Three years ago, my best friend Jake died. He was only 23. It made no sense. He was a maniac for the gym and suggesting getting fast food when we were out together was more likely to earn me a lecture than a cheeseburger.
His family said it was a brain aneurysm. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve googled it. Apparently, it can happen to anyone. Everyone in my life, my therapist, my family, his family, encourages me to accept it and try to move forward. The advice people spew is all vapid. “You can’t bottle up your emotions.” “Try to remember the good times.” “It’s been three years. You need to move on.” “Accept what happened.” It all means the same thing. Stop bothering me with your pain.
I could never shake the feeling that something wasn’t right about this. It’s the way his face looked when I found him. It wasn’t like the way you think people look when they die. I found him behind the wheel of his car, the engine still idling, parked in front of an empty field. There was so shock, no sign of pain or distress, no gaunt, empty, lifeless expression. In fact, he was smiling. It wasn’t until I saw his clouded pupils and his red eyes staring out into that field that I knew something was wrong.
I don’t think anyone even believes that part of my story. It’s filed away in their minds as another one of the thousand lies people tell themselves to cope with death. “They died instantly.” “They didn’t suffer.” “They’re with their family now.”
But I was obsessed. I had to know what he was looking at in that field. I did everything I could think of to figure it out. I must have combed over every inch of that field twenty times. I bought a metal detector. I set up a wildlife camera. Nothing ever showed. Just a plot of grass and bushes on a hill.
A year ago, I finally found out. I had driven by that field every week after work on Friday for two years before I finally saw the house appear in that field, its front door open wide. I was astonished, sure. There was no way someone built an entire house in a week’s time. But more than that, it made me happy. As soon as I saw it, an involuntary smile grew into my cheeks. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so much ecstasy in my life. My body felt light, like I could just up and float away if I got out of my car. I giggled at nothing, the way you might on those careless nights you stay up too late watching silly videos on your phone. Then it wasn’t just giggling. It was full on belly laughing. And I couldn’t stop. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. But I didn’t care. Everything felt too good to want to stop. And I couldn’t break my eyes away from the house.
If it wasn’t for the cop tapping my window, I think I might have died there. The field ticks away at the end of a cul-de-sac, and the residents didn’t enjoy my obsession with parking on their street.
I stopped laughing the moment I heard the glass rattle from the officer’s flashlight. All my erratic joy evaporated as I winced from his light. Night. I got off work at 3:00. How long had I been here? Worse yet, when my vision adjusted to the light, I noticed the house was gone. Vanished.
I tried to stay focused on apologizing to the officer as he ushered me along, but all I could get out were a few mumbles. My heart hammered my chest as I drove home.
Had that been what Jake saw three years ago? Did that house have something to do with his death?
Strangely enough, things have been going well in my life since that night. Really well. The boss I hated at my job, Robin, quit. Well, sort of. She committed suicide. None of us saw it coming, but that’s the thing about suicidal people. Sometimes you never know. Still, her position had to be filled. So, even though I wasn’t qualified, I applied on a whim and ended up landing the position.
It wasn’t just landing the job that surprised me, though. They offered me nearly twice the salary I was expecting, and I get to work from home when Robin never could. Because of that, I saved enough for a down payment on a house. Not too shabby for 26.
My health improved too. I have no major issues, but my asthma is so good now I don’t even bother to carry an inhaler anymore. I’ve lost a little weight, even though I’m still on a strict regimen of midnight cheeseburgers and barely any exercise. And the energy. My god, I haven’t felt this good since I was in high school. It’s incredible.
I visited the field less and less. Working from home meant I didn’t have the routine of stopping after work anymore. That’s the excuse I told myself, anyway. I found the better my life got, the less I remembered to revisit my pain. I might’ve forgotten about him entirely if it wasn’t for the loneliness. The one part of my life that hadn’t improved.
A few weeks ago, on one of those lonely nights, I sipped wine and scrolled through the pictures on his Instagram. I had saved a handful of the pictures onto my phone, worried that someone in his family might deactivate his accounts, but nobody had.
I was grateful. The pictures I had on my phone were too familiar. I had only saved the ones I liked most, which were a mix of selfies or photos from the hikes he went on.
I flicked through the images, resisting the urge to glower at the ones that included his various girlfriends. I came across a group of photos from his time in Seattle. They were some of the last pictures he would ever take.
He went out there because he had landed an interview for some kind of bigwig engineering gig at Boeing. It was a relief for him. Even though he had graduated when he was 21, he struggled to find work in his field for two years.
