The Carbon Monoxide Dreams

I never believed in ghosts until my Aunt Clara moved into that house on Bellamy Road. It wasn’t a haunted mansion or an old creaking farmhouse; it was a brand-new suburban split-level, all pale siding and blank windows, sitting at the end of a cul-de-sac where the streetlights always flickered. I was twelve when she and Uncle Bob bought it, five years after my own family settled two towns over. The developer had a reputation for cutting corners, but the house was cheap, and Aunt Clara loved the idea of a fresh start.

The first odd thing happened the very day they moved in. Aunt Clara was unpacking boxes in the upstairs bathroom, the one with the ugly peach tiles, when she felt a prickle at the back of her neck. She turned, half expecting Uncle Bob to be leaning against the doorframe, but the doorway was empty. The feeling persisted, a weight of unseen eyes, and she found herself talking to the empty air just to break the silence. She shrugged it off as first-day jitters and went to make tea, but the sensation didn’t fully fade for hours.

A week later, they were settled enough to enjoy a quiet Friday night. The TV was on some crime drama, and Uncle Bob was dozing in his recliner. Aunt Clara was crocheting a blanket, her fingers moving in a rhythm she knew by heart. Then, from upstairs, came a heavy thud, followed by another, and another. It sounded like someone in work boots pacing the hallway. They both froze, the TV suddenly too loud. Uncle Bob muted it, and the footsteps continued, slow and deliberate, from one end of the hall to the other, then back again. After a few minutes, they stopped. They looked at each other, and Aunt Clara whispered, ‘Did you hear that?’ Uncle Bob just nodded, his face pale. They spent the night on the couch with the lights on.

My grandpa, the eternal skeptic, offered the usual explanations: the house settling, a raccoon in the attic, the pipes. He came over with a handful of mousetraps and set them along the upstairs hallway, chuckling at their ‘ghost.’ But the traps never sprung, and the footsteps kept coming, sometimes during the day, sometimes at night. Once, I was over for a weekend visit, and I heard them myself. I was in the spare room, reading a comic book, when the floorboards above my head groaned. I thought it was Uncle Bob, but he was outside mowing the lawn. The steps moved from the attic door to the stairs, then descended. I sat frozen, my comic forgotten, listening to them pass my door and fade into the kitchen. I never told Aunt Clara, but she knew. The house was changing them.

Aunt Clara started talking about the carbon monoxide detector. It was a cheap one, she said, always beeping at random. But I saw the battery meter on it—it was fine. She also started keeping a dream journal, though she never showed me what she wrote. One evening, I overheard her on the phone with my mom, her voice low and tight. ‘It’s not the pipes, Helen. I saw him.’ She paused. ‘He was standing at the foot of the bed, just watching. He had a dog with him, a black lab. I could smell the wet fur.’ My mom tried to soothe her, but Aunt Clara insisted, ‘I looked him up. The only person who died in this house was a construction worker, fell off the roof in the early stages. They say he had a lab that stayed behind, refused to leave the site. The superstitious workers said the house was built on a bad spot.’ She laughed, but it was hollow. ‘I’m telling you, it’s him.’

The construction worker’s name was Pete. I found it out later from a neighbor, a gruff old man named Mr. Gardiner who seemed to know everything about the street. He said the house was the last one built in the development, and the crew had a bunch of accidents. A nail gun misfire, a ladder snapping, and finally Pete’s fall. The site was cursed, he said, but the developer just paid off the family and finished the job. Mr. Gardiner told me that the dog, a chocolate lab actually, had to be dragged away by animal control, and it kept escaping and coming back to the site, howling at the empty frame where the house would stand.

I didn’t tell Aunt Clara about the chocolate lab because she was already unraveling. She began to refuse to be alone in the house, even during the day. She’d come to our place with bags of laundry, claiming her washer was broken. But I knew it wasn’t. She was avoiding the house. Uncle Bob was starting to argue with her, calling her silly, but his own eyes were hollow, and he’d stopped sleeping in the bedroom, claiming the heat was too much. They were both fraying at the edges.

The last time I visited, it was late autumn, the days short and grey. The house felt colder than it should have, despite the furnace running. Aunt Clara had taken to setting out a bowl of dog food in the kitchen ‘just in case,’ which Uncle Bob would throw away in disgust. She said she heard scratching at the back door at night, and when she opened it, the bowl was licked clean. I tried to tell her it was probably a raccoon, but she just stared at the door with a look I’d never seen on her before.

That night, I had a dream. I was standing in the upstairs hallway, the floorboards cold under my bare feet. A man in a dusty work jacket and a hard hat appeared at the far end. He was translucent, like a smudge on a window, and he was pointing at the floor. ‘They buried him under the foundation,’ he said, his voice like gravel and wind. ‘They all knew. They just poured the concrete over him.’ He pointed again, and I saw the floorboards become transparent, revealing a dirt pit with bones, human bones, and beside them a dog collar. I woke up screaming. Aunt Clara burst into the room, her face ashen. She said, ‘You saw him too, didn’t you?’ I couldn’t speak. I just nodded.

The next day, Uncle Bob insisted on having a contractor come and check the foundation for ‘settling issues.’ The contractor was a young man with a kind face, but as he walked the perimeter with his tools, he grew quiet. He finally knelt by the back wall and scraped away some dirt. Underneath, he found a small, rusted dog tag. It read ‘Max.’ He held it up, and Aunt Clara started crying. The contractor called the authorities, and they found what I’d seen in my dream. The developer had indeed poured the foundation over a body, a man who had died on the site, not from a fall, but from a fight with a foreman, buried in the mud. The dog, Max, had stayed true, lingering even after the concrete was laid, and somehow, our house had become his territory.

Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob sold the house for a loss, moving to a small apartment across town. They never spoke of the house again. But I still think about it sometimes. That house wasn’t haunted by a ghost that wanted revenge; it was haunted by a presence that didn’t know it was dead, a man and his dog who had been trapped in a place they never got to leave. The carbon monoxide detector that kept beeping? It was always fine. It was the only thing in that house that was. The beeping was just a reminder, a heartbeat from a nightmare. I haven’t been back since, and I never will.

Sometimes, when I’m falling asleep, I can still hear the heavy footsteps, the jingle of a collar, and a low, mournful whine. And I pray the concrete holds.