You may or may not have heard of the House of the Others. I certainly have.
The House is an American urban legend I’d been looking into on and off the past few years. The tale goes like this, essentially:
There is a house outside of town, deep in the woods. You can only find the House by accident. No roads lead directly to it, and you couldn’t build one that does if you tried, because the House moves. You may find it standing tall one day, and when you returned to that same spot the next, the House itself would be gone. The only thing remaining that would mark that the House had ever been there at all would be the detritus it left behind. Little things you would expect to find in a normal house, like shoes, a book, or a watch. Who these things belong to, nobody knows. The objects left behind simply belong to . . . others.
You wouldn’t be able to find the House again. No one ever finds it twice.
And that’s the bare bones of the legend, more or less. The fine-comb details change depending on the region, naturally. One of the delightful traits of urban legends is the way they shift and change as they are spread. If you happen to be a reader from Maine, for instance, you may have also heard that electronics break down near the House. An Arizonan may have heard that the House only appears in the Superstition Mountains. In upstate Washington, the House is instead the Log Cabin. Add to that, while the modern form of the legend seems to have popped up sometime in the late 1970s, iterations of it can be found dating all the way back to before European colonists rolled up to American shores.
Now, as I’ve previously mentioned, I’m a nut for all things supernatural. Mostly I collect items of interest, but I’m a bit of a tourist as well. Me being me, I took this urban legend far more seriously than the other kids at recess when I first heard it. I’ve never doubted the possibility of the House’s existence. I’ve always wanted to visit it, to see the House for myself. Specifically, see the inside, because that part is not mentioned in the legend. I’ve been reaching out through my usual channels of information for anyone with any leads, or even anyone with personal experience with the House that they’d be willing to share. As is usually the case with these things, I mostly hit dead-ends and goose-chases. But my patience was rewarded last week when I was contacted by a young woman from Oregon (to preserve her privacy, I’ll be referring to her as Alice) who claimed that the House made regular appearances in her area. She corroborated this claim with a few photos of a house that was certainly in a place a normal house would not be, as well as some testimony from two other townsfolk. Needless to say, I caught a flight the day after receiving her email and met Alice on the outskirts of her town (which again, I won’t reveal the name of to preserve her privacy).
Alice kindly gave me a ride to where the House had last been sighted. She also shared an affinity for the supernatural, and seemed to carry a sort of pride that her hometown had been chosen by the House for several visits.
We arrived at the location of the sighting. The surrounding woods were a perfect match for the photos she’d sent, minus the great gap where the House had once stood. In that rectangular space, the ground was about an inch lower than the rest of the area, and a handful of trees within the space were, there’s no better word for it, squashed. Flattened right into the ground. The House, in accordance with legend, had not stood around waiting for us. But lucky me, a few other things were. I sifted through the leaves as Alice watched. A jacket, a bracelet, a stick of cherry lip balm.
Alice shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, it doesn’t usually leave behind anything interesting. Sometimes it doesn’t leave anything at all.”
“Hm. Well, it’s left something pretty damn interesting this time,” I said as I picked up the last item. I held it up for her to see. A pink spiral notebook. With writing inside. I flipped through it. The first half was nothing special. A few journal entries, grocery lists, minor notes and doodles. But the first page of the second half begins like this, in beautifully ragged handwriting:
SO THAT YOU WILL UNDERSTAND WHY. SO THAT THE HOUSE WILL LET ME GO.
READ THIS.
If I couldn’t find the House on my visit out to Oregon, well, this could prove a pretty sweet consolation prize.
I later hurried to my motel room to read the notebook. I’ve now transcribed it here for you, with the names changed. What follows below is what I believe (based on evidence I will soon elaborate on) to be a legitimate, first-hand account of an individual who has found themselves inside the House.
***
TARA’S ACCOUNT
I wrote this all for you to read. I used up the last of my pen. It’s important that you read it. Even if you know it already.
“You don’t love me anymore.”
The words flew out of my mouth on their own, like it was another person speaking through me. I couldn’t see much of Jack’s face in the moon’s glow, but I could see the way he gripped the steering wheel like he wanted to snap it in half.
“How many times do I have to say this?” he snapped. “I didn’t do anything with Christine.”
“For fuck’s sake.” I turned and stared out the window. “You’re already caught, okay? I know. We’re past trying to lie.”
