Do you enjoy immersive theater? Do you wish you could experience the magic of an escape room from the comfort of your own home? Then In-Home Hauntings^TM are for you. Scary surprises. Plot twists you don’t see coming. And best of all—you don’t even have to leave your house. It’s your real life… but haunted.

 

I watch my wife scroll down the description. “Hm,” she says.

 

“Melissa did one,” I tell her. “She loved it.”

 

“What happened to her? Did a ghost appear on her doorstep?”

 

“She’s… contractually not allowed to tell me.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

On my first date with Quinn, on a mid-October day that was uncharacteristically warm even for L.A., I convinced her to watch The Shining. She insisted we keep the lights on. If it had been anything other than our first date, she said later, she would have refused, but she was trying to be easy-going, up for anything. Exactly the kind of person she isn’t, my scrupulous lawyer wife. She spent the evening with her head buried in my armpit. When I asked her if she wanted to turn the movie off, she shook her head. It tickled.

 

Now, as I try to convince Quinn to let me express-mail a spare key to some strangers so they can come “haunt” us, I’m pretty sure she’s going to say no.

 

She clicks on the FAQs.

 

Where will my Nextdoor Horror^TM experience take place?

We can’t tell you exactly where, but it will be on your property. It might begin at your front door, with an actor pretending to be a delivery man who turns into something much more sinister. (Although now that we’ve told you, it probably won’t be that. Or will it?)

What time will my Nextdoor Horror^TM experience happen?

We can’t say. That’s part of what makes it so horrifying: you won’t know when it’s going to be until it’s already happening.

But how will you know I’m home for my In-Home Haunting^TM?

Fill out the schedule with your availability and allow up to three weeks for the haunting.

How will I know that it’s happening?

Oh, you’ll know.

 

 “But Alice, what is it?” Quinn asks. “Is it just someone jumping out of the bushes at you, like ‘boo?’”

 

I shake my head. “No, it’ll be worth it. Melissa said she would have paid even more than three hundred. She said she’d never experienced anything like it, and you know how many of these immersive theater things she’s done.”

 

“Three hundred dollars?”

 

“And they tailor it to you! They base it on your schedule, and you can type in all of your nonnegotiables.” It’s not like we can’t afford it. I click on the sign-up form and show her the spot where you list your worst fears.

 

“See? I’d put spiders and being buried alive.”

 

“They could bury you alive?”

 

“It’s just an example.”

 

Quinn’s form would list needles, other people’s bodily fluids, and the fear of losing her phone, which she keeps next to her at night in a tiny phone bed.

 

On our second date, Quinn agreed to accompany me to what was, in retrospect, the best immersive horror show I’d ever attended, halfway between a play and a haunted house. I didn’t know yet about Quinn’s fear of bodily fluids and needles, but I did notice her panic when they made her check her phone at the front desk.

 

Somehow by the end of the show I’d ended up onstage, hooded, in a chair. The actress next to me received an injection, Quinn told me later, but I had no idea that the actor who hooded me had also mimed a shot into my neck. He’d whispered “go limp” in my ear, so I did. Quinn said afterward that she nearly passed out in the audience—the two of us in the same slumped position.

 

I sensed that she was ready to break up with me, so that was the last time we did anything remotely horrifying. Our third date was tea at the Huntington Library and Gardens.

 

I point at the form. “There’s a spot to indicate whether it’s a solo or partnered experience. I can put that it’s just me, and you can opt out.”

 

Quinn squints at the screen, then at me. “You can’t sign this, Alice. It’s a logistical nightmare. It has you acknowledging the possibility of your own death.”

 

“Here,” I say, “you take the computer and check the solo box or not”—I look pointedly away from the screen—“and I won’t know whether you opted in, and that will add to the suspense! And you can call Melissa later to hear how much she loved it. I promise she’s not dead.”

 

Quinn sighs and takes the computer from me. I’m sure I know what box she’s checking, but the possibility of sharing this, whatever it is, still thrills me. When she’s done, the rest of the form takes fifteen minutes to fill out. I upload three photos of myself plus one of my driver’s license. Even after I’ve clicked “submit” and paid the fee, Quinn is still grumbling about lawsuits and the very nice sushi dinner we could have bought with that money. She’s still whining when our doorbell rings.

 

I know there’s no way the haunting’s happening already, but my stomach flutters a little anyway as I open the door. It’s only a package though, documents from the New York branch of Quinn’s firm.

 

That night, she waits until we’re in bed with the lights out before she tugs on my sleeve.

 

“Al, I can’t go through with this.”

 

“Wait, you actually opted in?”

 

“You have to get a refund.”

 

“They don’t offer them. Did you text Melissa yet?”

 

She sighs and rolls away from me.

 

Late the next morning our doorbell rings again and my stomach tingles again even though I’d pictured the haunting, whatever it is, happening at a much scarier time than 10 a.m. on a Sunday.

“I’ll get it,” Quinn calls, peering out through the window. “It’s Randall.”

