Brett Eland

The house at the end of Foster Lane had always been there, though no one in town could quite recall when it had been built or who had lived in it last. It was narrow, impossibly gray, and slightly taller than seemed natural. People walked past it quickly. Children dared each other to touch the iron gate, and teenagers, in whispered conversations, swore they had seen candlelight flickering behind the drawn curtains late at night.

When Margaret Wilkes moved in, people took notice.

She arrived on a Wednesday, her small Honda Civic packed with boxes, and the town watched from behind curtains and over hedges. Margaret was not particularly interesting—neither young nor old, neither striking nor plain—but she was new, and in a town like this, that was enough.

She shopped at Harlow’s Market on Main Street, nodding politely when Raymond Harlow bagged her groceries but offering little in return. The bell above the door jingled as she stepped out, and Mrs. Carmody, the butcher’s wife, caught her just outside, wiping her hands on her apron.

“That house,” Mrs. Carmody said, her voice low but firm, “hasn’t had a tenant in years. Funny, isn’t it? Always looks lived in.”

Margaret only smiled, adjusting the paper bag in her arms, and walked to her car, its maroon paint dull under the afternoon sun.

As dusk fell, she watched from the parlor window as children were called home for supper, their voices fading behind closing doors. Soon, Foster Lane was still, the town settled into silence. Yet to Margaret, something remained—just beyond the glow of the streetlamps, watching.

The house had a way of holding its silence close, like a secret it had never quite decided to share. The air inside was heavy, thick with the scent of old wood and something faintly metallic, something she could never quite place. The floorboards, warped with age, groaned under her step, but sometimes—when she was perfectly still—she swore she heard them creak on their own, as if someone unseen were shifting their weight in another room.

More than once, she had set down her tea, climbed the narrow staircase, and checked each room, finding nothing but the still air and the faint draft that carried the scent of dust and time.

And then there was the parlor mirror, old and tinted blue, the kind that warped reflections just slightly, turning them softer, almost spectral. In the dim light, her own face looked unfamiliar—her eyes darker, her features blurred at the edges. At first, she thought the shifting shapes were a trick of the imperfect surface, a play of shadows cast by the streetlamps outside.

But sometimes, when she sat in the chair by the window, she caught him in the reflection of the mirror. A man, his figure indistinct, standing just behind her. The blue glass softened his form but could not erase it. Her breath would catch, her pulse quicken. She would turn, quickly, expecting to find someone there.

There was never anyone there to find. But the feeling lingered, a whisper at the back of her mind: she was not alone.

The town kept its distance. Margaret received no visitors, and none of the neighbors brought baked goods to welcome her. After a month, she stopped going to the grocer’s altogether. The curtains remained drawn.

One evening, long after the last shop had closed and the town had tucked itself in for the night, a woman knocked at the door. She was old, with a sharp face and pale eyes. When Margaret opened it, the woman did not introduce herself. She only said, “I wouldn’t stay, if I were you.”

Margaret laughed—just a small, breathless sound. “And why is that?”

The woman looked past her, into the darkened hallway beyond. “It lets you think you’re alone,” she said. “But you aren’t.”

Margaret shut the door. She locked it.

The next morning, the door stood open. Margaret was gone.

The house, as always, looked lived in.