If I had to watch Haley glare in my direction one more time while I finished unloading the moving truck, I might poke my eyes out. If you bought most girls a house, they’d be delighted. Especially in this housing market! But not Haley. If looks could kill, I’d be a dead man and she’d be stepping over my body to load all her shit back into the truck.

Haley’s dad threw me a half-smile, “With a little sweat and some good old-fashioned ingenuity this place is going to feel just like home. You look like you got the sweating part down pretty good. How about the other half?”

I chuckled a little at that. Haley’s dad had always been a solid guy. If he wasn’t careful, Haley might have started trying to murder him with her eyes too. With her long legs, she might be able to jump clear over both of us lying dead on the front lawn.

I snatched up the last box with a groan and lugged it through the front door of our new home.

I leaned over the pizza box and ate like a starving man. Haley was the only person I knew who could scowl while eating pizza. I still loved her though.

Finally, she spoke. “Derek, you didn’t even ask me for my opinion at all! This was a huge decision and you completely shut me out! A surprise, I get it, but Jesus! Next time just buy me some flowers or something.”

I dropped my half-eaten slice of pizza back into the box and stared at her. I put myself just over a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in the hole for her to be pissed off over closet size and not having granite counter tops.

For a split second I considered telling her how much this house was really worth and why we got it so far under value. Had we been married already, I might have.

“Good thing your dad helped me bring the couch in. I’ll see you in the morning.” I needed a shower to cool me off in more ways than one.

That night, I was convinced we must have damaged the couch during the move. It was lumpier than I remembered. Nonetheless, exhaustion eventually took over.

As my eyes fluttered in the moments between being awake and asleep, someone at least six inches taller than Haley turned the corner from the living room into the kitchen. I irrationally attempted to cram myself inside of the couch as my eyes bulged. In my sleep-muddled mind, I’d found the truth. One of the poor fuckers who died in this house was still here and he was going to kill me.

My tension sore body relaxed slightly as I made up my mind. I had to know for sure. My creeping posture most resembled a praying mantis which struck me as ironic as I sure as hell was praying as I snuck into the kitchen.

In the furthest corner in front of the basement door, the thing hid in the shadows. I let out a yelp and hit the light switch. It was gone.

I swore and pulled at my hair as I walked to my bedroom to wake Haley. She was really going to kill me now. Not only did she hate the house I’d attempted to surprise her with - it was haunted.

I didn’t have time to be pleasant. I put both hands on Haley’s back and shook her. Before she had a chance to react, I word-vomited the truth.

“The realtor said the house was worth closer to 225 thousand but the last two families to live here died. It’s fucking haunted. I just saw something in the god damn kitchen. I just wanted to prove I could give you a good life and I think I just guaranteed pretty soon we aren’t going to have any kind of life at all.”

Between Haley’s wild hair, bugged-out bewildered eyes, her protruding jaw, and the hysteria from what I’d seen in the kitchen, my mind broke. What started as a small chuckle worked its way into a bellowing laugh that heaved its way unwelcome through my mouth. Haley shot up and whacked me twice with her pillow. It didn’t hurt, but the blow brought me back.

“We aren’t talking about this tonight. Lay down. Don’t speak to me. Don’t even think about speaking to me. You’re exhausted and I’m sure you’ve been mulling when you were going to spill this to me through your stupid, stupid brain all night. You’re seeing things. Just go to sleep and don’t talk to me.”

I knew she was afraid. I knew she didn’t think I was seeing things. And she knew I knew. But what else were we going to do in the middle of the night? I lowered myself onto the bed, flat on my back. I wouldn’t sleep, of that I was sure, but at least I could rest my eyes. At least I was back in bed next to her.

Less than fifteen minutes had passed before Haley gripped my forearm and sunk her nails in. My stomach dropped for the second time as my eyes settled on the thing in the corner.

