CHAPTER ONE

This is the first time I’m seeing it.

When Alex came to me frantic and short of breath to say he wanted to quit his job and finally go for his dream of buying and flipping houses, my only stipulation was that he keep me in the dark while he shopped for his first property—no pictures, no address, no details whatsoever.

It was a fun idea, but I didn’t think he would go through with it. It wouldn’t be the first time a bourbon-fueled Friday night plan vanished by morning. Alex has been sitting on a nest egg since the age of eighteen, but spending the money he inherited from his parents might feel too much like moving on.

That’s what I suspect, at least. He never talks about them. The closest he ever comes is daydreaming about buying a house, then sighing and saying, “I don’t know. It’s a big risk.”

I didn’t think this time would be any different. Weeks passed and I forgot all about it. Then two days ago he charged through the door and broke the news in the middle of my stream: “Start packing!”

It took me a moment to process what he was saying, so I just stared at him.

“I did it,” he said. “I bought a house. And you’re gonna freak out when I tell you what the owner said. Apparently someone was mur—”

“No details!”

“Huh?”

“I want to—”

“Oh!”

“—do a live react stream.”

“Perfect,” he said, and just like that a little seed of intrigue had been sown. My chat exploded with speculation. They wanted a true crime arc. A murder mystery to solve. And all at once I saw an opportunity to evolve my channel into something fresh. No more gaming, no more reacting to spooky TikTok compilations, no more covering internet drama, no more watching live LA police chases and rooting for the suspect.

This could be a chance to build an audience for a story while I piece it together and write it. This could be a chance for me to chase my own dream of being a writer.

Forty-eight hours later, I’m standing in a leaf-blanketed front lawn in the middle of nowhere, backing up to the road to get our new house fully in frame, and I can’t believe it’s real. My hands are shaking—from the cold, from this sudden and monumental life change, and mostly from my viewer count: two-hundred and fifty-seven. A new record for me—a seventy-five-viewer Andy—despite the mid-res quality of rural 4G data and only having two days to promote First Time Reacting to MY NEW HOUSE!

“What do you think, chat?”

The house is much bigger than I imagined. Much older. Much more isolated. Giant oaks and maples tower over it on all sides. Two rows of apple trees run between the left side and a barbed wire fence choked in blackberry and honeysuckle vines, on the other side of which is a recently harvested cornfield. From the road I spotted barns and a grain silo in the back, and I’m pretty sure I heard a chicken when we first pulled in.

All around me is farmland. I have every intention of finding out how well this rural 4G data holds up, even if I have to sneak.

My eyes flick back and forth from the house to the view count to the chat.

SinaLeigh94 so creepy

jebaiter007 kentucky fried chainsaw massacre

feenixfred dafuk is going on

hollymoore05 how many bedrooms

user444 Do you like it?

qt314becca show us the inside!

j_cuttermedia haunted for sure

“I guess it is kinda creepy,” I whisper, my words lost to the chilly autumn breeze. Funny, my first impression was quaint, cozy, farmcore vibes, the way a house looks when the narrator says, “No one could have predicted the gruesome fate of those who resided in this quiet country home,” but the chat is saying this house is eerie on the surface. Maybe because Halloween is two days away and they’re in a spooky mood.

So spooky it is.

I feel like a marionette sometimes, marched along by the collective desire of my chatters, always afraid of a drop in concurrent viewers and thus inclined to pander. But upon closer inspection, they’re not wrong. White paint cracked and chipping from the clapboard siding, some of which bulges from the vines that have wormed their way underneath. Sagging roof littered with dead tree branches. Front porch choked in English ivy, likely home to abandoned wasp nests in every corner. Bay window to the left, wreathed by a horseshoe of untrimmed boxwood hedges half-hidden by an overgrown hydrangea shrub that tentacles out in all directions, the rotting remnants of its white blooms littering the ground. Four evenly spaced windows on the second floor that remind me of spider eyes.

I suddenly feel like this house looms, like it might peel and snap off its foundation to lean forward and hover over me, gnashing its wooden stud and copper pipe teeth before it chews me up into a mush of flesh and splintered bone.

“Chat, I love it.”

Good thing I’m not using the front-facing camera. The word love barely squeezed its way out from the lump forming in my throat, like a movie protagonist racing to slide under a closing gate. I just crossed three-hundred viewers, and the chat is scrolling faster than it ever has before, urging me to go inside, so I start to move forward, each crunch of leaves a note of autumncore bliss. Wiping my tears with the sleeve of my hoodie, I take a deep breath, then flip the phone to the front-facing camera, replacing the house with myself in the stream.

