5. Kristin
KRISTIN
Dinner felt more like an obligation than a meal, the three of us gathered around the table, staring down at one of the casseroles that had materialized on our doorstep.
I’d reheated it in the oven and tried very, very hard to pretend it hadn’t terrified me earlier—especially after seeing the woman in the window.
Even thinking about her now made my stomach tighten.
How her face was pressed up against the window like she was studying an animal in an enclosure.
How she didn’t even flinch, like she was waiting for me to notice her and be terrified.
And then she was gone in an instant. I’d run outside, circling the house in my slippers, calling out a shaky hello into the cold, but there was no sign of her or anyone else.
I still wasn’t sure if the old woman was real or if exhaustion was starting to play tricks on me.
The baby monitor sat beside my plate, Henry’s soft snoring picked up by the mic.
Patrick nodded in approval at the spread before him. “This looks delicious. New recipe?”
“No,” I said, keeping my tone light. “A neighbor dropped it off. Actually . . . three of them. They knocked and just left them on the porch. I didn’t even get a chance to meet whoever did it.”
He brightened. “Well, that was very neighborly of them.”
“More like deeply concerning.” Hailey wrinkled her nose, suddenly disgusted by the food. “Should we even be eating this?”
Patrick tilted his head. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“Because I’d prefer my obituary not to say, ‘Death by Random Casserole.’”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Hailey,” I said, flicking my hand in the air as though I could swat away her negativity.
Patrick took the first bite like the brave soldier he was.
“I’m not,” Hailey argued, prodding at her casserole, fork clenched in her fist like a weapon.
“We have no idea who made this. It could be some hoarder with cats, lots of cats, who like to mark their territory. Or people who think washing your hands is a government conspiracy and scratching your butthole is self-care.”
I opened my mouth to reassure her that none of those things were likely and that the food was safe, so she didn’t need to . . .
“Also, Eddie told me not to trust the neighbors,” Hailey added as though this should mean something to her father and me.
Patrick and I exchanged a look. “Who’s Eddie?” he asked.
“A neighbor.”
Patrick raised a brow. “Isn’t that a tiny bit contradictory? A neighbor warning you not to trust the neighbors?”
“Yeah, well . . . he’s mysterious.”
I groaned. “Oh God, that’s teenager code for ‘hot.’”
Hailey’s face flushed as she let her fork clang onto her plate. “No, it’s not!”
“It absolutely is,” I jeered back, smirking at her.
“It’s not!”
“Mm-hmm.”
“He also told me a family was murdered in this house. So what do you have to say about that? What’s that code for?” She jutted her chin out, pleased to have a perceived one-up on us.
Patrick and I stared at one another, searching the other’s face for some reassurance that surely we would have learned that through the home-buying process, that we must have just missed it on a piece of paperwork or didn’t catch it at the end of an email.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Patrick said, pulling his lips in.
“I thought you taught history, Dad. Shouldn’t you know the history of this house?”
The last thing I wanted right now was a conversation drifting anywhere near murders or strange histories. The house had already been gnawing at my nerves all day. The odd creaks, the whispers I kept telling myself were drafts, or the lights flicking on when no one was near the switch.
“I teach world history, not Tillington murder history,” Patrick said.
Before Hailey could latch onto the word murder and ask questions I wasn’t prepared to think about, I cut in. “Speaking of teaching.” I forced a smile. “How was your first day at school, Hails?”
“It sucked,” she said without looking at me, prodding away again at her untouched casserole. “How was your day, Mom?”
For a moment, my mind sifted through the truth, well, my truth.
I knew it would make me sound like the version of myself I’d been in the city—freshly postpartum, jumpy, unsettled by everything I couldn’t explain.
I chose to lie instead. “It was good. I got a ton of unpacking done because Henry napped like a champ.”
Patrick lit up. “That’s amazing. See? We’re settling in, we have friendly neighbors, and Henry already feels comfortable here. I told you everything would be—”
The house went pitch black in an instant.
Hailey let out a yelp but then smothered it with a deadpan quip about the vibes being off.
“I’ve got it,” I said, pushing back my chair. “I was downstairs earlier, so I know where the breaker is.”
“Are you sure, honey?” Patrick asked like he wanted to let the room know that he would be happy to step in as a man and venture into the dark.
“Yeah, just stay here with Hailey.”
“Great,” she said. “Dad and I can die together. Love that for us.”
Patrick sighed. “Why do you always go straight to death?”
“Because if you assume death, you’re never disappointed.”
