Guests

I am woken up from a deep sleep by the sound of the front door downstairs unlocking and creaking open. Unfamiliar sounds waft into my home. I am groggier than I ever have been.

“It’s huge!” I hear a woman’s voice say. I beam with pride. Her companion coughs.

“And so dusty. And full of cobwebs. We’ll have to get the cleaning crew in here first thing.”

I frown. I have always been proud of my family’s home, and to hear someone disparage it like this makes me defensive.

“Well, that’s what happens when you let a place go to ruin for this long.”

I’m trying to piece together what is going on, where I am, who I am.

I am Laura. I am eighteen years old. I am in my bedroom, in my bed. I am safe. A splitting pain shoots through my head as I remember the last sensation I ever felt; the cleaving of my skull, the spray blood across the face of—that part is blank. But I know for certain that I am dead. Just like Mom and Dad and Andrew. We stayed in our home after the incident. We could guess why.

We tried to carry on as normally as we could, but over the years we got bored. You can only watch so many TikTok videos, play only so many games of Scrabble. Dust all the furniture so many times, and for who?

After the search for our bodies was given up, the crime scene tape rolled up and put away, the news vans drove off to the next most interesting grisly murder scene. We became urban legend. I read about us on social media for years, but eventually that interest faded too. The sites that had seemed so ubiquitous in my life eventually crumbled as well. I don’t know what they were replaced with. No one bothers to tell us these things because no one visits. Not for us, anyway.

Once our phones and laptops stopped working, once there was no more WiFi for our router to connect to, it became impossible to keep track of time and the passing of the years. The punk kids who used to dare each other to throw rocks through our windows became punk teenagers who brought their dates in here with blankets and pillows and pilfered wine to have sex in our living room. Chasing them off was the only real fun we ever had as a family anymore, a replacement for game nights that we barely remembered.

Maybe we got a little too enthusiastic about it because eventually even the punks stopped coming. Those teenagers grew up into ambitious adults who moved out and on to other cities and lives.

Eventually I assume they became grandparents and great-grandparents who got to die peaceful, natural deaths that allowed them an eternity of real rest.

We discovered pretty early on that we were unable to leave the premises of our homes, so it didn’t bother us when a chain linked fence was erected around it and then later replaced with a barbed wire fence. We didn’t need food or water. Couldn’t eat or drink anyway if we wanted to. But we could sleep indefinitely. We started taking long naps. Longer and longer.

Eventually I think I had stayed asleep for decades. Maybe centuries? Or only a few years, it was impossible to know.

I imagined myself as a beautiful, enchanted princess waiting for a kiss. It was a much better story than being a boring old ghost.

But it was a breath of fresh air to hear real human voices enter our home. I had so many questions: Why were they here? What year was it? What was the world like out there? What plans did they have for this big, crumbling, tragic building?

Remembering now with clarity everything about my purgatorial existence, I allowed myself to slip down through my bed, through my floor, through the ceiling downstairs as if through a deep swimming pool whose depths extended to the ground floor.

I stared with wonder at the couple before me. They had to be in their 30’s. She had beautiful, shiny hair. Impossibly straight, smooth, and chopped close about her shoulders. Her clothes hugged her body with unnatural perfection, rippling in the sunlight to flatter her every move. She wore impossible high heels that shimmered and shifted as if the very molecules that made them up could anticipate the weight and cushion she needed as she moved her body and adapted to the demands of its motion.

Briefly, I wondered if she was an alien. How long had I been asleep?

Her eyes were the strangest of all. They were a deep blue, like the sparkling lake in a mountain forest with a bottom that no one had ever touched. I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and touched her hair. It was even softer than it looked. She jerked away from me and shivered.

“This place is creepy,” she said to her companion. “And freezing.”

Harsh but fair, I thought to myself bitterly.

I turned to him. He had the same strange, rippling clothing. His skin was tan and perfect. Despite his age, there wasn’t a single flaw nor blemish. I suddenly realized how lonely I was and was shocked that I could still feel desire for this living body.

I had been eighteen when I died, but years had passed since then. If we slept together, I mused, would he be the creep? Or would I?

“Laura!” a sharp voice barked behind me.

I turned with as much attitude as I could muster, irritated that I could never escape Mom’s bossiness and—unlike living teenagers—had no hope of ever doing so in the future.

“What, mother?”

“Get away from them,” she told me, and I watched the wind from her voice blow back the hair on the newcomers’ heads. The smaller hairs on the woman’s arms prickled.

“Drafty in here,” she said as if to reassure herself, rubbing her hands up and down her arms for emotional protection as much as a futile attempt to try and get warm.

I smirked with knowing. I was close enough to sense her fear, and it made me feel powerful.

“It’s daytime,” I told Mom. “They can’t see me.”

But I could see on the worried looks they cast one another that they could feel our voices as otherworldly breezes in the cold, dark, spooky house and that they were already questioning every decision that had led them up to this point. Tonight was going to be so fun. I hadn’t realized how bored I’d been. How much I had needed this. My soul stretched with delight like a kitten looking for attention.

“Family meeting in the attic,” Mom told me firmly.

“Fine,” I groaned, but before I floated over to follow her, I couldn’t help it. I slammed the front door shut behind them. I clocked the lock too, just for good measure.

She screamed.

I could hear his heart pounding violently.

“Laura!” Mom said again, a more forceful gust matching her more forceful tone.

“Cominggggggg,” I whined, leaving our terrified new victims behind me. For now.