The hallways of the house were dark and cold - even though the air outside was hot, there always seemed to be a chill running through the hallways. It never seemed to stay in the same spot, however - one day it’d be down by the bathroom, and the next, it'd be frigid right next to the front door. Today, the cold seemed to have centralized right in front of my bedroom door, making going to bed have a foreboding air that was normally not present. Part of my wondered if my grandfather had noticed the moving cold current around his house and had just never mentioned anything. I was going to have to have a contractor cme down and take a look at the insulation - they may not have had the money to put it in the first time, but I definitely wanted to get that done before winter took its true hold.
A part of my mind, though, kept wandering back to the conversation I’d had with Charlie. Ghosts were not a thing that I had put much if any stock into since I was a small child - they were about as real as Santa Claus - but I was running out of logical ideas. After all, if I was wrong and ghosts did exist, the only people I would look foolish in front of would be, well, them.
“Hi?” I asked into the night. My words rung in the quiet hallway, echoed only by themselves and the sound of Duke’s footsteps as he skittered up the stairs to find me. The cold felt immovable, and didn’t seem at all concerned with my words. “Um, I’m not sure if anyone can hear me,” I started, trailing off at the end of my sentence. Duke looked up at me questioningly, assuming I was talking to him. Then, he turned from me and cocked his head to the side, staring into the dark hallway in front of me.
“You know, what, fuck this,” I muttered to myself as I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. I knew all the ghost shows I had ever watched made it seem like ghosts would only come out if it was pitch black, but that seemed as ridiculous to me as most of the toys that they pretended to use to communicate with spirits. If ghosts are people who died ages ago, as they so claim, then why wouldn’t they want to communicate in the light? I know I personally wouldn’t like it much, either, if someone started yelling at me from out of the darkness. I imagined that that would be a universal experience, no matter your life status.
I shined the flashlight down the hallway in front of me, paying careful attention to shine it where Duke had been staring a minute ago. I saw nothing, though, and Duke had turned his attention back to me. I sighed a sigh of relief - I still didn’t think there was anything there, but staring down a dark hallway while your dog notices something that you don’t was about as close to a horror movie trope as I was willing to play with. Chances are that he just smelled something from outside that caught his attention for a few moments.
I took the few steps to my bedroom door and turned the handle. Or, rather, I attempted to turn the handle. The door handle seemed frozen in place - as I attempted to turn it, my fingers just glided around the outside. I stood there for a moment, trying to register what was happening. I didn’t remember locking the door behind me. In fact, I wasn’t positive that this door even had a lock on it - the only locks I had seen were obviously the ones on the front door and the bathrooms. I tried the handle again, just to make sure there hadn’t been some weird fluke last time. The handle slid around in my hand again, but more disconcertingly, Duke started to let out a faint growl. I turned toward him, and his eyes were locked on the door.
“What is it, Duke?” I whispered, not wanting to attract attention to myself if there was someone behind the door. I didn’t think there was anyone there, though - the house was so quiet that I was completely convinced that I would have been able to hear footsteps if they had been present. I’d been trying to listen for a sign, too, that there was any sort of ghost activity. Had someone been in the room making noise, I would have definitely heard it.
A thought crossed my mind like an intrusion - I could just knock on the door. Of course that wasn’t going to do anything, but I nearly couldn’t stop my hand from reaching out and knocking on the door regardless. The door sounded hollow behind my hand, and on the plus side, I didn’t hear anyone immediately scurry to try to hide and/or leave. I must have just somehow locked the door by accident when I left the room this morning. I tried the door handle again, as one last ditch attempt before I would end up calling a locksmith in the morning.
The door handle turned in my hand. I looked down at it in disbelief, but shook my head and pushed the door open. I wasn’t sure what it was in this house that made people think that crazy things were happening to them. I’d checked the carbon monoxide detectors when I’d first moved in, but maybe I’d go to the store and get some new ones tomorrow, just in case.
I swung the door open, swinging my flashlight around the room with it. As I had suspected, there was no one in there, and there weren’t a lot of places for them to hide. There was no one under the bed, nothing of note in the closet, and the window was shut and locked. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened with the doorknob - maybe they were just old and starting to stick, but it clearly was not the result of an intruder from the inside.
Relieved, I pulled my t-shirt over my head and tossed it into the corner of my room that had become my temporary clothes hamper. I unzipped my jeans and left them crumpled up next to the bed - they were already dirty from getting the house set up, but I didn’t have anywhere to be the next day, and only other pants that I’d managed to dig out so far were my dress pants. I climbed under the covers in just my boxers, and spent the next hour trying to fall asleep as my brain spinned around all of the information that had been discussed that day.
