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 at the request of the readers, i am working on a drawing of the manor's floor plan. you can view a preview of the first floor here.

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Once the sun had completely risen, Chanyeol grabbed his entire toolbox and climbed the northeast tower.

The wardrobe was really old, really beautiful, and probably worth a lot of money, so Chanyeol did his best not to completely destroy it in the process of opening it. After trying half a dozen things, Chanyeol ended up wedging a flathead screwdriver in between the doors and hitting the end with a hammer, using it like a chisel to put downward pressure on the locking mechanism, which was rusted in place. Finally, the mechanism gave, and the doors swung open.

The smell of must and mold hit Chanyeol like a truck, and he coughed and took a step back. Covering his nose with the collar of his t-shirt, he flipped the hammer around in his hand and used the handle to sift through the wardrobe’s contents.

Unsurprisingly, most of it was clothes. Very, very old men’s clothes, yellowed and brittle with age. There appeared to be an equal mix of Joseon-style hanboks, antique Chinese changshan, and Western trousers and jackets, all in expensive fabrics with once-gorgeous, now-faded detailing.

Carefully, Chanyeol pushed all of the clothes to the side. Behind them, leaning against the back of the wardrobe, was a large gilt frame. Chanyeol gingerly pulled it free of the fabric and brought it over to the window so he could examine it.

It was a portrait, obviously an original. Chanyeol could see the raised brushstrokes of the paint. The subjects were an older man in a formal hanbok, seated, with a beautiful younger woman in a lacy, ornamented, pink-and-cream Western-style dress, her black hair curled artificially into ringlets and piled upon her head. Though the styles of clothes were in glaring contrast, their features were similar enough that Chanyeol could guess that the woman was the man’s daughter, or perhaps his niece.

“Huh,” Chanyeol murmured. “That’s… not what I expected.”

He looked the entire portrait over, but other than an indecipherable signature in the corner, there was no information about who the subjects were, or when it was painted. Without any further clues, there wasn’t much else to do. Chanyeol ended up bringing the portrait downstairs and leaving it leaning against the wall of his sitting room, a splash of antique in a sea of modern brightness.

At he settled the portrait against the wall, the grandfather clock in the library chimed quarter-to-nine. Chanyeol froze, and looked around, but nothing else seemed out of the ordinary.

The house was so large, he probably wouldn’t be able to find out before they faded away - but if the pattern of when the clock chimed held, then someone had just died, somewhere in the house. And they would probably do it again and again, unless Chanyeol found a way to stop it.

Though technically he was unemployed, Chanyeol had been thinking of restoring the house as his day job. So even though his mind was spinning with everything that had happened the night before, Chanyeol still spent the day going through the west wing of the house, which turned out to be beautifully appointed guest suites that had apparently not been in use since the mid-20th century. The first floor had a large billiards room with antique gaming tables, a lavish parlor with a full bar, and a smoking room; the second floor had three lovely guest suites and some small communal sitting areas. At the very end of the wing was a two-story library, the third and largest library Chanyeol had found in the house. As far as Chanyeol could tell, not a single book within it had been published after 1950.

The entire wing was half-destroyed with time, faded and crumbling and coated with a thick layer of dust, but the center of the wing was actually charred. Two of the guest rooms on the second floor, and part of the parlor on the first, were fully or partially burnt; wallpaper blackened, carpet seared away, large holes in the floorboards where the charred wood had collapsed. There was definitely a story there, but Chanyeol didn’t know if he’d ever find out what it was.

Chanyeol was jumpier than usual, more alert than usual, and for good reason. Now that he was really paying attention to it, the house seemed… alive. The sounds in the walls were constant, more than once he’d spotted movement in the corner of his eye, and he was almost completely certain that old china doll in the furthest guest room had turned its head to look at him.

It was a bit freaky, but Chanyeol was determined not to let it get to him, and so far, the house seemed relatively harmless. Noisy, sure, and definitely spooky, but it hadn’t actually tried to attack him in any way yet, and he didn’t see any other apparitions, nor did he hear the ominous chime of the grandfather clock at any point.

The west-wing staircase kept going up past the second floor, and Chanyeol, thinking that maybe he’d found the path up to the peak of the house, started climbing it.

Halfway between the second and third floors, the staircase gave out from under him.

With a yell, Chanyeol instinctively grabbed for the railing. It shifted, pulling out from the wall under his sudden weight, but it didn’t come free, and Chanyeol came to a dangling halt as half of the staircase collapsed to the floor below him. Acting quickly and on pure instinct, Chanyeol managed to kick sideways off the wall and landed on the lower part of the stairs on his , sliding painfully down several of them before he landed safely on the second-floor carpet.

Stunned and breathing heavily, he stared at the ceiling.

When he had enough air to sit up, Chanyeol became aware that his jeans were torn below the knee on the right side, and his leg had multiple long scrapes from where it had punched through the rotted wood. “Stupid,” he grumbled aloud. “Why the didn’t you test the staircase first, Chanyeol, you know better than that.” Now he was going to have to haul himself halfway across the house on a bum leg. At least nothing was broken; it was just scraped up. Carefully, he rolled up his pants leg and prodded the wounds, examining them. They needed to be cleaned out.

Chanyeol hauled himself to his feet. “You win this round, staircase,” he said, “but I’ll be back.” Knowing that this particular staircase was now covered in wood debris between the first and second floors, Chanyeol went down the hall towards the main staircase instead.

It didn’t occur to him what time it was until he was halfway down the stairs, and he saw a figure approaching the foyer from the hall. Elephant-bell blue jeans and a paisley silk shirt. Fluffy, unkempt black hair, like he’d spent the last hour his hands in it. Bare toes peeking out under the too-long hems of his pants.

