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Jared thought he might have a serious problem.
The house was cheap, but not suspiciously cheap. The realtor was a stout woman who routinely reeked of sour milk, but she was brutally honest about the broken shingles and the bad electrical socket in the kitchen and she gave him a pretty good deal. Jared brought her cookies the day he signed and they ate them outside on the veranda’s creaky swing, shaded from the sunshine. After she left, Jared stood in his front lawn and took in the single crooked shutter and the gray-splattered sideboards and puffed out his chest a little because he was a homeowner and these house flaws were not flaws at all. They merely added to its character.
Coming back inside, he noticed that all of his boxes had been moved to the corner of the room. He really could have sworn he’d tossed them in near the door.
“Huh,” he said, and hummed Nirvana as he dragged his mattress up the steps.
--
There was some kind of problem with the lighting, which was a bit of a bastard.
Jared told himself it was to be expected: realtors weren’t all knowing, not to mention that the house was quite old. Jared had found an entire train case full of dusty black and white photographs and yellowed legal documents splattered with a darkened shade of red. The lights flickered as his fingers touched a sickle, the blade swaddled in a nasty-smelling bit of velvet.
In fact, the lights didn’t stop flickering. They blinked on and off in what Jared privately thought of as a happy manner, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, all dependent on what room he ventured into.
Chad came over and they got high sitting in Jared’s near-empty living room, backs against the peeling wallpaper and feet nearly smacking the 30” Jared had had since college. Chad suggested the flickering was a kind of Morse code and they spent a good half hour attempting to understand the house’s secret message. Nothing really came of it, as both of them were fairly ignorant in codes of any kind. Also, they were high as shit.
Jared woke up the next day with a sticky note on his foot. INTRNT ESSNTAL, it said, WIKI KNWS ALL.
He nodded to himself, as he couldn’t really find a fault with this sort of statement, and then he ate some Cheetoes.
--
The voices came about a week later.
Jared had been living in his new house for almost a month, growing fonder of its creaks and faulty lighting as the days passed. He didn’t really understand the way visitors tended to cross their arms and shiver when they stepped across the threshold, or how they’d stick close to his side when he announced he was leaving a room. The ones brave enough to stick to his admirably expanding selection of seating always had an odd sort of fear in their eyes when he returned, which he found equally curious.
Yes, yes, he told them, sometimes the fireplace (the fireplace!) liked to leak something burgundy and viscous. No, he wasn’t sure what was causing it, but the carpet cleaner he’d bought at Target seemed to work just fine. There really was no need for alarm, but they looked at him with wide eyes, anyway. They might move onto other conversation topics, but someone would inevitably snap their head toward the basement door and ask him, “Did you hear that?”
He hadn’t, and to be honest, he was starting to feel quite left out.
After his guests had gone, Jared took up the habit of opening closets and unused rooms and the basement door with the perpetually cool knob and saying hello. It did feel a bit ridiculous, but if his house was talking, it really only made sense that he should hear what it had to say.
Which is why he was pleasantly surprised when a small chorus of voices drifted out of the vent in his room. He’d been in bed at the time, nearly sleeping, and he rolled to the very edge of his mattress when he realized what was going on. Even being as quiet as he was, he could barely make out the words.
In all honesty, they sounded less than human, so Jared licked his lips and whispered, “What are you?”
The voices immediately quieted down, almost like they were debating what to say. Jared was beginning to worry he hadn’t been polite enough when a small chant started to rise up—unintelligible at first, but growing clearer as the voices rose.
“What are you?” Jared said again, straining to hear. “What are you?”
Hungry, they said.
--
He related this story at the neighborhood barbeque two weeks later, clutching a margarita with not enough tequila. To his surprise and delight, a small crowd had gathered around him, murmuring amongst themselves, and perhaps Jared embellished a bit more than he should have, but the facts were there: he’d been hearing voices in his house, and they were the loudest in the basement.
Naturally, the neighbors were all quite concerned. Jared did the best he could do alleviate their fears by telling them the truth: he didn’t mind the faulty lights or the bleeding fireplace and he especially didn’t mind the voices, only that they wouldn’t shut up. Because they really, really wouldn’t, and Jared was starting to forget what it was like to have a decent night’s sleep.
He told them about the other things, too: the way his keys always ended up on the coffee-table, even when he’d left them in the kitchen; how something thumped around in the attic from time to time, scattering the yellowed papers he’d found on the first day; how the basement door rattled when he entered the room.
The neighbors drifted away rather suddenly, after that. Mrs. Quincy even made the sign of the cross. Jared watched them all go with a confused tilt to his head, and didn’t even realize one person had stayed until he finished his sip of margarita.
“Hi,” the person said, “I’m Jensen.”
“Hello,” Jared said back, quite friendly.
Jensen made an aborted movement toward the bridge of his nose, and Jared got the impression that Jensen had only recently stopped wearing glasses.
“They don’t believe what you’re saying about your house,” Jensen said.
“I know,” Jared said sadly.
“Well,” Jensen swirled around the melting ice in his cup. “I believe you.”
Jared found himself instantly fond.
