The Wrong Address

The house had been settled for hours. The fridge hummed peacefully as I finished cleaning up the kitchen and preparing to settle in. The streetlight in the cul-de-sac made the living room floor glow softly in it's pale light. I brought my book to the living room, tucking myself in under a soft blanket. Inside the hush of rustling pages as I opened my book, the whole night felt careful, like a child holding a glass of water filled to the brim, trying not to spill a drop.

Then the knock came.

Not the purposeful blurt of knuckles from a delivery driver, or the rushed frenzy of a child trying a dare. Three knocks. Measured. Certain.

I placed the book aside and listened for a follow-up. Nothing. The clock in the kitchen kept ticking, the second hand scratching the air. I stood; somehow, it felt safer than waiting.

The porch light had washed the front of my home in a tired yellow. I looked through the peephole to find a face too close to see properly, then leaned back. A man in his mid-forties, hair slightly damp, his peacoat covered in rain freckles, eyes steady. He looked confused, but calm still, the calm of someone returning from a long trip away expecting relief.

I gave the chain a tug to make sure it was secure, then cracked the door.

"Can I help you?"

"This is my house," he said. His voice didn't rise or waver. "I live here."

"I'm sorry, but that isn't right." I tried to smile, feeling unsettled.

He shifted, lifting his hands in exasperation; to my relief, they were empty. He rolled his eyes slightly.

"You repainted," he said, pointing at the house exterior. "It used to be eggshell. You kept the numbers on the mailbox though. My daughter painted those." He nodded behind me to the staircase. "That third stair, it's soft. You have to step closer to the railing so it doesn't screech like a banshee. The living room smells like cedar when it rains, because the water comes through near the chimney."

He paused again, squinting at the fireplace. "Where did the dog bed go? He likes to sleep by the fireplace. I don't see it."

"I don't have a dog," I said.

He looked past me as far as the chain would allow. Not peering; simply letting his eyes measure the space behind me. "May I come in?" He said it like a courtesy, not a question posed to a homeowner living alone.

"No." The word felt small, insufficient. "You have the wrong address."

He shook his head slightly.

"There's a nick in the hallway going to the kitchen where I accidentally hit the wall when we brought in the table," he said. The hair on the back of my neck stood; there was a nick in the drywall. "The second room in the back corner upstairs is my daughter's room, we put up a light fern wallpaper, she loves that room. This is our house."

The image started to form in my head of a family going about their life, the dog wagging it's tail in the kitchen, a little girl laughing upstairs.

"I'm sorry, but you need to leave," I said, gently pressing the door shut. As it closed, I watched him. He didn't try to wedge his foot, nor did he argue. He smiled in a way that wasn't warm or cruel, instead as if he had just recognized a joke he was tired of hearing.

"You don't belong here."

The door closed, the chain gently scraping against the wood. I put my forehead against the door, forcing myself to manually breathe until my lungs remembered how. The porch stayed quiet. No retreating footsteps, no knocking. No car door. When I looked out the peephole again, the porch was empty, reflecting it's own tired light back to itself.

I counted to thirty, trying to settle my nerves. When that didn't work, I did it again.

The house let the silence back into itself by degrees. I turned off the porch light, returning to the living room. Everything was as I had left it. I told myself out loud that this was nothing, just a lost man, maybe with dementia. People drink, they chase old addresses, they make mistakes. I looked out the window; no sign of the man anywhere. He must have left.

From the fireplace came a low sound. Not the familiar tick of cooling bricks. A sound with breath in it.

I froze. The noise came again, a quiet growl, more of a warning than a threat. The hairs on my arms lifted.

"I don't have a dog," I said out loud, but hearing the words didn't change the sound. I moved toward the hearth; there was a darker oval on the rug, the ghost of a bed that had never been mine.

A soft thud above my head. Then a second one, lighter. Laughter followed, and then the sound of a child's feet pattering on the floor above me. I looked up at the ceiling as though I could stare it into transparency. The house fell silent again.

I went to the mantel. The photos in a row were proof that I belonged in this house, it was mine. My hand reached out, straightening the frame of my sister and I at the lake. I brushed the glass and came away smeared. In the reflection, behind the tiny print of my skin left behind, the picture had shifted. Same lake, same dock. A man I didn't know with his arm around a woman I didn't know. Their faces hugged into the space where my life should be.

I blinked hard. The photo refocused, my sister smiling at me through black sunglasses. I laughed out of fear, a short, foolish sound. I glanced at the next frame. A child's birthday. Four candles. Frosting on the cheek, a dog snout in the corner of the photo aiming for the cake. THe longer I looked, the less I recognized the small face. The blue eyes could have been mine when I was little. They could have belonged to anyone.

Upstairs, something clattered across the floor, sounding hollow like a stack of children's bricks being knocked over, a tower fallen. Children's laughter came again, followed by a voice, swift and certain. I couldn't hear the words; the word "Mama" wasn't in the sound, yet somehow I could feel the shape of it deep in my chest. I didn't have children.

"This isn't happening, it's not possible," I said. The house didn't seem to agree. The air in the hallway had a faint smell of perfume and a wet dog as though a ghost of a memory had walked through it. I kept walking, trying not to look at the nick in the drywall that could have once been bitten by a kitchen table.

I reached my bedroom door and pushed. The bed waited with it's quilt and two pillows, carefully crafted by my mother's hands. The dresser stood where it had always stood. I reached into my top drawer to feel for my keys that I toss in at the end of each day. My fingers found them, cold and certain. I breathed a sigh of relief. I carried them to the front door as though they could be a cure.

At the front door, there was a deadbolt. I held the key to the lock, holding onto the knob that had belonged to me for two years. I knew the feeling of it, I had done this every time I needed to feel more secure. I could fit the key without even looking.

It wouldn't enter.

The teeth of the key found a different pattern and balked at my attempt to lock the deadbolt. I tried another key, thinking I had grabbed the wrong one in my anxiety. The metal touched the lock and refused to enter.

Upstairs, a hand thumped into the wall in play, a squealing giggle floating down the stairs. By the fire, I heard a small huff from the dog. It could have been a sigh if it were human.

I pressed my palm to the door. The wood was cool, but it felt unfamiliar. I smelled cologne, as though a businessman had just approached me with some brochure. A voice stood just behind me in the stillness, close enough that it could have been my own, if my own voice had nothing left to lose.

"I told you," it said. "This is my house."