Phrog Spirits
By
Ben Young
Remy heard it again, a shuffling sound. A voice in the back of her mind confirmed it as the kind of noise a ghost might make.
The bedroom was dark, despite the curtainless window, because the moon was new and low in the sky. There were no streetlights here either, unlike the old house. Her house.
This house wasn’t hers, though. This room wasn’t either. They were new and dim, like the moon. New to her, at least. And it seemed dark here all the time, not just in the middle of the night like now.
Remy, eleven years old, was mature enough to know that her lack of sleep over the past four nights (since they moved in) was reaching the point where her mental state could be slipping.
Wear and tear on the gears of her cognition.
She was a bright kid, everyone told her, and her schoolwork reflected this, so she believed it.
But she’d also never felt so tired and restless at the same time, at least not for several nights in a row.
Still, she hadn’t reached a level of psychological fatigue that would have her doubting her senses. Not yet. Had she?
No, the noise was there, alright. And it was the same noise as last night. Only…
This time, it wasn’t coming from the same spot.
The wall where her dad, Bill, had put the mousetrap before he left an hour ago.
She’d insisted on the kind that captured them without hurting them, the humane kind.
Although it looked a bit like a tiny casket, a rectangular box that the little fellow would walk into, tip to one side, and flip the door closed and locked behind him (or her).
Dad told her that with a few dozen acres of forest behind the house, there would probably be mice getting into the basement or the walls at least once a year.
They’d want to escape the cold of early winter, and her room was just so cozy (according to him).
They may even climb up behind the drywall and make a little nest. And it was especially inviting, this old house, because the space between the walls was bigger than most newer buildings.
A “rodent haven” he’d called it. Remy had picked up on his word choice, and the near-imperceptible pause after that, accompanied by a look of recognition he brushed away just a bit too late.
He should have stuck with “mouse” and they both realized it.
“Rodent” implied something… bigger.
Just before they moved in, Dad called some guy named Brett—who he claimed had been a high school friend but they’d fallen out of touch.
Brett was a contractor, and so Dad had spent thirty minutes on the phone griping about all the peculiarities of how this place was built.
The people they bought it from said it had been in the family for three generations, and that “great grandpa” had built it himself, in the 1940s, supposedly “with his bare hands.” Remy knew that was some high degree of exaggeration or euphemism, if not an outright lie.
Still, when that phrase came out of her dad’s mouth, as he relayed the house’s history to her, she’d pictured a crusty old man with an empty leather toolbelt and a pair of construction goggles driving nails into 2x4 studs by punching them with his knuckles.
After that, Dad and Brett had done a walkthrough so they could list all the most important work needed to, in Dad’s words, “bring the place into this century.” Dad wasn't a handy guy, so it was going to take him forever. But they didn’t have much money either, so that meant he’d be spending a lot of time watching YouTube tutorials and making mistakes because he couldn't afford to hire someone to do it for him.
So that was this house. Bad lighting. Small windows, facing away from the path of the sun no matter what time of day, as if designed for vampires.
Big, uninsulated gaps in all the walls. Also, for some reason, “bare hands grandpa” had installed all the electrical outlets upside down and about a foot and a half higher from the floor than he should have, according to Brett.
Oh, and the vents were all in unorthodox places, apparently.
“I imagine we’ll keep finding weird stuff the longer we live here,” Dad had said, just before bed last night. He said it lovingly this time. For some reason she couldn't fathom, this house was working its charm on him. Even as it had the opposite effect on Remy.
She put on her brave face and tried to stay positive though, because she was sharp enough (even though she was dog-tired now) to know that Dad needed this.
Needed a win, after Mom had left. And finding this house at such a good deal, plus the opportunity to fix it up and make it their own...
well, that was looking like just the ticket to boost his spirits.
It could be a rope to pull himself through this hard time.
He’d be safe enough as he played fixer-upper here, she knew that, because one thing Dad definitely was, was careful.
Careful to a fault, Mom had always said.
She would criticize him for never taking risks, never trying anything new, never wanting anything to change.
And then, as Dad put it, she got a wild hair up her ass and ran off.
