Jamie stepped out of the taxi onto the gravel driveway. Pebbles popped under the soles of his polished shoes, unfit for countryside like this. He grabbed his suitcase and handed the driver a hundred-dollar bill for the extended trip. The driver gave him a curt nod before turning the car around and driving back down the winding dirt road.
Standing alone in the early evening twilight, Jamie took in the stunning Queen Anne-style house that would be his home for the next week. Surrounded by fields, the Airbnb listing promised exactly what he needed: solitude, a place to reflect and find peace.
He inhaled the scent of hay and maple. No cell phone, no laptop, not even a wristwatch on him. He had left it all behind in the city. This was meant to be a total retreat, a sabbatical to clear his head and, perhaps, find a way to mend his fractured soul.
Simultaneously charming and unsettling in an old-fashioned way, the house reminded him of places he’d seen in his youth but never visited: red clapboard siding, a wraparound porch with a swing creaking in the breeze, and windows that seemed to stare down at him as he approached.
A note pinned to the front door with a brass tack read: “Welcome, Pastor Millikin. Make yourself at home. The key is under the goose. – Margaret”
He looked down at his feet. To his right, between him and the doorframe, sat a hollow ceramic goose dressed in a blue and white apron with a matching bonnet. He bent over and grabbed the thing by its beak. Tilting it to its side, he found a small silver key. He picked it up. Looking back at the note, he smiled faintly, picturing a kind-eyed woman to match the voice he’d spoken to on the phone weeks ago when he’d made the booking. She had assured him the property was the perfect place for solitude.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside. Flicking it on the light, he found a cozy living room. The hardwood floors reflected the soft glow of faux chandelier candle lights. The walls sported an eclectic mix of antiques—weathered farm tools, vintage signs, black-and-white photographs in ornate frames, the kind of things that reminded him of the Cracker Barrel restaurants he had occasionally stopped at on long trips.
Setting his suitcase down, Jamie wandered slowly around the room. The floorboards creaked. A photograph beside the stone fireplace caught his eye: a small, sepia-toned image depicting a vast field of wildflowers amidst tall grass. In the distance, atop a gentle hill, stood a house. It had a porch much like the one he’d just crossed, but it was too far off to see how closely the two homes matched. Still, something about the way it watched over the field both captivated and frightened him.
Shaking off a sense of vague unease, he carried his suitcase upstairs. More squeaks and squawks broke the stillness of the house with each step he climbed. The banister felt smooth and cool beneath his hand. He reached a simple yet inviting bedroom. A small, four-post bed draped with a handmade quilt occupied the center. The nightstand supported an oil lamp that looked as though someone had converted it to electric.
He tossed his suitcase onto the bed and walked over to the window. Drawing back the delicate lace curtain, Jamie’s breath caught as he gazed out at the countryside. There, exactly as in the photograph, the field stretched out before him. On the distant hillside sat the house silhouetted against the darkening sky.
“Wouldja look at that,” he said to no one.
He stood in the exact spot where the photo downstairs had been taken. Even more striking was how the photograph matched, despite being an unknown number of years old.
The view of the house pulled at his attention so strongly it took some effort, but Jamie finally managed to close the curtains. Turning away from the window, he pushed the thoughts of the house aside. He needed to unpack and rest.
The next morning, Jamie woke to the sound of birdsong. He stretched, feeling more rested than he had in months. Morning sunlight filtered through the curtains, casting a gentle radiance over the room. He tossed his legs over the side of the bed, reached for his glasses from the nightstand, and walked back to the window. He wanted the first view of the day to be of that stunning landscape.
As he approached, the curtain fluttered slightly over the closed window. He pulled it aside. His eyes widened at the realization that the house no longer sat atop of the hill, but at its base, closer to the house he was staying in.
“Is that right?”
Jamie was almost certain when he’d looked the night before, the house had been on top of the hill, not at the bottom, just like the picture.
It had been taken from the vantage point of the upstairs window. It would prove whether he was imagining things.
He saw the field, the flowers, and the house—at the bottom of the hill. Exactly the way it looked outside his window that morning. He must have been too tired the night before. His mind was playing tricks on him, obviously.
After going back upstairs to dress, he came down and went into the kitchen for the first time since he’d arrived. There, on the counter, he found a basket of homemade bread, jams, fruits, dried meats, and another note from Margaret, his hostess.
