The Tenant of the Aluminum Siding

The summer of 2011, the year the heat broke records, was when I first noticed that my double-wide on the edge of the pine barrens wasn’t just settling. It was listening. The house was a box of rust-streaked aluminum, set on cinder blocks at the end of a dirt road that turned to mud after any rain. The nearest neighbor was a half-mile away, an old man named Gus who waved but never visited. Inside, the linoleum curled at the edges, the windows were patched with duct tape, and the air always smelled of dust and something faintly metallic, like old pennies. I was a night owl, and I’d sit up reading in the living room, the only light a lamp that hummed. That’s when I started hearing it.

At first, it was just the normal creaks and groans of an old trailer, but soon they became something else. There were soft footsteps in the hallway that led to the spare bedroom, the one I used for storage. They’d start at the bathroom and stop right at the door, as if someone was standing there, deciding whether to come in. I’d get up, but there was never anyone. I chalked it up to my imagination, to the stress of my dead-end job, but then the touches began. I’d be sitting on the couch, and I’d feel a cold hand press against the back of my neck, no more than a second, gone before I could flinch. Or while lying in bed, I’d feel a weight beside me, the mattress dipping as if someone sat down, and I’d hold my breath until it passed.

I started sleeping on the couch, my back to the wall, a kitchen knife under the pillow. The feeling of being watched was constant, so heavy I could taste it, like copper on my tongue. I began to trace the sound of the footsteps. They led to the storage room, where I kept boxes of my late mother’s things and old furniture. One night, I summoned the courage to open the door, and the first thing I saw was that the furniture had been rearranged. A rocking chair that had been in the corner now sat facing the door, gently moving, as if someone had just stood up. On the seat was a small, round mirror, propped up, reflecting the doorway. I didn’t remember owning that mirror.

I decided to search the whole house, top to bottom, looking for any sign of an intruder, a homeless person, a squatter. I checked every cabinet, under every bed, in the attic—which was just a crawlspace above the ceiling with a flimsy plastic access panel. The crawlspace was hot and dusty, filled with fiberglass insulation and mouse droppings. I found nothing. But as I was about to climb down, I noticed a symbol scratched into the wooden beam above the panel. It looked like a circle with a cross inside, but the lines were rough, like it had been carved with a fingernail. It wasn’t there before; I had replaced that panel just the previous year.

I went to Gus the next day, asking if he’d seen anyone near my property. He said no, but his eyes narrowed. He told me that my trailer sat on the site of an old fire tower that had burned down in the seventies. A spotter had died in the fire. ‘Some say she never left,’ he said, ‘but that’s just talk.’ He gave me a thin smile and a can of cheap beer, but I saw him make the sign of the cross when I walked away.

That night, the activity escalated. I couldn’t sleep, so I was lying in my bedroom, when I heard the loudest bang yet, from the kitchen. I grabbed the knife and crept in. The fridge door was wide open, and all the magnets had been arranged on the floor in a line, spelling out a single word: ‘MINE’. I stood frozen, the cold air from the fridge washing over me, and I knew that whatever was here had not just moved in. It had been here all along, underneath the aluminum skin, waiting for me to acknowledge it.

I called a priest, but he said he didn’t do ‘housings’, and I couldn’t afford an exorcist. So I decided to fight back. I brought in a strange assortment of items from my mother’s old boxes: a rusty pair of shears, a silver locket with a photo of a woman I didn’t recognize, a bundle of dried sage. I drew a circle of salt around my bed and placed the locket at the center. That night, I waited. Around 3 a.m., the salt line shimmered, as if something was trying to cross, but it held. I heard a voice, barely a whisper, like rustling leaves, say, ‘Leave my home.’ But it wasn’t a plea; it was a command. And I realized then that I was the intruder.

In the morning, I moved out. I packed what I could and left the rest. I stayed at a motel for a week, then found a small apartment in town. I never went back. But sometimes, at night, I still feel a cold hand on my neck, and I hear the creak of that aluminum siding, as if the house is settling over new ground. And I wonder if it followed me, or if it was waiting for the next occupant to move in.