Apparently, the interview went better than expected. They offered him a six figures salary, benefits, the works. They even offered to buy out his lease to incentivize the move.
He was gone within a month.
And of course he was taking Christine with him, even though they had only been together for maybe six months. I was halfway through my second overfilled glass of wine and 40 pictures deep into his pictures of the two of them on their first trip out there when I saw it, tucked away between a series of photos capturing the greenest hike you could imagine.
I had seen the picture before, of course, but this time it meant something else. He and Christine had come across a huge clearing in the middle of this otherwise dense forestry. “Should we go in??” the caption asked. It had been so long since I had seen it, I almost forgot. But there it was. The yellow house with the black windows. Exactly the same as the one I saw. And the front door was open.
Tendrils of dread crept down my spine. A forgettable image tucked away inside a hundred others. But there it was. All at once, I remembered my encounter with the house. How it made me feel. Jake’s bloated, cold, smiling face. And now I knew without a doubt. He had seen the house.
Dots connected in my mind. He saw the house at the same time everything in his life got better. Good job. Steady girlfriend. Moved to a new city that he loved. He was happier than I’d ever seen him. Almost everything that happened to him was happening to me.
And then he came to visit me for a weekend and died before he ever made it out of the rental.
It was that damn house. I knew it. I didn’t bother telling anyone else about it. What would I do? Show them the picture and rant about how I saw the same house in the empty field I’d been obsessing about? And that when I saw it, I felt good? I
spent the next day planning out several positions around the neighborhood. I was even prepared to book a trip to Seattle and hike every damn trail in the city if I had to. But I didn’t. When I went to my first position, the house was sitting in plain view in the middle of the day, as though it wanted to be found.
I rolled my car around and parked in front of it. The door was wide open, revealing a few feet of hardwood floor. I tried to resist the joy I felt surging through me again as I stepped forward towards the entrance. It’s a strange thing to resist happiness. I had to remind myself again and again with each step of what it had taken from me.
The door slammed behind me as I stepped through the entrance. Instinct woke me from my euphoria, allowing a single moment of fear and clarity to break through my mind. I wheeled around, intending to grab the handle and yank the door back open. But by the time I reached my hand forward, the mental fog had taken my mind again, and I had forgotten what I was doing.
The fog grew stronger, flooding my mind with waves of happiness. I heard myself giggle at nothing. With the door closed, the last remnants of light faded. The day couldn’t penetrate through the thick, black paint slathered across the windows. The darkness was so complete I could only see the vague, shadowy outline of my arm, which was still reaching for the door.
A thought floated through my mind, driven by the thousands of years of primal instinct wired into my DNA that the house could not fully suppress. Run. What a funny word that is. Run. Run. The thought came again, this time accompanied by a stab of fear that spiked through my chest. Clarity. My eyes widened as I realized once again what was happening to me. I finished my lurch towards the door when I heard his voice.
“Pete, you’re finally here.” I recognized the voice. I stopped cold with my hand on the doorknob and turned around. The lights of the house flickered on. A warm glow landed on a figure leaning casually against the bannister on the second floor.
“Jake?” He smiled, strolling towards me, running his finger along the railing.
“I knew you’d find me.” He said. Tears welled in my eyes as he slid effortlessly down the railing beside the staircase, landing in front of me. His eyes bored into mine as he stepped towards me. The chandelier above him hummed, glowing brighter as he passed underneath it. “It’s okay. This is real.”
He said the words like he knew what I was thinking, just like he used to. And he was right, like he usually was. He held his hand out towards me, smiling. My body shook as I reached my hand towards his, landing my fingertips on his palm. His skin was cool.
“See? Nothing to fear.” He matched his palm to mine, interlacing our fingers. I wanted to believe him. I wanted it to be real. So I didn’t fight it. He was still smiling at me. Tears streamed down my cheeks.
“They said it was a brain aneurysm. Nobody believed me. They said I should—“
“I know. It doesn’t matter now. You found me, just like I knew you would.” He took his other hand and pulled me into an embrace. I wept into his warm chest. His hand glided underneath my chin as he pulled my face towards his. He landed his electric lips on mine, and I forgot the world. He pulled away a few seconds later, still smiling. I could feel the red in my cheeks as he spoke.
“I’ve always known, Pete. I was just too scared. I’m sorry it took me so long.” He savored my speechless joy for a moment. “Come on,” he said, pulling away from me. “There’s something I want to show you.”
He led me by the hand up the stairway. Lights buzzed to life as he passed them. At the second floor landing, we took a sharp turn towards a dark hall when he stopped without warning. His hand trembled and gripped mine so hard it almost hurt.
