Chapter Text
The moon was nearly directly overhead, a little over half-full; its delicate silvery light cast an eerie glow on the treetops as Rey Johnston walked home alone.
She passed like a phantom from the orange flicker of one streetlight to the next, subconsciously quickening her pace in the darkness between them.
She hated this. Not just the act of walking back to her shabby, one-room basement suite alone in the middle of the night. She hated the way her every footfall echoed back to her off the cold sides of the houses which seemed to leer at her as she passed. She hated how the gnarled, leafless branches of the old elm trees looked like twisted fingers reaching out to grab her. She hated that there was a sharp chill in the air. She also simply hated the town she was walking in.
She moved to the historic town of Gracey two years ago from London, England; bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the prospect of living and working across the pond. At first it had been wonderful. She loved the old manor houses, with their iron gates, sprawling lawns, and retouched exteriors. She appreciated the effortless way that architecture from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries could be blended with modern designs through something as simple as siding colour, window shape, or shingling. It had brought joy to her architect heart to find a community so passionate about maintaining their historical buildings, as opposed to the common desire for destruction seen most everywhere else.
But things had quickly fallen apart for her. Every house was too expensive to rent; there weren’t enough apartments to be had, so she’d had to settle for living below her landlord, Miss Leroy, a strange old spinster with three cats named after her favourite game show hosts; and she worked a boring, grey job at a real estate agency where no one took her seriously and she was lucky to sell two houses a month.
She had slipped rather comfortably into this shroud of misery quite some time ago and had yet to find her way out of it, mainly due to the fact that she had long ago stopped trying.
But even so, walking home alone at night on those ancient streets still unnerved her. The town of Gracey had a peculiar and malicious energy to it that she couldn’t quite comprehend, though she had her theories.
She had done her research before moving from London. What she found should have scared her away, she knew, but somehow it had attracted her instead.
Gracey was a very old town, founded in the 1670s. Over the years following its incorporation, blood soaked the soil upon which the community continued to build. Devastating battles were fought there during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Amerian Civil War. Rey believed the concentrated bloodshed caused by these destructive events, along with the massacre of thousands of Indigenous peoples in the area, left a stained imprint on the land that could not be scrubbed out.
Whether it was an everlasting bloody stain or a curse remained to be determined. Bad things continued to happen in Gracey. People died in mysterious ways; electricity and even animals behaved strangely sometimes. But it was the why of it all, begging to be answered, that bothered Rey the most.
A sudden, damp chill encircled her ankles and she froze, looking down just in time to see a dense, low-hanging cloud of fog slip between her legs. She watched in muted horror for a moment as it crawled along the street, covering the pavement in a gossamer blanket that seemed to pulse and breathe like a living being.
Rey looked behind her as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and gooseflesh covered her body — the familiar feeling of being watched. She could see no one on the street behind her, nor could she see an end to the fog. It was simply a sea of gently rolling clouds, trailing towards her like smoke.
When she faced forwards again, the three streetlights that remained between her and her residence flickered out, leaving nothing but impenetrable darkness before her.
“No way,” she muttered quietly to herself as her heart raced faster. “This can’t be happening.”
Although she felt frozen, and her mind suddenly felt like it was trekking through mud, her legs began to carry her forward into the darkness as though they had a mind of their own.
I’ve just got to get home, she thought to herself. I’m almost there. I’ve just got to get home, and then I can crawl into bed and wake up in the morning to realize that this was just a dream.
Her legs moved faster and faster even though she couldn’t quite feel them, and soon enough she was running as quickly as she could in kitten heels and a pencil skirt. Everything was dark but her eyes were adjusting as best as they could. She could feel the fog growing thicker and rising up her legs. She knew when she hit the driveway to her house, and she could see enough to follow the narrow sidewalk around to the basement entrance.
With numb and shaking fingers, she pried her tan leather purse open and searched its depths for her house keys. As she was blindly grabbing for them, her phone began to vibrate and blurt out its sharp ringtone, which sounded ten times louder in the dead of night. Rey jumped and let out a small scream, quickly slapping a hand over her mouth.
