We were becoming closer, the house and I. As time passed, and Aaron grew busy at work, it was I who tended its many wounds: cleaning its gutters and touching up the chipped paint above the backsplash. Updating the outdated hardware on its cabinets.
And though I still feared it, I found myself beginning to love it a bit too, as each small change connected us.
Now that we had decided not to sell it, the house seemed to trust me more. It no longer devoured the chairs while I sat in them. And around bedtime, it even grew quieter, holding off on its most serious eating until I’d fallen asleep.
“It’s old,” I told Aaron one day at dinner. “It hasn’t been loved in a long time. Only used. Even we have been so focused on what it can do for us, that we never stopped to ask what we can do for it.”
I pointed to a section of floorboards long stained from some ancient leak, and then gestured to the single-pane windows, that bled heat all winter.
“It’s just a house,” said Aaron. “But sure. If you want to do a couple of renovations, go nuts. FYI, though, it’s going to be all on you: I’m about to get even busier. Remember how I told you Ken Lewis got pneumonia? Well, turns out he didn’t make it.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I know he was a mentor.”
Aaron shrugged. I had always admired his ability to persevere through pain. His mother had died only a few months into our time dating, and he’d soldiered on with a smile, flying through law school and acing the bar, never once betraying any indication that her death had affected him.
Now though, I considered the dark side to his ability to turn off his feelings. The house’s previous owner, Pamela, had suggested my husband was someone to be feared. But what that meant, I didn’t yet know.
“Ken was practical. And ruthless,” said Aaron, finishing a chicken wing and casually tossing the bones on the floor for the house to eat. “He made partner at thirty-two. He wouldn’t want me to mourn. He’d want me gunning for his spot.”
I bristled a little at the word gunning but tried to maintain my smile.
“What can I do to support you? Maybe we should have dinner with some of the other partners… we could call it a belated housewarming. An old-fashioned charm offensive.”
“Peter Green is the only one that matters,” he said. “He’ll be playing kingmaker. But we should invite the rest of my competition. Let me outshine them here on our homecourt. The only other real contender is Marlon Vasquez, but he’ll flame out if we give him the opportunity. We’ll make sure all of his favorite are scotches readily available.”
“You’re going to win this thing,” I told him.
“I knew there was a reason I loved you,” he said.
A few weeks later, several of Aaron’s coworkers from the firm arrived for the dinner party. Even though he was competition, I liked Marlon. He and his partner Bill arrived with a chocolate creme cake from a Michelin-starred bakery. As with every other time we’d met, they were effusive about my outfit and figure, but what touched me the most was their love for the house.
Bill was a student of the Edwardian period, and paraded through the house like a kid in a candy store, drooling over the whalebone inlay around the fireplace, the carefully carved oak bannister, the original hardwood.
The house seemed to take these compliments with pride. I’d never felt its mood so light. Like a child on its best behavior, it even spared my most delicate appetizers. We poured wine and champagne and paid a caterer to supply a lavish 4-course meal. Aaron was beaming.
And then right at six we got the news that Peter Green had taken ill and wouldn’t be able to attend.
After that, Aaron’s mood turned sour. It was him, not Marlon, drinking one too many scotches. By dessert, he was talking a bit too loud, slurring slightly, shifting from happy to angry all in the same sentence.
“May the best man win,” he said at one point, raising his glass up to Marlon such that it bumped into him and sloshed all over the floor.
“My fault,” said Marlon, trying to be gracious. “Let me go grab a towel and I’ll–”
“The house will take care of it,” said Aaron. “Trust me. Don’t waste your time.” He poured a fresh glass for himself and then flung it on the floor too. “Go on,” he spoke to the ceiling. “Drink up, won’t you?”
“I think we’d better get going before our Tesla turns into a pumpkin,” said Bill.
“Always wondered which of you was Cinderella,” said Aaron. He was staring strangely at Marlon in a way I’d only seen once before: the night he stood over the man in white’s body. I remembered the sound of the two gunshots. One through the head, the other through the heart. How had he learned to fire so precisely?