____________
“Really, did your mother never raise you? Did you grow up in a barn? I’d bet money on it, what with these random piles of filth in my room.”
My eyes shot open at the sound of the voice, but I immediately closed them again as the light burned them. I could have sworn that I’d turned off the light, but whoever came in must have turned it back on. I held up my hand to shield my eyes from the most of the light before reopening them to a squint. One of the women from the other day - Edith, I think? - was standing in the corner of the room by the side of my bed, holding the jeans that I’d discarded earlier. She folded them with one fluid motion, then set them on the edge of the bed.
“What the hell are you doing here again?” I asked her, sitting upright. I glanced around the room - Duke was missing again, as was the furniture set that my grandfather had - in its place was an old wardrobe, similar to the one that had been in the office, but significantly more worn. On it was a stack of papers that looked disheveled, as though she had just been rifling through them before she woke me up.
“I think it’s my turn to be asking you that question.” Edith sat down on the edge of the bed and turned to face me. From her stiffness, it was obvious that she had a corset under her shirt, which struck me as odd, considering how old everything else in the house seemed to be. I wouldn’t imagine a corset would be the first thing a person would spend money on. “You’ve showed up in my house again, this time in my bed. Per Clara, you didn’t even pay for your last trip here, and that has left a bit of a hole in our books, which I assure you, we will be rectifying with this visit. And now, you’re in my old bedroom, and in my bed nonetheless. What possessed you to think that this would be appropriate behavior? You know damn well that I’m not one that you get to spend your time with, and this is an invasion of privacy to say the least. Who even let you in here? Are they joking, or were you being noncompliant and need to be taught a lesson?”
Edith paused as though she were waiting for an answer, but I had no idea where to start. My brain had stopped on the fact that she had called this her room, instead of her being in mine. “Sorry, but I think you’re confused,” I started, unsure how to word it. It wasn’t very often that one had to argue about the ownership of a house, especially with a complete stranger, and the words felt foreign in my mouth. “You called this your house, but this is mine. I inherited it. I live here. And I have no idea who you are.”
“I think I would know if there were someone like you living in this house,” she snorted. “I’ve been here close to 10 years now, and I didn’t see you a day before this week. I know all the ins and outs of this house, too, so don’t go trying to fool me with any of your squatter nonsense. That sort of stuff ain’t going to work around here. So unless you’re trying to pay to spend a night in my bed, in which case I don’t think you have enough money to be able to pay me, you’d better be getting on.”
“I’m not going to pay to stay the night in my own house!”
“Or for our services, either,” she scoffed. “But this is my house. I bought it for me and my girls, and you, sir, are no longer welcome in this establishment.”
“What establishment?” I finally cried, getting fed up over the situation. Edith was spunky, and I liked that in a person, but not necessarily when it was directed at me in such a confusing way.
“The brothel, of course!” from the sound of her voice, she was nearly as fed up as I was. “Where did you think you were? A bar from the sound of you.”
“Wait, this is the brothel?” A cold feeling started sinking in my stomach - we had said earlier that the brothel had made too much sense in this situation, but having it confirmed was a whole different situation entirely.
“Of course. Where else do you think you come in and get the company of women at the drop of a hat? My God, if you were any slower, a turtle would beat you in a race.”
It couldn’t be. Ghosts were not a real thing, and even if they were, there was no way that I would be able to visit me. Their whole thing is appearing as indistinct blobs of mist tat you see out of the corner of your eye when you’re trying to go to sleep. And yet, here was Edith, looking as lifelike as myself. My eyes traced over her face, down her fine waist, and then down her silhouette (admittedly pausing slightly over her breasts and hips, but the lizard brain in me can only be so concerned with the spirit world when there’s an admittedly attractive woman standing in front of me). Maybe I had died when the paint can hit me? Maybe I was still comatose in the hospital, and this was one big, weird delusion to keep me from noticing the charming of the alarms. But still, that made no sense to me.
I reached my leg out, hitting her lightly on her ass. It was real, all right - firm, supple, and not able to be passed through. She looked down at my foot with annoyance. “Are you going to answer my question or not?” she said impatiently. Which, I suppose made sense - I was in her bedroom, apparently.
“Sorry, I just…I think I figured out what’s going on here.”