She squeezed her eyes shut and gave her head a firm shake. “Get a grip, Johnston,” she muttered to herself. “ Please get a grip.”
But who would be calling me this late at night?
She sourced out her phone and her keys, answering the former while she unlocked the door with the latter.
“Hello?” she said, breathless.
“Hello, madam. Who might I be speaking to?”
The voice on the other end sounded like it belonged to a much older gentleman. It was gravelly with age yet still somewhat kind, retaining an air of professionalism Rey had never encountered after midnight on a Thursday.
“Um, well this is Rey Johnston. And who might you be?” she replied warily. She quickly flicked the lightswitch and locked her door once she was inside.
“My name is Luke Skywalker. I’m representing my nephew on this call,”
“Oh? Well, Mr. Skywalker, what can I do for your nephew this late at night?”
“Oh! I suppose it is quite late, isn’t it? My apologies, Miss Johnston. I’m afraid I just don’t notice those sorts of things anymore.”
What things? The concept of night and day? Rey thought sceptically.
“It’s alright. I was working late, so I suppose I can take your call. What can I help you with?”
“I came across your flyer this evening as it was caught in our front gate. It says here you sell houses for a living, is that correct?”
Rey thought his manner of questioning to be odd, but said nothing of it.
“Yes, that’s correct. Are you looking to put a house on the market?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. Are you familiar with the Solo mansion?”
Rey’s heart dropped into her stomach and then just as quickly bounced back up into her throat. The Solo mansion was one of the oldest properties in Gracey: a mid-nineteenth-century home of immense stature, complete with five acres of land upon which there also sat a private cemetery. No one knew who lived in that house, and many even doubted that anyone lived there at all anymore. It was well-known amongst the Gracey locals as being haunted. Teenagers would dare one another to trespass there, only to be scared out of their wits before they even got to the house.
It was situated atop a great hill at the north end of Gracey, overlooking the town. It had often drawn Rey’s eye, from the moment she moved there, and she had never been able to discern why that was. It felt like a mixture of fear, curiosity, and awe; she just never knew which to act on. So she stayed at a distance. Though she could always feel its presence when she turned her back on it, as though it watched her and the town itself with a close, all-seeing eye.
“Miss Johnston? Are you still there?”
Rey gulped. “Uh, y-yes, I’m still here. Sorry. I-I do know of the Solo mansion. Although I kind of thought it was abandoned all this time. Do you mean to tell me you and your nephew have been living there?”
“For many years, yes, we have,” Skywalker replied, somewhat grim. “I’m afraid my nephew and I find it difficult to leave the house for many reasons, none of which are relevant to this discussion.”
“Oh, y-yes, of course,” Rey blinked. Somehow the man’s chastisement got to her, and she found herself feeling sheepish for asking such a silly question. Change the subject. Keep them interested. This could be big.
“So you want to sell it. Let’s talk about that.”
“My nephew would prefer to talk with you about it himself, in person,” Mr. Skywalker said, his tone now back to pleasant politeness. “Would you be available to come by and view the house, say, tomorrow evening, around six o’clock?”
“Um…”
No! Don’t you even think about it! This is wrong! This is all wrong! Her every instinct was screaming at her to refuse, but the part of her that loved architecture, and the secret part of her that even loved to sell houses, were more powerful. She had always been curious about what that house looked like up close and on the inside. Plus, if she pulled this off and got a chance to sell the place, she could make enough money to leave Gracey behind and never return. That alone was enough for her to make up her mind.
“I would love to, Mr. Skywalker,” she replied with a grin. “Six o’clock it is. I’ll see you and your nephew then.”
“Excellent,” Mr. Skywalker answered. “Oh — Miss Johnston? One last thing,”
“Yes?”
“Please be sure to come alone.”
Outside, the fog had mysteriously lifted, and the three streetlights flashed back to life in unison with the drop of the call.