It seemed fitting that we were having this conversation on an empty, backwoods road, hopelessly lost. Every time I checked my phone, I saw the same thing: no signal. We’d been arguing the past hour, caught in a loop of the same cutting words and accusations. The road went on and on without end.
It was Jack’s idea to move out to Oregon, back when he was still in the thralls of a woodsy, wannabe Davey Crockett phase. He hadn’t even camped since we moved here, except for today’s flaccid attempt that ended with us leaving the campsite before dusk because he was sure he’d been bitten by some kind of ultra-venomous spider. Me finding his texts to Christine probably helped move things along, too.
“Those were jokes, Tara. Do I have to explain the concept of a joke to you? Now? While spider venom is potentially coursing toward my heart?”
“Yes, please do explain to me where the hidden punchline is in ‘send me an ass pic’.”
I think it would have hurt less if it was some bombshell blonde, someone who looked completely different from me. I’d met Christine once or twice. Her hair was black like mine, round face like mine, mud brown eyes like mine. I guess she had a cuter nose.
“You’re being obtuse,” Jack spat. “Fuckin’ Christ, where are we?”
“Should have waited to leave in the morning.” I squinted at the road ahead. The white glare of the headlights made everything in their halo sharper, their shadows darker. Outside the halo, there was nothing but black stretching ahead. We were driving into the void.
“Yeah, and end up with an amputation-worthy infection, I’m sure you’d have loved that.”
“Jack. I told you twenty times. Brown recluses don’t live in this state.” I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting back the ache that was pulsing in the back of my head. “How about you start with an apology, at least? Can I at least get that from you?”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry you think I’m cheating.”
“Fuck you.”
“Not in two weeks, by my count.”
I spun towards him, heat flooding my face. “You know I was swamped with everything going on at work.”
“For a job you don’t have anymore. Was it worth it?”
I flinched. Getting laid off, another fresh wound.
“What’s it matter? Anything you’re not getting from me you can just get from Christine, right? You—”
“God, shut up!” He slammed his hand against the car horn, teeth bared in a snarl. “It never fucking ends with you, never. You know the very first time I brought you to meet Mom, she warned me? Everyone warned me what a pain in the ass you can be.”
I grit my teeth. “Maybe I am, but at least I’m not a cheater.”
Jack glanced at me, then shook his head, wisps of blond hair falling over his eyes. “I wish you could be the person you were when we met.”
His words struck me like a punch to the gut. The person I was when we met. Younger, softer, prettier.
“Stop the car,” I said.
“What?”
“Just do it.”
The car rolled to a stop. I unbuckled and stepped out of the car, shivering as the cold wind hit my bare arms. I should have worn a jacket. Thank god I grabbed my backpack. It held the notebook and pen. Not worth much then, but worth everything now.
“For fuck’s sake, what are you doing?” Jack asked.
I shrugged and started walking, stone-faced. “I’ll get back on my own. Hitchhike or something.”
“Oh, yeah, smart move. Get kidnapped, that’ll show me. Come on, get back in the car.” Jack drove along next to me slowly, talking through the open window.
“I’ve got my phone, my wallet. We drove past a motel on the way here, I think. I’m staying there for a while.” I picked up my pace.
“Yeah, you’re gonna walk all the way there, middle of the night?” He laughed. A harsh, mechanical sound.
I nodded.
“You’re acting like a lunatic, get back in.”
I didn’t say anything, just kept walking through his jeers and cajoling. After ten or so minutes of this, he finally lost it and drove away, the car roaring as he disappeared behind a curve in the road.
*
You have to understand the emptiness of these woods. You have to understand the lack of houses or hotels or footprints. You have to understand the road that goes on and on without a single car rolling by. You have to understand that utter absence of other humans, and the aspen trees that stand as sentries throughout the forest, their dark eyes watching from their wood where branches snapped off. You have to understand the sinking realization of no one was coming to the rescue, of a dead phone, and of being alone in this strange, virgin wilderness.
If you understand all that, you understand why I went to the House on the hill.
I’d been wandering for what I’d guessed to be an hour. Time gets slippery when there’s no way to count it. Then I saw it ahead, nearly hidden behind the silent lines of trees. The orange glow of a porchlight.
It might as well have been Heaven’s light itself. I ran up that hill, my spirits lifting the brighter the light became. The House was waiting for me as I wove between trees to it. At first glance, the House was beautiful purely for its familiar suburban style. Here, nestled among the feral tangles and shadowed shapes of the wood was something I knew and understood, something fundamentally human. A marker of civilization.