I tried to take Aaron’s hand as I whispered, “Honey. This isn’t you.”
He snatched his hand away.
“When did you become such an expert on who I am?”
“I think we’ve both had a bit too much to drink,” said Marlon, grabbing his coat. “I’ll see you at the office.”
The other guests made their excuses and filed out after him. As the last one left, Aaron looked down at the puddle of scotch on the floor.
“Drink!” he shouted. “Why won’t you drink?”
“It’s not a trained puppy,” I said. “You can’t just bark out orders.”
“It’s a tool,” he said. “It’ll do its job.”
Finally, after a few seconds, the scotch began to disappear.
“That’s a good boy,” said Aaron, his pronunciation lazy. “That’s a good boy.”
The party had been a setback for Aaron’s career aspirations, how big we didn’t know. Either way, Aaron threw himself into work, pulling late nights at the office as he tried to prove his worth.
In the meantime, I found myself alone more often than ever before. Once the kids left for school in the morning, it was just me and the house for hours on end. With little to clean, I spent my time on what additional repairs I could, updating the lightbulbs to LEDs and even recaulking the bathtub.
Often when I was done, the house’s grinding turned into something almost like a purr, as if I’d removed the thorn from the paw of a great lion.
Finally, though, I reached the limit of what I could fix myself and called in an expert. Brian Logan was a carpenter and a jack of all trades. He was also a friend since grade school who I could trust to be discreet.
“Sure, I’ll fix up your haunted house,” he said with an easy smile as he walked down the stairs. “As long as the money’s real.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Come on. You know I’ve never believed in any of this stuff before. This. This is real.”
“It really made your kids forget their dog?” he said. “I gotta be honest, I don’t ever remember you having one either.”
“See. And I know you met King when I had him out on a walk once! I’m telling you.”
He shook his head and laughed. “New windows, sanding and restaining on the hardwood throughout. You’d better hope your husband makes partner, ‘cuase this is gonna cost him.”
I can admit it now: I loved watching Brian fix the house. Watching him run a sander across the house’s floor felt almost like a massage. When he pried the windows from their casings, it was like some rotten tooth had been pulled out. There was almost a kind of physical relief to it.
Best of all, I could tell he worked with love. He spoke to the house like I did, assuring it that all the changes would be for the best, that even if a saw hurt like hell as he cut out a rotted board, it would all be for the best.
And then there was Aaron. He’d come home late, sometimes reeking of booze from nights out drinking with the boss or some important client. Usually, he wouldn’t even shower, counting on the house to eat him clean. Once, dead drunk, he threw up right in bed and slept in it.
“It’ll all be gone in the morning,” he said. “Like it never happened. You won’t even need to wash the sheets.”
Then one day, Aaron came home early and found Brian still working, finishing up the installation of a new double-paned window.
“Brian, right? Claire’s friend from high school.”
“That’s me, boss. You must be Aaron.”
“She didn’t mention how good-looking you were, Brian,” said Aaron, slurring slightly. It was one in the afternoon.
“You look like you could use some rest,” I said. “Brian, we can call it a day.”
“Nah,” said Aaron. “I wanna see what I’m paying for. Maybe Bry-guy can walk me through all of these little touches of yours.”
“We need a few supplies,” offered Brian. “Maybe Claire can hit up Lowe’s while I give you the tour.”
A few minutes later, I was walking through the window aisle when I bumped into Bill, who was pushing a shopping cart full of flower pots and potting soil.
“Claire!’ he yelled, giving me a big hug. “How’s it going? Here escaping your husband for a few minutes, I take it?”
“I’m really sorry about the party,” I said. “What Aaron said to you and Marlon was totally out of line.”
A strange look crossed Bill’s face. “Who’s Marlon?” he asked.
I sprinted back to the car, calling Brian’s phone over and over again, only to get no response. I tried Aaron too. Nothing. Even before I pulled into the driveway, I knew it was too late.
I found Aaron on the basement stairs, sipping from an open bottle of wine as he watched dry skin flake from a nearly bare skeleton. His gun sat at his feet.