 

We good-cop, bad-cop Randall, taking turns chatting with our sixty-something Jesus-freak neighbor. He’s convinced that the giant oak in our yard is going to fall on his house, unless—and here, he usually points to the sky— “unless the big guy wills it differently.” Anyway, it’s Quinn’s turn to answer the door and I hide in the bedroom.

 

“Hello, Miss Quinn!” His voice resounds through the house, and I wonder why he never became a preacher. “Did you girlies hear anything last night?”

 

Even without seeing her, I’m sure Quinn’s flinching at “girlies.”

 

“Nope,” she says. “What’s up?”

 

“Oh, probably nothing.” Randall pauses. He savors a silence like it’s something he’s chewing. He spits a little when he gets excited.

 

“I thought I saw something up on your roof, a shadowy kind of figure. Probably one of those stray cats. One mangy son-of-a-gun nearly tore up my poppies last week.”

 

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Quinn’s using the same fake-nice voice she uses with my mother. I peek out of the bedroom then, taking headphones off my ears as if I couldn’t hear their conversation until just now.

 

“Randall!” I say, and he waves at me.

 

“Hello, Alice! Like I always say, someone’s got to keep an eye out for you ladies without a man around.”

 

Even from across the room, I feel Quinn begin to shake with silent laughter—a subtle vibration, a concert-hall silence before the performers walk onstage. I have about ten seconds to get Randall out before my wife erupts in giggles.

 

“Thanks for checking in.” I urge him out the door, stepping outside with him as he leaves. “Let us know if you see that… figure again, whatever it is.” I consider telling him about my imminent Haunting, but decide he’ll ask too many questions.

 

“May our good Lord and Savior be always with you, my sister.” He crosses himself before he leaves.

 

When I come back in Quinn’s sitting at the table with the Times. “I swear, if he calls us ‘girlies’ one more time…”

 

“Oh, he’s harmless.” I grab a section of the paper and drink some of her coffee before she snatches the mug back from me. Mine always goes cold before I remember to finish it. Hers is the perfect temperature.

 

“Maybe he’s in on the Haunting,” I say. “And that was part of setting the scene.”

 

“Are you kidding? He’s probably right about those cats.” We’re dog people, my wife and I. Dogless dog people—our Jack Russell terrier, Willow, died two months ago. Stomach cancer. She was fourteen, her joints as creaky as our old hardwood floors. If Willow was still around, I would never have ordered the Haunting. She’d have alerted us to any intruder long before they’d had a chance to Haunt.

 

Quinn’s walking away from me now. She does this when she’s ready to change the subject, like she can physically force the conversation to end by moving to another room.

 

I follow her into the kitchen. “But what if they’re paying Randall to act weird?”

 

“It’s only three hundred dollars.” She pours a little fresh coffee in her cup to replace my sips. “They have to profit, and how much do you think they’re paying their actors? Like, half that at most, right?”

 

I don’t want to think about actors. I don’t want it to feel like acting when it happens. I want fake blood that’s warm enough to be my own. I want to be surprised, shocked, awed, like when I watched Final Destination at fifteen and thought of little else for a week than a thousand ways for Death to engineer my own ending. It made me feel safe, cataloguing disasters. Like if only I logged them all, I’d be inoculated against each one.

 

Still, Randall’s probably not in on the Haunting. I imagine he’d refuse on principal, muttering something about how the only spirit he believes in is the Holy Ghost. I tell Quinn she’s right, and she walks back into the dining room, grabs my mug, and refills it for me.

 

A week passes with no Haunting. Each night I’m awake until nearly two in the morning, unable to sleep. While I wait, I catalogue the ways our old house talks to itself at night. The AC kicks on like a gunshot. The doors shrink in their frames. The fridge’s ice machine is a monster tearing up our creaky floors.

 

I’ve had trouble sleeping ever since Willow died. Not because of how she slept in the crook of my legs—though I swear my legs ache sometimes with the absence of her—but because she’d patrol the house at night. Quinn is a much lighter sleeper than me, and whenever we woke at a noise she’d tug at my arm. We’d sit there for a moment before one of us called, “Willow?” And then our dog would come padding up from whatever direction the noises had come, and we’d fall back asleep with each sound accounted for and Willow safe at our feet.

 

But now at every noise I’m convinced it’s happening. Tonight, I wake Quinn with my restlessness. She murmurs something unintelligible and hands me two of the allergy pills she keeps in her nightside table for when she can’t sleep. I swallow them with water from the bathroom sink then get back in bed. The floors creak and the ice machine is a monster, but then somehow it’s morning again.

 

Another week passes like that, until one night after Quinn’s gone to bed early—she has a trial in the morning—I go into the kitchen to load the dishwasher. Willow used to sit by my feet when I did dishes. Sometimes she looked so pathetic, staring up at me, that I’d give her a crumb from a plate. I’m there at the sink, missing her, when the automatic light in the backyard turns on.