“Well then by all means, don’t keep it hidden from the rest of us curious people,” she said, gesturing to the empty room. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if she was being serious and there were a bunch more ghosts, this time invisible, hiding in the corners of the room. Then she turned back at me, a slight smirk on her face from her own joke, and I knew that that was not the case.
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“Well, I don’t know exactly, but I have a couple of theories. One is that I’m from the future.”
“The future?” she laughed. “Who are you, the grandson I could have had, here to tell me about all the wrongs I’ve done in my life?”
“No. Or, well, at least I don’t think so. Pretty sure we’re not related, but when I told you that I own this house, that was the truth. I inherited it from my grandfather, who bought it from someone when he was about my age, and the person he bought it from had apparently bought it from you.”
“Bought it from me? I know you’ve made some jokes tonight, but that’s perhaps one of your best jokes, yet! I’ve always said that they can rip the key from this house out of my cold, dead hands, and I fully intend to keep that promise.”
“Exactly - I think that’s what happened. And now for some reason, I’m here, when I’m supposed to be like 100 years into the future.”
“Well, that would explain some of your weird clothing choice, but that could also be explained by the fact that you’re an absolute loon.”
“I wish I had my phone so I could prove it to you.” I looked longingly over to where my bedside table should be, but there was just empty space. “In my time, your outfit is ridiculous.”
She looked down at her clothes, as though just now realizing what she was wearing. “I suppose it is a bit out of the fashion at this point, but this is perfectly acceptable attire.”
“Yeah, maybe for the 1900s, but not today.” We stared into each other's eyes blankly for a few beats before it finally clicked. “That’s what year it is, isn’t it?”
“1912,” she said, looking me up and down. “And you really aren’t from now, are you? If you were, you wouldn’t be so surprised by that news, I wouldn’t think.”
“I am not. I don’t think my grandparents were even born by 1912.”
“Well, that does pose a bit of a problem then, doesn’t it?” She stood up, her hands clasped in front of her as though in prayer. “Do you know about how long you’ll be staying in this time? I assume your money is no good here, and you don’t seem to have brought anything with you, including a set of clothing.”
“I wish I knew how long I’d be staying, but I don’t even know how I got here. It just sort of happens. Like last time, I got hit in the head with a paint can.”
“Oh, I remember that well. It took me forever to get the blood stains out of the front carpet, and I’m not entirely sure if Clara ever got them out of her bedsheets…although I certainly hope so, I’m fairly certain that she’s had clients since then.”
Edith’s head seemed to be a bit more cloudy than the last time I was here, but to be fair, it seemed to be pretty late at night. I wasn’t positive how late it was, as there were no clocks in the room, but outside the window was pitch blackness. Inside the room, only a couple of candles showed any sort of light. I ignored her commentary and continued. “And today, the last thing I remember is falling asleep. So, with any luck, I’ll come out of it by morning. At least for right now, it seems to be something that only happens when I’m unconscious.”
She smiled at that comment. “And you assume that I’m not just a vivid dream that you’re having, then?”
“Trust me, I’ve considered it. In fact, I sincerely hope that’s the case. And yet -” I grabbed her wrist as she paced past, and she immediately acquiesced her hand to mind. Her skin was warm to the touch, as well as quite soft, although I could feel calluses on her fingers. That made sense with the little bit I knew of her - she didn’t seem like the kind of person who would just be running the place, when she could instead be tending to the needs of the house. “You feel too real to be a dream. I don’t know how this works, but somehow I managed to come back here.”
Edith pulled her hand away, a small blush appearing on her face. “And you somehow manage to always find me. What dumb luck.”
“I’d say it’s pretty good luck, personally. Without you, I probably wouldn’t have healed as quickly from my head wound. Or, at the very least, it would have been a much less enjoyable of a wakeup than it was.”
Her eyes glistened with interest and she stopped her pacing for a moment, turning back toward me. “And what did happen when you woke up? You seem to have survived the night, at least.”
I smiled. Her biting tongue was probably not something that would have been sought out back in her days, especially when talking with me that she didn’t know well, but I thought it was endearing. “Basically just that. I woke up with a searing headache, but a fully scabbed over wound. Went and found my dog, who acted like he hadn’t seen me in years. And then I went downstairs to look at the spot where I fell, and saw that there was a ton of paint that I had to clean up, but the blood was gone, I assume thanks to you.”
“How interesting…so, what you’re claiming is that, when you come to this world, you come with, and apparently your clothing, but nothing else seems to join you. And when you leave, you don’t take anything back, but everything connected with you leaves as well. Does that sound about right?”