“Thought you’d appreciate some snacks without a grocery nearby. Enjoy your stay!”
After eating, Jamie decided to explore the property. A path led from the red house down to a small pond. He could tell it had receded a bit by the ring of dry, weedy, compacted dirt that circled it like a crown of thorns. He stood at the edge, watching tiny fish dart beneath the shallow surface near the bank. A dragonfly buzzed by, stirring his attention back above the water.
He saw the path winding further away into the field before disappearing into the tall, brown grass. In the distance sat the house from the photograph, nestled at the foot of the hill. The bright noonday sun shone down with brutal intensity, but it was still too far to make out any real details. He felt a flutter in his stomach like he was back in middle-school again, about to pass his crush in the hallway. The house had a strange magnetism. He felt the urge to walk through the field and meet whoever lived there.
But wasn’t that defeating the purpose of the retreat? To be alone, away from the pressures of his congregation. Away from the whispers, the knowing glances. The judgment passed by the very people he was there to shepherd.
Instead, he let the tranquility of the place seep into him. For a while, he allowed himself to simply be. There were no sermons to write, no meetings to attend, no visitations to retirement homes that reeked of piss and death. No elders scrutinizing his every move.
Still, a low boil of anxiety remained. Thoughts of Adam—always Adam, with the chocolate eyes and the pinkest mouth he’d ever seen. Adam, who’d come to him seeking guidance and found something else entirely. The elders gave Jamie the choice: go on sabbatical and work out this lapse with God, or lose his job.
Jamie shook his head. There would be time for that later.
After spending the rest of the day reading, napping, and trying to write prayers in the journal he’d brought (though the words didn’t come easily), Jamie prepared himself another simple dinner and settled into the armchair by the fireplace.
Night fell. The photograph beside the hearth drew his eye again. The flowers in the field. The house in the distance. Something was different, though he couldn’t say what. The house seemed…closer, perhaps? He dismissed the notion as a trick of the shifting light from the glowing embers of a nearly spent fire.
Jamie climbed the stairs to his bedroom. The silver light of the moon was particularly bright through the gap of the curtains. It beckoned to him. He moved toward it and slowly, delicately, pulled the curtain aside.
The silhouette of the house across the field seemed larger than the night before. The moonlight must have distorted the distance, but that was all secondary to the lights on the top floor and the shadow passing by an upstairs window.
Something about it sent a chill down Jamie’s spine. He closed the curtains firmly and climbed into bed. He dreamt of a house-shaped shadow looming over him, growing larger and larger before swallowing him whole. Then he dreamt of Adam.
Jamie woke early. The memory of unsettling dreams washed over him like an ocean wave and then quickly faded into obscurity. The dim sunrise streamed through the window weaker than before. He hesitated to look out but quickly gathered his courage and walked over to peer through the glass.
It was undeniable. The house was closer now, resting just this side of the center of the field. Close enough that he could make out more details.
“This is absurd,” he said aloud.
Investigation was the only way to put his mind at ease. Someone lived there, he knew that now. He needed to talk to them.
Jamie dressed in a hurry. After hustling downstairs, he grabbed a muffin from the basket Margaret had left him and dashed toward the front door. He stopped only momentarily to glance at the photograph. The drifting house was about halfway between the hill and where the photograph was taken.
He set out across the field. The tall grass brushed against his khakis. The morning air, filled with the scent of wildflowers, felt cool against his cheeks.
As he approached the house, the sense of wrongness intensified. The place was in a state of decay. Most of the windows were either boarded up or shattered. Part of the roof had caved in. The front door hung ajar from one hinge. The siding had faded to charcoal, bits of its peeling paint revealing a former scarlet sheen. Overgrown weeds choked the path leading to the front door, rising high around the porch.
Silence hung over the place. No birds, no breeze through the brush. An eerie familiarity crawled under Jamie’s skin as he looked over its architecture. While dilapidated in its current state, he could see that it would have been striking in its prime, much like the one he was staying in across the field.
“Hello?” Jamie’s voice felt small. There was no response.
