Chapter III

Deep in the Maine woods, and distant from memory, if not quite forgotten, stood a house. It had been built back in 1912 from Sears Kit No. 174, at a cost of just under $1,500, or $300 less than the company's estimate, in large part because no laborers needed to be hired, the family responsible for its purchase taking care of the construction. The excavated basement had never been finished, and the plasterwork had always been rudimentary at best, while the brick mantel and fireplace in the dining room began to crumble shortly after the house was completed, for reasons that were never satisfactorily established. The cedar shingles on the roof and porch had lasted well into the 1970s, when they finally began to surrender to moisture and the decay that came with it. Even then the deterioration was gradual, and might still have been arrested with proper maintenance. But nobody arrived to address the issue of preservation, and just enough was done to keep it standing and secure. No one had ever spent long in it—or no one had ever survived in it for long, which is not the same thing. No, not the same thing at all.

Kit No. 174 had originally been designed with a narrow lot in mind: 24 feet in width and 50 in length, give or take, which included the front porch. The kitchen was a 10-foot-square box and the two bedrooms on the second floor were not much larger. The parlor was grim, and the dining room could barely have accommodated a standard table and chairs. It was, therefore, an odd choice of model for a woodland site, particularly on a large acreage owned by those who would be assembling the kit house. Only marginal effort would have been required to cut down some trees to facilitate a larger footprint, which would also have allowed more light to penetrate, any dwelling being otherwise destined to exist in an umbrous zone. Yet that option had not been explored, and so, for more than a century, a slender house had occupied an attenuated lot in a woodland hollow upon which the sun shone only reluctantly, as though electing to be frugal about the expenditure of its rays on such a poor object.

A traveler coming across the house unexpectedly might have wondered why it had been constructed at all, so unwelcoming an aspect did it present. This traveler, in passing, might also have noted how, the lichen on the shingles apart, nature appeared to be keeping its distance from the habitation. No ivy climbed the walls, and no briars enmeshed the banisters and steps of the porch. Even the growth patterns of the surrounding trees had accommodated themselves to the intruder, adopting stratagems to avoid touching it with their branches, their extremities taking abnormal turns back upon themselves, like broken limbs poorly set.

And while the house spoke of neglect, it was no ruin. The windows were dirty but unbroken, obscured by wooden boards on the lower floor, and the beveled plate glass on the oak front door remained in place, if now hidden behind reinforced steel. Inside, the original yellow pine flooring had been repaired in spots, but was otherwise intact. The ceilings' poor plaster hung on only in places, but whatever fell had been swept up and disposed of. Enough: always, just enough.

Would our traveler have been tempted to explore it further? No, they would not. Some places discourage curiosity. They trigger an ancient response, one that advises us not to linger, and perhaps not even to mention what we might have discovered. Pretend you were never here, a voice whispers, and it takes us a moment to realize that it is not our own. Be on your way. If you forget me, I might forget you in turn.

But there is no traveler, or if there ever was—an incautious person, or an inquisitive one—the ground has long since swallowed them up, and their grave lies unmarked. This is private land, and has been since early in the nineteenth century. Its trails are not for hikers or snowmobiles. Admonitions against trespass are posted on the nearest roads, both public and private, and nailed to trees. No local resident takes amiss this desire to be left alone. It is not uncommon in these parts. If the stewards of this realm wanted company, they would have situated themselves closer to people. They do not interfere with others, and others do not interfere with them. They give aid when it is sought, but do not offer it unless asked. They watch, but their gaze rarely extends beyond the borders of their own land. They do not ask for credit, and always pay in cash. They do not trouble the law, and the law does not trouble them. For these reasons they pass, if not unnoticed, then at least unremarked, or mostly so.

True, some in the area know about Kit No. 174, or have heard tell of it, even if they have never themselves set eyes on it. There is a story of a daughter who died, or maybe it was a niece: the tale varies according to the teller. The house was to have been hers and was left empty after she passed, bearing faint traces of intentions never to be fulfilled, like fingerprints on a glass of untasted wine. For a house cursed by ill luck to remain unlived in is not unknown, even after so much time has gone by. After all, ghosts may not be real, but no one has told the ghosts.

So this particular incarnation of Kit No. 174 occupies a liminal space. It is both finished, and unfinished; remembered and forgotten; concealed and in plain sight. Like all borderlands, it is disputed territory, but an accommodation has been reached, one that is satisfactory for most, if not all, concerned. No person has ever dwelt in it, but people have died there, and Kit No. 174 holds them in its memory.

Sometimes, it holds them so tightly that they scream.