Someone Was Always Home

This story is an experiment that functions alongside audio tapes which are needed to understand and appreciate the narrative fully.

Story made for Kateb_VonShoat's bounty : https://civitai.red/bounties/13016/re-something-in-the-house-image-and-story-contest-20000-buzz-in-prizes

The house had stood empty for several months by the time people began to talk about it. That alone would not have been remarkable ; old properties were abandoned all the time, especially in places where newer, cheaper homes had begun to replace them. What made this one different was how quickly people seemed to leave. It had been occupied by five different families over the course of four months, and none of them had stayed long enough to make the place feel lived in. The explanations varied depending on who was telling the story. Some said the house was simply in terrible condition, that there were leaks, mold, structural problems, and repairs nobody wanted to pay for. Others blamed the nearby road, claiming the constant traffic made the house impossible to sleep in. And then there were the quieter explanations, the ones usually accompanied by lowered voices and a glance toward the property itself : the house was cursed, or haunted, or perhaps there was something inside it that did not want people to stay.

That was what interested me.

My name is Saga Legrasse, and I have been investigating supposedly haunted locations for nearly twenty years. I have never been particularly interested in proving that every strange noise is caused by a ghost, nor do I expect every abandoned house to contain some tragic spirit waiting for an opportunity to speak. Most places are disappointingly ordinary. Others are old enough, poorly maintained enough, or psychologically unsettling enough that people eventually begin filling in the gaps themselves. Still, every once in a while, there is a place that gives you a reason to look twice. When I heard about this house, I decided to start where I always did, with its history.

The local library still kept a surprising amount of information in its archives, including property records dating back more than a century. I spent most of an afternoon going through them, following the names of owners as they appeared and disappeared from the documents. For the most part, there was nothing unusual. Families bought the house, lived there for several years, and eventually moved elsewhere. There were marriages, births, debts, sales and renovations. Nobody had died violently on the property. Nobody had been found buried beneath it. There was no obvious tragedy that could explain the stories attached to the place.

Then I reached the 1920s.

The house had belonged to the son of a wealthy and influential family, the kind of family whose name still appeared frequently enough in the local records to make me understand why people might have thought twice before crossing them. Among the documents I found a reference to a young maid named Sarah Hawkins, who had worked at the property until the summer of 1923. There was nothing particularly remarkable about her employment, but the date she left caught my attention. I asked the librarian whether there were police records from that period and, after some searching, she brought me a collection of old reports.

There it was : a missing-person notice filed by Sarah's mother.

The notice had been withdrawn less than a week later.

There was no explanation given for the withdrawal, and certainly no indication that Sarah had returned home. I could not prove what had happened to her, but I found it difficult to believe that the daughter of a working-class family had simply decided to disappear on an unannounced holiday and that her mother had then voluntarily withdrawn the search. Perhaps someone had paid her. Perhaps someone had threatened her. Perhaps there was another explanation entirely. Whatever the truth was, it was enough to make me want to see the house for myself.

I arrived in the late afternoon, parking in the driveway as the sun began its slow descent toward the horizon. The house loomed over its smaller neighbors, its upper windows dark and strangely prominent against the fading light. For a moment, sitting behind the wheel, I had the uncomfortable impression that they were watching me. It was an absurd thought, and I dismissed it almost immediately. I had spent enough time around abandoned buildings to know how easily the imagination could turn windows into eyes.

For the initial walk-through, I brought only an EMF meter and my voice recorder. I wanted to explore the property without cluttering it with equipment, taking note of the rooms and locations where I would later place cameras, motion sensors and recording devices. I switched on the recorder as I stepped through the front door.

I spent several minutes examining the ground floor after the recording ended, taking particular notice of the old furniture and the carved wooden cupboard near the entrance. The house had the peculiar stillness common to places that had been abandoned recently enough for traces of their occupants to remain, yet long enough for dust to begin reclaiming everything. A few books were still sitting on shelves in the living room. There were small marks on the walls where pictures had been removed. The fireplace was cold, and the carpet felt soft beneath my shoes with accumulated dust.

I have always found living rooms particularly interesting in abandoned houses. They are usually the center of a home's activity, the place where people gather, talk, argue, watch television, entertain guests. If a house could be compared to a body, the living room would be its heart : not because it performs some necessary physical function, but because it is where everything seems to converge. Here, however, nothing was moving. There was no warmth, no conversation, no footsteps from another room. Only the occasional creak of old timber settling beneath its own weight. Event the EMF meter stayed still.

I continued through the kitchen and bathroom before noticing the basement door. Basements have always fascinated paranormal investigators, although nobody has ever produced a particularly convincing explanation for why they seem to feature so prominently in stories of hauntings. Perhaps it is simply because they are dark and isolated. Perhaps because people already associate them with things hidden away and forgotten. Or perhaps there is something about descending beneath a house that makes us instinctively uncomfortable.

Whatever the reason, I decided to investigate.

