The house quiet, and the ghost was still inside it when Daniel pushed the door open. He had heard the local stories about abandoned houses like this one from a coworker who grew up on the same street, but he had come anyway, mostly out of boredom, with a flashlight and a bad idea. The floor creaked under his boots, and something moved near the staircase before he even got the light turned on.
“Hello?” he said, feeling stupid the second the word left his mouth.
Nothing answered. He walked further in, past a collapsed couch and a pile of old newspapers, and the air felt colder near the kitchen than it should have. He told himself it was just a draft from a broken window. He kept walking anyway.
A few days earlier, his coworker Priya had told him not to go near the place at all. She said her uncle used to say the house never stayed empty, that something kept the doors locked from the inside even though no one lived there. Daniel had laughed it off at the time. Now, standing in the hallway with dust falling from the ceiling, the memory didn’t feel as funny.
He turned the flashlight toward the stairs and saw a woman standing at the top of them.
She wasn’t moving. She wore an old gray dress, and her feet were bare on the broken wood. Daniel took a step back and hit the wall.
“Sorry,” he said, because that was the only thing his brain gave him. “I didn’t think anyone lived here.”
The woman didn’t answer. She tilted her head, slowly, like she was listening to something behind him. Daniel spun around, but there was nothing there.
“Look, I’m leaving,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come in.”
When he turned back to the stairs, she was three steps closer, though he hadn’t seen her move. His chest tightened. He backed toward the front door, fumbling for the handle, and it wouldn’t turn.
“Come on,” he muttered, twisting it harder. “Come on, open.”
The door stayed shut. He looked over his shoulder and the woman was standing at the bottom of the stairs now, watching him struggle with the handle like she found it interesting.
“What do you want?” Daniel asked, his voice cracking in the middle of the sentence.
She stepped closer, and for a moment she just looked like an ordinary woman, tired and pale, the kind of face he might pass on the street without a second look. Then she reached out one hand toward him, and her fingers were wrong, too long, bending in places fingers don’t bend.
Daniel yanked at the door with both hands. Something inside the frame gave a little, and he threw his shoulder into it. The wood cracked. He hit it again, and this time it burst open, and cold night air hit his face.
He ran across the yard without looking back, tripped over a root, and fell hard on his hands. When he looked up at the house, the woman was standing in the doorway he had just broken through. She wasn’t chasing him. She was just standing there, watching him get up.
“Stay away from me,” he said, though there was no real reason to say it out loud, since she hadn’t moved from the doorway at all.
He got in his car and locked the doors before he even had the keys in the ignition. His hands were shaking too much to get the key into the slot on the first two tries. When he finally managed it, he looked back at the house one more time.
The doorway was empty.
He drove home without calling Priya, without calling anyone, because he didn’t know what he would even say. He kept checking his rearview mirror the whole way, even though there was nothing behind him on the empty road.
When he got inside his apartment, he locked the door, checked it twice, and sat down on his bed without taking off his shoes. He kept thinking about her hand reaching toward him, and how she hadn’t said a single word the entire time.