Jongin. About to relive his death, again, as he had every afternoon for forty years.

“Hey,” Chanyeol said, hobbling further down the stairs. , this was a terrible time to be injured. “Hey, man, can you hear me? Look at me, please look at me.”

Heavens above, the fearful, despairing look in Jongin’s eyes was heartbreaking. Chanyeol moved faster, reaching forward as Jongin started to climb the stairs in front of him.

“Hey, stop. Jongin. Stop!” Jongin was right in front of him, now, and he looked nearly solid; Chanyeol suddenly really didn’t want the ghost to walk through him. He threw his hands up in front of him. “Kim Jongin!”

To his utter shock, Jongin stopped, right there where he was, only one step below Chanyeol. Chanyeol’s hands were actually inside his chest, and it felt every bit as cold and moist and icky as he’d expected it to. He quickly pulled them away.

“Jongin,” Chanyeol said again, “can you hear me? Do you see me?”

Blinking, Jongin looked up, but his eyes were unfocused, looking through Chanyeol. Abruptly, Chanyeol wondered if to Jongin, Chanyeol was the ghost, a voice on the wind he could almost-not-quite hear. Was he seeing the house as it was forty years ago? Could he hear his family out on the back patio, talking and laughing and completely unaware of what he was about to do?

Jongin took a step forward, right into Chanyeol, and both of them shivered at the same time. He stopped, a confused crease appearing between his eyebrows.

Chanyeol scrambled back up a step so they weren’t occupying each other’s space anymore. “You don’t want to do this,” he said, raising his voice and trying to catch Jongin’s gaze. “You don’t, Jongin, I can see it in your eyes. You don’t want to die. Something’s doing this to you.”

Looking around, Jongin’s brow furrowed more. His tears were slowing in his confusion, and Chanyeol thought that was probably progress.

“Think about what you’re about to do,” Chanyeol urged, trying to picture himself as the angel on Jongin’s shoulder. He didn’t exactly have experience in this kind of thing. “Think about why you are doing it. Do you really think killing yourself is a solution? Is it even something you want?”

It was very clear now that Jongin could hear Chanyeol, and maybe feel him, but he still couldn’t see him. Desperate for an idea, Chanyeol yanked the shoe off his injured foot and threw it at the far wall.

It rebounded with a thunk, and Jongin’s head whipped around, staring at the wall. He didn’t seem to see the shoe on the floor, but he’d definitely heard the noise.

Okay. That was progress, too. Chanyeol banged his fist on the railing to get Jongin to turn back around, wide-eyed. “Kim Jongin, I am here. I am real, and I am talking to you. Please speak to me.”

“I - ” Jongin, clearly confused, looked around. “Is someone…” Shaking his head, Jongin looked up at the chandelier. His eyes started to go out of focus again, and he lifted his foot to keep climbing the stairs.

! “Jongin, listen to me. Something has control of your mind. It’s the house, I think. Or maybe it’s something in the house, I don’t know. But this isn’t you.” Jongin took another step, and another, and Chanyeol scrambled back, trying to stay in front of him, because occupying the same space as a ghost was freaky as heck. “I mean, I don’t know that this isn’t you, I guess, but you don’t really look like you want to do this. You’re not acting like you’re in control of this.”

Jongin was still moving. Chanyeol reached the top of the stair and happened to look up - the chandelier was already pulled over the balcony and suspended impossibly in the air, and this time, Chanyeol could see the rope knotting itself around the central stem. “See! Look at that! Rope doesn’t move by itself! That’s not natural, come on, Jongin, think!” Panicked now, not knowing what else to do, Chanyeol reached for Jongin’s shoulders. “Kim Jongin, your sisters don’t want you to die.”

Jongin stopped. Blinked. Stared, unfocused, at the chandelier.

The grandfather clock struck half-past five. As the pattern of chimes sounded, Jongin looked towards Chanyeol, and this time, his eyes focused on Chanyeol’s face.

The chandelier swung forward, like a giant hand had let it go, and very suddenly, Jongin gasped, pulling in a huge, desperate lungful of air, like he...

Like he hadn’t breathed in forty years.

He stumbled forward, and instinctively, Chanyeol reached out to catch him. His hands closed around sweat-soaked silk and warm flesh. Suddenly, he could smell Jongin, faded cologne and hair product and skin, could feel him shake, could see the sweat on his brow -

Solid and real, Jongin collapsed into Chanyeol’s arms.

So relieved he was nearly dizzy with it, Chanyeol collapsed along with him, wincing as his still-bleeding leg flattened onto the dusty carpet. Jongin was real. Warm, and alive, and heavy, clinging to Chanyeol like his life depended on it, and some protective instinct in Chanyeol’s heart went into overdrive. He ignored the pain and pulled the younger - older? - no, younger - man close, his heart pounding at the feeling of fingers clutching his t-shirt.

“What -” Shuddering, still gasping, Jongin shakily looked around. “What just… Who are…”

Chanyeol shushed him. “Breathe, Jongin. You’re safe.” His own words came out shaky and giddy, his pulse flying in his neck from the adrenaline drain. “My name is Chanyeol.”

A deep, involuntary shudder, and Jongin leaned back so he could see Chanyeol’s face, but he didn’t let go of Chanyeol’s shirt. “Who are you? Why are you in my house?” It wasn’t angry, wasn’t accusatory. Just confused.

Chanyeol took a deep breath. “What do you remember?”