“Jake?” His head whipped around to me. His smile had vanished. Panic filled his eyes as he looked at me.
“Pete?” He looked at me like he didn’t recognize me for a moment before darting his eyes around. “What are you doing here?” He was screaming. “You have to…” he fell to his knees, groaning and clutching his stomach.
“Jake? Are you okay?” I asked, running around to his front. His hands clamped around my arms in a motion so fast I hardly saw it. He looked up at me, his face contorted in fear. His lips trembled as he struggled to speak. He managed one word.
“Run.” He groaned again and convulsed on the ground, foaming at the mouth. I had my phone pulled out an instant later, dialing the police. In one swift motion, Jake ripped the phone from my grasp and crushed it in one hand. He rose slowly to his feet, no longer trembling. He dropped the shattered bits of my phone to the floor. Shards of glass riddled his bleeding hand as he motioned towards the hallway behind him.
“Almost there.” His smile had returned like nothing had happened. He grabbed my hand as he meandered past me. His strong fingers bore into my arm, and an instant later I felt myself being pulled from my feet. He was dragging me with one hand down the hallway, one easy stride after the other. I could see a door at the end of the hallway creak open as we approached. Fresh waves of euphoria washed over me as the door opened.
A near deafening roar of laughter spilled out from the room at the end of the hallway, as though an entire theatre full of people were inside. It was infectious. A moment later, I felt a giggle bubble into my throat. Something inside me wanted to resist it, so I choked on it, releasing only a snicker instead, the way a child might try to hide a laugh in a classroom. Jake heard my snicker and released his own, and soon we had both erupted into waves of laughter.
Jake marched onward as we laughed, his gaze set on the widening doorway. I was twenty feet away at most now. With each step Jake took, I felt the waves of euphoria drain out of my mind, but I couldn’t stop laughing, not even to breathe. Another step.
“Jake,” I managed between fits of giggles. “Jake, stop.” More laughing. “You’re scaring me.” His head whipped towards me, locking his red eyes on mine. Tears streamed down his unsmiling face as he laughed. Another step. We had reached the door. For the first time, I gained enough will to struggle against him, yanking at his fingers on my arm. It was useless. “Jake, this isn’t funny anymore.”
Jake’s fingertips reached towards the doorknob. All the laughing from us and inside stopped the moment Jake touched the door, leaving nothing but the creak of the door to penetrate the sudden silence. Jake’s hand trembled, his eyes still boring into me.
Released from my fits of laughter, I gasped, swallowing gulps of air back into my lungs. A second later, a distinct footstep clacked against the hardwood floors from inside the room. Then another. Panic swallowed my mind. I yanked and pulled against Jake’s unmoving grasp.
“Jake, let me go!” Primal instinct took control as I swung my free hand. My fist landed clean on his jaw. He didn’t move an inch. Not even a flinch. In fact, as far as I could tell, he didn’t even close his eyes during the impact. Behind him, a set of fingers wrapped themselves around the door as it pushed open further.
I screamed. I saw a flash of recognition flash through Jake’s eyes at the sound. He finally released me. I toppled backwards. He stared into my eyes one last time, one last true moment. Then he screamed.
“Run!”
The moment the word escaped his throat, a blade jutted through his jaw and out of his mouth and retracted just as quickly. Jake collapsed instantly, his figure replaced by an unusually tall man adorned in a bright yellow suit standing behind him. I watched in horror as his figure continued to grow taller and taller, filling the doorway, still holding the machete-like blade that had just finished plunging into Jake. And then he smiled.
This time, I listened to Jake, and I ran. Behind him, I could hear him laugh. I wheeled the corner and raced towards the staircase that lead towards the front entrance. I could hear his laughter fading. He wasn’t chasing me. I reached the staircase. I made it halfway down before I decided my feet couldn’t move fast enough to satisfy my panic, and I jumped the rest of the way.
I stumbled on my landing, falling forward. I braced myself on my hands, pulling myself up as fast as I could. That’s when I noticed the man’s laughter was now coming from in front of me.
He had somehow reached the bottom of the stairs before me, now leaning casually against the wall beside the door that lead to my escape. He smiled wildly at me, as though he dared me to try. I saw no other option. I mustered all my courage and charged towards the door shoulder first.
To my surprise, he opened it a moment before I would have hit it. I flew out onto the grass, toppling over, my face landing in the dirt. I heard one last laugh ring out behind me before the man finally spoke.
“See you soon.” I heard the door slam shut, and before I could turn around, the house had vanished.
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