I thought about it for a moment. I hadn’t thought to check my pockets the last time I was here to see if I had brought my phone with me, but now that I thought about it, nothing clattered to the floor when my pants were removed, so it can’t have come with me. But the bandage didn’t make it back (although frankly, the situation was so chaotic that it was possible that Clara took it off without me noticing), but the blood stain had disappeared assumedly because Edith had cleaned it up. Not sure why that meant that the floor was still wet, though - that must have meant that the water from the floor came back too, right? “I haven’t tried bringing anything back with me,” I said finally, “but otherwise, that seems about right.”
“In that case, I guess we’ll have to test it, and hope that you don’t end up staying here too long. And, if that’s the case, then you can perhaps try to bring something for me next time, to prove your story. Here,” she said. One hand reached into her cleavage and I froze - I had to admit that I found Edith attractive, but I thought she had at most a passing fancy for me. Maybe even begrudging acceptance. But then she started pulling out a white handkerchief like she had used on my last time here and I felt my body relax. I had to admit, though, that with that relaxation was also a twinge of disappointment. She held out the handkerchief to me - take this back with you, and we’ll see if it actually goes with, or if it stays here when you leave.”
I grabbed the handkerchief from her, but then I realized the fatal flaw in the plan. “The only issue is that, it seems like the only time I can go back and forth is when I’m asleep or unconscious, so I don’t know how I’ll be able to hold onto it.”
“Can’t you just put it in your pocket?” she asked, pointing down at my crotch. I looked down, confused - I thought I had gotten undressed before going to bed. Indeed I had, but it became immediately obvious what she was referring to - the fly of my boxers.
“No, no, no, that’s not a pocket,” I quickly stammered. The fact that she didn’t know what the fly was for was an easy way to tell that she was telling the truth about being from the early 1900s. “That’s this thing we have in underwear now - it, uh, lets you pee easier.”
“Oh!” Her eyes widened, looking down at my boxers again. While the situation felt awkward, having that sort of direct attention to my package made it twitch slightly, and I sincerely hoped that the movement was not visible beneath the thin fabric. “But it still goes inside, right? Might not be the most proper way to bring something back, but it still should function fine. May I?”
I nodded, not entirely sure what she was asking, but unfortunately the blood was starting to run from my head at that moment, so I didn’t particularly care. She grabbed the handkerchief from my hand and crouched down in front of me. Deftly, she pulled open the fly of my boxers and shoved the handkerchief inside. I felt that plus her hand lightly brush against my swiftly engorging cock and tried my best to stifle a moan that suddenly appeared in my throat. Come on, body, I told myself - this is not a sexy situation, you have to keep it together. My cock didn’t listen, as it twitched at her touch, but she either didn’t feel the movement, or she chose to ignore it.
“There, now you’ll be able to bring it back, even though you’ll be asleep.” She swiftly stood up and looked at me, then giggled slightly. “And, forgive me for saying this, but you get used to it when you’re in this profession - it makes you look extremely well-endowed.” While I think most of my blood was headed down to my package, I still felt some manage to creep up and flush my face. “Now comes the difficult question, though - if you need to fall asleep, where are we going to have that happen?”
“I would prefer in the house,” I quickly injected. “I wouldn’t mind staying elsewhere if it made you more comfortable, but last time I woke up in the same spot where I went to sleep, and I’d rather not wake up in someone else’s house in my boxers.”
“That’s understandable. I wouldn’t want you to leave the house in this state either - we run a professional establishment, and I don’t want to run the risk of someone seeing you and assuming that you were either robbed of all of your possessions, or that I had allowed you to come into the house in that sort of dress. Either way, it would lead to a bad look.” She turned back toward her wardrobe and started ruffling through the papers that topped it. After a moment, she found the paper she was looking for and started to read it. “Clara already has a client who chose to spend the night, so her room is out for today. That’s unfortunate - she probably would have been the most accepting of a scantily clad man showing up at her door in the middle of the night, plus I’m sure she would have welcomed the chance to see you again. Alice is free, but I think she’s feeling under the weather, and while I want to test if you can bring things back and forth, I don’t want you to die before you get a chance to return. Maybe Hattie’s?”
“Or, if you don’t mind, I could just stay here,” I interjected. While I didn’t mind the chance of getting some action, especially at this point, I agreed that it would be interesting to see if we could bring things back and forth, and I didn’t want to ruin the chances of that just so I could get laid.