“I was… going to dinner.” Jongin was shaking so hard, he could barely form words. Chanyeol pulled him closer and passed a hand over his hair, instinctively trying to soothe him. “I came down the hall and then…” He shook his head, furrowed his brow. “I can’t remember why I was…”

So he hadn’t actually intended to kill himself. Chanyeol had suspected, but hearing him say it made it that much more disturbing.

His shakes were calming somewhat, and Jongin looked up, looked around. “This is my house, but… It looks wrong? Where’s my family?”

Oh boy. “Jongin, it’s, um…” . “There’s no easy way to say this. It’s September of 2019.”

Wide brown eyes stared up at him in shock. “What? No.”

“I’m sorry,” Chanyeol said. “Jongin, you… You died.”

Confusion, and silence. Jongin’s grip on his shirt tightened.

“There’s something here,” Chanyeol said. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s… It’s something evil, I think. This house kills people.” He bit his lip. “Forty years ago, it killed you.”

“Forty…” Jongin shook his head. “You’re messing with me.”

“I wish I wasn’t,” Chanyeol said. “Here, I can prove it.” He fumbled his phone out of his pocket and brought up the screenshot of the obituary which he had saved.

Jongin took the phone from him gingerly. “What kind of Star Trek space age wizardry is…” His eyes widened when he saw the screen. “...Oh.”

Chanyeol held him while he read, bracing himself. Sure enough, Jongin collapsed into tears, the phone dropping to the ground as he buried his face in Chanyeol’s shoulder.

It took Jongin a good ten minutes to cry himself out, and Chanyeol just waited, numbly trying not to imagine what could be going through Jongin’s mind. Eventually, Jongin’s tears quieted, and Chanyeol shifted them both, scooting around so he was leaning against the balcony railing and Jongin was cuddled into his side.

Jongin took a deep breath, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “I knew there was something in this house,” he murmured. “I knew it. The things I saw…” He shook his head. “But no one else saw them. I thought I was losing my mind.”

Chanyeol’s stomach jolted uneasily. “What did you see?”

“Blood?” Jongin said hesitantly. “So much blood, everywhere. From the taps, from the walls, soaked into the rugs. Once, I pulled a book off of a shelf and blood poured out like a fountain.”

“Jesus,” Chanyeol muttered.

“I saw bodies,” Jongin continued. “I saw death. I saw a man in robes get run over by nothing at all, out in front of the house. He was bleeding to death in the driveway and my sister walked right over his body like he wasn’t there.” He breathed a shuddering sigh. “I saw the man in my bathtub, God, I kept seeing him over and over again. Night after night, he drowned, and I couldn’t save him.”

, that sounded traumatizing. “The handprint in the great room…?”

Jongin looked up at him. “Yes! Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not.”

Chanyeol exhaled, staring at their long shadows stretching in front of them, cast by the light of the setting sun coming through the front windows. Jongin’s shadow was as solid as his own and Chanyeol had never been so glad for the company of a stranger. “I thought I was going insane, too,” he admitted.

“I guess not,” Jongin said. “I almost wish we were, honestly.” He took a deep breath. “2019, huh? I wonder if my sisters are still alive.” He flashed Chanyeol an unhappy smile. “They’d be nearing seventy by now.”

“Maybe you could go find them?” Chanyeol asked.

But Jongin was staring ahead of himself, at nothing. “I… I don’t think I will get a chance,” he murmured. “Chanyeol… can you see that?”

“See what?” Chanyeol asked, looking where he was looking.

“That light.” Jongin pointed, but there was nothing there. “It’s so bright.”

“Jongin…?”

Tears were starting to drip down Jongin’s face again. “I guess I should have realized,” he said. “I should have known that my time was limited.” He looked up at Chanyeol again. “I’m going to go now, okay?”

. “Do you have to?” Chanyeol asked, the idea tearing at his insides way more than it should have. Jongin was the first indication that he wasn’t insane, and moreover, that he wasn’t alone, and Chanyeol didn’t want to let him go.

“I think… I think I do.” Jongin inhaled slowly, and exhaled heavily. “It’s better than being trapped, right? It’s better than reliving… that… every night.”

His eyes widening, Chanyeol said, “You remember now?”

“Yeah.” Jongin got to his feet, and Chanyeol quickly did the same, ignoring the pain shooting up his injured leg. “I remember you trying to save me, I remember when you walked into the house, I remember the woman who came before you, your… aunt? But she never saw me.” He took a step forward, then looked back over his shoulder. “You’re right, Chanyeol. There’s something evil in this house. I was under some kind of spell, or a curse maybe, and you broke it when you called my name.”

He reached back, and Chanyeol reached forward and squeezed his hand. Jongin’s fingers were cold now, and Chanyeol’s hand kept closing, until it was clenched in a fist around nothing. He could see the wallpaper through Jongin’s head once more.

“I’m glad I got to meet you,” Chanyeol said desperately.

Jongin smiled, as bright as that lovely photo in his obituary. “Thank you, Chanyeol.”

As the last rays of sunlight disappeared from behind them, Jongin took a step forward, and faded.

Meeting Jongin changed everything for Chanyeol.

Amber called Chanyeol back later that night, concerned by the message he’d left her, and Chanyeol spilled everything to her. She was clearly skeptical, unsure of what to say to him, her worry dripping from her voice. Chanyeol hadn’t really expected her to believe him, but it still stung, knowing that she thought he was losing it, that he couldn’t handle getting dumped and being alone.

Still, as he was talking to her, telling her about the grandfather clock and the creepy doll watching him and the way that Jongin faded away, it became clear to him what he had to do.

He started that night, making a list on his phone of every weird thing that had happened to him, and the time and date that it happened, if he could remember it. Jongin’s scene had had the most obvious pattern - every night just before 5:30 PM - and it seemed like the scene in the tower played out every night as well, just before sunrise.

