1
When he comes to the door, I don’t answer immediately. Instead, I stare through the peephole, studying him. It’s only a matter of time before I’ll forget him altogether. He’ll stand before me, appearing much like he does now, and I’ll look back at him blankly, the same way my mom used to eye me, no recognition at all.
His dark hair is bushy, unkempt, as if he hasn’t had a decent haircut in a while. His mouth is obscured by a thick beard.
He glances around, no idea he’s being watched. When he knocks again, I draw back from the peephole and turn the knob. Swinging the door open, I push my lips up into a wobbly smile. Our eyes meet. At first, he doesn’t react. His face remains stoic. Or maybe I can’t see the smile through his mess of a beard.
He takes a step forward. “Mom.”
“Hudson.” I bury my face in his shoulder. He smells like wood, pine needles, faintly of cloves. It’s foreign, a reminder of how many years he’s been away from home. Yet somewhere, hiding beneath that unfamiliar scent and all that hair, is my little boy. The one I’d read bedtime stories to and sat on the ground for hours playing Hot Wheels with. The one who’d cried on my shoulder and tucked his chubby little hand into mine when crossing the street. I hug him too long. His arms loosen and float away from my body, but mine are still looped around him.
Reluctantly, I release my hold. Leaning against the door frame, I peer over his shoulder and down the large sweeping staircase spanning the front porch, to the car parked along the curb. An older Honda Civic, the gray paint faded and chipped.
“You can go ahead and bring your stuff in,” I say.
“For sure.” Reaching down, he snatches up the duffel bag sitting by his feet. Slinging it over his shoulder, he walks forward.
I raise a brow. “Is that all you have?”
He nods, and I don’t know why I’m surprised. The past few years he’s lived a vagabond existence, crashing at friends’ or girlfriends’ houses, sometimes renting rooms from strangers. Kendra has often expressed disdain for his lifestyle, saying there’s no way she would ever be able to do it. And she’s right. She couldn’t. She needs security. But I admire Hudson’s courage, his ability to take risks.
Hudson moved out the day he turned eighteen, as if he couldn’t wait another minute to be away from us. But he’d pulled away from me long before that.
As an infant, Hudson was only happy in my arms. In his toddler years, he remained glued to my side. Even in early elementary school, he followed me around, his sticky hands always reaching for mine. But around the time Hudson turned nine, things started to take off for my band, Flight of Hearts.
I was gone a lot, and in that time, Hudson grew more attached to his dad. I couldn’t blame him—just hoped that one day he would understand why I missed his eighth-grade graduation, his junior prom. Ambition comes at a cost, especially, unfairly, to working mothers. But since Darren died five years ago, Hudson and I have rarely spoken, and he’s only been home a handful of times. It’s like the mutual connection between us was severed. Or maybe my inability to stay settled at home affected Hudson in its own way.
I’ve never stopped missing my little boy, though. The one who would sit close to me on the couch, one hand on my arm, as if preventing my escape.
And now he’s here.
I need him, and he’s come running.
“Well, sure, he probably has nowhere else to go,” Kendra had said to me a few days ago, a hint of bitterness in her tone.
I usher Hudson inside, my hand lifting, itching to rest on his back. But I fight the urge, leaving it to hover a few inches away.
“I’m not a baby, Mom,” I remember him saying repeatedly as a sullen, metal-mouthed teenager.
He’s in his mid-twenties now, and I have no idea how I’m supposed to act. With Kendra, I don’t have the same problem. She’s been an adult since she was five. Bossy. Independent. Responsible. Hudson took a little longer to mature.
“I got your old room ready.” It’s weird to think about Hudson being back in his former bedroom. The one he grew up in. So much has cha
nged.
“My old room?” His spine straightens, his head cocking to the side.
“Yeah, is that a problem?” I have no idea where else I’d put him. Kendra’s old room? Darren’s former study?
“No, of course not.” He runs a hand through his hair, and I catch the edge of a tattoo circling his upper right arm. I can’t make out what it is, though. “I just...it’s just...been a while, I guess.”