“You do realize that while this is still technically part of the brothel, my bedroom is normally off limits to the guests, don’t you?”
“True, but I’m going to guess that most of the guests aren’t time travelers. But honestly, I don’t want to do anything,” her eyes darted down to my crotch as though to silently point out my lie. “I just want to go to bed, hopefully be able to sleep at some point, and not ruin our chances at testing this.”
She sighed and looked back at what I assumed was her log book. Her eyes scanned the page for a minute more, and then she set the paper down and turned back to me. “Fine, you can stay here,” she said begrudgingly. “But I get the bed, so you can sleep anywhere of your choosing on the floor.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, jumping out of the bed. While it wasn’t my favorite arrangement, I could understand it, and I still thought it was much preferable to trying to find a random house to sleep in and hoping that the owner would be fine with it.
“Now, I’m not sure what to do about your dressing clothes. I assume that’s not usual sleep attire for your time?” I shrugged - it wasn’t unusual sleep attire, but it also wasn’t that uncommon to just sleep in your underwear. She frowned slightly, looking me up and down. “Regardless, I suppose it will have to do, as I doubt we have any mens clothes around. Our patrons do tend to take them with them when they leave. And as for myself, there is no way I’ll be able to sleep in a corset.”
“I won’t sneak a peek if you need to change,” I said, throwing both hands over my eyes in an exaggerated gesture to emphasize my statement. “Let me assure you, that’s plenty improper in my time too, at least without an enthusiastic partner.”
“Well, it’s good to know that some things haven’t changed, I suppose. Fine, I guess this is a better solution anyway - if I walked to and from the restroom with an arm full of clothes, some of the girls might start to wonder. You meeting people by falling into our parlor is one thing, but showing up in my bedroom is another. This may be my home, but it’s also my business, and I have a reputation to protect.”
“I totally get it, and I’ll try to make the situation as easy as I can for you. I didn’t ask for this, but I know you didn’t either, and it’s more an intrusion on your life than it is on mine.”
She was silent for a beat, with the only noises in the room being the sound of fabric running against fabric. “I appreciate that,” she finally whispered. “I’m so used to anticipating the needs of everyone else; it feels weird to have someone anticipate my needs in return.”
“Well, it seems about the least I can do, considering I’m technically crashing at your house.”
“That’s fair. You can open your eyes now, if you’d like.” I opened my eyes, and Edith was standing there in a white nightdress, holding one of the candles. “If you’re still here in the morning, we’ll have to figure out some other sort of arrangement. I tend to get up before everyone else, so perhaps we can quickly get you downstairs before anyone notices. Your outfit might be something we have to deal with at that point, but if we claim that you’d been drinking, maybe nobody will mention it.”
“It’s worth a shot. Hopefully I’m back home by then, so we can see if our experiment worked.” I turned over onto my stomach, trying to find a comfortable spot. My eyes locked on the mirror at the other side of the room - from it, I could see that Edith was sitting on her bed, looking at me with a faint smile on her face that she had apparently not wanted me to see. It didn’t seem sinister, as though it were just something that she was not used to showing someone. It softened her whole face, and I realized that her job was probably the reason why she kept it to herself - this was not the sort of occupation that one would want to be soft in.”
“Brian, you’ve been so kind thus far, I feel bad making you sleep on the floor. If you want, you can have the other half of the bed. But we’ll make a row of pillows in between us, and no funny business allowed.”
“Yeah, if you’re comfortable with that, I’d love it.” I got to my knees and stretched widely. I could see her watching me out of the corner of my eye, as though trying to guess what my next move was going to be. I got to my feet and walked around to the other side of the bed. “No funny business, I promise.” I grabbed the pillow from the top of my side (after getting up from the floor, sleeping on a bed with no pillow seemed like a word of improvement regardless) and moved it so that it rested against the small of her back. “If I cross this line, I fully expect to not be able to go back, because you’ve killed me in my sleep.”
Edith laughed, then turned over and pulled the pillow into her stomach. “You’re damn right I would. Now, get in and go to sleep. I’ve got to be up early in the morning to make sure that we don’t need some sort of excuse for why you’re here.”
“Yes Ma’am!” I crawled under the covers of the bed, being careful to not get too close to the pillow that protected the space between us. “Sleep well, and I hope I don’t see you in the morning.”
Edith laughed lightly again. “I don’t think I’d go that far, but I do hope you manage to get home tonight. Sleep well.”