It was much closer this time. Its long teeth jutted from its mouth like an angler fish and its gaze held fast to Haley and me on the bed. Its eyeballs pushed outward from the sunken sockets. It stunk like wet fur and rot. Even through my terror, I gagged. When it spoke, it wasn’t a single voice. It was many. Some small like a child’s, others grated like an old garbage disposal.

“Time to leave. Or don’t. One way or another, this house will be vacant again soon.” His grin spread until it swallowed his face.

“Haley, turn on the lamp,” I whispered.

The thing turned his head slightly towards me and managed to take a single step forward before Haley fumbled the lamp light on. Once again, he was gone.

“Derek?” Haley whispered.

“Yeah?”

“The house isn’t haunted you God damn moron. That’s a monster,” she hissed.

And she wasn’t wrong. Had I seen that thing more clearly in the kitchen, I wouldn’t have bothered waking Haley up and confessing. I would have thrown her over my shoulder and carried her out of the house. She would have kicked and slammed her fists against my back as I walked until my feet bled, but I wouldn’t have cared. But the kitchen was too dark and I’d flipped the light on too fast.

“I noticed. Pack a bag. We’re leaving.”

Haley scoffed as she turned on the bedroom light and grabbed her phone. “We aren’t leaving until we know what’s happening. And as long as the lights are on, we’re safe, right?”

I sat down on the bed next to her, looking over her shoulder. I cringed as she typed our address into the search bar. I’d done the same a couple months ago, and to say the results were rough was an understatement.

My body tensed as her eyes widened, “Derek, please tell me you didn’t buy this house knowing some weirdo who collected creepy ass occult shit lived and died here.”

I shrunk as I replied, “It was sixty-five grand under market value. It was a great deal - ow!” Haley smacked me on the back of the head. I deserved it, but it still made me angry.

“You said two families died here. Let me guess, you didn’t count Mr. Creepy Occult Man in your confession because he wasn’t a family?”

I rubbed the back of my head before responding, “Mostly because he wasn’t murdered, but yeah, that too,” My chest hitched as I spoke, “I was going to tell you Haley, I just wanted to spiff the place up a little more first. I wanted to make you happy. I didn’t want us married and still renting. I wanted to give you a good life in a good home. I love you.”

Her sharp glare relaxed slightly. “This guy looks more like a Boy Scout leader than a creep,” she tilted her phone towards me. The man on the screen smiled warmly back at me, his blond bangs dangling youthfully in his eyes.

“Adam Brand. What a name, right?” I let out a small chuckle. The dull look on Haley’s face informed me we weren’t on chuckling terms yet. Fair enough.

Haley scrolled through a few more articles, her brow lifting, “They found all of the bodies in the basement. Adam died of a heart attack and the other families were murdered. But they were all in the basement. That’s weird, right?”

I thought back to my first encounter with the monster standing in the corner, just in front of the basement door. He hadn’t interacted with me at all at that point.

Just as my brain was firing off in the necessary directions to make the connection, Haley spoke first, “Do you think he’s guarding something in there? Have you been down there yet?”

I hadn’t. The house was significantly bigger than the nasty apartments we’d just left. Sure, I’d opened the door and peered down the steps, but I never entered.

When I was ten, my older brother told me the bogeyman lived in our basement. Lame, but I was young and I looked up to him. I believed him. One night when our parents went out, he was charged with babysitting me. He convinced me to go downstairs. He slammed the door shut behind me and left me in the dark while he scratched at the door, rasping that he was going to eat me. I tripped on the last step and fell hard on my rear, bruising my tail bone. I cried like a baby and at some point, had wet my pants. After a few minutes, my brother came down, got me cleaned up, and swore me to secrecy. I never told anyone, not even Haley. But I haven’t been in a basement since. The listing pictures were good enough for me.

“No. Not yet. We’re going to have to go down there, aren’t we?” My voice quivered and I hated myself for it. For the quiver and for the fear from my childhood that I’d allowed to climb onto my shoulders and make a home there.

As a child it was an irrational fear. Now it seemed I may actually have a bogeyman that stemmed from something in the basement.