I hate looking at myself, but it’s part of the job. Warm, golden sunshine lights up one side of my face, so that’s cool, but my shaded cheek feels icy. Hashtag symbolism. Behind me, leaves tear sideways through the air like a rain squall, littering the tiny unmarked road, beyond which are fields of tall dead grass, woods in the distance.

Stopping short of the porch steps, where leaves have piled up like a snow drift, I pan the camera around for one last look at the farmland. We have two neighbors: a house on a hill surrounded by barns and grain silos, and a single-wide trailer next to an old rusted-metal garage, its yard junked up with gutted-out cars and sun-bleached kids’ toys, beyond which the road dead-ends close to the woods.

“Okay,” I say, turning back to the house, “let’s see what this place looks like on the ins—”

As I’m taking my first step, I freeze like a robot suffering a glitch.

The front door is creeping open.

And I’m falling.

I crash hard on the steps, catching sharp wooden corners in tender places all over my body. Temple, forearm, hip bone, shin. For a moment all I see is black. That’s how I deal with injuries: close my eyes and hope someone tells me it isn’t fatal.

“Oh, shit! Are you okay?”

The door swings open, and Alex crouches over me. I’ve retreated from the steps and am sitting in the leaves, grimacing my way through four epicenters of throbbing pain. The pavers beneath are slimy and cold and dampening the seat of my jeans.

“Freakin’ jerk,” I mutter through clenched teeth.

“Me?” he asks. “What did I do?”

“The door!”

“What about it?”

“You—” My phone isn’t in my hand, I realize. What if the stream ended? I’ll never get that many viewers back. “Sorry, guys, I dropped my phone!”

I shoot forward, fanning my arms like I’m swimming in the leaves, every passing second a missed opportunity to pick up a new viewer because the thumbnail will be nothing but—

My fingertips touch a hard, smooth surface. Plopping down, I hold the phone to my face and inspect it. I’m still live, still at over three-hundred viewers, and the phone is fine. My own comically disheveled state makes me laugh. Ponytail worked loose, leaf litter in my hair, collar twisted, one sleeve of my white hoodie pushed up to my elbow, the other sleeve hanging halfway down my forearm. My followers are spamming laughter emojis, Ls, and GGs in the chat.

Chuckling, Alex helps me to my feet.

“Falling is lonely business, right?” he says.

I shoot him a murderous scowl, but it only makes him laugh harder. He’s referencing a short story I wrote when I was a kid—my very first, in fact. In the story, a nameless girl hears her mother calling her down to dinner, but it’s dark and she can’t see anything. When she reaches the bottom of the stairs, she falls into a black abyss.

No one knows where I went. No one wants to find me. No one cares that I’m gone. No one remembers I was ever there. I’m falling, falling, forever falling. Forever.

I titled it Falling is the Loneliest Thing.

“Maybe watch your step instead of your chat next time, eh?”

I shove him with all my strength. Laughing, he steps back and makes room for me to stomp up to the porch. On its squeaky planks, I spin around and put him in frame.

“Say hi to Alex, guys. This is going to be the last known footage of him in a true crime documentary soon.”

Alex doesn’t like being on my stream. Or TikTok. Only on a rare occasion will he pose with me for an Instagram photo. But he knows pointing the camera at him is my modus operandi when I’m out for revenge. Sometimes I think he’s only pretending not to like it. Hands stuffed into the pockets of his Carhartt jacket, he leans forward and sticks his face close to the camera, filling up the entire frame. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone died in this house.”

Grinning, he moves past me to the door.

“What?” I say, feigning surprise. Fake reaction, yes, but they don’t know. I’m giddy on the inside. That was a great reveal. I didn’t know how I was going to “discover” the potential murder lore, and he just solved that problem for me.

“A lot of people watching?” Alex calls back from inside the house, his words drowning in the squeal of hardwood.

I check my view count as I step into the threshold. “Three-sixteen! What do mean it wouldn’t be the—”

“Damn, that’s a record, right?” he interjects, continuing on into the kitchen.

He disappears from view, and I close the door behind me. Part of me wants to chase him through the house, extract any juicy details he learned from the seller, but he’s being a good sport about me going live for our arrival. Concerns about me inadvertently doxxing us aside, he envisioned today as an intimate, private occasion. Just the two of us, a spirited young couple embarking on an exciting new adventure together. But he understands that I’m always on the lookout for fresh content. I need to grow my stream as much as he needed to quit his job and invest in this new real estate enterprise. He doesn’t want to process mortgage loans anymore, and I don’t want to stream braindead content. I want to steer my audience in a new direction, one that’s about stories.