--
Jensen had more books than anyone Jared had ever known. Jared gave up trying to count them as he sat in Jensen’s living room, waiting for Jensen to come back with coffee. He bounced on the couch a little, testing the cushions, and found them more than satisfactory. He’d have to ask Jensen where he’d gotten it, as Jared had recently decided that couch-shopping was one of his least favorite activities.
“Here you go,” Jensen said, and handed him a mug shaped like Elmo’s head.
Jensen’s own coffee cup was light blue and unassuming, and Jared wondered if the cup in his own hands was either a kind of statement or the product of mere chance.
“Your house has been haunted for years.” Setting his coffee cup squarely on a patch of stained carpet, Jensen pulled a boring-looking book out of a nearby messenger bag. “I read about it the other day.”
Jared highly approved of people who read up on things like haunted houses, and he listened intently as Jensen described what he thought might be the origin of it all.
Mr. Huffs had lived in Jared’s house over a hundred years ago. He was a painter, a marvel at the flute, and in love with a madwoman named Ms. Nettle. Ms. Nettle was also talented in many things, namely convincing herself that she was a witch of the highest caliber. Neighbors heard her chanting mysterious things well into the night; there were several reports of inhuman screams, as if Ms. Nettle had managed to turn her fantasy into something wickedly powerful. Despite several inquiries, no one could find anything more suspicious than dusty corners and shelves. Everything was fine until Ms. Nettle sliced Mr. Huff’s neck with a sickle.
“So maybe whatever she conjured is in your basement,” Jensen concluded, and his eyes were free of anything but excitement.
“Could be,” Jared agreed, and waited until the story settled in his head before speaking up. “This is kind of cool.”
Jensen grinned. “It is.”
--
It was hard not to gravitate toward someone who joined Jared’s habit of greeting empty rooms with a cheery hello.
Jensen came over more often than not, lugging his books in backpacks or in the crook of his arm. He planted himself in the living room and told Jared what he was reading: stories of knights and plagues, an ode to the Fibonacci numbers, the published journal of a gardener in Brazil.
Jensen talked and Jared listened. And then he fell a little bit in love.
--
“Maybe they’re shy?” Jared suggested, pulling the blanket up to his nose.
“Maybe,” Jensen said.
They were on Jensen’s couch, curled up and warding off the sudden chill that had descended upon the town. A documentary on the partial migratory patterns of bluebirds played in the background, and Jared enjoyed the way Jensen’s crappy television had a tendency to flare brighter at random intervals. It felt like home.
Jensen had just mentioned that he’d never heard the voices at Jared’s house.
“I didn’t hear them at first, either,” Jared added. “I thought I was insane.”
“You aren’t,” Jensen said, before he kissed him.
--
The voices had started to make Jared a little grumpy.
“Quiet, please,” he had taken to saying, especially at night. “Could you just be quiet while I sleep?”
Hungry, they always said. Hungry.
Jared explained his predicament to Jensen, who listened as he stirred the soup.
“It’s not that I mind them,” Jared went on. “It’s just that I can’t get to sleep.”
“Then sleep here,” Jensen said, so Jared did.
--
Jensen’s bed was ridiculously comfortable, but as much as Jared enjoyed the thread count and the company, he missed his house.
“There’s not enough squeaks,” he complained softly, and Jensen understood.
“We’ll sleep there tomorrow,” Jensen said, patting Jared’s chest.
“But what about the voices?” Jared worried.
“I’ll be there, remember?” Jensen said. “I still haven’t heard them.”
Jared was the luckiest person alive.
--
They grabbed take-out the next day, and Jensen didn’t mind when Jared accidentally dropped some of the fries in his car. He snatched them up as quickly as he could, tossing them out the window for the birds.
It was a nice evening: they waved at Mr. Michelson as they walked to Jared’s front door, laughing when the neighbor stiffened and backed away. Jensen helped Jared set up the guest bedroom for his mother, who was visiting the next week, and they swept up the dead bugs in the basement.
Nighttime came soon enough, and Jared munched on cold fries as they settled in his bed.
“This is amazing,” he said, and grinned down at Jensen. “They’re quiet.”
Jensen smiled. “Goodnight.”
--
It was all well and good until the voices returned.
Their chanting was loud enough to wake Jared from an amazing dream. “No,” he moaned, when he realized what had happened. “Not again.”
Jared glared daggers at his vent until Jensen woke up too, hair mussed and face confused. “I hear them,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. He took a minute to concentrate on what the voices were saying, then he turned to Jared for confirmation. “They’re hungry?”
“Yes,” Jared said glumly.
Jensen took in this new bit of information before he lunged across Jared for a fry he had forgotten on the nightstand. He tossed the fry near the vent, and they both watched as a thin, sickly gray hand slithered out and snatched it up.
They waited. The voices were quiet.
Jared turned to Jensen with wonder in his eyes. “I guess they—”
“Shh,” Jensen hushed, and put his fingers to Jared’s lips. “Listen.”
Thank you, the voices said.
Jared smiled. Jensen smiled back.
And then they went to sleep.
END