But so far, the thing with the conservatory glass breaking had only happened once, and the thing with the tiger had only happened once, and the thing with the pond had only happened once. He wasn’t sure if the thing with the knife in the kitchen was the house or just a fluke, but he wrote it down anyway.

He also added the chime of the grandfather clock that he’d heard that morning, and what Jongin told him he had seen - the man drowning in the bathtub on the second floor, the man who was flattened by something unseen out in front of the house.

So far, every single apparition had been a young man. Did that mean something?

Jongin had said he’d seen the bathtub scene happen multiple times, night after night, which Chanyeol guessed meant late in the evening right before he would have gone to bed. But he hadn’t said which of the bedrooms was his, so Chanyeol picked one and hung out on the bed, keeping an eye on the bathroom doorway as he assembled a color-coded chart of the times, dates, and occurrences he’d witnessed so far. But nothing unusual happened - no splashing noises, no taps turning on by themselves, no sounds of struggle.

The grandfather clock chimed ten PM, and Chanyeol realized he’d probably missed it. Disappointed, but not deterred, he moved back to his own rooms.

It occurred to him that if he went back up to the tower, there was a chance that he could stop that suicide from replaying as well, but… He was feeling sick just thinking about it. And Jongin had said that the spell hadn’t been broken until Chanyeol had said his name, so since Chanyeol didn’t know the tower ghost’s name, he wasn’t really sure going up there would do anything other than force him to relive the trauma. The image of the man in the tower looking straight into Chanyeol’s eyes before cutting his own throat kept popping into his head as it was; he didn’t need to witness it again.

So he avoided the tower, and slept in his uber-modern bedroom with a white noise app playing in his earphones, blocking out the world.

The next two days, Chanyeol fell into a sort of routine. During the days, he explored the house and began the process of restoring it. Just clearing debris from hallways, fixing door hinges, and getting the pipes and electricity was making a huge difference already. In the evenings, he worked on trying to catch another scene playing out, or did research.

By continuing to dig through the obituaries in that archived newspaper, Chanyeol did manage to find one other name, but it wasn’t one that matched with anything he’d experienced so far. Huang Zitao, also 25, had died in 1965, the year before Jongin’s family had moved into the house. He’d locked himself in the garage with a running car - suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Chanyeol had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t suicide at all, and armed with the man’s name he spent the next day working on the east wing - which turned out to be garages on the first floor and old servants’ quarters later remodeled into extra guest suites on the second - in the hopes of being close by when the scene triggered. To his disappointment, though, nothing happened, and Chanyeol was too far from the center of the house to hear the grandfather clock chime. In fact, the day was so quiet and normal, Chanyeol almost wondered if he had imagined all of it after all.

Just to be certain, Chanyeol made sure he was in the foyer just before five-thirty. But the chandelier didn’t swing, the clock didn’t chime, and Jongin didn’t appear, just like he hadn’t appeared the night before.

“I hope you’re at peace now,” Chanyeol told the silent room.

Friday night - or, rather, Saturday morning - saw Chanyeol awakening while it was still full dark. At first, he only blinked groggily up at the ceiling, not certain why he was awake at the ungodly hour of - he glanced at the clock - one forty-two AM.

Then, he became aware of faint music playing, seeping through the gentle rain noises pattering in his ears.

Chanyeol yanked his earphones out and listened. That was definitely piano music. With his heart suddenly in his throat, Chanyeol sat up and cocked his head. There were several pianos all over the house, where was the music coming from?

It was really hard to tell the direction. Getting out of bed, Chanyeol paced around the room, trying to figure out where the music was easier to hear. It took a moment, and he got some conflicting evidence, but then he realized why. Opening the door in the corner of his room, Chanyeol stuck his head in the stairwell and listened.

Yep. The music was coming from the west tower, above him.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Chanyeol muttered, and raced down the hall to grab a stepladder.

The spiral staircase up to the west tower was rusted through because there was a collapsed section of the roof above, exposing the antique cast iron to the elements. Chanyeol had been looking for an artisan who might be able to come fix it, but in the meantime, getting up to the second floor of the tower would take a bit of work. He ended up using the ladder to bypass the staircase entirely, climbing directly up onto the landing in front of the tower room’s doorway.

The tower room was circular and really quite large. Thin windows were spaced evenly around the entire perimeter, but most of the light in the room was coming from moonlight streaming through the part of the roof that was collapsed. Debris littered the hardwood floor, leaves and twigs and fallen shingles blown into piles against the walls.

On the opposite side of the room from the collapse sat a large, weatherbeaten antique grand piano, and the semi-translucent figure of a man sat upon the bench.

As he came closer, Chanyeol realized he actually recognized the piece the man was playing. It was Beethoven’s Für Elise, a piece Chanyeol had learned in his piano lessons back in secondary school. He hadn’t recognized it at first because the man had been playing the much lighter, less well known B section of the piece, and not actually very well. When the music returned to the main theme, Chanyeol of course recognized it immediately, despite the occasional missed note.

Chanyeol came around to the side of the piano to get a better look at the ghost’s face. To his surprise, he recognized it. It was the same man that Chanyeol had seen in the northeast tower. He was fully dressed now, in long trousers, a trim brocade waistcoat, an open suit jacket with tails, and a rather frothy cravat tied at his throat.

Long fingers missed three notes in a row, and the ghost suddenly slammed his hands down on the keys, blaring out discord and making Chanyeol jump. Making a frustrated noise, the ghost stood, strode over to the nearby window, and leaned both hands on the sill.