Haley smiled softly. She knew I was afraid and she knew this was entirely my fault and still somehow, she found compassion for me. She could be rough at times, but she still loved me.

“No time like the present, right?” Her voice was soft. It made me ache for the situation my stupid mistake had pulled us into.

Phones in hand, we headed towards the basement, making sure to flip every light switch on the way.

As the door creaked open, my heart jumped. I tried the switch near the door, which proved useless. We settled for our phones as flashlights and climbed down the stairs. When we reached the bottom, Haley and I stood back-to-back attempting to illuminate as much as possible. The basement was in stark contrast to the house upstairs as well as the photos I’d seen in the listing. It was unfinished, damp, and dirty. Your typical horror film basement. I glanced nervously over my shoulder at Haley, but there was no blame in her eyes when she glanced back at me. Only fear.

On the far end, my eyes caught a red door. When I swung my phone’s flashlight towards it, the door disappeared. I tapped Haley’s shoulder. She kept her light forward but turned slightly to watch the door appear and disappear from existence with a beam of light. This was what the bogeyman had been guarding.

Slowly, we inched towards the door. As we crossed the midpoint of the basement, my phone’s light shut off. The bogeyman stood in front of the door.

“Leave or die,” the monsters voice grated, leaving my ears sore.

“We can’t,” I whimpered. My heart thudded as I felt Haley’s back leave mine. I took a small step backwards until we made contact again. She took another step towards the stairs and I followed her lead.

The monster didn’t bother to move slowly this time. His long legs closed the gap between us in just two steps. He reached a hand with long mangled nails towards my face and sunk them in as I yelped. Haley whirled around, shining her flashlight at him. He disappeared, but the pain in my face didn’t.

As we neared the stairs, my phone’s flashlight lit in time to catch the monster’s arm reaching from between the stair planks to drag Haley back down. He blinked out of existence as his nails grazed her ankle. We cleared the last of the stairs and slammed the door shut behind us, safe for now in the sanctuary of the kitchen lights.

“What happened to your phone down there?” Haley asked as she dabbed a wet paper towel against the bleeding nail marks on my face.

I winced, “I don’t know. The light shut off once we got close to the door and didn’t turn back on again until we got to the stairs. I think it has something to do with the door.” I took Haley by the arm and gently moved her hand away from my face. “We need to burn the house down. If there’s no house, there’s no monster,” I reasoned.

“How do you know that? What if it’s stuck in the house and if we burn it down it’ll be free? We don’t know how this stuff works. We need to open that door. If it’s guarding the door, whatever is inside might be the key to getting rid of it.”

I stared at her blankly. In that moment, there was nothing on Earth that could persuade me to go back into that basement. The lights didn’t work, the flashlights stopped working near the door, and worse, he was down there. The monster.

“We aren’t going back down there. We’re burning it down. I can’t go back down there,” a low sob escaped with my latest confession. I was a coward. It isn’t that I wouldn’t go - I couldn’t. My legs simply wouldn’t carry me there.

“You bought this house alone and look where it got us. If you want to burn it down, you’ll be doing that alone too. And I’ll be going back to stay with my parents. We’re done. The choice is yours, but I’m not doing this anymore. Either we’re a team and you do this with me, or we’re done,” she spat the last word with no malice. It wasn’t even really an ultimatum. She was just done with my shit and I wasn’t surprised.

“Electronics don’t work near the door. We need candles,” I said softly. I couldn’t lose her. Not like this.

“Looks like you get your fire after all,” Haley joked gently. She wasn’t a sore winner. I liked that about her.

After sifting through a few boxes, we finally found two bigger candles. They were the scented kind in jars. Haley’s favorite claimed to smell like marshmallows, but it reminded me more of sweet burnt asshole hair. Hopefully the monster in the basement appreciated the scent while he flayed us.

Slowly, back-to-back, candles lit, we crept down the stairs. The creaking of the steps felt offensive. It didn’t matter, the monster in the basement knew we were coming, but it felt like we were announcing ourselves. Challenging him. I suppose in a way, we were.