That’s what I’m hoping to find here.

And if what he said is true…

hollymoore05 what did he say

trashleymay murder mystery

El_elegido1 GG

sahmomma05 true crime arc!

SinaLeigh94 def haunted

waifu_weeb investigate already geez

feenixfred house looks like shit

user444 Might be worth looking into.

j_cuttermedia we need mooore

“I think he’s messing with us, guys,” I say, scanning the dimly lit foyer. “Let’s have a look around!”

There’s a staircase on the left, wide entrances on either side leading to big, bright front rooms with lots of wavy-glass windows that distort the trees, the fence, and our car, which I parked halfway up the drive while Alex pulled the Uhaul around back.

The room on the right has a fireplace. The TV will fit perfectly on the mantle. On the way here Alex said he ordered a brand new sectional sofa that’s supposed to get delivered tomorrow—brand new king-sized bed, too, because our old queen, a remnant of his childhood, was absurdly uncomfortable. He tossed the mattress and box springs in the dumpster right before we pulled away from the apartment building.

“These floors are squeeeaky.” To demonstrate, I bounce up and down. “Look at this wainscoting, though.” I run my fingers over the rough texture created by layer upon layer of white paint, then pan up the sickly yellow floral-pattern wallpaper, which is peeling away in some places. “I love the high ceilings.” The grimy, booblike light fixture bowls, not so much. “Smells kinda musty, chat. I don’t think anyone’s lived here in a long time.”

It’s the dusty floors, I think, as much as the stale air. This house looks like it sat empty for years before it went on the market.

Halfway down the dark hallway, on the left, is a set of French doors. Through their wavy glass panels I spot floor-to-ceiling bookshelves built into the walls and a bay window with a cushioned shelf so deep I could curl up and read a book.

The flood gates have opened. I’m full-on crying now. It’s like someone plucked the office of my dreams from my imagination, went back in time, and placed it here for me to one day discover.

“Chat,” I squeak out, sniffling as I step into the middle of the room. The windows rattle when I start to jump up and down. “This is freakin’ crazy!”

martinilynn omg chloe it looks amazing! call me

user444 This should definitely be your office.

qt314becca so cuuute

j_cuttermedia hell yeah man

elonbezosbuffet are you crying PepeLaugh

amelia1234 jealous omg

My vision is so blurred I barely notice Lynn in the chat. My best friend since middle school—let’s be real, my only friend—she’s planning to make the hour drive out of Louisville to visit next weekend.

“Lynn! I’ll call you tonight. We just got here. I have to help Alex unload the Uhaul. I’m gonna try to set up my computer so I can do my first official stream in my new office tomorrow!”

Before moving on, I make one last sweep around the room. The hardwood in the center still has a shiny finish as though covered by a rug for decades, but on the edges it’s worn bare, giving the impression that a bookworm once lived here.

Next I peek out the windows, beneath which half-dead shrubbery huddles like it’s hiding. Beyond them are the apple trees, then a cornfield spiky with the stumps of harvested stalks. Through low-hanging oak branches, the singlewide trailer down the street is partially obscured.

“Okay, let’s check out more rooms,” I say, but I stop at the door. High above my head, the corner of a book juts out from a shelf. I reach up on tiptoes, pinch the corner, and pull, but it slips from my grasp and flutters to the floor. Something—a bookmark?—falls out from between the pages.

There’s no time for book browsing, so I pick them up and set them on a lower shelf. I promised Alex I would make it quick. We have so much to do: unload, unpack, figure out dinner, return the Uhaul, get groceries. The odds of getting my streaming equipment set up tonight are vanishingly slim.

And my viewers are still hoping for evidence of a murder.

Down the hall, there’s a dining room on the right. A simple, bright rectangle of a room with a big picture window, its view blocked by the thick trunk of an oak tree, the ghosts of picture frames in blocks of sunshine—instead of sickly—yellow wallpaper. Directly across from the dining room is a cramped, filthy bathroom: constellated patterns of toothpaste and grime on the mirror, rust stains around the sink drain, an uncaulked, avocado-green relic of a toilet, and scarred laminate flooring mossy with a build-up of dust and dribbled pee.

hollymoore05 yuck that toilet

SinaLeigh94 Omg remodel please

jebait.andy007 scuffed AF PepeLaugh

feenixfred backrooms vibes

martinilynn gotta go love you!

“Yes,” I whisper, backing out into the hall, “this is a friggin’ crime scene in here. Moving on. Oh, bye, Lynn!”

