The house looks different. This isn’t especially surprising. It is haunted, after all. But it looks drastically different.

The bushes don’t purr as I run my fingers over them. The house doesn’t shudder when I clang open the door. But most importantly, there’s a four-person family sitting in the living room. That’s certainly odd.

At first I think that the house is playing with me - it does that sometimes. So I let out a dry chuckle and pat the drywall softly.

That, of course, draws a member of the apparently-real-family’s attention.

“Who are you?” a little boy sneers, pompousness filling his voice that matches his upturned and snotty nose.

His parents don’t hear him and I bug out my eyes as if to say shut up!

Thankfully, he does and they continue watching some stupid action film. I take the opportunity to walk around my changed home.

It is a stereotypical house now. It has little signs detailing such ridiculous sentiments as Home Sweet Home. This house is a home, yes. It’s a home to me.

Hell, it used to be a home to the Devil Herself.

That’s how it really started being haunted. She disguised herself and then a small family moved in. They disappeared the very next day.

If I recall it all correctly, it was a family of three. It contained a mother, a father, and a little boy. Their mystery was never solved. How could it have been? No law officer in their right mind would claim the culprit to have red horns and a silvery, split tongue.

But then my family arrived.

The difference is, we beat her. We tamed the Devil and we tamed the house. But then my parents left.

And I was all alone.

So, I went for a walk. And then I came back to this… madness. 

Frustrated beyond belief by all of this, I walk back down the stairs. My sandals clack against the wood and the chipped paint makes me feel like I’m back at home. After all, this house is all I have left.

I enter the living room, fully prepared to roar at the family to leave.

But the boy points a shaky finger at me and whimpers, “Mummy, there’s someone here.”

“Darling,” the mother coos and stares right through me, “of course there isn’t. There’s no one else here.”