 

I freeze, imagining the ghost of Willow at my feet choosing to bark or stay silent, depending on my reaction. She’d look up at me and I’d stroke the rust-colored fur on her neck.

 

There’s nothing in the yard, or at least nothing I can see. I turn off the kitchen light, so the room goes dark. The flood light in the backyard goes out, and I pick up another dish in the dark.

The flood light goes on again. This time I keep watching the yard even after it turns off, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

 

There’s a figure in the yard.

 

If he’s a man, he’s mostly shadow. I can’t see his face. He waits near the back gate that leads to our driveway—just out of the light’s range—and stands as still as me, both of us waiting. He’s looking at the house, but not at me.

 

A hit of dread and a little excitement bloom in the pit of my stomach at once, a dark rush of that feeling: scared but safe, or maybe safe but scared. Two emotions inextricably bound into one single, icy shot through my chest.

 

I reach down to pet Willow before I remember she’s not there. The figure lets himself out of the yard through our fence. I start the dishwasher then head back to bed.

 

“It’s happening,” I say quietly to Quinn, in case she’s still awake. She mumbles something and flops over onto her left side. I lie on my back and wait until 12:30, then 1:00. I pick up my book and try to read. I wait to see if Randall will text us about the shadowy figure in our yard. He doesn’t. Finally, I drift off, dreaming that Willow and I are walking past the abandoned lot near our house before she turns to bark at me, then grabs my sleeve in her teeth and tugs at it.

 

When I wake, Quinn is tugging at my arm.

 

“What—” I start to say, but she presses a finger to my lips. I hear it then. Someone, or something, is in our living room.

 

We wait in darkness as the footsteps grow louder. We still leave the bedroom door cracked, out of habit, for Willow. We watch the thin slit of light from the door as the figure crosses in front of it, then stops.

 

The AC kicks on then. The sound of it rattling to life usually startles me, but I’m already trembling. It’s hard to hear what Quinn is saying over the rumbling.

 

“No,” she’s whispering. “No, Alice, I…”

 

“What? You what?”

 

The figure walks past our door again, a dark shadow eclipsing the sliver of light. Quinn waits until it passes, then mumbles in a panicked whisper as she reaches for her phone.

 

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “It’s the Haunting, we’re okay—”

 

“No, no,” she says. “It’s cancelled.”

 

Her phone lights up in the dark as the AC kicks off, her words hanging in the air. My eyes take a second to adjust to the light from her screen, so it takes me longer than it should to see the figure standing in our doorway.

 

“Quinn?” But she’s typing something on her phone instead of looking at me. I force myself to look up at the figure and it’s staring at us, an empty silhouette. Where there should be a face, there’s only shadow.

 

I scream.

 

It steps closer. My eyes adjust enough to make out a dark hood, dark shirt, dark jeans. Jeans? Why is it wearing jeans? In its hand, a glint of metal.

 

Quinn puts her phone down. “Alice,” she growls. “Alice!” She’s grabbing my arm and pulling us into the bathroom. The hooded figure is walking closer and Quinn’s shutting the door, but it won’t shut because a dark-gloved hand is reaching around to pry it open. My wife is shrieking.

 

“It’s not the thing!” she shouts as I’m pushing the door shut and she’s scrambling around me to help close it. “It’s not—”

 

We’re pressing against the door with all our weight. We’re screaming the same awful scream. And then there’s a growling sound—Willow I think, before I remember our dog is dead—and the sound of something ripping, jeans or skin. The door goes limp against our weight, then shuts.

 

Quinn locks it. We sit still, panting, and the quiet is unbearably loud. I am sobbing I think. We sit for minutes or hours before there are footsteps and a loud knock on the door. Quinn shrieks again.

 

“Are you girlies okay?”

 

“Oh my god,” my wife says. “Oh my god oh my god.” And then Randall is opening the bathroom door and telling us he saw our back door wide open and knew something was wrong. Randall is guiding us into the light of our bedroom, past the unmasked man and his pale grimace, his leg that looks bitten open. Randall is taking us into Quinn’s study to call 911 and then handing Quinn her phone and Quinn is showing me her refund from In-Home Hauntings^TM.I was going to tell you tomorrow, look, see? and I believe you, Quinn, you don’t need to show me. Randall is making a tourniquet for the man’s leg, shouting He’s in God’s hands now. Then Randall is handing us water, the sirens are growing louder, good cop bad cop, bloodstains on our white carpet that will never come out and Willow still gone and my once-unshakable wife trembling next to me—but here we are, together and safe, yes, scared but safe now, aren’t we?

 

 

 

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Dale Trumbore is a writer and composer based in Azusa, California. Her short fiction appears in failbetter, Jabberwock Review, Santa Fe Writer’s Project Quarterly, and Tupelo Quarterly. She has written extensively about working through creative blocks and establishing a career in music in essays and in her first book, Staying Composed: Overcoming Anxiety and Self-Doubt Within a Creative Life. Find more of Trumbore’s writing and music at daletrumbore.com.