Thunk.

I awoke with a start. The room was dark and freezing- I had been so tired that I hadn’t even thought to close the window I had opened earlier, and the chill of the night had crept in. I staggered to my feet, eyes still blurry with sleep and stumbled to the window. It creaked when I closed it, as though it were protesting the movement. A lot of the windows in here didn’t seem to have been moved in years, and all of the rooms seemed stuffy, as though they’d been closed off from the world for too long. I supposed that made sense - it’s not as though at this point, my grandfather had had a lot of visitors, what with my grandmother having passed many years ago, and all of the children now out of the house. We would stop by to visit once in a while, but we never stayed the night since we lived so close. I assume some of my other family would have stayed in the guest rooms when they came to visit, but who thinks to open a window when you’re staying at another person’s house?

I turned around to head back to bed, and immediately bumped into Duke. He yelped slightly. “I’m so sorry, buddy! I didn’t mean to bump into you! You must have been cold too, huh?” I reached down to sooth him as an apology for bumping into him. I felt his fur first, though- the soft bristles on his back were standing up on end.

“Duke?” I said worryingly. “What is it, boy? You smell something you don’t like? Maybe there’s a skunk outside. You’re not used to this out of town lifestyle yet.” I pet down his back, trying to smooth down his fur in a soothing motion, but the moment I touched him, I started to let loose a low, rumbling growl. I removed my hand quickly, in case he thought the touch was from someone else who would have been a threat, but the noise continued.

Slowly, I shifted my eyes upward, both curious about what Duke was seeing and nervous about what the result might be. My eyes had trouble focusing in the pitch black night - a reminder to myself to install a light on my new nightstand so that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen anymore. I saw the silhouette of the loveseat and chairs, all of the boxes that I had been bringing in the day before, the clothes from yesterday hanging from a hook by the closet. The closet door was ajar, which was not a typical thing for me, but I had been so tired when I went to sleep that I wouldn’t put anything past me. Aside from that, nothing seemed too abnormal. “Calm down, buddy,” I whispered to Duke, reaching back down to rub his ears in the hopes of distracting him. “I get it, there’s been a lot of changes, but there’s nothing here. You’re just not used to this place, is all.” Duke didn’t react to my touch, and instead just took a few steps toward the door. His tail ran into me, as it stood straight up in the air.

“Look, if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll turn on the light, and you can see that there’s nothing here.” I patted his head, then fumbled my way across the room to the light switch. I clicked it on, and averted my eyes from the bright light as I watched the shadows skitter away. Through narrow eyes, I looked around the room. “See? Absolutely nothing here.” Duke turned his face toward me for a half second, then immediately turned back toward the door. I sighed and walked back to him. “It’s okay, buddy, I get it, it’s a lot. You’ve only slept at the apartment since you were a pup, and now there’s this big scary place. It’s a lot for a dog to handle!” Duke ignored me.

Thunk.

There was that noise again - the same one that had woken me up earlier. I barely remembered it in the haze of sleep. But it did not sound like it was coming from my room. It sounded more like it was coming from downstairs. The instant that he heard it, Duke started to growl louder.

“Alright, have it your way,” I said to him, trying to make myself feel braver and failing miserably. I was sure it was nothing - we were far enough out of the city that the likelihood of someone trying to break in was slim to none, and there was even a smaller chance that it would happen on my first night here. But still, I could feel a pit forming in my stomach - in an apartment, if you hear a noise, you just assume it’s one of the neighbors and go back to sleep. It’s a lot harder to do that when you’re by yourself on a large property. “We’ll go take a look. I’m sure it’s just the house settling.”

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I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and checked the battery - still at 10%, so while it wouldn’t be great for the long run, I could still use it as a flashlight to find the light switches in all of the rooms. It would have taken even longer without it, and I was still expecting it to take forever regardless, just based on how many rooms there were in this house. I was half hopefully that, as soon as he saw I was going to leave the room, he would run to the noise so that it would be easier to find. But no, I got the cowardly dog who wanted to hide behind my legs in case something was out there.

