Worn, gray shutters shift in the soft breeze. Floorboards creak, paint peels, and cloudy windows gaze out at shadows on the unkempt lawn; an overgrown slope where children once ran in the spicy grass, and dogs followed their crooked chase into the forest. The house hovers between the waking and dreaming of old age, but it remembers. A hundred years of comings and goings, repairing and rotting. Secrets etched in the peeling walls and chipped woodwork. Countless echoes haunt these halls, but one still living remains, guardian of the noble ruin she inhabits.

The last family was the favorite. A periwinkle front door welcomed them on moving day years ago as boxes and furniture bumped through rooms to their rightful place. A blue benevolent witness to summer picnics, leaf piles, and sledding in the days to come. The children called it a Storybook House. A fairytale cottage. A magical fortress, where thick walls swallowed the giggles and tears of sunny days and hushed black nights.

The red and white kitchen was the sunniest room in the house. A cast iron sink from the first inhabitants dominated one wall; the floral curtain below concealed 2 small children when father’s voice rumbled. The bright window above peered out to the kitchen garden and thorny roses, where wildlife watched, and the house held its breath.

A long wooden table dominated the room, where pencils were sharpened, homework was completed, pumpkin pies cooled, and Christmas decorations were glued and glittered. A table scrubbed and polished each day, ready for inspection when father burst through the periwinkle door to catch them off guard.

Plates were stacked neatly in white cupboards, and heirloom silver sat in tidy rows of paper-lined drawers. Everything was in order, from the bedrooms above, to the dirt-floor cellar below. A musty space beneath their feet filled with the forgotten bits of their lives; broken chairs, broken toys, and unanswered prayers.

Three children aged 3, 5 and 7 were homeschooled. They grew their own food and made their own clothes. They did what they were told. And no one entered their troubled world unexpectedly.

But their ability to obey diminished as the children grew. They complained of their isolation as party invitations and sleepovers were denied. But defiance was met with a fist and fractures. And the house bore its own scars of rage and helplessness. Patched holes and patched wounds occupied every tidy room.

It was already a long winter that December, almost ten years since they moved in. Years of tears and anger both repressed and unleashed hid in the nooks and crannies beneath the watchful eye of the old house. Stairs creaked as it remembered that night.

She loaded astonished children into the cranky station wagon and delivered them to a Christmas party next door. They stepped into the frosty air toward a new door for the first time in their battered lives, nervous and exhilarated as they stepped over the cheerful threshold and mother sped home. She returned the car to the same spot, with enough time for the engine to cool before father was expected.

Dinner was bubbling on the wood stove when he slammed the front door, while holiday tunes played on the turntable. He reeked of cheap whiskey, but she was calm when he stomped into the kitchen and demanded dinner. The house shivered in the cool twilight of dread and uncertainty.

She mumbled that the children were out gathering pinecones for Christmas as soup was carefully ladled into bowls and bread was buttered. They ate their meal in icy silence as he drained the holiday cheer from his mug. She jumped when he pounded the table and snarled, “Since when do the kids go out in the dark to get pinecones?” His chair flew across the room, but the punch missed its mark when she ducked and ran toward the back door. He staggered toward her, red-faced, fists clenched, screams slurred.

“I’ll be Home for Christmas” played as he hit the shiny linoleum floor and the poison settled into his brutal bones. Father disappeared as night swallowed the yard and uprooted earth while stars glittered overhead, and oak and maple limbs moaned in the wind.

A fire dances in the hearth most of the year now; the house no longer capable of containing heat or hope. Old family photos line the mantel and stare out toward an unknown horizon, forced smiles, frozen, when the flashbulb fired like a shot in the dark. An unimaginable horizon then, safe, and far away from here. They left the house long ago.

The kitchen garden out back returns to its wild and unmanageable state. Overgrown roses guard irregular beds with prickly authority. And an unmarked grave keeps watch, listening, and waiting for the one who tends the fire.

About the author:

Part of our Halloween 2025 Issue. New stories, poems, and essays now through October 31, 2025.

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