The Mulligan House

The Mulligan House sat at the end of Cedar Lane, a crooked Victorian that had witnessed a century of secrets. On the outside, it was a charred husk, its front facade blackened and crumbling, windows boarded with plywood that warped and splintered under the summer heat. The roof had caved in on the porch side, leaving a jagged mouth open to the sky. But from the back, where three stacked balconies overlooked a weedy lot and the faded lines of a long-unused baseball diamond, the house looked almost whole. It was that deception that drew me in.

I was a graduate student in architecture, and the Mulligan House was my obsession. The town records said it was built in 1901, but the style was an odd hybrid—Queen Anne bones with a craftsman addition slapped on in the twenties. The fire in June 2019 had gutted the front, but the back remained eerily intact, as if the flames had been a surgical blade, excising only what faced the street. No one knew how it started. The official report said ‘undetermined,’ but the neighbors whispered about a family curse, about the Mulligans who had owned it for three generations and had died in a boating accident in ’87, leaving the place to a distant cousin who never visited.

My chance came when a friend of a friend, a guy named Rick, rented the bottom floor and basement for a frat party. He knew I was obsessed, so he invited me along. The basement was a labyrinth of storage rooms and old coal chutes, and the bottom floor had been the original parlor, now filled with beer pong tables and cheap sound equipment. But I wasn’t interested in the party. I slipped away, climbing the creaking stairs to the second floor.

The second floor was a wreck. The fire had licked up the front stairwell, and the floorboards near the windows were collapsed, but the interior rooms were surprisingly intact. The wallpaper peeled in strips, revealing layers of pastel and floral from different eras. I found a child’s bedroom, the bed still made with a faded quilt, a rocking horse in the corner. It was as if the family had simply walked out. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.

I moved to the third floor, which was an attic apartment. The stairs were narrow and twisted, and the air was thick with dust and the smell of old insulation. At the top, a single door stood ajar, and I pushed it open. The room was vast, sloped ceilings, dormer windows overlooking the back yard. In the center sat a heavy oak desk, its surface covered with papers, yellowed and brittle. On top of the papers lay a leather-bound journal, its pages blank except for the first one, where someone had written in a beautiful cursive: ‘What is done cannot be undone.’ I pocketed the journal, feeling a pang of guilt, but also a thrill. I was stealing from a dead house, but I told myself it was for research.

On my way back down, I passed the second floor landing, and that’s when I noticed a door that I hadn’t seen before. It was set into a recessed alcove, painted the same color as the wall, so it had gone unnoticed. It was locked, but the lock was old and the wood was soft. I gave it a push, and it swung open. Inside was a narrow staircase descending into darkness. I heard music from the party below, and I knew I should go back, but the darkness seemed to pulse with an invitation. I took out my phone, turned on the flashlight, and descended.

The stairs ended in a sub-basement, a space that didn’t appear on any of the building plans I’d studied. The walls were rough brick, coated in a black residue that wasn’t soot. The air was cold and still, and my breath fogged in the light. In the center of the room stood a stove—an old cast-iron potbelly, its door hanging open. Inside, I saw ashes, perfectly white, as if they’d been carefully sifted. I knelt down, and that’s when I heard it: a faint scratching, like fingernails on metal, coming from inside the stove.

I should have left, but I was frozen. The scratching grew louder, more insistent, and then a voice, thin and dry, like wind through dead leaves, said: ‘You have it.’ I stumbled back, knocking over a metal bucket. The sound echoed in the small space. I turned and fled, up the stairs, through the hidden door, down to the party, where I grabbed my coat and walked out into the cool night. I didn’t stop walking until I was home.

That was a month ago. Since then, I’ve had nightmares. In them, I’m back in the sub-basement, and the stove is glowing with a furious blue heat, and the voice is louder, asking over and over: ‘What have you brought me?’ I woke in cold sweats, convinced that the journal was the key. The pages might have been blank, but I felt a warmth when I held it, as if it was alive. I tried to open it again, but it wouldn’t budge, the pages stuck together as if glued.

Last night, I woke to a sound in my apartment—a scratching, coming from inside my walls. I couldn’t sleep, so I went to my desk and pulled out the journal. I placed my hand on the cover, and this time, I spoke to it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have taken you.’ And I opened my hand, expecting to see the cover. Instead, I saw a new message scrawled across the first page, in that same beautiful cursive: ‘You can return it. But I will follow you home.’

I stared at the words, my blood running cold. The scratching in the walls grew louder, and I swear I felt the floor tremble. The journal began to warm in my hands, and the voice, the same thin voice, whispered from between the pages: ‘Where do you keep the ashes?’ I dropped the journal, and it fell open on the floor, revealing a page I hadn’t seen before—a sketch of the Mulligan House, the back view, with a marked X over the third floor window. And beneath it, in trembling handwriting: ‘He wants what you burned.’

I don’t know what that means. I never burned anything. But this morning, I looked out my window, and there, across the street, on the lawn of a neighbor’s house, stood a figure—a man in a long coat, his face hidden under a wide-brimmed hat. He was just standing there, staring at my apartment. When I looked down, he was gone. And the journal, which I had left on my desk, was closed, but now a red bookmark was placed within it, sticking out at the very end.

I’m terrified to open it again. I don’t know what I’ve unleashed, but I know that the Mulligan House wasn’t just a burnt-out ruin. It was a container, and by entering that sub-basement, I’ve become a container too. The voice in the walls has found a new home. And it’s patient. It can wait. It’s been waiting since 1900.

I’ve decided to burn the journal. I’ll take it to the backyard, douse it in gasoline, and light a match. But as I write this, I feel the heat on my neck, and the scratching is now inside my head. And I know it’s too late. Some doors, once opened, can never be closed. The ashes in the stove weren’t from the fire—they were from the bodies the Mulligans had been hiding for decades. And my journal is the key to bringing them back. But I’ll burn it anyway. I have to try. Even if I know that in the sub-basement of that house, the stove is now glowing, and a voice is whispering my name. I just hope I don’t remember how to answer.