Watching him, Chanyeol tried to puzzle out what was going on here. This didn’t seem to be a death scene like the others he’d witnessed. In fact, he was pretty sure he already knew how this particular ghost had died, so why was this scene playing out? Did this event have something to do with why the ghost had decided to kill himself, was it somehow important?

Or did ghosts just get bored?

Unable to touch the ghost, and guessing that he wouldn’t be able to get his attention without knowing his name, Chanyeol instead sat at the piano. Did he remember how to play Für Elise?

It had been close to a decade since he had tried, but after a moment of poking around, Chanyeol found the right key and muscle memory took over. The piano was no longer in good tune and the pedals were sticky, but he managed a relatively clear rendition of the main, most recognizable theme anyway.

“You are a better musician than I.”

Chanyeol startled, his hands slipping discordantly off the keys, his foot dropping unconsciously on the damper pedal and forcing the last raw chord to ring out against the walls as he looked up. The ghost was standing next to the piano, looking right at him with mild curiosity.

“Uh.” Chanyeol swallowed, at a loss for what to do. “You can… see me?”

An unhumorous smile twitched at the corners of the ghost’s mouth. “Should I not? You are the one who is real, after all.”

Whoa. Chanyeol blinked in shock. “You know you’re a ghost.”

The ghost reached up to his throat and dug long fingers into the knot of his cravat, pulling it open to reveal the open, bloody wound at his throat. “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

Chanyeol stood, his heart pounding with - fear? Excitement? Nerves, certainly. It wasn’t every day that you got to speak directly to a ghost!

The ghost was as tall as he was - taller, even, since he was wearing shoes and Chanyeol was barefoot. Chanyeol came closer, staring at the wound in morbid fascination. “Does that… hurt?”

The ghost knotted his cravat again. “Not anymore,” he murmured.

A thousand questions raced through Chanyeol’s mind. Who are you, why did you kill yourself, what does it feel like to be a ghost, what is going on in this house - but Chanyeol didn’t get a chance to ask any of them. The ghost turned his head, looking sharply towards the other side of the room as if he’d heard something, and then he moved, crossing the room towards the east-facing windows. Chanyeol followed him, wondering what he was looking at.

The window was narrow, and Chanyeol had to get very close to the ghost in order to see out, cold clamminess all down his side like he’d stepped into a very condensed bank of fog. He followed the ghost’s gaze towards the northeast tower, just visible over the roofline of the house.

Only barely visible in the moonlight, a man-sized figure stood on fifth-floor terrace of the tower.

. Oh, .

“That isn’t you,” Chanyeol whispered. “Is it?”

“No,” the ghost said softly in his ear. “But it’s my fault.”

The man fell. A piercing, familiar scream ripped through the night, and Chanyeol shut his eyes as the sound of shattering glass rang out.

“They’re all my fault.”

The grandfather clock chimed twice. When Chanyeol opened his eyes again, he was alone. The ghost was gone.

It was hard for Chanyeol to go back to sleep after that, but he forced himself to at least try, lying in bed with the covers pulled up over his shoulders, gentle rain noises playing in his ears, and the image of the falling body repeating over and over in his mind. Around five in the morning, he gave up, and went to go make some coffee.

He drank his coffee and ate his breakfast in his sitting room, with the doors to the back patio open to let in the morning breeze and his laptop set up on the lifted top of his cool new convertible coffee table. He’d already sent an email to the real estate agent who had helped him transfer the manor into his name, asking her if there was any way he could get his hands on the deed history of the house, and was looking online for anything he could find about previous owners.

There wasn’t much to find - or maybe he just wasn’t using the right search terms - but he did find a human interest piece about the remodeling that his aunt had done shortly after moving into the house, in the early 80’s. As he’d suspected, the old kitchen had been completely knocked out and replaced, and the three rooms that came off the kitchen - family room, sunroom, and breakfast room - had been an entirely new addition.

That probably meant he could rule those rooms out, then. His aunt had been the only one who lived here since Jongin’s family had moved out; Jongin’s death was likely the most recent death within the house. Chanyeol didn’t think it likely any ghosts would appear in those rooms.

Chanyeol wondered if the fact that his aunt had had the former parlor and lounge converted into a first-floor master suite would have any effect on the ghosts. So far, other than the piano-playing dark-eyed man in the tower room, nothing supernatural had happened to him there, so he was hopeful.

Thinking of the piano-playing man, whom Chanyeol was beginning to call ‘the tower ghost’ in his mind, made Chanyeol wonder if he could find anything. He did some research on Für Elise, then on the clothes the ghost was wearing, trying to pinpoint what era the ghost might be from.

The style of the tailcoat and cravat that the man had worn matched best with the early 19th century, sometime around the 1820 to 1840 range. Oddly, though, the sheet music for Für Elise wasn’t released to the public until 1867, and Chanyeol could only assume it would have taken a few years for it to become popular, which would date the ghost somewhere in the 1870’s at the earliest. Curious.

Around nine, he got a call from Amber.

“Hey, you.”

“Hey, loser. Am I coming over tonight?”

The terrified face of a young man getting dragged backwards flashed through Chanyeol’s mind, and he hesitated, but - that was silly. The house hadn’t actually tried to hurt him, or Amber. It was probably safe. “Sure,” he said. “It’ll give me an excuse to not work for a few hours.”

“...Yeol, it’s the weekend. It is, in fact, Saturday. Please tell me you’re not planning to work on the house today.”

“Um… yes? What else would I be doing?”

“Have you taken an entire day off from home improvement since you moved in?”

“...Not really.”

“Park Chanyeol!”