“It doesn’t like me,” he said, gesturing to the house. “It doesn’t like to do what I tell it to do. But it sure loves to eat.”
“Aaron,” I said, shaking with fear. “Why did you… Brian was…”
“Brian who?” asked Aaron smiling. “Was there a guy here, Claire? A guy looking at you with sweet little puppy dog eyes, fixing up your precious house? What else do you think he was planning to do with you? Are you sure you aren’t just making him up? Go ask anyone on the street if they’ve ever heard of the guy. I’m sure they’ll tell you he doesn’t exist.”
“And Marlon?” I asked.
“He was in the way. You should have heard the vicious rumors he was starting about me. How I’d made some kind of slur against him at the party. Well, now that never happened. Because there is no Marlon.”
“But there was,” I said, tears rolling down my face. “There was.”
Aaron shook his head.
“You need to work on forgetting,” he said. “Remembering around here is dangerous.” Slowly, he picked up the gun and pointed it at me. “Come downstairs,” he said.
I thought about running. Then I thought about the two shots I’d heard. One through the head, one through the heart. I didn’t have a chance.
I did as I was told, the stairs creaking under my weight as I descended. By the time I reached the basement floor, Brian’s bones had turned to dust.
“Stand in the hot spot,” said Aaron quietly.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t do this. Think of Derek. Grace.”
“I wonder what they’ll remember,” he said, looking thoughtful. “Will they think they were abandoned at birth? Or will there just be a big, gray blank spot in their memories, the place you used to occupy. I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.”
I was so scared I couldn’t control my legs. I fell to the floor, sobbing,thinking of my children, of being erased from their memories. Every goodnight kiss and book I’d read, every hug, every lunch I’d packed. It would all be gone.
“You’ll remember,” I said. “You’ll remember.”
“You have no idea how good I am at forgetting,” he said, cocking the trigger.
And that’s when the ceiling above him collapsed, the perfectly good beam cracking right in half and landing squarely on top of him as the house sacrificed its body to save mine. Aaron screamed, but the house only purred. It was ready for its next meal.
Sometimes, I like to pretend that he died right then. Of course, that’s not the truth.
Aaron was very much still alive, just trapped, screaming at me to get him out. But I didn’t listen. I had found his gun at my feet. I’d never fired one before, and it felt unexpectedly heavy as I picked it up.
“Don’t,” he said as I leveled it at him. “I wasn’t really going to shoot you, I swear. I just needed to scare you. To make sure you wouldn’t turn on me.”
And I realized I had spent a lifetime listening to Aaron talk. He was always talking. Lawyers are just so good at it. So convincing. With enough time, enough words, I’m sure he would have talked me around.
But instead I shot him in the head.
For a minute, I just stood watching him.
Aaron’s skin began to harden and clutch to the bone. And then finally, after maybe half an hour, he was all gone, a pile of powder under the ruined basement ceiling.
“Thank you,” I whispered to the house.
I’m a single mom now. Most people think I always have been. In some ways that makes it easier. I mourned Aaron in my own private way, but at least I didn’t have to worry about the kids’ grief.
We’re happy in the house now. The mood has been light ever since Aaron’s departure. The house munches happily on groceries. I don’t think it ever wanted to eat bodies. Not really. It just ate what we gave it. And now I try to give it love.
Still, every once in a while, I wonder if I might need to use it again.
A few days ago, Derek came home from school with a bloody lip and told me about a much older boy who’d been bullying him. That night, I couldn’t help indulge a little fantasy about dragging that boy’s body to my basement and putting him right in that hot spot.
Of course, it was only a fantasy. For now at least. I mean, I never thought I’d be capable of killing anyone before I shot Aaron.
Sometimes, when my thoughts get dark like that, I think about how hard it is to know people. Even yourself. There’s this old quote from Hamlet that I’ve been turning over in my head lately. It says, “We know who we are, but know not what we may be.” So true, so true.
See, I used to think the house wanted us because of Aaron, but in the moment where push came to shove, it chose me.
And sometimes, as I lay awake at night, peacefully listening to it feed, I wonder if I was the one it wanted all along.