A summer night. A darken street. The residents of Forest Ridge neighborhood are all asleep, nestled into their beds and cribs. It is a perfect summer night. The sounds outside are of air-conditioning units humming, and that of little night creatures buzzing, and croaking, and whining. A skunk trots across the road, avoiding the streetlamp, and hurries into his den under the Forestall’s shed.

Abruptly then, the sounds stop. No buzz, no croak, no whine. Even the air conditioners have all sputtered out and stopped.

A moment of complete quiet, an eclipse of sound, as if the whole neighborhood had just been sealed away inside some monstrous vacuum.

And then the light show begins. Heat lightning as silent as a muted television streaks across the sky. It’s only audience: the scared, shivering skunk under the Forestall’s shed.

In the dark stillness, with flashing, silent lightening, the wind picks up and it blows hot, and strong, knocking down a length of the Johnson’s new fence and blowing down several of Miss Calder’s wind spinners.

Then, across the street from the Forestalls, on Brackett Street next to the Golding’s lilacs and an azalea bush, a structure is illuminated in the flash-strobe lightening like a still-frame nightmare.

It grows up from the ground like the dead rising from a grave.

The skunk burrows deeper into its den.

The structure: a fully formed house.

And the night is alive once more.

  

Shelley walks her normal route around the neighborhood. It’s a normal summer afternoon. She passes the normal number of walkers, passes the normal number of dogs, waves at the normal number of cars that drive by.

When she is several streets over Shelley ducks under the tree branch that she always ducks under. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. At the end of this street a woman, still in her housecoat, stands out on her front lawn, hands behind her back, staring across the street. Nothing too abnormal.

“You see that?” The woman says.

 “Huh?”

“That house.” The woman points to a house across the street. It’s a black house, but a black that Shelley had never seen— the color of deep space. Looking at it makes Shelley’s eyes hurt.

“Wasn’t there yesterday,” the woman says.

“No?” Shelley says as if she can’t believe it, but Shelley knows it’s true. Shelley has walked that neighborhood twice a day, five days a week, for the last five years. Shelley doesn’t know many of the residents, but she knows the houses. That house, the house that wasn’t there yesterday, looks as if it’s been there for years. But Shelley knows it hasn’t.

“There was a rose bush there last night,” the woman says.

“Azalea,” Shelley corrects. “How’d it get here? They can’t move a house that quickly.”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” the woman says.

“I bet it’s the military,” a voice says, and the women turn.

A man with a crew cut, a stained t-shirt under suspenders, is out on the woman’s front porch, most likely the woman’s husband.

The woman is eying Shelley then. “You live on Tanner?”

“Yes.”

The woman nods. “We’ve seen you walking,” the woman says. “You probably walk the most around here.”

“I’m Shelley.”

“The government has all sorts of things we don’t know about,” the man says.

“That’s, Daryl,” the woman says hitching a thumb over her shoulder. “I’m Pam. Pam and Daryl Forestall.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Shelley.

“I’m expecting it to fly away any minute,” Pam says.

Shelley stands there a moment longer. It’s like looking at the ocean, dizzying, the tug of the current wanting to pull her further. Shelley shakes her head and checks her watch. “I should get back,” she says. “I have work.”

“Yeah,” Pam says. “Me too.”

  

Shelley works from home. In her company’s HR database, they label Shelley as a “remote employee”. Shelley knows this because she helped design the database. Shelley likes working from home. It’s one of the reasons why Shelley took the job to begin with.

Shelley loves that she has no commute, that her laundry and dishes are never piled up, and overall, she has less distractions to focus on her work. In the office there were constant interruptions. People popping in to see if she has a few minutes for a question, or worse, popping in just to chat. Cube sparrows, Shelley once heard them referred to and thinks it appropriate.

But on that day, when she settles back into her home office to review the week’s current sprint, Shelley can’t stop thinking about the house on Brackett— the house that shouldn’t be there. Shelley tries to imagine what it would take to move a house in… Twelve hours? Fifteen hours?

Shelley imagines a flatbed truck driving the two storied house down the narrow neighborhood streets. It’s like something off a cartoon: A house teetering perilously on the back of truck, bouncing down the road with nothing but a single strap around it.

Would it be multiple flatbed trucks? Shelley wonders. Would they need to break the house into two, or three pieces?

That would take even more time to put together… more than a single evening, wouldn’t it?

Did the house have a basement?

Was the driveway paved?

Wasn’t there a tree out in the front yard too?