As I suspected, the hallway comes to an end at the kitchen, which I’m surprised to discover has brand new appliances—fridge, stove, microwave, dishwasher—with the stickers and warranty information still taped to them. Alex mentioned he wanted to buy new appliances, but I didn’t know it was already done. Kind of annoying that he didn’t let me have any input, but whatever.

In the center of what would otherwise be a spacious kitchen sits an old wooden table.

“Why is this not in the dining room?”

Right now it’s serving as storage for moving boxes. I’ll have to ask Alex to help me move it later.

My favorite kitchen find is the walk-in pantry. Hanging lightbulb, lots of shelf space, ancient laminate flooring that matches the bathroom. It’s dirty in here, but I don’t see any mouse poop—a miracle considering how old this house is.

Reaching to turn off the light, I pause to point the camera at rows of old, dusty mason jars on the top shelf, their contents too dark and cloudy to make out.

“Somebody didn’t do a great job of preparing this house for buyers, chat.”

It’s not a big deal, but it is mildly concerning. Alex is new to this enterprise, and it didn’t take him long to find a house. I don’t want to root against him, but when I started streaming, I fumbled the ball constantly. None of us know what we’re doing when we first try a new thing. Will I find evidence of a leaky roof upstairs? A cracked foundation? Black mold?  Termites?

Tentatively, I move on. The kitchen has a side entrance to the dining room. On the other side of the dining room, another entrance leads back to the living room, creating one big loop. On the same wall as the pantry is a door that leads into a back stairwell—and what I’m pretty sure is the basement door—but first I check out the sunroom behind the kitchen: saggy floors, mint green walls, white trim. Lots of chipped paint, probably caused by temperature fluctuation. It’s significantly chillier in here despite being the brightest room in the house. Significantly hotter in the summer, too, I bet, but we might not be here long enough to find out.

Through a single dirty window not covered by yellowed, broken blinds, I spy Alex setting a bedside table in the grass, then going back into the Uhaul for something else.

“Want to see the back yard really quick?” I ask my viewers.

I reach out for the door knob only to find it stuck. The knob turns, but the door won’t budge. Even a forceful pull achieves nothing.

“Dang it.”

Uneven foundation, I figure. Not as big a deal as a leaky roof, but we haven’t gone upstairs yet.

“Guys, I can’t get the freakin’…”

I try one more time, then give up, return to the kitchen, and veer right, stopping in the entrance to the windowless back stairwell because it’s dark and I’m starting to get a little spooked. The light switch doesn’t work, which doesn’t help. Chat has spotted the basement door underneath the stairs and they’re insisting I go there next, so I creep forward into the shadows, crack the door open, and glimpse the top three steps descending into darkness.

“Nope!” I say, slamming it shut. “Big nope, guys.”

And just like that, my view count starts to drop.

Chat is trolling me now, begging or calling me lame or spamming PepeLaugh.

“I want to save the basement for when I have more time to explore,” I decide on the fly. “Trust me, we’re doing an explore-the-basement stream for sure.” With Alex to stand guard, or maybe when Lynn comes down so I don’t have to go down there alone. I spent my entire childhood in a basement, albeit a half-finished one in a relatively new suburban Tudor-style home, a far cry from whatever dungeon lies at the bottom of these steps.

“Let’s check out the upstairs for now,” I insist. The view count is still above three-hundred. I’m desperate to finish this tour and end the stream before it dwindles further.

As I ascend the staircase, each step screams under my weight. At the top, a chill runs through me. It’s drafty up here. Cobwebs hang from the corners of the ceiling and dustbunnies dart around like mice in my periphery. There’s also a strange odor. A mildewy sweetness, like old book smell mixed with old people smell. Just like downstairs, a long hallway runs from the front to the back of the house, connecting the two staircases.

I start with the door across from the landing, cracking it open and holding my phone up to the little sliver of nothingness.

“It’s dark in there,” I narrate to my viewers as if they can’t see for themselves, as if this makes up for skipping the basement. “Okay, here goes.”

Nudging the door open with my foot, I scoot backwards until my back bumps the landing newel. A foot to the left and I would have gone tumbling down the stairs.

“Goodness. I gotta stop getting myself worked up. That could have been bad.”

Chat didn’t see what almost just happened, but I push forward, reaching around the wall for a light switch, spiders and skeleton fingers on my mind. I find a switch and flip it, and a dim glow casts over a tiny room with a slanted ceiling. Dusty blankets cover two windows. The psoriasis-lumpy plaster walls are cracked and chipping in some places, like someone took a hammer to them. In one spot, the laths are exposed, an open wound on a ribcage.