One would expect a house in the middle of the forest to be run-down, its wooden body being worn down by the elements. This House was in perfect condition, as though built yesterday or sprung fully formed from the ground. Its paint was blinding white. Its windows were lined up in symmetrical rows. There was not one uneven brick or stair. The porch was wide and, in my mind, welcoming. A rocking chair was tucked in each corner, and the cornflower blue door was flanked by two caladium plants in white stone pots. I hesitated at the door, taking a moment to figure out my surroundings. No homes that I could see besides this lonely House. No cars, but they could be parked somewhere out of sight. Bright lights emanating from behind the window blinds. Someone was home, and I hoped to God it would be someone kind enough to let me use their phone.
A gust of cold window hardened my resolve and shocked me into movement. I knocked on the door as loud as I dared. I didn’t want to seem threatening, after all.
From the other side of the door, a soft knock sounded.
I stood still, waiting. Was that knock an invitation? A warning? Just me hearing things? Every small sound seemed amplified in the woods. Like the leaves whispering to the wind, or a snake dragging itself across the floor of rotting foliage, or the coyotes’ distant, hungry cries.
Sick and tired of the forest and its untamed chorus, I couldn’t stand out there a second longer. My hand snapped to the doorknob, wrapped around its cold, golden sphere. I turned it slowly with no resistance. Unlocked. Craving fluorescent lights and a human face, I edged the door open. I prepared to call out a timid ‘hello’. The word caught in my throat as I stepped inside.
The hallway stretched far, farther than should have been possible considering the size of the house. There were no tables, no pictures hanging, and no personal touches to be found. There was only the beige paint, the steady light from the two ceiling lamps, and the rows and rows of open doors on each side of the hall, facing each other like mirror images. And then, of course, there were the people at the end of the hall.
I couldn’t tell much about the first person. She was already mangled beyond recognition. Her hair, matted in bloody clumps, hung over her face. Everything about her was red. Red stained her clothes, red dripped off the ends of her still fingertips, red pooled around her body. Silver flashed and disappeared somewhere in her, drawing out even more red. It splattered all over the hand that held the knife, all over the woman who drove it in, out, in, out, punctuated by feral shouts. Her back was to me, to everything except the corpse and her knife.
And then the door slammed shut behind me.
Before I could even think run. Before I could snap out of the shock. Before I could make my body obey me, make it understand what was happening at the end of the hall. Bam. Shut.
The woman at the end of the hall stopped abruptly, her knife poised in midair, dripping over her hair. She turned and met my eyes.
She met my eyes with my own eyes.
I stared back in disbelief at my own eyes, my own nose, my own mouth, my own haircut. She had my face. She even had my clothes. She was me, bloodsoaked and wild.
She tilted her head and watched me. Then she rose.
Finally, as if a switch were flipped within, I snapped into motion. I spun towards the front door and tried the knob, struggling to turn it. It wouldn’t budge even an inch. I ran my fingers all around it with my heart beating so fast I thought it was going to sputter out, desperately searching for the lock. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I could hear her footsteps behind me, steady at first, then faster. I yanked at the door one final time before surrendering to the will of the House and bolting for the nearest open door just as she ran up behind me.
Never in my life did I run as fast as I did then. I sucked in desperate breaths as I pushed my body to its limits, careening down beige hall after beige hall. Don’t think, just run. I didn’t slow down until I realized that the only footsteps I could hear anymore were my own.
*
My first thought was to escape out a window. So long as I could find one, I’d have a chance to make sure this night would be nothing more than an unbelievable story for the cops. I wasted hours looking for that promised window.
There was not a single one to be found in the House, and not one of its endless doors led outside. It was always to another hall, another room, another staircase. I climbed up and down countless flights of stairs, ascending to floors that should not have existed in what had seemed like a two-story house from the outside. I found rooms where the ceiling was so low, one would have to crawl on hands and knees to enter. I wandered into rooms where the ceiling towered so high, its walls arced into a distant black dot. Some doors opened to blank walls or to other doors. I once spent at least an hour opening doors within doors within doors before giving up.
Hallways would narrow into a point just big enough for a grain of rice to pass through, or widen until you couldn’t see the walls around you, just an ocean of beige paint and carpet. Sometimes when I’d reached exhaustion, I would just sit in the center of a hall like that and stare into forever. It was the closest I could get to peace in that place.