The more Shelley thinks about the house the more questions she has. Shelley opens her web browser and searches for ‘house movers’ but all the results are of companies that will move your belongings, not your house. Shelley refines her search: how to physically move a house. Then adds: in a single night.

The only reasonable thing to do would be to see the house again.

An instant message pops up on her screen. “Hey” it reads. It’s from her coworker Daneal.

Shelley’s fingers hover over the keyboard. Her cursor flashes, waiting for her words. Shelley runs through a dozen scenarios on what Daneal’s “Hey” could mean, but none of the scenarios take less than a half an hour of her time. Hey can you review this code? Hey do you know why the counts in database x or database y don’t match? Hey can you… Hey are you… Hey…

Shelley stands from her desk, leaving Daneal’s message popped up on her screen, and is out of the room.

  

Rather than taking her usual walk around the block, Shelley goes straight to Brackett Street.

The place where she had found Pam Forestall standing out in front of her house earlier that morning, one-twelve Brackett, looks like the beginnings of a block party. Twenty or so people are standing around gawking, talking, taking photos. Some are neighbors that Shelley recognizes but many she doesn’t.

Pam Forestall sees her. “Hey look,” Pam yells. “It’s the walker.” Heads turn to Shelley. 

Pam puts an arm around Shelley and pulls her into the mix.

“Mrs. Golding,” Pam says weaving through the people with Shelley in tow. “Mrs. Golding this is… I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

“Shelley.”

“Mrs. Golding, this is Shelley,” Pam says, introducing Shelley to an older woman with freshly permed hair. “Shelley’s on Tanner. She’s the walker we see every morning.”

“Nice to meet you,” Mrs. Golding says. “Isn’t it a shame at what they did to that little corner store at the end of your road?”

“It is—”

“Shelley, Mrs. Golding lives in that house,” Pam points to the house next to the black house; next to the house that shouldn’t be there.

Before either Mrs. Golding or Shelley can say anything more Shelley is pulled away again.

“You know, Stan,” Pam says. “The mailman.”

Stan, the mailman nods. “Twenty-two Tanner Street?”

“Twenty-four,” Shelley corrects.

“Stan, tell her what you told us,” Pam says.

“All’s I said was that this house isn’t on my list.”

“Isn’t on his list,” Pam repeats, satisfied. “That proves it.”

“So what?” Someone says. “Maybe it’s new.”

“You can’t build a house in a day,” someone else says.

“We would have heard it being built,” Mrs. Golding adds.

“What did you hear?” Shelley asks.

Mrs. Golding shrugs. “Not a thing. We were having lunch, Jim, my husband and I, when we noticed all this commotion,” she sweeps her arm around gesturing towards the crowd. “We thought it was some party,” she laughs. “First time seeing it was crossing the street just a few minutes ago.”

Stolen story; please report.

“It’s so strange,” Shelley says.

“It’s probably just a prank,” someone says. “I bet if you go around the back it’s probably just propped up on braces, like those fake house on a movie set.”

This gets some nods.

“You can see the back of it, from our house,” another person says. “It’s a real house for sure.”

“Could be some PR Stunt,” someone else says. “We’ve got friends in California that work for companies that do stuff like this all the time. Probably being recorded right now.”

“Has anyone gone over there?” Shelley asks.

“Like knock on the door?”

“Yeah.”

For a long moment no one talks.

Surely this isn’t the first time someone thought about going over there, is it? Shelley wonders.

“Go for it,” someone finally says. “Be the first one to knock on that door.”

Shelley finds then that she doesn’t at all want to be the first one to knock on that door. Looking at the house makes Shelley’s skin crawl.

So why did I want to come? She wonders.

“It makes you dizzy just looking at it, doesn’t it?” Pam says. She’s next to Shelley.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t have the damnedest clue.”

The crowd is quiet for a long while, just staring. Besides its color, the house doesn’t look at all out of place in the neighborhood. The house has a driveway, a walkway, an ordinary number of windows, and a front door. But something…

Shelley checks her watch and realizes she’s been away from her desk for over two hours.

Where did the time go?

She curses and runs back in the summer heat, imagining the worst: a dozen emails, a pop-up meeting, an IM from her Boss, an IM from her Boss’s Boss.

But when Shelley gets back, she finds Daneal’s solitary IM still waiting for her.

Around five Shelley finishes her workday and logs off.

She goes for another walk around the neighborhood.

To wind down, she tells herself. Then tells herself the truth: To see the house.

  

The gathering in front of one-twelve Brackett has swelled again.