Chanyeol huffed, annoyed at her chiding tone. “Hey, I’m the one who’s gotta live here, alright? So sue me if I want it to get it cleaned out quickly.”

“You’re seriously telling me you’ve been working on the house for two and a half weeks straight, with no breaks at all?”

“I take breaks. I’m a twenty-six year old man, Amber, I can set my own schedule.”

“Eating lunch doesn’t count, as a break, Yeol, and don’t give me that, I know you. You’re burying yourself in the work so you don’t have to think about anything else.” Ouch. Stung, Chanyeol opened his mouth to retort, but Amber wasn’t done. “Okay, I’m definitely coming over tonight, as soon as I get out of work. As for you, I am ordering you not to work on the house in any way today. Put the hammer down and back away slowly.”

It wasn’t worth the argument, and Chanyeol knew it. “Fine, fine. I’ll take a day off and… I don’t know. Watch horror movies or something.”

Amber was silent for a second. “Chanyeol… I’m really thinking you don’t need to watch any horror movies. Do me a favor and watch something totally brainless, okay? Like… I don’t know. Iron Chef, maybe.”

Chanyeol had meant it as a joke, and Amber’s genuinely concerned tone caught him off guard. “I’m fine,” he insisted.

“You saw a man kill himself in your bed,” Amber retorted, her tone careful.

“Oh, for - Stop tiptoeing around me, I’m not insane,” Chanyeol told her. “I saw him again last night, by the way.”

A pause. “What?”

So Chanyeol told her about the piano and the tower and watching the man jump together. “He said, ‘They’re all my fault.’ What do you think that means? I’ve been trying to work it out for hours but it’s so open ended.”

“Wait, wait, whoa. You said you dreamed the glass breaking the last time. Now you’re telling me it was the exact same crash, a week later?”

“Yeah, dude, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Chanyeol sat back and put his feet up. “I mean, obviously I didn’t see the jumper the first time, but the scream was the same, the crash was the same, and the grandfather clock was the same.” Then, suddenly, something occurred to him. “Hey… you’re right though. The first time, it was a week ago. Exactly a week ago. Like down to the minute.”

“Huh?”

“Two AM on Saturday mornings,” Chanyeol muttered. “Or, I mean, shortly before two AM. Maybe some of the scenes in the house play out weekly instead of daily? That would explain why I’ve only seen some things once, but other things I’ve seen over and over.” He blinked at nothing, a realization seeping into his mind. “Oh. .”

“Oh, , what? Yeol, what the heck is going on with you?” Her tone was worried, and that familiar resentful guilt was crawling into Chanyeol’s stomach again. “You’ve really been acting strange. Maybe you should come visit me tonight instead.”

“No way, dude,” Chanyeol said stubbornly. “I have to show you my sweet new digs!”

Silence for a moment. “Okay, now you’re purposely ing with me.”

“Maybe. I did get a bunch of new furniture in though.” He patted the couch fondly. “And a huge TV! You’ll love it.”

“Yeol…”

“Quit worrying. I’ll see you tonight. Bring me takeout, I don’t feel like cooking.” That made her laugh, and she agreed and hung up. Grumbling to himself about nosy, overbearing friends, Chanyeol opened up his color-coded chart of all of the scenes he’d encountered in the house.

The scene with the tiger had last played out on Sunday, just after 5:30. If he was right about some scenes being weekly, then… would it play out again tomorrow? Could Chanyeol do anything to stop it?

Maybe not, but he had to try. Leaving his half-finished coffee on the table, Chanyeol went down the hall to the closet where he’d stuffed the tiger-skin rug. It was still there, bundled up and glaring. Since Chanyeol had no idea if any of the chimneys were open - probably not - he instead picked it up and hauled it outside to the empty pond.

It took a second to find some fuel, but Chanyeol eventually fetched an old kerosene lamp from the guest wing, emptied it over the tiger skin, and set it ablaze.

The thing was pretty ugly, anyway.

Chanyeol texted Amber to go around the back and come in through the patio doors when she arrived, so late that afternoon, Amber walked in to find Chanyeol on his laptop in his sitting room.

“Dude, this is awesome,” Amber said approvingly as she toed off her shoes. “But I thought you were going to restore the house, not update it?”

Without looking up, Chanyeol waved his hand at her dismissively. “I will,” he said, “just not the master suite. I didn’t throw anything out or paint over anything that wasn’t already painted; if I want to restore it later I can.”

Flopping down next to him on the couch, Amber put her feet up on the ottoman. “Sweet,” she said. “Whatcha working on?”

Chanyeol turned his laptop towards her to display the scan of an antique title deed he was studying. “I’m charting out the history of ownership of the manor,” he muttered. “My agent sent me everything she had on file, but it’s all out of order and there’s a bunch of missing spots, so I’m trying to fill in the blanks with newspaper articles or anything else I can find online.” He huffed. “I’m probably going to have to go down to the town and see if their library or the city records have more details. Most of this is way too old to be online.”

Amber gave him a reproachful look. “Chanyeol, this doesn’t look like not working.”

“It’s not home improvement, though.”

“Well, true, but…” She looked around for a second, and then picked up his coffee cup, sitting empty on the table with a dried ring of coffee dregs in the very bottom. “...You haven’t been sitting here all day, have you?”

Chanyeol glanced at her. “No! Only… most of it.” He quickly minimized the deed, turning his color-coded chart so she could see it. “I’m putting together a timeline. I think all of the ghosts were young men who died in the house, so I’m trying to figure out if they had a connection, if they were all living here or if young men who were just visiting died too or - ”

“Chanyeol! Breathe.” Amber squeezed his shoulder and waited, staring at him, until he took a deep breath and let it out all the way. “Dude, you don’t look so good. You’re kind of flushed and sweaty, are you okay?”