That’s where I was maybe two days after the door shut. It felt like two days, at least. I hadn’t heard or seen any sign of her in hours. There was only a low, static hum. The noise your brain creates to fill silent space.
Just two days, yet all the things that had driven me to fear, driven me to the door of this unnatural, impossible place had become things I’d have given anything for. A cold gust of wind instead of this still, stale air. My boyfriend’s yells instead of footsteps echoing. Darkness instead of this ever-present fluorescent light. My small, studio apartment in place of this purgatory of rooms. I wish I could at least say the House was haunted, but that would suggest some kind of presence or spirit within. This was nothing. Just an empty, endless place. And do you know what disturbed me the most about that House that was not a house?
That it was, to some buried part of me, familiar.
I sat in that hall in a haze of hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. I was trying to think of some way to navigate this ever-shifting maze. I had tried staying close to right-hand walls, walking straight forward until it became clear that no straightforward path stayed that way for long. I had tried going all the way up, then down the stairs to find the top or bottom floors. No luck.
Soft, distant noises cut through my thoughts, snapping me back into the sharp vigilance of prey. It was her. It was only ever her when the noises were like that. I got back to my feet and dashed to the nearest door I could find. Another hall stretched out for me to run hopelessly through. And run I did.
The House isn’t completely lawless, to be fair. I did find one rule that stood true no matter what room or hall I entered: Two of everything, always.
Two rooms would be situated parallel to each other across the hall, each with identical furnishing. Two staircases would be placed side by side. Two halls, forking in opposite directions. Two vases on two tables, two goldfish bowls with two emaciated fish, Two birdcages swinging empty, two mirrors reflecting each other back into eternity. Whatever it was, it always had a twin close by.
Mine tried to keep close by, too. Anytime she finally caught up with me or found me somewhere, she would charge with the knife, more determined than the last time. Nothing I said would slow her or elicit a reply, and I would always be forced to run, disappearing into a new hall. She didn’t seem to have any better knowledge of the layout of the House than I did, if such a layout even existed, or had any sort of permanence. I saw her from a distance once or twice, herself wandering with furrowed brows and a frown, unaware I had seen her. She seemed too like me in those moments, just a confused woman in a strange world. My same expression, warped.
Still, I kept hope. I kept running, kept wandering, kept looking for the way out. There had to be a way out.
*
How many days had it been? God knows. I slept, I woke. I ran, I hid. I ate potted plants and drank stale fish water. I slept. I did not dream. I wandered. That was what I was and what had been when I stumbled into the dining room.
It wasn’t the first dining room I had found in my days in the House, but it was the most beautifully decorated. Two crystal chandeliers hanging over two tables draped in golden tablecloths. Vacant leather chairs in front of empty porcelain plates and silk napkins, the tables all set for guests that would never arrive. There were marble statues of Venus. Oak grandfather clocks with pendulums that swung in a synchronous rhythm, though their tickers moved not an inch. It almost gave me a headache to look at such vibrant, beautiful things after wandering the bland halls.
And there, sitting at the opposite end of the left table, was the other me.
Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw me walk in. The knife was still in her hand as if it were melded to the skin of her palm. She wore the same clothes as before, stained with old blood. She watched me.
I was still near the door, half-wanting to bolt like I always did. But I was tired of running with no answers. Here I was finally in a position of some distance from her, with a close escape route. This was the time to get what answers I could.
“Who are you?” I rasped, startled at the sound of my voice for the first time in days. I gripped the chair nearby me to keep from shaking. “What do you want?”
“Who are you?” she cocked her head, her voice just as scratchy as mine. “What do you want?”
What? What the fuck do you think I want? I want to go home! I screamed in my head. I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. Snapping wouldn’t help.
“My name is Tara,” I said slowly, my eyes never leaving her. “And I want to leave this place. Do you know how I can do that?”
“My name is Tara, and I. Want. To. Leave. This. Place.” She leaned over and raised her eyebrows with a wicked grin. “Do you know how I can do that?”
I fought back tears of frustration. “Oh, my God.”
“Oh, my God?” Other Tara asked with a snort, then shook her head.
“Please just help me,” I pleaded. I threw my arms up. “Or do you want to keep doing this forever?
“Please just help me.” She shrugged. “Or do you want to keep doing this forever? Or? Do you want to keep doing this forever?”
“Fine!” I nearly shouted. “Just tell me what I have to do!”
She drummed her fingers on the tabletop, bored. “What I have to do.”
