All good stories start with a house on a hill so perhaps this might not be a good story. Our house sits deep in a ditch, surrounded on all sides by mountains so drenched in fog that some people sit and ask themselves if they can still be mountains with so much of the sky resting on their shoulders. 

We’re not sure if the town on the summit came first, or the house. Regardless, every little kid knows to avoid the valley and the persistent clouds clinging to the roof of the dwelling.

Sometimes the brave ones will sneak down after dark, tiptoeing through grass so overgrown that it will brush up against their skinned knees when the summer winds blow in hot weather again.

Anyone claiming to have seen a ghost is lying, but that doesn’t mean the ghosts haven’t seen them.

Peeking out from behind faded checked kitchen curtains, a little boy peers through the frosted window every night in an attempt to catch a glimpse of whomever might be traipsing through the dilapidated garden. In the shadow behind him, an old school teacher reaches into the fridge for a box of leftovers she’ll never find.

Upstairs, another adolescent sits in their window sill, concealed by the gossamer curtains they have drawn around them. As the teacher marches back up the stairs, she never peeks in and the child never glances into the hallway at the footsteps. 

In the warmer months, the windows open even as no hands push them out into open air. Taking care of the residents who have slowly filled up the bedrooms with the stench of uncertainty. Every few years, some teenager will peek their head in, but they never find anything. Just a house filled with dust that used to mean something to someone. 

But when a chill weaves through the air, every window stays sealed tight and the thermostat comes on the very minute someone’s skin starts to shiver. Even so, no matter how many times they walk down the hallway they never see each other. 

Once upon a time usually means that a story has a happy ending, or a satisfying one at the very least. We may be misusing the phrase, but we don’t think the poets will mind. So once upon a time, that little boy had a father that took him fishing, and an older brother that always made sure to keep camp as clean as he could in the forest. As a little kid does, he pushed the limits. Wandered too far down the beach. And so when the car drove away the little boy sat on a log around a fire that wouldn’t burn with no father to light it. 

As for the teacher? Well she’s been here the longest. Years of a life spent in the service of youth, preparing young minds and comforting boys that got left in the forest. But she grew old, as we all must do, and when she laid on her deathbed no one came to say goodbye. 

When it comes to the child in the window, their once upon a time is less elaborate. One day they simply came home and there was no car in the garage, no one in the house. No note, and they never showed back up.

More feet patter up and down the stairs every day, more backs lean against the couch watching a TV that may have never worked the way it should. 

But it’ll all be okay for them, because they still have a house they can share without knowing it. Whenever the sun beats down too hard and all the dead bugs congeal into one mass in the flower boxes, it’ll get cleaned by the next morning. Whenever it’s too cold to let in fresh air and too much dust settles on the dressers, it’ll get swept up as soon as it is noticed. Whenever the sun hits the living room just right and whoever is sitting in the chair with too much stuffing looks too fuzzy to be a person but too solid to be a ghost, we’ll make sure no one notices. 

After all, only an abandoned house knows how to take care of abandoned people. And loneliness is the only creature that can crawl down the steps of the underworld to join you in death.