Chapter Text
It looked like a normal house. Well, relatively normal. It was small, one bedroom and one bathroom. A living room and small kitchen with a laundry closet. Only a little bit bigger than a one bedroom apartment. Nothing fancy. It wasn’t ridiculously close to campus, but it was within reasonable biking distance and in a decent neighborhood. So why was it so cheap?
The rent for this house was so cheap it would almost end up being less expensive than living in a dorm, even with paying for utilities, and it didn’t look nearly terrible enough to justify that. As far as he could tell the AC and electricity worked fine and the water wasn’t brown and didn’t smell weird. He didn’t want to ask the landlord why the rent was so low out of fear that that would prompt them to raise it, and he didn’t want to look into the property’s history because he was pretty certain that even if he found out that every single previous tenant had been murdered here in their sleep with an ax he’d stay anyway. He was just so tired of looking for a place to live.
He’d lived on campus for his first semester but his dorm was a small cramped space lacking all but the barest amenities and with a bathroom that had to be shared with way too many other people. And on top of that he and his roommate had caused plenty of problems for each other. Also, he’d found it was impossible to get any homework done or get any sleep with everyone around him loudly partying or drinking or screwing or setting off the fire alarm or doing all of those things at once. One Saturday he had awoken to find that someone had ripped the exit sign out of the ceiling and he’d known at that moment that he needed to get out of there. The next semester he had moved back home and tried commuting but it was too far to ride his bike and the public transportation in the area was unreliable, crowded, prone to breakdowns, and generally filthy. Plus, it gave him motion sickness.
Finding this place had been a godsend, he’d be able to bike to campus without having to wake up so early he’d have to skip breakfast and end up passing out on on the sidewalk on the way to class, and he’d always have a quiet space where he could do his homework and sleep at night. So, all in all, Ling Yao was pretty sure wild horses couldn’t drag him out of this house.
After his friends had helped him move in and he had gotten everything unpacked he still had a few weeks of summer break left to settle in and enjoy doing nothing before the fall semester started. He hadn’t found any glaring problems with the house while he was getting everything set up and he had decided not to actively search for them, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth. As he sat on the couch eating leftover pizza and scrolling through Netflix to find something to watch he came across the paranormal thriller show that the Elric brothers had insisted on watching when they took a break from unpacking to eat lunch. Ling had nothing better to watch so he put it on.
So a couple of hours later when the lights in the house started flickering wildly he jumped but told himself he was being paranoid. If some wiring problems were the only reason the house was so cheap then that was perfectly fine by him. He got up and turned all the lights off, the tv was bright enough to see the room by anyway. He sat back down and resumed his show. A few minutes later the lights turned themselves back on and flickered more before turning themselves off.
“Okay. I’m going to bed. And no more spooky tv.”
Ling all but collapsed on top of his bed, it had been a long day and he was more tired than he thought. But after getting comfortable he found himself a bit anxious at the thought of closing his eyes.
“Of course I’m nervous.” He muttered to himself. “First night in a new house, first time living on my own, I just need some time to get used to the place. There’s absolutely nothing to be scared of.” He closed his eyes and tried to drift off into sleep. After a few moments he opened his eyes again.
“Dammit.” He jumped up and unscrewed all of the lightbulbs in the room before getting back into bed.
He lay there a moment and again tried to sleep. The room was dark enough to keep him from seeing anything and it was pretty quiet too. Dead quiet. Ling could practically hear his own heartbeat. He angrily tried to get it to slow down.
Then a floorboard near his bed creaked and he let out an embarrassingly high pitched noise of surprise. He muttered some curses to himself and pulled the covers up over his head. Then he reached over to his nightstand drawer and felt around until he found the small stuffed animal he kept there purely for sentimental reasons. He held the little lion close to his chest and pretended he was still in his childhood bedroom in a house full of people who could protect him instead of all alone. Then he was finally able to fall asleep.
……
He woke up the next morning after dreaming that he’d had to fistfight a ghost and vowed to never again watch anything in the supernatural horror genre. As he was walking to the kitchen to get breakfast he heard his phone start to ring, and answered it.
“Hey…Yeah, the house is fine so far…Just some trouble with the lights but it’s nothing compared to the trouble with everything that I had living on campus…No, it’s okay, I can handle it…I don’t need anything…I will…I know…Yeah…You too…Alright. Bye, Lan Fan.”
As he was about to hang up a burst of static screeched through the speaker, making him drop the phone in surprise. He clenched his teeth and purposefully ignored this, picking his phone back up and grabbing a bagel. The lights in the kitchen started flickering as he walked towards the toaster so he turned around and walked to the couch. He put on some reality tv and ate the bagel untoasted. The rest of the day passed without any more unusual occurrences, but he still avoided the electronics in the kitchen just in case.
……
The next day he started feeling cold spots. He got a blanket out from the closet. The lights kept flickering. He took out all the lightbulbs and let the house be illuminated by just the tv and sunlight from the windows. The creaking of the floorboards and door hinges and the rattling of the pipes made strange and sinister noises, and they often sounded like laughter. He started playing loud music to drown them out. He opened the fridge one morning to discover that all of his eggs had been smashed. He had been reluctant to try using the stove anyway. He also learned quickly to expect any can of soda he kept in there to have been shaken violently just before he opened it. He started drinking more water. The coffee maker was unplugged and stored in a cabinet under the sink as a precaution, he never once attempted to use it.
One time, when he got out of the shower and wiped the fog off the mirror he thought he saw a quick glimpse of a shadowy figure with a monstrous red face standing behind him. He yelped and turned around but saw no one. He started to avoid looking into mirrors as much as possible and did his best not to react the times when he did see the figure behind his reflection again.
If I can deal with 6:00am fire drills and 3:00am actual fires then I can deal with this. Ling thought to himself. I can’t let myself leave the most convenient house in the world just because it’s spooky and I’m stressed and overreacting.
He continued stubbornly ignoring all of the strange activity and pretended like everything was normal.