But strangely Remy wasn’t sad, more relieved because it was clear she’d never wanted to be a mom.
She thought Dad knew that too because he’d wanted to get married, but she never did.
It all hit him hard as evidenced by his big swing in buying this house.
He’d never owned one, and hadn’t proven that he was up to the task yet, but Remy had to admit he seemed motivated, even if that just meant he was finally doing the kind of thing Mom criticized him for never doing, and just late enough to be defiant but not purposeful.
Shfshfshf, the noise came again, pulling her out of memory and back into the dark, desolate moment in this unfamiliar space.
This time it came from another, different place.
Not by the little gray casket-shaped mouse trap.
And not from the adjacent wall where it had been just a moment ago, either.
This time it sounded higher up. Almost above her.
What’s up there? she thought. Does this place have an attic, or a crawlspace between my ceiling and the roof?
Remy reached to her bedside and grabbed the flashlight she’d brought to bed with her.
Pointed it at the wall. Nothing there. Silence filled the room for a few seconds until a low wind came outside, whooshing through gaps in the house’s shoddy construction.
Behind the wind, the shuffling came again, louder, somehow sounding more insistent.
Heavier. Back behind the first wall now, and Remy pointed her light over there just in time to see an eye behind the air vent. She screamed.
***
“But Remy, you couldn’t have seen someone in there,” Dad said.
In the morning, they were both exhausted; it had been a long night after she’d run to his room and insisted on staying.
He hadn’t been able to calm her, so she had slept in his bed for the first time since she was probably a toddler.
It wasn’t like them to argue, but clearly today would be an exception. Tension coated the room.
“Dad,” Remy said, with all the sternness she could muster, “that vent is too low, remember? Brett said so. He said it’s supposed to be up by the ceiling, not halfway down to the floor like that."
“So?”
“So, someone could look through it if they were short, or hunched over.”
“That’s not what I meant. Behind that cover is a metal duct that’s way too small for a person to fit in.”
Who said it was a person? she thought. “The only thing we know about this house is that it wasn’t built right. What if there isn’t a duct where there’s supposed to be one?”
“Then your room would be a thousand degrees.”
“I saw it, Dad. It was there.”
“I’m not doubting that you saw something, I just think it was a shadow. Your mind playing tricks. Think about it, Rem. We’re in an unfamiliar place, it’s dark. I’m sorry this has all been so hard on you, but there’s nothing in the walls.”
“Except maybe rodents?” she asked, arresting her arms halfway to shoulder height, on their way to provide air quotes without her permission. Mocking him wouldn’t help, but she was too frustrated. Dad wasn’t usually this dismissive of her. He must have a lot on his mind, she supposed.
“Mhm,” he said, his focus on the toaster as it ejected a pair of bread slices and he reloaded it.
“I’m serious. I saw an eye looking out of my wall last night.”
He laughed. He actually laughed. She’d been scared out of her mind all night and refused to talk about it so he could sleep, even though neither of them did, and now he was laughing at her.
She felt more like a little kid in that moment than he’d ever made her feel.
Helpless. She had no other recourse than to tell him, but no way to make him believe.
“The house is not haunted, Rem,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the realtor would’ve said that.”
“Dad, haven’t you ever seen a scary movie?” she asked, before realizing that would hurt her credibility. But once she’d let it slip, it was too late to not commit. “Did they tell you why this place was so cheap?”
“As a matter of fact, they did. It just happens to be a buyer’s market right now and it had been vacant for two years. So they were desperate for any offer.”
“Did they tell you any of the history?”
“You’ve heard that, Rem. It was a pretty unorthodox building process, but other than that everything is on the level.”
“No, I mean… What happened to the family? Why did they leave?”
He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Didn’t you ask?”
“No. That’s not something we’re entitled to know. All I know is that the bank had taken possession of it for nonpayment. That’s a big reason why it was so cheap.”
“But where’d they go?” she asked. “Like… did they move out? Or did they die?”
“I don’t think anyone knows what—”
“No one knows?!” she interrupted. “There was a family here and they… vanished?”