I moved from room to room upstairs, flicking on light switches and quickly scanning the rooms. Everything seemed calm in the night - a few more of the rooms had their closet doors ajar, but frankly I couldn’t remember if they’d been open before or not. The past few weeks had been such a blur that I probably wouldn’t have remembered if I had opened them all myself. Plus, I’d had a couple of buddies over to help me move some of the heavier things, and they had of course wanted to take a grand tour, so it’s possible one of them was just scoping them out. Fine with me - they are the sort of people I would want to have moving in with me once I finish renovations anyway.

I moved to the large staircase, content that I had searched in all of the rooms. The staircase always seemed so imposing to me - yes, the house was large, but most of the rooms and the exterior of the house were fairly plain. The rooms were almost exclusively painted gray, save for my new room, which my grandfather had painted a dull blue color. The outside of the house was white with some brick accents. All in all, nothing too special. The staircase, however, looked like a grand staircase you might see in an old movie. It was wooden with a carpet inlay, as though it were made for presenting the family like the VonTrapps. Made a great backdrop for family photos, like we always used it for at Christmas, but it just fit in strangely with the rest of the house.

I flicked on the light above the staircase. It flickered on, illuminating the staircase except for one section that remained in shadow at the bottom of the steps. It was tall and vaguely humanoid - it almost looked like someone was standing right at the bottom of the steps. I dropped my phone and fumbled to catch it, but failed, and it clattered down a couple of steps.

Duke let out a low growl behind me again. I brought my eyes back to the shadow again and stared at it hard. Then I realized - it wasn’t a person, it was just the way the shadows from the banister reacted with the light at the top of the stairs when the bottom light wasn’t there to illuminate it. I chuckled lightly to myself. It was late, I was tired, and frankly, I’d been exhausted the last week, what with both work and moving into the new house. I just saw a shadow and overreacted.

Thunk.

I jumped at the noise, this time. Now that I was out of my room, I could hear it better - it sounded as though it was coming from the room directly to the right of the entryway where I was standing. I walked down a couple of steps, grabbed up my phone, and hurried downstairs past the shadow that, now that I got closer to it, didn’t even look that much like a human. It seemed foolish of me to have even considered that that might have been anything other than a weird casting of the light, but I had to remind myself, I was in a place where I had never before stayed the night, and it was much darker and quieter than it ever had been in the city. There is something about being farther away from the rest of humanity that just adds a creepy element to the area in general, much less when you’ve got a dog that apparently reacts over nothing. Thanks, Duke.

I turned the corner into the room next to the entry, which was my grandparents living room. Flicking on the light, I saw the room I had spent so much time in as a child. Some of the knickknacks that my grandmother had collected while she was alive were no longer in their place - some of them my grandfather had gotten rid of after her passing, and some were claimed by my relatives, trying to find something to remember the two of them by. I didn’t mind those being gone, but I with they had taken the old flower-pattered couches that had probably been sitting in the room since the Regan administration. Those would have to be replaced at some point with couches that still had some of the stuffing left in the cushions.

I scanned my eyes around the room - the sound had definitely come from in here, but I wasn’t sure exactly what could be making it. Clearly, there was no one in the room, and there didn’t appear to be anything that would be making noise in the middle of the night - they did have a large old clock, but it had been broken for as long as I could remember. Plus, clocks don’t typically sound like they’re hitting something when they chime.

Through sheer force of habit, I scanned my flashlight as I looked, as though that would help me find the noisy thing. I scanned over the clock, the couches, some of the old shelves in the room, and finally over the windows. That’s when I saw it. The big suspenseful moment I had been dreading was the sound of the window shutter banging against the house. I sighed in relief, and then chuckled at myself for being such a scaredy cat - there weren’t many shutters left of the house, but it was definitely storming outside, and the fact that I hadn’t thought of that at first was just a sign to how new to the house owning business that I was. I shook my head and headed back up to try to go back to sleep - I was still exhausted, and now that I knew what the sound was, there was no way I was going to go fix it right at the moment. Just adding it to the to do list that seemed to be growing increasingly larger as the days passed.