“Christ, is this all you can do? Echo?” I snapped.
“All you can do.”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“Don’t understand.” Other Tara stuck out her bottom lip and pantomimed a tear running down her cheek. She then rolled her eyes. “Why you’re doing this.”
My grip on the chair tightened as I grit my teeth together. “You can’t, or maybe won’t, talk to me. Fine, we’ll find another way. Shake your head for no, nod for yes. Do you want to leave this place?”
Other Tara nodded evenly.
I sighed. “Good. So do I. Next question. Are you willing to work together with me to do that?”
She looked at me with a small, sad, almost condescending smile. She shook her head.
My eyes widened. “But—”
The words caught in my throat as my double rose to her feet. She leaped onto the table and dashed towards me, knife raised over her head like a sword as she kicked aside plates. I screamed, ran for the door, and the chase took hold again.
*
Days and days and days. Halls and rooms and stairs. Beige walls across beige walls next to beige walls. Muffled sound in air. It went and it went and it went. Maybe it wasn’t days, maybe it was years, maybe it was hours. Time doesn’t exist without a way to mark it.
She was everywhere. Always trotting down some nearby stairs, always leaping from behind a door, always calling out from a distant hall. She was relentless, always on the hunt for me. But that was okay.
You see, I was beginning to understand the House. The House has a rhythm, a flow. When I gave myself over to it instead of fighting it, I was able to navigate the House much better. Not well enough to escape, of course, oh no, there was no escape. But when I wanted to I could find a bedroom to sleep in when I dared to sleep, I could find dining rooms and wide halls and once, even a bathroom. Water didn’t run out of the faucet. That was fine.
It was easier now to evade the other one. She was getting frustrated. She wanted me dead so, so badly, and I could hear her howling every time she hit a dead end. She was forgetting how to move with the House, not against it. I moved with the House. I wanted a stairway so I walked along the halls and through the rooms and there was a stairway.
I was becoming a part of the House now, not just an intruder. I was the bacteria in its gut, I was the blood cell passing through veins, I was the electric snap moving through the paths in its brain matter. Move with it, that’s all I had to do. For a while it was good. I was evolving. I was winning.
And then, the changes began.
Changes! There had never been changes in the House like that! I didn’t like it. There were rules, there were supposed to be rules. The lights were always on, the walls were always beige, and everything was in doubles. Everything must have its twin!
It started small. Of two vases, one sat smashed in the bedroom I’d been napping in. It was the one by my bed that was smashed. I figured I must have done it in my sleep, didn’t think much about it, because it was no good to think much about anything anymore. But I saw it more and more.
One fish alive, one floating dead at the top of its bowl.
One door fine, one door ripped from its hinges and reduced to jagged spikes of wood.
One stairway leading up as it was supposed to, one split down the center as if struck by lightning. One plant blooming, one brown and drooping. One mirror reflecting my wretched face, one with its glass shattered on the carpet.
The doubles were being destroyed, disappearing, decaying. As time went on I watched countless pairs reduced to one. I saw it everywhere, in every corner. I couldn’t escape the sight.
As I said, I didn’t like to think about things too hard anymore, but this merited a good think. After all, it had to mean something, right? That the principal law of the House was being broken with increasing speed and malevolence? It couldn’t be the other me doing it, she didn’t care about anything other than driving the knife through me. I thought about it, thought so hard it made my head hurt. Then I understood.
It was a message from the House.
It must have known I wanted to leave. The destruction of the doubles, again and again. They were instructions.
The idea would have been unthinkable to me when I’d first arrived at the House. Now it filled me with relief, and dare I say it, excitement. It was all so clear now, the way out, the answer. I wanted to return to the real world, but in the real world, there can be only one of something, every fingerprint and snowflake unique, everything its own. To return to reality, I needed the destruction of the double.
*
What a thrill, to be the hunter. It came more naturally to me than fleeing. I knew this House now, knew it better than that other one. Her. The House helped me, led me through the labyrinth as I followed to soft sounds of her shuffling feet. Slow cow. I walked and walked and walked and I could feel her presence getting closer, yes, she was not far. I could do this. I could win. The House favored me, the true one.
I walked out a door, into a new hall. No, an old hall. A familiar hall.
There were no tables, no pictures hanging, no personal touches to be found. There was only the beige paint, the steady light from the two ceiling lamps, and the rows and rows of open doors on each side of the hall, facing each other like mirror images. And then, of course, there was the person at the end of the hall. My double.