He couldn’t believe someone lived here. He stepped onto the porch; its wood groaned at his touch. Careful not to knock the door entirely off its frame, he gently pushed it open wider and peered into the dark interior. Shafts of light pierced through cracks in the walls. Specks of dust danced in the beams like a swarm of gnats. The air smelled of mold and the faint, acrid scent of decay.
“Anybody home?” he tried again. Silence.
His judgment screamed against it, but Jamie stepped inside. Debris littered the floor—fallen plaster, broken furniture, piles of leaves and grass that had blown in over time. On the wall, he noticed picture frames hanging askew, faint outlines where others had once been, now long gone.
A sense of déjà vu covered him like a burial shroud. On the wall beside the fireplace hung a small, framed photograph. He moved closer. Wiping off the film of dust that had settled on the glass, he squinted in the dim light at the image underneath.
It was a picture of the red house. His house. The one he was renting. The angle suggested someone had taken it from this very dwelling, and Jamie had a good idea of which window. In the photograph, the house appeared exactly as it was, with a single light glowing in an upstairs window.
Prickles crawled up the back of his neck.
“What in God’s name—”
He backed away, his pulse quickening. The sound of a thud came from upstairs—a door closing, perhaps.
“Hello?” Jamie was louder this time, partially from the urge to be heard and partially from the fear swelling inside him.
No answer.
Every instinct screamed at him to leave. But when he looked toward the staircase, he saw footprints in the dust, climbing each step. Someone had to be in this house, maybe just a squatter perhaps, but someone nonetheless. That, mixed with a whisper at the edge of his consciousness urging him forward, compelled Jamie to ascend the stairs. He placed a hand on the rickety banister and began to climb.
Each step, splintered and warped, moaned in pain under his weight. When he reached the landing, he found a long hallway with doors on either side, all slightly ajar. A rustling sound echoed from the far end.
“Hello?” he called once more, knowing in his gut what the response would be.
He walked slowly down the hall, something grating in his mind about this place. The deeper he explored the house, the more he felt like he’d been there before. His heart pounded more insistently with each step. The rustling seemed to be coming from the last room on the left. He reached the doorway and pushed the door open.
The room was empty, not a soul to be found. Not even a single piece of furniture. But he knew this room as soon as he saw the tattered curtain over the window on the far wall. This was a bedroom. This was his bedroom in the red house. Recognition flooded his mind, like he was coming out of a state of amnesia. The familiarity, the déjà vu he’d experienced—it was because this place was the red house. At least, how he imagined it would look if it were abandoned for a hundred years.
The torn drape blew back from a gust of wind coming through the broken window. For a brief moment, he caught sight of the view he knew he’d find before he even approached. Out the window, from this vantage point, against the landscape sat the red house he’d rented—same as the photograph he’d discovered downstairs.
A sudden chill swept over him. He felt exposed, as if unseen eyes were watching him from every corner and shadow.
I need to leave.
Descending the stairs more quickly than was safe, he hurried out of the neglected house and back across the field. His mind raced with the options before him. He had no phone. No car. He’d need to pack his things and walk to the nearest town. Margaret’s note had said there wasn’t even a store nearby. He tried to remember back to the taxi ride in. How far had they gone after everything turned to nothing but fields and dirt roads? Five miles? Ten miles? It didn’t matter. Jamie convinced himself he had to try.
He scrambled up to his bedroom to grab his things. When he snatched his suitcase from the closet and tossed it onto the bed, as it flopped open, a sound sent dread into the pit of his stomach.
Thunder.
“God, no, no, no, no—”
Before he could make it to the window to look outside, rain started plinking onto the roof. When he pulled back the curtain, clouds for miles choked out the last rays of sunlight. Lightning in the distance flashed; thunder followed. The seemingly endless storm crawled toward him like the end credits of a film, playing a swan song over his plans to leave this strange place and never return.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
Darkness swallowed the countryside. A storm unlike any Jamie had ever experienced unleashed its full fury. Rain battered the windows relentlessly like hammers pummeling the facade. Wind howled through the eaves of the red house, starting at a whisper before eventually reaching a full wail. Just when Jamie thought his nerves couldn’t be on more of a razor’s edge, the electricity in the house gave out.
