16. Kristin
KRISTIN
Patrick set his bag on the floor, the canvas slumping sideways against the wall. He rubbed the bridge of his nose the way he always did when he was trying to summon patience from thin air. Snow dusted his shoulders, and I recognized the look on his face before he spoke.
“Kris,” he said gently, “we need to talk.”
I knew he wasn’t going to believe me, not at first, not until I showed him everything I’d found. He’d read the articles, the forum posts, and he’d see that the pieces fit together too neatly to be coincidence. Once he saw it laid out, he’d have to understand. He’d have to.
“Good. We do need to talk,” I echoed.
“Great.” He stepped into the kitchen as if nothing in this house felt wrong. “Then let’s all sit down.”
All.
I turned. Hailey stood in the doorway, arms crossed, eyes lowered. She wasn’t annoyed. This was new. She was . . . nervous. And just like that, the air shifted, and my stomach tightened. This wasn’t a conversation. This was an ambush.
Patrick gestured to the table, but I didn’t sit. “Before you say anything, you need to see what I found.” I grabbed my laptop and turned the screen toward him. One of the articles was already open. “There have been multiple murders here. Disappearances. Whole families—”
“I know,” he interrupted.
“You . . . know?”
He nodded, lips pressed thin. “Bad things have happened here, but that doesn’t mean the house is bad. And it doesn’t mean something supernatural is going on. Places collect history. That doesn’t make them dangerous.”
Hailey nodded beside him like they’d practiced this.
The room tilted. This was familiar—too familiar. Two calm faces. One concerned. One resigned. Me standing alone, trying to make something invisible sound real.
Patrick’s voice stayed even, careful, like he was trying not to spook a wild animal.
“We want to help you, Kris. You’re overwhelmed.
Anyone would be. A newborn, the move, a new town, a new workspace.
It’s a lot.” He paused. “So Hailey and I talked, and we’re going to step up more. Take some of the pressure off you.”
I stared at him. This wasn’t validation. This was containment.
“Maybe tonight,” he continued, “you take a nap, and Hailey and I will handle Henry.”
I took a step back.
“Kristin,” he said softly, “we’re just trying to help.”
I turned to Hailey, my last anchor to reality. She was an angsty teen prone to feeling every emotion on the spectrum. She had to have felt it, had to have felt something was off.
“Hailey, you said Eddie warned you about the neighbors, right?”
She half nodded.
“Tell your dad I’m not crazy.”
“Mom, you’re not crazy. You’re just . . . tired.”
“No, I’m not.” It was a lie, because I was exhausted—but not in the way they meant. “You said you didn’t want to live here because of what’s happening. Tell him.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to live here because we’re in the middle of nowhere and I have no friends.”
“Hailey, please.”
She looked at me with something like pity, with the look a doctor gave to someone lying in a hospital bed who wasn’t going to make it. With the look friends and family gave as the police were about to take someone to a state institution as they said, This is for the best.
“I hear you at night,” she said quietly. “Walking the halls. Standing in my doorway. Sometimes for almost an hour.”
The words cracked something open. I wasn’t walking the halls like that. I wasn’t—and suddenly I wasn’t here anymore.
I was back in Chicago. Henry was still small enough that his weight felt borrowed. The front door was open when I knew I’d closed it. The police stood in my living room, calm and polite and already decided. Maybe you left it ajar.
Patrick arrived just as they were leaving. I clutched the baby, shaking, insisting: No, no, I know I didn’t. The spare key hung on the rack, shifted one hook to the right. It was enough to notice, enough to haunt me.
We have to move. They’ll come back. We’re not safe here.
Patrick held me, saying okay. He was always saying okay.
“Hailey,” I said hoarsely. “I do not—”
“It’s okay,” she interrupted. “I looked it up. Sometimes new moms get postpartum psychosis. Or sleepwalk. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. But Dad’s right. You need rest.”
My daughter sounded relieved, as if saying it aloud freed her.
“You’re both wrong,” I said. “You’re both so wrong.”
“There’s no right or wrong,” Patrick said. “We just want you to feel like yourself again.”
“Mom,” Hailey said gently, “you’re not okay—and that’s okay.”
The words landed like stones.
“I am not sick. I’m not imagining this.”
Patrick reached for my arm, and I pulled away. “Listen to me. I’ve seen things. I’ve heard things. Wet footprints. A child in the basement. A woman hanging from the rafter. Whispers through the monitor. The pond . . . there are people under the pond. And Judi Vee. She took our baby!”
“Mom!” Hailey shouted.
“You both saw the casseroles,” I said, pointing. “The maggots. I’m not making that up.”
Patrick sighed. “We talked about that. That woman is confused. Maybe she—”
“Are you even listening to me?” My voice broke. “She was in our house. She took Henry!”
Patrick closed his eyes. “Kristin, I think you should lie down.”
A white-hot bolt of anger shot through me. Of course I should. The hysterical woman always needs to lie down. My own family had decided that I needed managing, and it was obvious there was no getting through to them.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go lie down.”
Hailey exhaled, and Patrick nodded. As I walked down the hall, their whispers followed.
“We’re not going to have to move again, are we, Dad?”
“No, she just needs sleep.”
“Maybe we should call someone?”
In the bedroom, I shut the door and leaned against it, gasping. Was I losing it? Twenty minutes ago, everything had been clear. It was so undeniable. Now Patrick’s doubt crawled under my skin, and Hailey’s words replayed in loops.
I cataloged it all—the footprints, the splitting maul, the whispers, the pond, the windows, the little girl, the rafter, Judi Vee.
“It’s postpartum,” I whispered to myself. “It’s stress. It’s sleep deprivation. It’s—”
I almost believed it. Then I remembered the forum comment.
That house should be bulldozed or burned down.
And something clicked. It didn’t matter whether this house was cursed or haunted or simply poisonous. It was dangerous. To Henry. To Hailey. To Patrick. To me. And I was done waiting for permission to act. I stood, calm settling in like a decision already made.
“I’ll get us out,” I whispered to the house. “And I’ll make sure you’ll never hurt anyone again.”