Don’t Follow the Footsteps
There’s footsteps in the hallway. One soft shuffle after the other, padding across the carpet and down the stairs. They aren’t very loud, only last for a few minutes, but I can hear the floorboards creaking and the whisper of weight on each step.
Someone is pacing. Someone is moving in the dark.
I don’t know who lived here before me. I used to try and call up the last owners or find an emailing address or information online, but every phone call ended in a disconnected mailbox. No one ever tried to contact me back.
Before that I would wake my boyfriend up with a sharp shake and a hiss in his ear to call the police. We’d go inspect every inch of the house with a baseball bat at the ready and the cops on hold. We wouldn’t find anything.
It would only be more empty rooms and silent halls and my boyfriend eyeing me warily when he didn’t think I was looking.
Once I placed a string with a bell on it across the hall, and waited to hear it go off in the night. It never did ring. All I heard were those steady steps going down, down the hall and down the stairs. Pacing.
Brody is gone now. We never could make it work after I noticed that first look. I’m selling the house in less than a week. I don’t mention the footsteps or the creaks or the fact the faucet will sometimes turn on without me touching it.
I have one last week left to endure it.
Creak, something moves in the hallway.
I squint my eyes open and I glance toward the clock. It was 1am.
Something moves in the hall.
“Enough!” I spit between clenched teeth and shove my quilt down. It didn’t matter that Brody wasn’t there. I hadn’t slept well in weeks. I picked up our baseball bat and stomped toward the door. “I’m not afraid of you!”
I huff, red-faced, but when I swing the bedroom door open the hallway is as it has always been. Empty. Sound of footsteps gone.
“Ugh.” I groan and lean my head back. And then I hear it: the steps are almost down the stairs and to the front door. “Not this time!”
My bare feet prickle as I launch myself at the stairs and take them two at a time with a study thud, thud, thud, my own steps so much louder in the night.
When I make it downstairs the front door is open.
I growl and with a battle cry launch myself out onto the lawn. I turn left and right and spin around in circles, but the grass and sidewalk and driveway are nothing but stiff backdrops bathed in moonlight. Nothing is there.
I pull at my hair. “I can’t believe I’m going crazy! Like this!” I’m about to start swinging my bat wildly into the empty air when I hear it again: a creak. From the top of the stairs.
I turn around swiftly and stare at the house. And for a moment I think my eyes are playing tricks on me.
The two front windows on the second story are dark as velvet. Dark except for a moment, just a moment, a single prick of light in each one. Two lights, both focused on me.
You know, there’s this belief about ghosts that they are human-shaped. Like memories. Faded photographs of the people they were before. And maybe some of them are. Maybe some of them remember the body they died in.
But why should the soul restrict itself to humanity? I look at the house. And it looks back at me. It’s eyes dark with pupils white as stars in the center.
I blink and the eyes are gone but the curtains are fluttering inward. The door is hanging slightly more open. The shadows are gently and ever so slightly waving me back in.
I turn on my heel and walk down the street without looking back. I don’t stay in that house another night before I move out the next week.
I leave a note for the next family: don’t follow the footsteps.
But I’m not sure they ever get it. After all, I disconnect my phone after the first call with nothing but soft creaks on the other end.