Damnit. He should have known better than to talk to her about this; she was never going to believe him. Brushing her off, Chanyeol saved his work and closed his laptop. “I’m fine. This room gets kind of warm, I don’t have the air conditioning working yet.” He cocked his head. “I should probably get some fans, honestly.” Amber looked skeptical, so Chanyeol flashed her his best smile. “Did you bring me takeout?”

She held up the bag, and Chanyeol grinned and lead the way into the kitchen, trying not to favor his injured leg too much. He hadn’t told her about it, and he didn’t want her to fuss, so he changed the subject, asking her about her latest exam and the cute grad student she’d been eyeing.

Putting the takeout containers in the microwave, Chanyeol shut the door, pressed the start button, turned around - and stopped. Amber was still talking, but Chanyeol was no longer listening, because a young man Chanyeol had never seen before was standing right in between them.

“,” he whispered, his eyes wide.

Seeing his expression, Amber stopped talking. “Yeol? What is it, did you forget something?”

The young man was small, narrow-shouldered, wide-eyed, with long hair tied up in a crisp topknot. He held a large chef’s knife in his hands, and was moving like he was prepping food, but he wasn’t standing at the counter and there was no food to be seen. Chanyeol could see Amber’s dyed hair through the young man’s head.

“You… you don’t see him?” Chanyeol asked.

“See who?” Amber looked around, but Chanyeol could tell from the way her eyes scanned that no, she could not see the ghost.

She took a step forward, right into the space the ghost was occupying, as if it wasn’t there. “Move back!” Chanyeol hissed, flapping his hands at her until she moved. “, you can’t even feel that? Whenever I step into a ghost it feels like I fell face-first into a melting snowbank.”

Amber reached out and swiped her hand through the air a few times. It passed through the apparition’s shoulders. “Here?” she said.

“Yeah.”

She looked at him funny. “I don’t feel anything.”

Huffing, Chanyeol took a step to the side so he could see the ghost more clearly. “He looks like he’s about a hundred-seventy centimeters, maybe a little taller,” Chanyeol said, indicating the man’s height with his hand. “Good-looking, in a wide-eyed kind of way. He’s prepping food of some kind, I can’t see what.” Chanyeol looked around a little. “This must have been where the kitchen counter was, when he was alive.”

“Chanyeol,” Amber said, very slowly and carefully. “There’s nothing here.”

“He’s wearing a hanbok,” Chanyeol said, ignoring her. “Plain, dark-colored, probably a servant? He’s in the kitchens, I imagine he must be a - !”

The young man had turned away and tripped over nothing visible, falling directly through Chanyeol’s body. Chanyeol skipped backwards as a clammy, wet chill brushed over his skin.

The knife had embedded in the tile, blade-up, and the young man had fallen directly onto it, the blade protruding from between his shoulders. Dead center, perfectly severing his spinal cord; he must have died almost instantly. Chanyeol watched in horror as the ghost twitched and gurgled, the life draining from him as blood soaked the tiles, following a pattern of grout that didn’t match the pattern Chanyeol could see.

Chanyeol dropped to the ground, reaching out. The ghost felt almost solid, the air resisting his hands, but he couldn’t get a grip. “No,” he muttered. “No, no, , how many ing times am I going to have to watch someone die in this house?”

The clock chimed quarter to seven.

“Chanyeol, what is that?”

“It’s the grandfather clock,” Chanyeol said numbly. “It chimes when a ghost relives their death.”

“What?” Looking confused, Amber crouched next to him. “What clock? I was talking about that.”

She pointed at his leg. Chanyeol looked where she was pointing, and saw that the cuff of his jeans was riding up, revealing the bottom edge of his injury. “That’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” he said. “Just an accident.” He looked back to the body, but - “Damn. It’s gone.”

“Sit your down,” Amber commanded, pushing him back onto the tile floor. For one sick second, Chanyeol felt hot, fresh blood soak through his pants and cover his hands. He recoiled, but in the next moment the feeling was gone, and so was the blood. “Let me see that.”

She carefully rolled up his jeans leg. There were four long scrapes up the front and side of Chanyeol’s shin, varying lengths and depths. They’d scabbed over but the skin around them was bright red, and when Amber carefully prodded one, Chanyeol hissed and recoiled in pain.

Wide-eyed, Amber looked at him. “The happened to you?”

“I, um. Went through a staircase.” He tried on a sheepish smile.

“Christ.” Amber shook her head. “We’re going to the hospital.”

Chanyeol blinked. “What? No, I’m fine.”

“These are infected, Chanyeol,” Amber snapped, with such sharpness that Chanyeol suddenly realized she was really, really freaked out. “You’re running a fever, you’re ing hallucinating, you’re going to the hospital. Don’t make me carry you over my shoulders, dude, because I will.”

“Amber - ”

“No. I’m not letting you do this to yourself. Not again.” Amber stood and dragged him bodily to his feet, tucking herself under his arm like a human crutch. “C’mon. I’ll drive.”

As it turned out, the cuts were indeed infected, and Chanyeol spent the night in the hospital. Just a precaution, the doctor had said, but it freaked Chanyeol out anyway. Amber stayed with him, getting a hotel room overnight and then coming the next day to hang out by his bedside while he waited for the doctors to figure out if they were going to release him.

Most of that time, Amber was obviously trying to distract Chanyeol with pop culture chat or dumb gossip, but as they were driving back to the manor, she got a bit quiet, then took a deep breath.

“Chanyeol, I don’t think you should keep living in that house by yourself.”