The floor is littered with trash: empty chip bags, unopened mail, crushed soda bottles, the severed, eyeless head of a porcelain doll, a little girl’s hairclip, a flattened half-roll of toilet paper, the base of a flatscreen TV, a surge protector, a hex wrench, a wadded-up pillowcase, and so many dead ladybugs that I have to tiptoe to the small, doorless closet, where more trash lines the floor—and where I find a little plywood hatch that probably leads to an attic space.

“Kinda looks like a homeless person was squatting here,” I say as I pan back over the mess.

That would make sense in the city. Out here? I don’t think so.

When I rip a blanket off a window, dust powders the air and sends me into a coughing fit, but bright light floods the room—a fair exchange.

The wood frame is painted shut. It takes a lot of tugging and pulling on the little brass handle to pry it open, but then it won’t stay up on its own because the counterweight is broken. Luckily a small stick of wood rests in the insect graveyard of the windowsill. I use it to prop the window open, then poke my phone through the wispy remains of a screen that flaps in the autumn breeze.

“Alex!” I call out.

No response. He must be rummaging around inside the Uhaul. It’s taking up most of a little asphalt parking area that he wants to use as a half-court. He played basketball in high school, used to meet up at a park and play with friends when we first got married, but everyone is busy with their own careers and families these days. I’m glad he’s inspired to get back to the things he loves. Maybe he can find a community league to join, and I can stay home, stream, and gather content for a story—YouTube documentary first, but maybe a book at some point.

The thought of being in this house alone is a little unsettling. I haven’t taken that into consideration. Then again, I didn’t know the house was going to be so…creepy.

Chat is starting to get to me with their Halloween-inspired talk of ghosts and chainsaw massacres and I claim no negative energy.

“Alex!” I call out again.

Still, he doesn’t answer. It’s deathly quiet. I’ve had my back turned to the room for—

A squeal from out in the hall forces me to whip around, but I laugh in relief when there’s nothing there. What was I expecting? A Nextbot glitching its way through the door? The realization that I noclipped into a dimension of decay and despair on the drive down here?

“Okay, guys, I think we’re gonna have to call it quits for now.”

Stepping back out into the hall, I make my way towards the front of the house, giving each room a quick glance—half bath on the right, another bedroom on the left, master bedroom on the right, another bedroom on the left, all empty, all relatively clean. No obvious signs of a leaky roof.

Descending the front staircase, I say goodbye to my—eek!—three-hundred and twelve viewers. Peak viewership ended several minutes ago, but I still have to contain my excitement as I make my final farewell: “I’m definitely streaming tomorrow, hopefully at my desk. If not, we’ll do something IRL. Check out the barns, maybe? I’ll have to see about getting permission to explore the farmland all around us. In the meantime”—I lower my voice to a conniving whisper—“maybe we’ll do a little sneaking. Until then!”

I end stream right when I reach the foyer. Slipping my phone in my pocket, I open the—

Like the back door, the front door won’t budge.

I twist the knob with both hands and pull hard, then put my foot on the wall for extra leverage.

“Are you shitting me? Alex!”

In my struggle, I become a little unhinged. I don’t like feeling trapped. My vision tunnels, and I kind of work myself up into a panic. An awful feeling crawls its way up my throat, one that always accompanies flashes of memory. My twin brothers, Joe and Travis, locking me in the hallway linen closet, having convinced me it was “the closet for the ghosts,” because at night the ghosts wore the bed sheets. When my step-dad came upstairs and made them stop, he scolded me for making so much noise—Stop overreacting, Chloe—instead of them for locking me in there.

I’m not strong enough to pry it open. I’ll have to wait for Alex to come inside, so I retreat to my new office—if he can buy appliances without my input, I can stake claim on my favorite room—to wait for him, telling myself I’m not creeped out.

Not even a little bit.

Scanning the room again, my eyes quickly fall upon the book I dropped. It’s a thin, glossy-covered paperback titled, Hauntings and Other Strange Tales from the Bluegrass State. Tucked inside is what I mistook for a bookmark: a tiny, sepia-colored, likely 19th century photograph featuring a man and woman in front of this house, only it’s newly constructed. The man is wearing a double-breasted suit, standing beside his seated wife who’s wearing a dark Victorian ball gown and what looks like a peacock feather hat, though it’s too blurry to be sure.

What’s really striking about the photograph is that the whole left side is blacked out by an aberration, or some other error in devel—

Glass shatters upstairs.