Free Within These Walls by Ania Ahlborn

risers beneath the patter of rain. He leaned against the island and exhaled, his attention drifting over the foreign details of the room.
    He wondered how many people had lived at 101 Montlake Road without knowing what had happened in the past. Who had beengiven the job to pull up the carpet that had grown tattered with age? Had they seen the blight of blood that had seeped into the very foundation of the house?
    Did you recognize what it was? he wondered. Did you stand over it with an appropriate sense of dread? Of course not, especially if the carpet installers hadn’t known the significance of the address. They would have dismissed the stain as something unremarkable and mundane, something as innocent as grape juice or wine. What a party. Lucas’s skin crawled at the thought.
    It was at that moment that, as if picking up on his manner of thinking, the house groaned on its foundation. A series of loud pops came from deep within one of the kitchen walls, the entire room sighing at its lack of emptiness. And while anyone would have written off the popping as nothing but wood expanding and contracting with fluctuations in temperature and humidity, it still gave Lucas the creeps.
    On edge, he pushed himself away from the counter and coiled his arms across his chest. There was an odd energy here. Something didn’t feel right. He flipped off the lights, ready to leave the dated kitchen behind, but it was the shadow in the corner, not the weird vibe of the place, that stopped him in his tracks. There, in a dark corner of the kitchen, was a shadow within a shadow. For a moment he was convinced he could see the curve of a shoulder, the outline of an arm. What the hell is that? Hesitant, he took a couple of forward steps to close the distance between himself and the light switch, inadvertently cutting the space between himself and the figure in half. The silhouette faded with his every step.
    Lucas hit the lights. The corner came up empty.
    “Okay,” he murmured to himself. “Keep that imagination in check.”
    But he nearly yelped in surprise when Jeanie yelled from the upper floor.
    “Dad!”
    Her abrupt calling down to him assured him that this was a bad idea. She’d found something. Goddammit, not even an hour into their first night and it was over. He should have never considered living here a possibility.
    He rushed into the living room while picturing the worst, the impossible. A bloated, rotten body in one of the rooms, somehow missed by cleaning crews, past residents, and the Realtors who had handled the listing for so long. He saw Halcomb’s followers spread out on the living room floor; Audra Snow half-gutted yet somehow still alive. Her mouth opening and closing while she gasped for air.
    But when he skidded around the corner, he saw nothing but Jeanie hanging over the upstairs banister. Her hair framed her face in twin swaths of gold. For half a second, excitement glinted against the green of her eyes. Her mouth turned up into a smile that reminded him of how she used to be, before the blight of his and Caroline’s problems had eaten away at their kid’s happy innocence.
    “There are two bathrooms . . .” Her excitement faded midsentence, as she spotted what must have looked like panic on his face. “Dad?”
    Anxiety had jammed his heart up into his throat.
    “Are you okay?” The lightness of her expression was gone, replaced by leery concern.
    “Fine,” he said, forcing a smile. “Sorry. You just freaked me out for a second.”
    “Freaked you out.” She parroted the words back to him, her worry taking on a far more skeptical intonation. “Why would I have freaked you out?”
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “How do you not know? I just said Dad and you—”
    “I thought something happened.” He cut her off. “Never mind.”
    “What would have happened?”
    “I said forget it ,” he snapped.
    Jeanie blinked at him. Her face went taut with emotion. Just when he was sure she was about to