The basement yielded nothing conclusive. Whatever I could hear down there could have been the house settling, an animal moving somewhere beyond the walls, or something else entirely. I made a note to place a night-vision camera and motion detector there later, then returned upstairs.

The first bedroom contained the first genuinely interesting physical clue I had encountered. A broad patch of moisture and mold had developed along the wall separating it from the master bedroom. I examined it closely and found no obvious indication of a leak from above. A damaged pipe seemed more likely. If the mold had been present for some time, it could potentially explain some of the stories told by the previous occupants. There had been reports of objects being moved or misplaced, after all, and prolonged exposure to poor air quality could certainly contribute to confusion and memory problems.

I made a mental note to investigate the condition of the house more thoroughly before drawing any conclusions. Then I crossed the hallway and entered the second small bedroom.

The sound that interrupted the recording sent me toward the master bedroom. I remember being strangely relieved when I found nothing there. At the time, I interpreted that relief as evidence that I had been startled rather than genuinely frightened. I was beginning to suspect that the house's reputation was affecting my judgment.

The master bedroom itself was peculiar, however. Unlike the other rooms, its floor was covered by an old red carpet. The wallpaper was a deep, muted pink, and the white skirting boards had small raised points running along them. They reminded me, vaguely, of teeth. I dismissed the thought almost as soon as it occurred. I raised my EMF meter, as usual, but it stayed silent yet again.

There was also a large damp stain behind the bed, running almost from the ceiling toward the floor. Strangely, there was no visible mold on that side of the wall. I examined it closely, trying to determine whether the moisture came from within the wall or from somewhere behind it, but I could find no answer. By then, the sun was almost gone, and I decided it would be wiser to retrieve the rest of my equipment from the car before darkness made the process more difficult.

I left the bedroom.

For several seconds, I simply stood in the hallway.

The staircase was gone.

I had walked past it only moments earlier. I was certain of that. Yet there was no opening in the floor, no broken boards, no evidence that anything had ever been removed. The hallway continued uninterrupted beneath my feet, as solid as the floor of any ordinary room.

I checked it more than once. I crouched down and ran my fingers over the boards, searching for seams or some concealed mechanism. There was nothing. Eventually, I found myself wondering whether I had somehow remembered the layout incorrectly. That possibility frightened me more than the missing staircase itself.

I returned to the master bedroom because I had nowhere else to go.

I wish I could say I immediately understood that something was wrong. I didn't. Even then, some part of me continued searching for explanations. A trick. A hallucination. A reaction to exhaustion or stress. Anything that allowed the world to remain comprehensible.

But when I stood in the middle of that bedroom, I became aware of something I could not explain. My own thoughts felt strangely distant, as though they were moving through my head without entirely belonging to me. I still recorded them, for posterity, and perhaps to examine later for any EVP.

After the recording ended, there was no longer any room for rationalization.

I remember turning toward the place where the door should have been and finding only the same dark pink wallpaper. The windows were gone too. There was no longer any connection between that room and the outside world. I was simply inside it.

I shouted at whatever I believed was responsible. I demanded that it reveal itself, that it speak to me. I don't remember exactly what I expected to hear in response. Perhaps a voice. Perhaps another physical manifestation. Perhaps nothing at all.

Instead, I reached for the recorder.

I told myself that if whatever was inside the house wanted to communicate, it could use my equipment. That was what I had come for, after all. I pressed the button and waited in silence. When I listened back to it, something spoke, using my own voice.

Everything went black.

When I regained consciousness, I could not tell how much time had passed. I was lying on something soft and wet. The air was warm and damp, difficult to breathe, and there was a strange pressure surrounding me. I could not see anything. I tried to move my hands and felt my fingers strike something hard.

My recorder.

I remember realizing that I still had it and thinking, with surprising calmness, that if I died there, perhaps someone would eventually find the recordings. Perhaps the journal I had left behind would give them enough information to understand what had happened.

I pressed the record button.

After that, I remember nothing.

When I woke again, I was in a hospital bed beneath bright white lights. A neighbor had noticed my car parked outside the abandoned house and contacted the police, believing someone might have broken into the property. They found me unconscious at the bottom of the staircase.

According to the doctors, I had probably fallen and struck my head against the wall. There was no evidence of anything else. No missing staircase. No sealed bedroom. Nothing that could explain what I remembered.

I was told I had been lucky.

Perhaps I was.

But I know what happened inside that house.

The recordings are still with me. Sometimes, despite knowing better, I listen to them again. I listen to the voice that came from my recorder, speaking in my own voice, describing things no human being should have been able to know.

I don't know why it spared me.

Perhaps it was never trying to kill me.

The house is still there, standing quietly among the other homes in that neighborhood. Its windows still look out over the street. Its doors remain closed. Nobody has lived there since.

And sometimes, when I think about it, I imagine it waiting in the darkness behind those walls, remembering the sound of footsteps that are no longer there.

Waiting for someone to come inside.