I grabbed the flashlight from the junk drawer, one of the few things I’d actually put away today, and made my way to the basement door. As soon as I cracked it open, the cold, damp mildew smell hit me. The flashlight flickered, already regretting this journey.
The basement was unfinished with wooden beams exposed overhead and a cracked concrete floor.
Spiderwebs stretched across the space like abandoned decorations.
Then something darted across the floor .
. . a mouse fleeing the light. I flinched but quickly reminded myself that it was far more afraid of me than I was of it.
The flashlight beam bounced as I walked to the far end of the basement, where a side door concealed more utilities.
Inside I found the breaker box and shelves filled with old paint cans and spare light bulbs that looked straight from Edison’s lab.
I reached for the breaker, and as my fingers grazed the metal, something swept across my back.
I whipped around so fast I nearly dropped the flashlight, but there was nothing—just the dark and the smell of old stone and damp earth.
Then something rolled across the floor toward me, the sound starting faint, almost as though it didn’t want to exist, but growing in volume the closer it got, before finally tapping against my shoe.
The flashlight shook in my hand as I pointed it at the floor.
A small plastic head stared back at me, round and hollow.
The kind that once snapped onto a Fisher-Price Little People body.
Its painted face had faded with time, the eyes dulled to dark pinpricks.
The smile—if it had ever been one—curved the wrong way now, turned downward into a permanent frown.
I followed the path of the sound, back to where it came from, sweeping the beam up slowly into the far corner.
Pitch-blackness gave way to illuminated concrete, inch by inch, until something else materialized.
Two black curves, followed by white, then the shine of buckles across the front of a pair of children’s shoes.
I stopped, not wanting to reveal any more of what might be standing there in the dark.
But ignoring it wouldn’t make it go away.
I tried to steady my hands as I let the light continue to crawl up, revealing a pair of small legs standing still, nothing but pitch black above them.
A few more inches revealed the hem of a skirt and the tips of pale white fingers, dangling at its sides.
I couldn’t make myself lift the light any higher.
My brain screamed run. Instead, I quickly turned around and slammed the breaker switch up.
The basement lights burst on as I snapped back .
. . but the corner was empty. No shoes. No legs.
I looked down at my own feet, and the small plastic head was gone.
A scream tore through the house—and then another. I spun and bolted toward the stairs.
In the kitchen, Hailey was hunched over the sink, retching hard enough that her whole body shook. Patrick stood frozen beside the table, the color drained from his face. He wasn’t looking at Hailey; he was looking at the casserole . . . or at what the casserole had become.
The surface rippled like something was breathing under the cheese. It split in the middle, and a pale knot of maggots erupted from beneath the crust. They slithered over one another, their bodies bloated and glistening as they gorged on the rotting food beneath the surface.
My face twisted, and I stumbled back. The smell hit a second later, sweet and rotten at the same time. “Oh my God,” I gasped, my stomach rolling.
“I . . . I just . . . I just ate that,” Patrick whispered, pointing a shaking finger at the dish before gagging into his napkin.
“And I almost ate that,” Hailey said, dry heaving again. She gripped the sides of the sink like she was bracing through a storm.
The baby monitor crackled sharply, and a low voice growled through the static. “Leave now.”
I sprinted to the monitor and snatched it from the table, bringing it up to my ear. “Patrick, did you . . . did you hear that?”
He blinked at me, still pale, still horrified. “Hear . . . what, Kris?” he asked through gags.
I looked to Hailey, who appeared dazed and miserable, staring into the sink basin.
“The baby monitor! Someone said, ‘Leave now.’”
They gave each other a confused look before turning to me and shaking their heads.
“If anything said ‘leave now,’ it was my stomach,” Hailey muttered, somehow still managing full snark despite her dry heaving.
“Hailey—” Patrick warned.
“What? She’s the one that served us maggot casserole for dinner.”
Patrick exhaled and shook his head. “Kris, we’re not uprooting our family again over a noise on a baby monitor.”
He softened immediately, like he regretted the words even as he stood by them. “Go check on Henry.”
I nodded, but my eyes lingered on the baby monitor that I had cupped in my hands.
I’d heard it, beneath the static, a warning or maybe a plea.
But exhaustion was a sculptor, carving nightmares out of nothing.
Postpartum fog could turn shadows into shapes, silence into whispers.
I knew that. I’d lived that. Even as I forced myself to turn away, the words stuck with me.
Leave now. Maybe I should have listened.