Buyer Beware

She can’t forget the sme

She shuffles from room to room, impatiently following the flow of people, mirroring the steps of their polite dance.

Move to the side to allow another person to pass in the opposite direction.

Press your back against the wall to make a space.

Pause to let someone step out of the doorway you’re about to go through.

She wasn’t expecting it to be this busy, but she should’ve been. The newspapers say there’s a housing crisis. This property is in what they call a premium location. And until you see its condition, you might be under the mistaken impression that it’s reasonably priced.

But she’s grateful for the crowd.

She can hide in it.

It also meant that, when she arrived, the man in the too-tight trousers wielding a clipboard at the door only had time to glance at her, ask for a name – the fake one she’d given when she’d registered – and brusquely check it off his list. She’d had a story prepared, but was relieved when she didn’t have to offer it.

The less interaction, the better.

As she lets the human current carry her around the house, she wonders if anyone else in here can sense it.

The icy finger of a draught that can’t be traced to an open door or a cracked window.

The crushing heaviness that settles on your chest. The air’s electrical charge, as if somewhere a television is switched on, but muted and not tuned to any channel.

The feeling that, if these walls could talk, they’d scream.

When she finally reaches the bedroom, she has it all to herself – a stroke of luck that can’t last long.

It doesn’t look like much. A dreary, empty space with no curtains on its only window and a carpet covered in stains.

But in her mind’s eye, she can fill it with ghostly furniture.

An old mahogany wardrobe whose doors don’t quite meet.

A small double bed. A framed print above the headboard, a watercolour coastal scene.

And a knife on the floor, in a pool of glossy red, next to a waxy body.

She can still hear the scrape of the blade against bone.

She can’t forget the smell, afterwards: wet pennies.

The floral wallpaper is misaligned and plagued with bubbles and creases; she touches a hand to one of the imperfections and imagines more than mere air trapped underneath.

She never believed in anything supernatural and it’s been years since she believed in anything else, but in some corners there are what could be more rational explanations.

Chemosignals, for one. A type of pheromone.

They did a study where participants had to smell sweat collected from the armpits of people watching horror movies.

It triggered a fear response in their brains.

But when it was sweat collected from runners on treadmills, nothing.

Some reptilian part of the brain could smell other people being scared, after the fact.

As if the fear itself had survived.

It made her wonder if, back then, these walls could have absorbed it all – the fear, yes, but the darkness, rage and violence, too. If they’ve been slowly seeping back out ever since, like some kind of olfactory telltale heart.

If, one day, they might tell on her.

She puts her other hand on the wall now too, pressing both palms flat against it. Closes her eyes. Holds her breath.

‘Are you all right?’

She startles at the voice and turns to see a young couple in the doorway, their features pinched with concern.

Hastily, she straightens up.

‘Oh, fine,’ she says. ‘Yes. I just …’ She frowns at the wall. ‘You know, I think it might be damp under there.’

The couple turn to look at the wall the way they were just looking at her.

She brushes past them, pushing out into the hall. There, she rejoins the shuffling river and follows its flow to the other rooms, for show. She takes note of the people around her, the fools who think they want to buy this house.

The thirty-something married couple, trying to maintain poker faces but every now and then risking an exchange of excited smiles.

The two men in jeans and dress shoes, talking loudly about international relocations potential and market rents.

The mousy woman in her twenties who is almost certainly a nurse or a schoolteacher or a civil servant, meekly following her parents around.

She looks at each of them in turn, and she wonders.

Are you the next victim of 1 Delaney Row?