She didn’t move with the quickness of before. Less sharp. The knife gleamed in her hand, no longer frightening to me for being such a familiar sight. She cocked her head and watched me as if she expected me to run back through the door I’d come in. I shook my head and laughed at her. No running away, not this time. I was the coyote that howls in the night, I was the fanged one who did not fear death. Death and life were things from the world before, meaningless in the House.
Behind me was the door to the outside. I didn’t test it. I knew it would be locked. It would be locked until I did what I must, what the House wanted me to.
I charged at the other one. She was stunned by this, stunned by the change in our continually looping script. She stood at the end of the hall frozen until I was just a few feet away, then snapped out of her shock and lifted the knife to strike. But I was ready, I knew how she would swing it, I ducked. I barrelled into her, knocked her to the ground. I kicked her in the stomach and I stomped on her wrist so that she screamed out and let go of the knife, and then it was my knife. Mine!
She tried to get back up but I slashed the knife across her face. She fell to the ground with a dull thud. I pinned her down. I had to do it, had to do it now, my only chance finally at hand. I lifted the knife and plunged it into her chest. Then I did it again. Then again. Then I struck her stomach, her neck, everywhere the knife would go. I had to make sure it took. I had to make sure she was dead.
Her blood sprayed me as I worked, bathed me in red. She was a limp little doll. A pale imitation. How had I ever called her ‘the other Tara’? As if she could compare! She was not Tara, she had never been Tara. I was Tara, me! She’d wanted to take that from me. That’s why the House lured me and trapped me in, so I could do what had to be done. Dispose of the fake.
I had won. I had risen. I couldn’t be replaced. I was the only me.
And then, behind me, I heard a door slam.
I stopped abruptly, my knife poised in midair, dripping over my hair. I turned and met my own eyes.
At the end of the hall stood another double, another fake. Cleaner, more wide-eyed, more frightened. A locked door behind you.
Of course, you know what happens next.
These papers are my testament, and my apology to you. Because really, I pity you. You don’t know you’re a fake. You don’t know you’re a double, a copy, a replica. You must be so frightened. I remember. I can see it in your eyes, right before you dart down some hall or stairway or room. I will give you the kindness of an explanation that the other fake failed to give me. I had to write it. Speaking has become impossible. The words keep repeating in my mouth.
I understand now. What my double was trying to do, why she had to do it. But I will succeed where she failed. I’m sorry, but you have to understand, there can only be one.
No others.
END OF TARA’S ACCOUNT
***
Intriguing stuff.
In the days since I read this, I’ve got some fact-checking done. I did indeed find a missing persons report for a young woman with this same name and description in Oregon. After combing through it, along with some articles about her disappearance, I feel confident in saying that this notebook is hers. Her missing persons report was just a month ago. Whether our month was also a month for poor Tara, who can say? As she observed, and based on reports of places similar to the House, I suspect time works differently in it.
Oh, and I also saw the House, for what it’s worth.
I’d been driving around the area for hours the night before my morning flight home. I was desperate to see the House for myself, to get even a glimpse inside. Reading Tara’s account had only made me more rabid for information, for answers. The not-knowing was keeping me up at night. Some of you can relate, I’m sure. It’s like an itch you can’t scratch. A feeling you can’t shake. Curiosity really does kill the cat, and it does so slowly.
Maybe the House sensed my desperation, because just as I was finally about to call it a night and drive back to my motel, I spotted the orange glow of a porch light, nearly hidden behind silent lines of trees.
I parked the car on the side of the road and ran up, despite the fear that spiked within me. The House came into view. It looked just as Tara had described, down to every exact detail. A beautiful trap, now waiting for me. My mind raced as I approached the door. The possibilities sent a rush of euphoria and dread through me as I thought about what I would see when I threw the door open. Would I find this strange, eternal maze that Tara described? Tara herself, and her double? Or would there be others who’d been trapped inside? Were the writings perhaps the unraveling of a demented mind, and the inside of the House was something entirely different than what Tara experienced all together? Was it different for everyone who entered?
These and more raced through my mind as I wrapped my hand around the doorknob and pulled.
And in the end, none of the questions were answered, because the House didn’t let me in.
The door stayed locked and shut despite anything I tried. The windows wouldn’t budge, and their blinds were drawn so I got no view of the inside. I spent a solid hour trying to find an entry, to no avail. Eventually I turned away, and in the second it took me to turn back, the House was gone again.