We Used to Live Here

Thomas explains that he used to sleepwalk and had night terrors as a child but hasn’t had them since, until returning to this house. His parents used to tell him that the devil caused his nightmares. Eve asks about Thomas’s implication regarding the house. He reveals that his sister, Alison, was 14 when she started claiming that things were changing color or being moved. This escalated to her thinking that rooms in the house were appearing and disappearing and that actors had replaced her family. She came to believe that the house was changing her entire reality, and her parents again blamed it on something satanic. Thomas explains that the circle symbols Alison carved around the house were a response to her experiences, but he was never sure whether they were real. He was eight years old then and wishes he could have helped his sister. After everyone goes to bed, Eve lies awake thinking about everything that happened during the evening.

Eve has a nightmare in which she’s running from someone or something that chases her with flashlights in the night. She comes to a cliff and has no choice but to jump off, hitting the rocks below. Eve dies in her dream but continues to hear a phrase that repeats itself over and over: “Once they’re in, they never leave” (87).

Eve wakes, startled, but doesn’t remember her dream. She gets up for a glass of water and notices that the basement door is open. Afraid and irritated, Eve suspects that Jenny snuck into the basement again and calls out for her. Eve performs a special knock that she saw Thomas do earlier and thinks she hears Jenny respond. Suddenly, a small child who looks like Jenny appears, unblinking and sitting stiffly. When it stands, it becomes six feet tall, and Eve runs from the basement in terror. She wakes Charlie, who is certain that Eve saw nothing at all and goes back to sleep. Eve wonders if she saw anything or if Charlie is right.

Two documents show news coverage of fires at the Yale hospital and city hall, each without a known cause.

Eve wakes to find Charlie already gone (without having said anything) and the family cooking breakfast downstairs. Perturbed and alarmed, Eve asks Thomas why they’re still there, and he answers that Charlie offered the kitchen, adding that they plan to leave after breakfast. Eve is suspicious, wondering why Charlie didn’t wake her and suddenly recalling all the previous night’s events. She looks for her phone to call Charlie but can’t find it anywhere, and Thomas asks if she lost something, like he already knows. Eve sees Charlie’s locket with the photo hanging over the fireplace on a nail that Eve took down the night before, and she immediately feels the need to escape the house and call Charlie. She announces that she’s leaving and heads out the door with Shylo.

A document shows a conversation on the internet forum website 4chan. Several users discuss a toy monkey with cymbals (like the one Eve had). Some remember having the toy, while others are certain it never existed. One user suggests that it might be a “Mandela effect,” or proof of an alternate timeline because of how many people remember a different version of the past. The users list examples of other Mandela effects, and the thread closes when one user insults another’s intelligence.

Eve and Shylo take the 10-minute walk to the neighbor’s house, and Eve can’t help feeling that something is horribly wrong. The snow from the night before melts around her as she walks, and she thinks about how far she is from any sort of help. Eve recalls that the realtor who sold them the house talked about how the mountainside was nicknamed Stray Dog Summit because of the area’s many stray dogs. When Eve reaches the neighbor’s house, she’s certain it used to be 3708, not 3707. In the yard is a frozen koi pond with fish still swimming beneath the ice. Eve rings the bell, but no one answers. She sees a light on inside, but when she rings a second time, it turns off. Suddenly, a woman appears behind her, and Shylo approaches the woman trustfully. Eve is stunned because Shylo is usually cautious of new people. The woman explains that she used to foster stray dogs, but when Eve mentions the nickname Stray Dog Summit, the woman says she has never heard of it. Eve explains that she needs to use a phone, and the woman introduces herself as Heather. Heather lets Eve into the house.

A document reports on the strange effects of hypothermia and how a couple in Canada was found in the 1980s after freezing to death in their home. The man was lying under the bed, and the woman was in the basement and was clearly attempting to burrow in the dirt. The document explains that people who know they’re about to die often resort to primitive evolutionary behaviors like burrowing.

Heather invites Eve inside, and Eve can tell that she’s a lonely elderly woman whose family doesn’t call or visit often enough. Heather tries to invite Eve to stay for a while, but Eve insists on just using the phone. Heather points down the hallway to a rotary phone around the corner and leaves Eve to make her call. Eve dials Charlie’s number, and when Charlie picks up, she seems irritated at being contacted. Her voice is barely audible, and a second voice is mumbling in the background. Eve tries to find out where Charlie is, but the call disconnects as Charlie tries to say something. Shaken, Eve gets her boots on to leave, and Heather says she overheard Eve mention Thomas on the phone. She explains that she babysat Thomas when he was a child and is glad to hear he has a family now. Heather seems sad that Thomas didn’t visit her, and when Heather invites Eve to stay again, Eve agrees, wanting to learn more about Thomas.

A document reveals a movie theater advertisement for a showing of Spirited Away, in which a girl named Chihiro finds herself lost in a spirit world and must rescue her parents.

Heather offers Eve some tea, and they sit down to talk. Eve asks Heather what she knows about the house, but Heather doesn’t seem eager to reveal anything. She tells Eve that the house is extremely old and explains that someone broke into the local library several years ago and stole all the records of it being built. Eve was sure she heard that they burned in a fire, but Heather insists that they were stolen. When Eve mentions Thomas’s sister, Alison, Heather clarifies that Alison was a temporary foster child, not a sister, and that she wandered out of the woods one day without any idea where she came from or who she was. When Alison became enveloped in the idea that her reality was changing, she thought she could fix it by stabbing Thomas: She stabbed him almost 40 times with a pen one night. After that, she was taken away, and Thomas was never the same.

Sitting on Heather’s sofa, Eve sees a Jolly Chimp toy sitting nearby and picks it up. She notices that it looks almost exactly like Mo but has a different manufacturer. Eve thinks back to the day she lost Mo, when the toy mysteriously vanished from the family car. Eve was devastated, and nothing could replace it. Staring at Heather’s toy, Eve suddenly feels like she needs to leave and says little else before exiting the house.

A document shows an incomplete police report by an officer who found a man wandering in the middle of the street. The man was apparently being pursued by three other men in white suits, but none of them were ever identified.

Eve heads toward home and notices that the family’s moving truck is still there. When she sees footprints around the truck, Eve follows them and sees a person standing with their back turned. She calls to the person but receives no answer, and then the person darts into the trees. Eve follows the footprints deep into the forest until they simply end; no one is in sight. Shylo stares off in another direction, and Eve notices that her dog is looking at an old cabin. Shylo runs toward it and enters, and Eve has no choice but to follow her inside. On the steps leading up to the cabin is a carving that reads “Old House.”

Eve follows Shylo into a back room filled with maps, blueprints, and many other documents. Some of them mention supernatural occurrences like an entrance to another world and a place where time moves slowly. When Eve turns to leave, an elderly man confronts her, terrified to see someone in his cabin. He insists that she leave immediately, and Eve apologizes for intruding. As she goes out the door, the man tells her that the people in her house are not what they seem and she must get them out as soon as possible. Scared and disturbed, Eve leaves for home, surprised by how close it is to the cabin.

A lengthy document entitled “hoax” details several incidents surrounding the house, including plant and animal species that are native to Europe randomly appearing there. One such species, called a Gelsheimer ant, has a distinct circle on its body. No records exist of these ants or of the supposed lynx that appeared on the property. The document also discusses the house itself and how a person who stays there longer than a month will become a host and unable to escape it. Its “anchors” are nonhuman and apparently “feed on terror” (153). Throughout the document, various letters are capitalized, and when put together spell “THE OLD GODS SEE ALL” (153).