He built a fire, more for light than warmth. He paced the length of the living room as the flames cast long, dancing shadows across the walls. Thankfully, the antique decor offered access to several candlesticks as well. He used one to illuminate his journal, where he tried once more to pray through the terrifying episode, but the words swam meaninglessly on the pages. His prayers met only with more sounds of the storm. And his thoughts tilted toward Adam. Jamie missed him more than ever before. He would have given anything to be in his arms—to feel protected from this experience.
He decided at that moment he wasn’t going back to the church. The sabbatical had brought clarity, just not in the way the elders probably had hoped. Jamie was coming to terms with who he was—and who he loved.
His daydreams of a life with Adam were shaken off with a start when a bolt of lightning struck close enough to shake the house within its bones. A picture—the picture—fell off the wall by the fireplace and shattered on the floor. He couldn’t stay downstairs. Fear and weariness overtook him. He needed to go upstairs and wait out this storm with sleep.
Clutching a candle for light, Jamie ascended the staircase. The flame trembled. He couldn’t tell if it was from the draft or his own shaking hand. He took a deep breath to ease his nerves. Continuing upward, he took one cautious step at a time.
At the top of the stairs, flashes of lightning strobed the hallway, revealing the closed doors lining the corridor. For a split second, he thought he saw something poised in the shadows at the far end. Thunder crashed immediately after, and the illusion vanished.
He shook his head, chiding himself for letting his imagination run wild. He found the door to his bedroom and slipped inside, closing it firmly behind him. He leaned against the door, exhaling slowly, willing his racing heart to calm.
The room felt cold compared to the space with the roaring fire downstairs. He crossed to the bed and sat on the edge, placing his candle holder on the nightstand. He ran his hands over his face. Rain continued its assault. The wind carried faint, indistinct sounds, almost like far off voices.
He glanced toward the window. The drapery was drawn tight. A pale glow seeped around its edges. It pulsed, too soft to be from flashes of lightning. Couldn’t possibly be moonlight, which the storm would have obscured.
Rising slowly and picking up the candlestick, he moved toward the window. His feet felt like dumbbells, reluctant to get any closer. But his curiosity gnawed at him. He reached out, his fingers brushing the fabric of the curtain. It felt damp and oddly warm.
Lightning flashed again, and Jamie jerked his hand back, his breath catching in his throat.
“Get a grip, Jamie,” he told himself.
He grasped the edge of the curtain and drew it aside.
His gasp was swallowed by the roar of thunder.
The other house stood mere feet away, impossibly close. Almost flush with the red one. The space between the two was practically nonexistent.
But it was the window of the opposing house that seized Jamie where he stood.
In the flickering light of his candle, behind the cracked and grimy glass, faces pressed forward. Dozens of them. Men, women, and children of all ages. Their eyes were wide and terrible, mouths open in silent screams. Hands slapped and clawed at the panes, leaving streaks of condensation that quickly evaporated.
Jamie stumbled backward. His legs hit the edge of the bed and sent him sprawling onto the mattress. His eyes remained locked on the window. The figures’ mouths moved frantically, forming words he couldn’t hear. Some pointed directly at him, while others seemed to be reaching out, their fingers splayed against the glass.
A child clutched a tattered doll as tears streamed down her cheeks. An elderly man pounded his fist against the window, his face contorted in desperate madness.
A woman with dark hair and sunken, tired eyes mouthed two words repeatedly.
Get. Out.
The candlestick tumbled out of the holder and fell to the floor, extinguishing its wick on impact.
Panic surged through Jamie. He scrambled off the bed in the full darkness and bolted for the door. As he wrenched it open, his eyes tried to adjust, and he could see the hallway stretched before him, impossibly long.
He raced down the corridor and barreled down the stairs, nearly losing his footing on the steps. He was done with this place. He would take his chances running to town, storm be damned.
The front door stood ahead, almost beckoning him. He lunged for it. His sweaty hand slipped on the doorknob. Gripping it tighter, he managed to fling the door open and threw himself through the doorway, over the porch, and into the storm.
But instead of the rain-soaked yard, he landed on the living room floor. The wind was knocked out of him from the blow. He lay there, gasping, drowned in confusion.
He scrambled to his feet. His eyes were wild as he spun around and around. The front door was ajar. He could see and hear the storm raging outside—the wind, the rain—but he couldn’t reach it.