When he makes his way up the stairs, my instinct is to trail after him, but I stop myself. Wrapping my arms around my body, I lean against the wall, watching his back as he climbs the steps.
Hudson has never been a big talker. His sister is. I used to joke that she sucked up all the words in our house, leaving none available for the rest of us. Still, his silence today is unnerving.
When I hear the click of his bedroom door, I sigh. Pushing off the wall, I walk toward the kitchen to make some tea. The floorboards creak beneath my slippers. The clock on the wall ticks. Bowie barks from the backyard. Other than that, it’s deathly quiet like always.
A woman and her dog all alone in this big Victorian house.
The first time I saw this house, it beckoned to me. A whisper. An outstretched arm. The curl of a finger, bony but elegant. Its pull was hypnotic.
I stood at the curb, staring up at the imposing staircase, the shuttered windows, the pointed roof. It reminded me of my grandma. Not because she had a house like this, but because she was strong, tall in stature and had a presence that overshadowed everyone around her. That was this house.
The surrounding homes were lower—at street level with only a few steps leading up to a small porch. This one sat high above them, more than a dozen steps leading up to a large wraparound porch. None of the other homes had the personality this one did.
“Can you imagine the stories this house holds?” I whispered under my breath, the words coming out in white puffs that disintegrated in the air like cigarette smoke. Without a word, Darren put his arm around me, steadying me as we made our way up to the front door, the cold January air enveloping us. We’d left the kids with a sitter, since Kendra was only seven, and Hudson five.
Jan, our real estate agent, had a hard time getting the lock to work. And with each passing second, Darren’s uneasiness showed in the way he held his jaw, the way his hold on me tightened.
As if I couldn’t pick up on the subtle clues, he finally let out a frustrated grunt. It was obvious he already hated the house. Not that I was surprised. He’d made it clear to me that he wanted a newer home. Granite countertops, crown molding and updated appliances. But when we’d toured the ones he liked, I felt stifled. Uncomfortable. A fish flopping in the sand.
I wanted a house with history. A heartbeat. A voice. From what Jan had told us, this house had go
ne through multiple owners in the ten years before we’d bought it and then had been vacant for months. It was in obvious need of some TLC. The paint was chipped in spots, and in one of the rooms there was an odd wallpaper, red with black circles that almost looked like floating heads.
“A fixer-upper,” Darren had called it.
“Charming,” I’d countered, causing Jan to smile.
Despite all the issues, the house gave me a sense of comfort. Familiarity. Inside its walls, I became a fish that had finally found the water and breathed deeply through its gills.
Plus, I’d always wanted to live in midtown, and this was the perfect time. I’d just joined a new band called Flight of Hearts, and we’d hopefully be playing a lot at clubs and bars in this area.
It wasn’t until after we’d moved in that I found the newspaper articles about six-year-old Grace Newton’s mysterious death inside this home over fifty years ago. She’d died of a brain bleed, caused by a fall down the stairs.
It was ruled an accident, but many neighbors and family friends suspected it had been anything but. According to some of the newspaper articles I’d read, there were reports of bruising on Grace’s skin for months before her death. And even the coroner had said she had contusions and cuts that were old; healing. Not from the fall.
Many people in this neighborhood believe that Grace haunts this house. Roams the halls. Plays in the attic. Traipses around the backyard.
When we first started hearing the rumors, Darren said they were ridiculous. But I’m prone to think they’re true. From the moment we moved in, I could feel her. A breath at the back of my neck. A charge in the air. A presence in the room. And sometimes when I took pictures of the kids in Hudson’s room, orbs appeared on the photos after I had them developed. Seriously. It’s why I suspect Hudson’s room had once been Grace’s.
The AC kicks on above my head, startling me. I hug myself tighter.
It’s eerie to think about the similarities between Hudson and Grace. Both were the younger of two siblings. They might have shared a room. I’ve seen pictures of Grace: dark hair and chocolate brown eyes—same as Hudson’s. They had the same delightful smile, and a matching dimple on the left cheek. But most startling of all: both of their lives were irrevocably changed by an untimely, suspicious death.
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