Work Text:
A lock clicked.
Her eyes shot open, searching half-blind through the darkness. She reached instinctively for the baseball bat leaning against her bed.
"Not this shit again," she grumbled in a whisper.
She lay there, still, straining her ears in the silence, listening for the tiny squeak of the door hinge, feeling for the shift in air pressure that would tell her the front door had opened. As she had every night for the last month. And as ever, she heard nothing, felt no change in the air.
Anna was so, so tired.
She squeezed her eyes shut, and curled up tighter under the covers, bat still clutched between tense fingers. She knew that if she walked downstairs to check the door, it would still be locked. It would be locked, and the doorbell camera wouldn't show anybody there. Just as it had been and shown all the other nights.
She tried to drift back to sleep, but it was so, so hard, knowing what was coming next.
"Fuck this haunted house shit," she whispered, "and fuck me." For ignoring the warnings and buying it anyway.
325th Chestnut St N was so fucking haunted.
It wasn't even surprising, not really. A family had died here three years ago, horribly murdered by some ex-lover. The usual sad song and dance these days. Mother, father, daughter, son, all killed in dead of night. The news said the children were held hostage against the parents; and that all four of them had died screaming. Nasty stuff.
They got the bastard that did it when a neighbor had called 911 as the first cries had rung out. Guy wasn't even supposed to be home, but his business trip was delayed last-minute due to a flight cancellation. An unexpected little fortune.
An unexpected fortune, Anna had thought, finding a house for so cheap. It was known to be haunted, locally, haunted enough the realtor had to disclose it when she bought it. But that was okay. She hadn't believed in ghosts.
Not then.
"Please, please, you can have me, just leave them alone!"
"It's too late for that! You should have stayed with me when you had the chance!"
Her face twisted as she squeezed her eyes tighter. She pulled the covers over her head, and her grip on the baseball bat was painful.
"It's just ghosts," she whispered to herself, "just ghosts."
They'd never touched her or her belongings. Never swung the cabinet doors or moved her keys or turned out the lights on her. She'd never seen them.
But every night, she could hear the murders, re-enacted over and over again.
The first night, the first week of nights, she'd still been awake, downstairs in the living room. She'd rushed to the door to confront some mystery intruder in seconds - only to find the door locked. Only to hear the creak of footsteps and the change in the air right through the foyer she was standing in - the empty foyer.
She'd brought the baseball bat to her bedside by night three.
By night five, she thought: If it's really an intruder, just kill me. She'd stayed in bed, and woken whole and healthy in the morning.
By night eight, she knew by heart the tread of that long-gone murderer.
"AAAAAAAAAAAA-"
"No!"
The shrill scream split the air, and Anna shook her head into her pillow.
"Just ghosts," she whispered hoarsely as the wheezing gurgle of a young boy choking on his own blood drifted up the stairs.
"Just ghosts," she mouthed the words again.
"Just-"
"Miss? I'm sorry-" a hand tapped on her shoulder; a young boy's voice spoke directly behind her.
"Shit!"
Heartbeat rushing in her ears, Anna rolled away from the voice - and off the bed, swinging the bat as she went.
Her eyes were bleary with weariness and attempted sleep, but when she sprang to her feet and looked across her bed-
-of course there was nothing there. Just like all the nights before.
Except this time, looking to her side-
"Miss? I'm sorry for scaring you." An invisible hand tugged on her sleeve.
"You're dead," Anna said dumbly.
"I know," said the voice of the boy who'd been murdered three years ago. They say he'd died first. They were right.
"I know. But it's not me downstairs."