Chapter Text
I’ve never believed in ghosts. Sure, I act like they can kill you in your sleep when I do tours, but that’s just a gimmick to make some extra cash. It’s also pretty funny to see people clinging to each other as I led them through the bright, welcoming halls. I’ve been working there for years and had not once seen a ghost or anything odd, but everyone thinks that they’re special and that they’ll be the chosen one to see a ghost. But no one’s special. All the tourists know, at least in some part of them, that it’s all stories. All lies. But they pretend to believe, because they need something to tell around the campfire. Something to mistake their fears for. Something to swear that they saw in the shadows. Because if not malevolent phantoms, what else?
“Right this way, people. Watch out for the middle step, people fall down there and snap their necks… occasionally." I just stepped on it while talking to them, while walking backwards, but of course the group’s eyes widen, unsurprisingly, because it’s a group of parents and their snotty three-year-olds. “I’m kidding. Not really. Let’s go.” Always gotta keep ‘em guessing. I turn around so that they won’t see my grin. Everyone who goes on these tours is obsessed with ghosts, but everyone’s greatest fear is becoming one. (And haunting this dump for eternity.)
It’s hardly a dump, with all of the care that goes into keeping it nice, but that never matters. People have already made up their minds about what a “ghost house” looks like, and so they always look for the worst when touring ours. A single speck of dust triggers their vision of a dark, decaying, grime-filled house with boarded up doors and windows, no matter how hard our staff works to keep it pleasant-looking and bright. I always say that we should just let it decay, because people only come for the paranormal part anyways, but no one ever listens to me.
I end the tour by dropping them off outside; it looks close to rain and the sky is a light gray. “Remember to never die on this property, or you’ll make another of our many terrors!” I drop a plastic cup on the ground; it thumps against the soft spring grass and nearly topples over before regaining its balance. “And as always, tips are appreciated!” I get about 20 bucks in tips, so better than usual. Probably from that quip about the broken stair.
As the group slowly disperses to probably do other tourist-y things, like buying a ton of tacky merch from some random gift shops, I take a minute to stop and look at the house in its full. It always seems to shine, even on days as cold and melancholy as this one. The groundskeepers throughout the years have put in their fair share of work keeping the house well-preserved, spending hours touching up even the tiniest paint chip or tending to the gardens that run from each side of the house to the small picnic area in the back. Taking the time to view the beauty of the house always reminds me of why I’m still here, and the day that I first fell in love with it all. Everything from the slopes of the roof to the tile colour had been perfectly selected hundreds of years before, and it’s one of the only things that I can truly see the allurement in, and why the original owners were so eager to wait nearly a decade for it to be built.
I make my way back into the building and slump down on a wooden chair in the parlor. The parlor is filled with too many mismatched patterns and colours, and it simply screams Victorian. The heavy red curtains on the large windows are drawn halfway shut, allowing thin rays of sunlight escaped through the clouds into the room, to lay on the lace tablecloth.
No one ever leads tours through here, maybe because it’s the one part of the house that’s been perfectly preserved through time. May would kill me if she knew I was sitting on the original furniture, but I’m smart enough to see the beauty of time frozen, and I always do everything that I can to keep it that way. Kaia walks up to me with a giant smile on her face; unreasonable for such a dreary day.
“So did you add anything new to your act today? That group looked traumatized after you brought them back down.” She sounds way too happy about that. I call it my act, and everyone else does too, because that’s how it is. Fake. Just acting.
“Just some stupid quip about how the middle stair on the east staircase is caving in and people have fallen and snapped their necks.” Kaia looks taken aback, and a little haunted. Sure, it’s dark, but she knows it’s not true. For a second, I wonder if it was too far. I decide not, because they paid to be scared, and I gave them just what they wanted.
No one ever thinks of me as the forgiving type.
I’m not assigned to any other groups later, probably because business has been getting slow, so I go home in the middle of the day. My battered old jeep makes a groaning sound on the highway, but I’m not getting it fixed until it actually breaks down. Though I’m praying that it doesn’t, because there’s no way that I can pay rent and pay off a new car on my salary. I would argue that I’m an expert in my field, but I don’t bother to do research besides quick little facts from the house’s wiki page, which hardly qualifies me as an expert.
I snap back to reality and narrowly avoid running a red light. I spot myself in the top mirror and shake my head a little, simply out of habit. People have pointed it out before, and once Kaia said that I looked like a small animal right after it sneezes. It took all of my self control to not bitch-slap her.
It’s like this every day. Always a repeat of the last. Sometimes I wait for a change, but maybe that would be worse. Sometimes it’s better to just watch life go by, from what I know. So I watch everyone else, and wait; for what, I’m not sure.
Over and over.
I take a group the next day of about 13, more than usual, on a new route. “Now, I don’t usually bring people this way, but you seem to be a bit more of an intuitive group than usual, so I’ll show you.” True. No three-year olds with greasy little fingers that want to touch everything, then cry when I tell them to quit it. About half of the group are teenagers that came together, but they seem genuinely interested in my words and not just the house, which is rare. The other half is a mix of middle aged women and their husbands that had begrudgingly agreed to go on this tour and are panting at the idea of its end. They follow me up the spiral staircase curiously, whispers floating throughout. “One at a time, people! Move off to the side once you get up!” A smile is plastered on my face, and for once, only a little bit of it’s fake.
“So, as anyone who has been listening already knows, this house was built in 1862. We’ve managed to keep almost everything well preserved, including almost all of the furniture, but not even our magnificent parlor has been as frozen in time as our clock tower!” I hold my hands out very showmanly towards the giant clock, literally halted in time at 11:59.
“Now, some people say that this clock was frozen at 11:59 AM, but I think that it just adds a layer to the ghostly history of this house that it stopped less than one minute from midnight, because what are the chances?” This earns a few murmurs of agreement from the cluster. “And there’s an urban legend that the man who designed this house and lived in it, Samuel Pinnon, ordered for it to be stopped permanently at the time of his death, because of course he couldn’t go peacefully and had to feel like he made a big difference.” At the mention of clocks, I checked my watch to realize that this tour was running way over time than they had paid for. I would’ve brought them around for free, but apparently we have to pump as much cash out of them as possible. “Alas, it looks like it’s time for the tour to end. Remember that we have tours running 24/7, so feel free to come back any time!” I lead them down the back stairs so as to not bump into any other tours, and keep spitting out insignificant, stupid facts as I do so. “This used to be the servant’s passages, but they recently remodeled it. This back staircase leads from the third floor to the kitchen, and was frequently used by servants during the Gilded Age so they wouldn’t be seen at events.” I finally get them through the house without crashing into another group, and drop them on the front lawn. “As always, tips are appreciated, and you can request me as your guide if you choose to come back on our website! Thank you for being such a wonderful group.” I bow with a little flourish of my hand and hold out the jar for tips.
“Hey, nice tour,” One of the teenagers tells me as they slip a five dollar bill into the jar.
I don’t reply with anything more than a small smile, but the interaction still lightens my mood.
Not even to lift me up as much as that day, though.