture that looked barely used, the rug was unstained but looked unused, and the kitchen was bare and hardly stocked. While I was taking stock of the house, I sneezed. It was pretty dusty and many of the surfaces had a thick layer of dust evenly spread across. It must have been a while since the owner managed to get someone to rent his AirBnb and it was probably why he had to drop the price so cheaply. The room certainly didn’t look bad. I sat down on the couch to test it and it was firm and springy, like it had only been lightly used. It felt like those firm couch cushions that you typically get at hotels. As I walked around the house, the furnishing was pretty bare and neatly organized, though everything was horribly dusty as if it hadn’t been used in a very long time.
In different circumstances, I would have sent a complaint to the owner for how dusty everything was, but today I was just glad to not have to stay in the other half at 1606. It’s amazing what a little perspective can do for your gratitude.
I took a quick tour of the house, ending in the foyer where I noticed a neatly placed note that I didn’t see earlier in my excitement. Unfolding the yellowed notepad paper, scratchy writing greeted me.
YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE
What? Was this actually addressed to me? Flipping the paper over, it was clear that this was all that was written on it. Without context, it made no sense. Perhaps a previous visitor left this here. Or maybe the owner meant it as a warning to trespassers. Ignoring it, I folded the paper away and threw it into the trash bin in the kitchen.
I yawned. That was enough excitement for today. I went to bed. It was a dusty bed as expected with a desk in the corner, but no chair for the desk. Throwing my suitcase open, I sleepily washed up in the bathroom before taking out my clothes for the next day.
--
I dreamed that I heard footsteps near my bed, walking back and forth, back and forth. It didn’t seem to stop.
Then I heard a thud.
I woke up from my deep sleep with a start. Bleary-eyed, I sat up. The illumination from the streetlamps outside set a glow in the room. Even through the mental fog, I didn’t see anything or anyone.
I went back to sleep.
Not fifteen minutes later, I heard the footsteps come back again. They paced, then suddenly stopped at the foot of my bed near the closet. My mind snapped awake, but because I wasn’t sure if this was a dream or reality, I kept my eyes closed and just listened carefully and strained my ears to make out any noise that I could.
There was a pause of silence, then the sound of the closet door sliding open slowly. The hairs on my neck stood up and I feared that there might be a person or something standing at the foot of my bed. I didn’t bother fully unpacking, so I didn’t put anything in that closet earlier and I knew there wasn’t anything in it.
Staying as still as possible, I contemplated what to do. Should I ignore the sound? Should I peep one of my eyes barely open and check? I cracked my eyelids as little as I possibly could; in the dim lighting, I saw the blurry outlines of the room: the frame of the door, the short nightstand with an old-style lamp sitting on it, the cracked open closet, the foot of my bedframe – oh shit the cracked open closet.
I have to go check it. I must. It’s not like I can sleep without double-checking it.
However, with no weapon in hand in the event of an intruder, I slowly slid my hand over to the nightstand where there was a ballpoint pen with a notepad. The pen is mightier than the sword, they say– I sure would prefer a sword if I had one.
Bracing myself, I sprung out of bed, shoving the closet door open, ready to proactively stab the intruder–
But I was simply greeted with nothing in the closet. Just empty clothes hangers, gently swinging from my forceful handling of the closet.
Actually I was wrong. There wasn’t a person in the closet. But there was something else:
In deep black paint, blazoned in large sweeping letters on the back wall of the closet, the words
I WARNED YOU
My face went cold and stopped me in my feet for a few very long seconds of silence with breath abated. What the fuck? Eventually my brain reminded me that I must start breathing again so I flipped on the lights immediately.
But ever the rational person, I remembered that yes, halloween was just a week away and this must be a halloween joke to play on the “haunted” legends of this street.
I sighed and thoroughly checked the rest of the room for any signs of an intruder and returned with empty hands. I left for glass of water to wash away the jitters in my bones and let it calm me.
A loud thump and a crack sounded from the hallway, leading up to my room. What now?
“Argh!” Hurrying back to the bedroom, I stepped on shards of glass in the darkness and realize the room’s lightbulb must have shattered somehow. Fuck. Even in the dark, I could see thin dark streaks of blood on the bottom of my foot where I had stepped on the lightbulb’s sad remnants, but the cuts were not too deep. With my other foot, I realized I was standing on something soft that didn’t feel like carpet–
My clothes? Squinting in the dark, I realized what looked like an explosion of my clothing in the room as if my luggage decided to fling every piece of clothing all over the room; there were pants and shirts on the nightstand, on the lamp, over every surface of the floor, on the bed. By now I was understandably, fully, freaked out and my blood was running cold in spite of my heart rate beating like I was running a marathon.
Above the headboard of the bed, giant black painted letters were scrawled on the wall.
YOU’RE TOO LATE
I screamed involuntarily and ran out of the room, headed to the front door. However, as I hurriedly tried to force the doorknob open with my sweaty hands, it was locked. It was then that I realized there was no lock from the inside, as if it were meant to keep things inside.
A voice came from behind the door, on the outside of the house. It sounded like the AirBnB owner.
“I warned you! I told you to stay only on the side of the house I rented you! Would you let me in?”
How was he here and how did he know? But regardless, if he could just save me from this hellhole– “Yes! Yes! Help me please! I can’t get out from this side, open it from the front!”
Suddenly the voice of the owner changed to become garbled, throaty, and twisted.
“T h ank you for inv it ing me IN”
A blackened, clawed hand appeared in the side window.
And I knew I made a terrible mistake.
Thinking fast, I saw a dusty vase on the coffee table and grabbed it, slamming it at the glass of the window. If it was between being trapped in this demonic house or tussling with the demon, I had a better chance outside.
Not caring for my safety, I climbed out of the broken window as the glass shards gave me bloody lacerations. Just as I was exiting, the demon was opening the door to come inside where it stopped following me, presumably because it was now “stuck” inside without an invitation out.
Adrenaline pumping and no car keys, I sprinted down the street until I went around the corner to a cross street and was able to get help by pounding on doors.
--
I’m writing this to you now from a hospital bed. I contacted some priests to come and check out that home. Since then the AirBnB listing has been taken down and in fact, several other houses on that same street also got their AirBnB listings taken down.
I guess in the modern world, demons move along with the times and technology just as we do.