The House That Took a Chance

The recently retired doctor was content. He sat in his cozy wingback chair, upholstered in deep burgundy buffalo leather, in the small living room corner of his new house. "New" was a bit of an exaggeration—it was actually a very old house, left uninhabited for years before he decided to buy and restore it. And it needed it.

The roof had holes, so a new roof was necessary. The woodwork had also been replaced. The walls had been renovated to fix weathered bricks, and of course, new windows were carefully installed—plastic replicas of the originals with small panes and intricate grids. Inside, the walls were extended slightly into the house to add a proper layer of insulation. Electricians had spent countless hours replacing and laying new, safe cables and wires.

The doctor had owned his own clinic for years, so money was not an issue. It had to be the best of the best.

The flooring had posed a dilemma. Should he have the original painted floorboards sanded down and lacquered, or should he have the floorers install new, durable laminate flooring? He'd been uncertain for a long time, but in the end, his desire to preserve something old in the house won out, and he told the floorers to sand down and lacquer the old boards.

A beautiful open kitchen and bathrooms were added to the rooms, including the master suite. His guests would not lack for comfort or a sense of luxury.

He stood up, went to the small bar cabinet, poured himself a whiskey in a crystal glass, and sat back down. He grabbed the remote and turned on the music. Being a music lover, he preferred classical pieces and had created a playlist of his favorite selections, which he now activated.

It was his first evening in the completed house. The wood stove was lit with a gentle fire, casting a flickering glow around the room along with a delightful warmth. Yes, it was truly cozy, and he looked forward to showing the house to his friends at his housewarming party that weekend.

His gaze drifted around the room. The pictures hung exactly where he'd planned them for so long. There were tasteful furnishings and shelves filled with books.

He got up, went over to the bookshelf, and reached for a book he had intended to start reading. But just as he was about to pull it from the shelf, his hand seemed to automatically reach for a different book. He grabbed it and pulled it slightly out of the shelf, staring at it in confusion. The title was "The Old House That Took a Chance." He couldn't remember ever buying or receiving this book as a gift. Where had it come from? Had one of his former colleagues played a practical joke on him?

He pulled it all the way out, went back to his chair, and sat down under the reading lamp.

"This book is dedicated to the restorer who dares to make this old home new," it read on the inside of the cover. The words were written in dark, curly script that he struggled to decipher.

The doctor smiled faintly to himself; it was almost as if it had been written for him. But that couldn’t be right, as the book was old, and no one a hundred years ago could have guessed he would buy and restore the house with such a thorough renovation.

He suddenly noticed that the warmth in the room wasn't quite what the wood stove usually provided.

Nonsense, he thought. He had spent his whole life working with science and objectivity, and here he was, getting goosebumps over a dedication in a book.

He turned to the first chapter. "The House's History," it read. His eyes devoured the lines on the yellowed, slightly moldy pages.

The house was built in 1659, underwent several rebuilds, burned along with its inhabitants, was rebuilt again, and at one point became a poorhouse where the most destitute locals could find shelter in their final days before vanishing into oblivion.

It had functioned as a poorhouse from 1790 to 1850, by which time it had become dilapidated.

An enterprising pharmacist bought it and restored it. He lived there for many years until he died a mysterious, sudden death in 1875.

The house then belonged to his widow for another 25 years until 1900.

A new family moved in, followed by several others until 2004, when the last inhabitant also died in the house.

The doctor laid the book in his lap. So many must have met their end in this house; he had a clear feeling that the book was indeed about this house. But that was life, after all. It always ended in an irrevocable death, whether you were rich or poor.

He continued reading and turned the page. There it was:

"The house stood empty and decaying until 2023 when the doctor Tom Tungstone bought it. He restored it to a modern home but met a sudden end on October 31, 2024."

He nearly threw the book from him. This couldn’t possibly be real. He was Tom Tungstone, and yes, he was a doctor, but how on earth did his name end up in this book?

He didn’t believe in the supernatural. There had to be some trick to this. Someone must have played a prank on him. And that date, well, that was today, and the day was almost over, so thankfully his demise had not come to pass.

He sat and stared at the floor. Something inside him told him the house’s history could very well be true, but that he was a victim of a sick story was simply too much.

He got up and crossed the beautiful floor, dark in thought.

Then he saw it. In the wood grain, there was a Face. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. There was no doubt. A distorted Face with an open mouth, a stream of vomit pouring from it. The eyes, made of knots in the wood, gave the face a pained and horrifying look. The head was skewed, and the top of the skull slanted up and to the right. Was it the face of a trapped soul?

What kind of thought was that? Some superstitious nonsense, he sneered. Was he going mad? This was simply too much. But the Face on the floor remained.

Suddenly, he heard the house creaking and shifting. The walls, which he had spent so much money stabilizing and insulating, seemed to make the room smaller.

The light flickered and blinked in the lamps, and the fire in the fireplace sparked, sending embers in all directions behind the glass door.

The Face seemed to materialize, beginning to detach from the floorboards. The stream from the mouth turned into words he strained to hear.

It sounded like it was whispering, "You have finally come; now it’s your turn."

He felt a chilling draft blow toward him. "My turn? What do you mean? Who are you? Why me?"

The Face now floated before him, the dead, empty eyes staring straight at him.

"This house is not yours, but ours—we, the spirits of the dead paupers, the pharmacist, and all the others who have perished here. No soul escapes this house. Everything is trapped, and the Lord of Death demands our presence. You do not believe in us, so you are doomed and have no future."

Tom now felt the walls pressing against his body, until he could no longer breathe.

He felt his last breath being drawn from his lungs, and the last thing his eyes saw as a living man was a mist leaving his mouth and moving in the opposite direction into the Face’s stream, into the dark of its mouth.

In the darkness, there was life and death at the same time. It was Halloween.