The Chair at the Door

It had been nine months since the city’s sewage had surged through our home, and the lingering smell of damp decay still clung to the floorboards. My name is Leo, and I’ve been living in this shell of a house, trying to salvage what’s left of my sanity. My friends have abandoned me, all except for Marcus, who still has the nerve to visit, though he jokes that he’s only here for the free coffee.

We were in the living room, me scribbling notes for an online course, Marcus sprawled on the sofa, scrolling through his phone. The afternoon light filtered through the grimy windows, casting long shadows that seemed to stretch and shift. I had locked the front door earlier, a habit I’d developed since the flood, but when I went to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen, I noticed the door was ajar, the lock jiggling as if someone had just turned it. I froze, staring at the gap. ‘Did you open that?’ I called to Marcus. He looked up, puzzled. ‘No, man. I’ve been here the whole time.’

We tried to shrug it off, but the unease settled in. After I finished my homework, I went to check the door again. It clicked shut, locked. I turned around, and a chill ran down my spine. The kitchen door, which I had closed, was now open, and the porch light flickered. Marcus joined me, his face pale. ‘Okay, that’s not normal.’

We decided to test the waters. We placed a lawn chair in the center of the room, empty, and left to grab a beer from the fridge. When we returned, the chair was positioned right in front of the doorway, as if something had moved it to block our path. My heart hammered. We moved it back, and I spotted a trail of ants marching along the baseboards. I hadn’t seen any ants before. Marcus swept them away, but they reappeared moments later, forming a line that led to the broken trophy on the mantelpiece. The trophy, a cracked gold figure, had a piece lying beside it, and the broken fragment was perched on top of the main figure, looking like a macabre crown.

We tried a Ouija board, thinking we could make contact. We placed our hands on the planchette, asked if anyone was there. The board was cold, and we felt nothing, no movement, no whispers. Frustrated, we mocked it, daring it to prove itself. Then the lights flickered, and the board flew off the table, clattering against the wall. We heard a low chuckle, a sound that seemed to come from all directions at once.

Night fell, and we decided to stay, armed with a flashlight and our bravado. We sat in the dark, the door locked, the windows sealed. At midnight, the chair creaked, moving on its own, sliding toward the door. Marcus grabbed my arm. ‘We need to leave,’ he said. But I was frozen, watching as the door slowly unlocked and swung open, revealing the pitch black of the hallway. In the darkness, we saw two faint, silhouetted shapes—the ghosts of a man and a woman, their eyes hollow, their mouths open in silent screams. They were standing at the threshold, as if inviting us to join them.

We ran. We didn’t stop until we reached my car. I never returned to that house. I sold it for a fraction of its worth, and I still carry the memory of that night, the chair at the door, waiting. The ghosts aren’t trapped in the house—they’re with me, always watching, always waiting for the moment I’ll be weak enough to look back.