The Tenant’s Menagerie

The first thing I noticed about the house was the smell. Not the musty odor of an empty home, but a thick, cloying sweetness, like rotting fruit left too long in the sun. It clung to the air, to the furniture, to my clothes. My boyfriend, Leo, had been hired to look after the place for a week, and I’d come along to keep him company and escape my own cramped apartment. The owner, a man named Gus, had left a note asking us to feed his small menagerie: a parrot, a snake, and a lizard. Simple enough, we thought.

The first day was fine. We explored the house, a sprawling Victorian with creaking floorboards and dusty rooms that felt like they hadn’t been touched in decades. The animals were in a small room off the kitchen, each in their own cage. The parrot was a brilliant blue and gold, but it watched us with a strange intensity, its head tilted almost unnaturally. The snake was a thick ball python, coiled in a tight figure-eight. And the lizard, some kind of gecko, was pressed flat against the glass, its tiny chest heaving. I found their silent observation unnerving, but Leo laughed it off, saying we were just new sights.

That night, we settled into the master bedroom on the second floor. The bed was huge, with a canopy that seemed to swallow the dim light from the hallway. The sweetness was stronger here, almost suffocating. I tried to sleep, but my mind raced. Leo was already snoring softly, his arm draped over me. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on his breathing, but then I heard it: a low, guttural hum, like a giant insect vibrating its wings. It seemed to come from the walls, from the floor, from everywhere at once. I sat up, heart pounding. The sound stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

I told myself it was just the old plumbing. I lay back down, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me. I glanced at the closet door—it was ajar. I could have sworn it had been closed before we went to bed. As I stared, a pair of small, glowing eyes appeared in the crack. They blinked, then vanished. I shook Leo awake. ‘There’s something in the closet,’ I whispered. He grumbled, ‘It’s just Gus’s stuff. Go back to sleep.’ He rolled over, and I was left alone, staring at that dark opening, my skin crawling.

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, it was dawn. The room was bathed in a pale, sickly yellow light. Leo was gone. His side of the bed was cold. I called his name, but there was no answer. I got up, pulling on my robe, and padded down the hallway. The smell was worse—decidedly like decay now. I made my way to the kitchen, and there I found Leo. He was crouched in front of the animal room door, his back to me. He was humming. It was the same low hum I’d heard the night before.

‘Leo?’ I said, my voice trembling. He didn’t respond. I touched his shoulder. He flinched and turned to me, and his eyes were wrong. They were too wide, the pupils dilated so much they looked black. His lips were caked with something dark and wet. He smiled, and his teeth were stained red. ‘They’re hungry,’ he said, his voice a monotone. ‘We have to feed them.’

I backed away, my mind refusing to process what I was seeing. Leo turned back to the door and began to open it. I screamed his name, but he ignored me. The door swung open, and the smell hit me like a wall—rot and blood and something else, something primal. Inside, the cages were empty. The parrot was perched on the snake’s thick coils, its beak dripping. The lizard was nowhere to be seen. The snake, its body now unnaturally bloated, began to uncoil, and from its mouth came a sound—a wet, sickening hiss that almost sounded like words.

I ran. I fled out the back door, through the overgrown garden, and didn’t stop until I reached the main road. I called for help on my cell phone, but the line kept cutting out. When I finally got through to the police, they came, but they found nothing. The house was empty. The animals were gone. And Leo was standing in the doorway, his clothes neat, his face calm, asking what was wrong. He had no memory of the morning. He said I must have had a nightmare.

I never went back. I tried to convince myself it was a dream, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed me. In the weeks after, I would sometimes catch Leo humming that same low tune when he thought I wasn’t listening. And when I asked him about it, he would just smile and say, ‘It’s called a lullaby.’ I don’t know what happened to Gus or his animals, but sometimes, late at night, I swear I can still smell that sweetness, and I hear a soft, scratching at my bedroom door.