Unsurprised, but no less dreading this conversation because of it, Chanyeol kept his gaze aimed out the window. “I’m fine,” he said softly.

“No, you really aren’t. And you haven’t been for a while.”

That actually did surprise him, and he glanced at her. “What? Me getting injured isn’t related to Minho breaking up with me, Amber.”

“No, I mean - well. Isn’t it, though? In a way?” Chanyeol’s confusion must have shown on his face, because Amber sighed. “You didn’t really have time to recover before going off on this project. And, like, it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve sunk yourself too deep into a project to distract yourself from pain.”

Oh. Chanyeol flushed. “It’s not like that this time,” he insisted. “I’m like… I’m functional. I promise I am. I’ve got my routines down and I’m remembering to eat at least twice a day and to shower at least every other day.” It had taken a bit, but he was in that place now, and being accused of falling back into bad habits stung, probably more than Amber realized.

Amber’s gaze bored into him, in between her glancing back at the road, anyway. “Are you sure? That was a nasty breakup. And like, you still won’t tell me why he dumped you.”

“Less nasty than the one before it,” Chanyeol mumbled. Minho hadn’t called him a frigid freak, anyway. “Minho had good reasons. It hurts, but he was right to leave.”

“Bull. You’re a ing fabulous catch, what reason could he have to leave?”

Chanyeol laughed at her vehemence, but it wasn’t very humorous laughter. “I like to think I make a decent friend,” he said, “but I’m pretty at being a boyfriend. Look, just drop it, okay?”

“Yeol…”

“I’m okay, Amber. I get why you’re worried, but it really isn’t like last time. Minho and I just weren’t a good fit. He had his reasons and I understand them.” He shrugged unhappily. “I think I probably need to just be alone and get my own head on straight first, before I try anything new.”

“If you say so,” Amber said. “I just don’t like you being alone in that house all the time. I think the solitude is really getting to you.”

Ah. Suddenly, Chanyeol realized what she was getting at. “You think I’m losing my mind.”

Amber pursed her lips and didn’t answer.

Sighing, Chanyeol leaned his head on the window. “Right, then.” He had guessed, honestly. It was, after all, pretty insane, and Amber hadn’t seen what he had seen. An impending mental breakdown was a neater and less existentially troubling explanation than actual, for real ghosts of actual, for real people, actually manifesting in Chanyeol’s house.

They made the rest of the drive in relative silence, just the sound of the radio playing old hip-hop in the background. The manor was exactly as Chanyeol had left it, the sun hanging low enough in the sky that the house blocked it from view as they pulled into the driveway. Amber insisted on carrying Chanyeol’s bag into the house, which had Chanyeol grumbling about not being incapacitated as he followed her up the stairs, still favoring his bad leg.

A terrible roar cut through the air as Chanyeol put his key in the lock, and Chanyeol suddenly realized it was just past 5:30 on a Sunday afternoon and what, exactly, that meant.

He glanced at Amber, but she had no reaction. There was no way she wouldn’t have reacted to hearing a tiger roaring inside the house, so obviously, she hadn’t heard it, just like she hadn’t seen the servant fall on his knife the day before.

Swallowing hard, Chanyeol schooled his features into something neutral, opened the door, and walked in the house like nothing was wrong.

Screaming met his ears, and in front of him, between the staircases and under the balcony in the great room, Chanyeol could see the young man running, tripping, scrabbling against the door frame as the too-large, striped beast behind him dragged him brutally backwards. Turning his back on the scene - and firmly telling himself it wasn’t real - Chanyeol tried to smile normally. “Thanks for - bringing me home.”

Amber squinted at him. “You look pale again.”

. “I’m fine,” Chanyeol said cheerfully. The sound of flesh ripping away from bones filled his ears, drawing bile up his throat.

“Are you sure? I can stay.”

“You have classes,” Chanyeol pointed out. “And a two-hour drive home. The sun is setting soon, you should get going.”

Amber didn’t seem convinced, but after a little more stalling, she eventually hugged him tightly and left. By the time she did, the horrible sounds had stopped, and the grandfather clock was chiming a quarter to six.

Taking a deep breath, Chanyeol turned back towards the great room.

The ghost’s body - corpse? - remains - were lying on the bare floor where the tiger-skin rug used to lay, blood draining from the ripped-up flesh and draining away into a puddle on the floorboards. It was horrifying in a visceral way that none of the other deaths Chanyeol had witnessed so far had been, and the only thing that kept Chanyeol from losing his meager hospital lunch was the lack of smell and the fact that he could see the pattern of the wood grain through the body.

It wasn’t really there - but at one point, sometime in the house’s history, it had been. Right there.

Chanyeol fell back against the wall and dropped to the floor. His body didn’t disturb the ghostly pool of blood that edged up on his feet.

After a few moments, in which Chanyeol simply sat and stared blankly at the body, he registered movement and looked up. The tower ghost - the one with the black eyes - sank to his knees next to Chanyeol’s hip. He was wearing a hanbok this time, very traditional in design, his long hair tied up in a high topknot rather than pulled back at his nape. Like Chanyeol, his clothes did not soak up the blood, and Chanyeol found the chill of his presence at Chanyeol’s side to be grounding.

They stayed like that for a good long time, until the sun had set and the body on the floor had faded, leaving nothing behind but the bloody, desperate handprint on the wall. Eventually, Chanyeol turned to the tower ghost beside him, and found that he was watching Chanyeol rather than the now-empty spot on the floor.

“Amber couldn’t see him,” Chanyeol said.

“No.”

“...Why?”

The tower ghost regarded him for a moment, as if trying to decide what to say. Finally, he spoke.

“Because she isn’t a victim,” he replied.

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