As we inched towards the door in the far end, I realized at some point, I’d need to blow out my candle. As I started to shake, the melted wax teetered and threatened to end the candle prematurely. I stopped walking and took a few breaths. We were so close. I couldn’t risk fucking this up. I’d line my hand up with the knob, blow the candle, and twist. All in one swift motion.

My feet began to shuffle forward again while Haley’s followed suit in reverse. As I reached for the knob, the monster’s voice called out from under the stairs.

“There’s death behind that door. If you open it, you’ll set it free,” it gargled. “I’d kill you faster than it would. I’d be so much more merciful. And I’d only enjoy it a little bit.”

“Don’t listen to it, Derek. Blow the candle and open the door,” Haley hissed behind me.

“You’d be better off burning the house down,” a shrieking laugh bounced off the basement walls. For a moment, I forgot the candle in my hand and nearly set my hair on fire trying to cover my ringing ears. The shrieking stopped as quickly as it had started. “Derek,” the monster whispered, “I’m going to eat her first. I’m going to make you watch. Then I’ll nibble your fingers off and use them to pick her flesh from between my teeth.”

I watched in horror as he slowly slid his head out from under the stairs. His long nails clicked as he grabbed the steps and slowly pulled himself out. I couldn’t take it anymore. I blew the candle out and felt the cold metal of the knob in my palm. I twisted and threw the door open.

Haley whirled around and huddled close to me. Behind the door, Adam Brand stood leaning over a mortuary table. Lost in concentration, he hadn’t noticed the door open. The man he was dissecting, however, had. He reached an arm towards the open door and let out a blood curdling scream. I fell on my backside from shock, just as I had as a child. A hard shock flew from my tail bone up my back.

I didn’t hear the monster creep behind me, but I smelt the rot coming off of him. “The breaking of souls is a beautiful thing,” he sighed contently, “Adam was always a curious man. In life, he strove to understand what lied beyond. In death, he strives to understand what it is that gives human’s life. You human’s always want what you don’t have.”

Adam turned slowly in our direction. His shoulders fell with disappointment. His shoes dragged like cement blocks as he walked towards me.

“There was so much I still wanted to do - things I wanted to try. Just a few more cuts - a few more experiments and I’m sure I’d know what souls are made of. I thought I’d have more time,” Adam hung his head like a scolded child.

“I’m sure you would have, dear friend, but the door has been opened and a deal is a deal. Time is up.” The monster tipped Adam’s chin up with a cracked, yellowing nail. As their eyes met, the sensation of peeping into an intimate moment between two lovers crept over me. It felt dirty.

The monster’s jaws cracked and jolted as they forced themselves open wide. Adam never looked away. In one quick motion, the monster slammed his open mouth over the man’s body and swallowed him whole.

Haley’s screams awakened me from my daze. I sucked a deep breath of air as I struggled to my feet. I put myself in front of her defensively. The monster shook as he laughed.

“You couldn’t stop me if you wanted to. You know that, don’t you?” He cocked his head to the side, amusement twinkled in his disgusting eyes. “Regardless, my deal has been upheld. Unless you two would like to strike a new one?”

I cleared my throat, “No. I don’t think we would.”

“I didn’t think so. If you change your mind, just whisper into the shadows,” his eyes gleamed, “I’m never far behind. Enjoy the new house.”

He winked, burped, and then disappeared.

As Haley and I ran up the stairs, I glanced back over my shoulder. The red door was gone.

For the first week after everything, we barely slept. We kept the lights on all the time. We never went to the bathroom alone. But slowly, we relaxed. We started turning lights off one by one. The shadows were only shadows.

The following week, Haley commented on how the layout of the kitchen was perfect for cooking together. We held each other on the lumpy couch while light from the TV screen bounced against the walls of the dark room. We’re finding happiness in our home. We never go down into the basement.

But even still, fuck the housing market. At just over a hundred and sixty thousand, we overpaid.