Shelley stands just on the outskirts of it all. One would think standing there, a crowd of strangers with a solitary fixation, it would feel just like the fourth of July. But it doesn’t. Nor does it feel like a ball game, or concert. It feels like… like…

Stan, the mailman bumps into her.

“You’re back?” He says. His face is sunburned.

“I’m back,” Shelley agrees then wonders, did you ever leave?

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Stan says. “The police came.”

“They did?”

“Yeah, they’re right over there,” he hitches a thumb over his shoulder.

“What are they doing?”

“The same we’re doing,” Stan says. “It’s the strangest thing.”

“Anything happen in the house?”

Stan shakes his head. “Not a thing.”

“Anyone go in?”

“Go in? No one’s been on the lawn.” He watches her then. A smile forms at the end of his lips.

“What?”

A bigger smile.

“What?”

“Don’t you feel it?” He says.

“Feel what?” As soon as the words leave her mouth Shelley does feel it— She feels it first in her chest, an energy, then it’s everywhere— in her legs, her arms, her toes, fingers, head. Shelley’s eyes widen. It’s electric.

“You do feel it,” Stan says, his smile even wider.

“I do,” Shelley says. She too can’t help herself from smiling.

She had felt it all day she realizes then, it had been the reason she couldn’t sit still, the reason why she wanted to leave her house and run… but down there at one-twelve Brackett it was…

“It’s like a hum,” Stan says. “Aint it?”

“Huh?”

“A hum,” Stan repeats. “Like your whole body is a tuned-up engine and it’s just humming like a top.”

Shelley nods. Yes, it was humming— she was humming. That was as close to it as she could get, as close to it as any of them could get, she supposed: A hum.

“I wish I lived here,” Stan says, almost sadly.

And that’s the last thing they say for a long while, the last thing anyone says for a long while. Everyone is quiet, soaking in that electric charge, bathing in the hum coursing through their bodies.

Dusk comes, then night.

The hum grows, intensifies.

Shelley can feel it in her teeth. In her fingernails and hair follicles.

Around her some people start to laugh, some cry. Some sound as if they’re having the best sex of their life which maybe they are, but most are quiet; trapped in the throes of the hum permeating through them. Shelley focuses on her breath. In. And out. In. And out. Her eyes are shut tight. She’s with the hum, inward. She’s so close to it that another moment of this, she thinks, and she will be the hum, be the white light, the electricity. To be devoured, obliterated by it. It’s pure ecstasy.

A hand tightens around Shelley’s wrist and her eyes open— it’s Mrs. Golding. Her face is slack like a deflated balloon. Her eyes are dark, round pools. Her mouth is open. For one brief moment, Shelley is reminded of the famous painting, ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch.

“I can’t,” Mrs. Golding breathes. “It’s…”

Shelley wants to respond but finds words failing her. Instead, Shelley takes Mrs. Golding’s hand in her own as if the pair were about to jump off a high cliff together.

Another moment passes. The frenzy of light and electricity, that hum reaches further heights.

This is it, Shelley thinks. This is where I burst at the seams. And oddly, Shelley is ready for it. Wants it even.

Another moment passes.

A cool breeze sends goosebumps up Shelley’s arms. She blinks and swats a mosquito. People begin to move, leaving. Porch lights turn on, doors open and close, engines start.

Mrs. Golding’s hand loosens and falls from Shelley’s grip. Mrs. Golding doesn’t say a word, she just shuffles across the street back towards her house.

That hum in Shelley’s body, that white electricity… it’s there, but settled. Now she’s just… tired.

Shelley walks up Kennedy with a family of four. The smallest, a girl, is asleep, draped over her father’s arms. Shelley can relate.

That night, Shelley has the best sleep of her life.

  

The following morning Shelley wakes before her alarm goes off. She dresses quickly, puts on her sneakers, and is out the door.

It’s a gray, overcast day.

At a quick pace, not quite a run, but not quite a walk, Shelley crosses High Street and then Pebble. At the next intersection she takes Ardsley, then Kennedy. While she walks, Shelley writes an email on her phone, to her boss, Melanie. She writes that she woke up with a stomach bug and won’t be signing on that day. She hits send and is walking down Brackett.

It’s not even seven when Shelley ducks under the low tree branch that overhangs the sidewalk, and…

There is already a small group gathered out at one-twelve Brackett, out on the Forestall’s front lawn. Shelley knows without even looking across the street.

“It’s gone,” Shelley says. “It’s gone, isn’t it?” Not daring to look across the street.

“Went sometime last night,” Pam says, her voice cracking.