He tried again, sprinting toward the doorway with all his might. As he pushed the door open and crossed the threshold, the space around him spun, and he found himself back inside the house, facing the living room.
A laugh bubbled up in his throat.
“This isn’t happening. Wake up, Jamie. Wake up!”
He slapped his own face, feeling a sharp and immediate sting. The house remained unchanged.
Desperate, Jamie ran to the kitchen. Perhaps a back door, a window—anything to escape this nightmare.
He reached the rear of the house and yanked at the back door, but it wouldn’t budge. The handle twisted uselessly in his grasp. He picked up a chair from the kitchen table and swung it at the window. The old panes should have shattered easily, but the chair bounced back like it had hit a brick wall.
“Dear Jesus… oh, God, please…”
Jamie stumbled back into the living room. The dancing shadows from the fireplace seemed to spin around him mockingly. A sob tore from his throat as he collapsed to his knees. He was trapped in a maze without exits.
As he knelt there trembling, his mind wandered back to the figures in the window upstairs. The woman whose lips he’d read had said Get. Out. It wasn’t a demand. It was a warning. All of those people were urging him—begging him—to flee the house.
Where were they now? Jamie looked toward the staircase, blurred through the tears in his eyes. He sprang to his feet and bounded up the stairs, skipping steps as he climbed. He bolted down the dark hallway to his bedroom and ran into the ajar door with the force of a linebacker.
On contact, when the door flung open and he crossed inside, it felt like a television of static had just turned off. The storm was silenced. It had vanished. Sunlight filled the room from the window. It was no longer night. No one was in sight. It was as if he’d just awoken from a dream.
But he knew better.
Jamie walked to the window in slow, deliberate steps, as if trying not to wake whatever hellish monster was putting him through this. He reached out his trembling hand and drew back the lace curtain covering the window he’d become all too familiar with over the past few days. He felt a dreaded sense he’d be acquainted with that window for many years to come.
A tear escaped the corner of his eye and ran down his cheek, like a raindrop on a window, at the sight before him. In the distance, past a field of tall grass and wildflowers swaying in the wind, far below the house on the hilltop where Jamie stood upstairs, sat the red house. It rested there alone and empty. Somewhere inside it, near the fireplace, was a photograph of its monstrous twin atop the hill, too far away to see any details. Too far to see Jamie in the window. Too far to see all of the others gathered around him there, none of them noticing or able to see each other, but all screaming and pleading for the next person to run—to escape their fate, trapped eternally in the house on the hill.
Margaret stepped out of her old pickup truck humming a tune as her feet hit the gravel. She walked up the porch stairs as sunlight bathed the red house in a warm glow. She took the key from her pocket, unlocked the front door, and entered the house. She noted the silence, wanting to be certain that Mr. Millikin had indeed departed earlier that morning when he was due to check out. The living room looked tidy, and she could see no dishes out of place in the kitchen from where she stood. Margaret figured this would be a fast reset before the next booking was due to arrive that weekend.
She went up the stairs and wandered down the hallway. As she did, she peeked into the couple of bedrooms to see which one she needed to change the sheets on. Pushing open the last door on the left, she found the bed unmade, the sheets in a tangled mess. She walked over to it and began stripping the bedding, tossing it into a balled-up pile on the floor.
Something on the nightstand caught her eye—a small, leather-bound journal. She picked it up, running her fingers over the embossed initials: J.M.
Flipping it open, she scanned the entries, the handwriting growing more frantic and disjointed as it progressed. It seemed to be filled with written prayers.
“Always leaving something behind,” she said with a sigh.
She tucked the journal under her arm and bent over, picking up the pile of sheets and pillowcases. She turned to walk out of the room but paused for a moment to look out the window. She moved toward it, pulling back the curtain to let in more light. Her gaze drifted across the lavish field to where the old, mysterious house stood on the hill. A tender smile spread across her lips.
“It really is a beautiful view,” she said.
T.S. Parnell is a midwestern author of genre-bending fiction. Some of his short fiction has been featured in Suburban Witchcraft, Sheepshead Review, and The Belmont Story Review, as well as shortlisted and a finalist in various contests. He is currently at work on his debut novel. When not writing or reading, he can be found exploring local bookstores or sitting in the back corner of a movie theater. He lives in Wichita with his family. Connect with him at tsparnell.com.
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