There are five of them: Pam and Daryl Forestall, a lanky kid—most likely he’s of college age (a freshman, maybe a sophomore), a woman around Shelley’s age that she had never seen before, and finally there’s Stan, Stan the mailman. He’s not in his postman blues though. He’s in khaki shorts and a t-shirt.

It’s like a funeral, Shelley thinks, then realizes it is a funeral. A funeral for the house that shouldn’t have been there, but was, and now isn’t again. 

“Why?” Shelley says. And the question hangs there like a cloud.

Why what? She thinks. Why did it go? Why was it ever there in the first place? Why didn’t it let us in? Why… Why do I even care?

Shelley is crying. They’re all crying. An arm is around her, it’s the woman Shelley doesn’t know but Shelley lets the woman hold her just the same.

“What was it do you think?” Shelley says between sobs.

No one knows. How could they?

“It was like a magnet,” Stan says. “A magnet for people.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“Could have been something from a different dimension,” the college kid offers. He sniffles. “What we see is a house but in the other dimension… fourth, or fifth… it’s something else.”

“Like a spaceship?” The woman Shelley doesn’t know says.

“Could be,” the college kid agrees.

“Could have been the thumb of God for all we know,” Pam says, bitterly.

“It felt good, whatever it was,” Daryl says.

  

The followings weeks, Shelley grieves. The whole neighborhood grieves. Every night for nearly two weeks the neighborhood (and Stan) holds a candlelight vigil. They place cards and photographs and handmade signs on the small plot of land across from the Forestall’s. People bring rocks and build little shrines. They burn candles and incense. They decorate the azalea bush (not rose bush like Pam Forestall originally believed) with ornaments and it looks like some strange summer Christmas bush. But these acts, rituals, and prayers don’t bring the house back and it doesn’t stop their grief.

“It wasn’t the house,” someone says. “It’s how it made us feel.”

On the third week, most of Shelley’s emails and instant messages go unread. Her dishes pile up. Her laundry goes unwashed.

On the fourth week the Forestall’s put their house on the market, and it sells within twenty-four hours. The Realtor tells them it’s a buyer’s market but neither Pam nor Daryl seem at all excited. They just want out of the neighborhood. They plan to go south, closer to their children.

On the fifth week Shelley starts seeing a psychiatrist. She can’t explain at all why she feels the way she does. The psychiatrist tells Shelley that she doesn’t need a reason to feel the way she does. Grief can just come.

The therapy helps. Shelley’s work starts getting completed. Her dishes and clothes get put away.

On the first day of fall, when the trees had already begun turning red and orange, Shelley is smiling. Giddy even. Dr. Kruzel, her psychiatrist, is surprised at the turnaround.

“It’s the change of seasons,” Shelley says; lies. She then tells Dr. Kruzel that she’ll be gone for a while. “Taking a trip.”

“Where to?” Dr. Kruzel asks.

“Germany.”

Dr. Kruzel nods.

Shelley watches some sort of calculation happening in her psychiatrist’s head.

“I’m still taking my medications,” Shelley says. “I’m going to Oktoberfest. Going with some friends.”

“That sounds like a fun time,” Dr. Kruzel says.

At some point in the last eight- or nine-weeks Shelley made half-a-dozen Google Alerts including: “House that appeared overnight”, “mysterious new house”, “house appeared out of nowhere”, and “a pleasant humming when standing next to house”.

A week ago, Shelley received her first notification: Dalian, China. An hour after that Lund, Sweden. An hour after that Esslingen, Germany. This last had a photograph. It was fuzzy and pixilated, but it was Shelley’s house. It was the house that shouldn't be there.

These houses cropped up overnight just like the house in her neighborhood.

After more research, she finds that the house in Dalian, China disappeared the following day. The house in Sweden two days later. The house in Esslingen... so far, it's been there for a week. Whatever the outcome: Shelley arrives by the time the house is gone, or the house disappears the day after she gets there, none of that really matters. There are more of them each day. Yesterday one in Russia. Today, Morocco. What does it all mean? Shelley doesn't have the slightest clue. But it's calling for her. That hum, it's still there... distant... but still there.

And so, Shelley is at the airport waiting. She isn’t alone. She’s seen the woman that had held her while she cried several weeks back. She’s seen another neighbor, the one that had thought it all had been a PR Stunt, and four rows over, sitting with his back to her is Stan the mailman.

If all goes well, tomorrow at this time they will all be standing in front of the black house. They will be in its presence, and they will be feeling that cosmic hum radiate through their bodies, through their very beings. To commune with it, Shelley thinks, and the plane begins to board.