Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

Author’s Note: This story came from a writing prompt about how “kitchen spirits are the friendliest ghosts,” which of course made me think about the other, nastier spirits lurking within the household. I love writing about haunted places, and have always been interested in the parasitic nature of hungry spirits and their victims. After all, what’s the point of a haunted house if there’s no one within to be haunted? —AB

CW: Blood.

1. Skin: The exterior of the house peels and scrapes in the sun. Once cream, now smudge-stain yellow, it seems to beckon toward you with crooked-up, curling fingers of peeling paint. Insects crawl from a crack in the wall like pus from a wound. The heat makes you sweat as you walk up the driveway. You think, it really needs work, but we designed this place this way. Your flush of doubt will curdle into fear soon enough. You are correct, though: there is work to be done. Certain tables must be set before we can eat. Lay the fork next to the knife, pull back the curtain, ring the dinner bell. We’re hungry.
2. Bones: Wood. Cement. Insulation. Unhappy hands trapped in the wall, waiflike and warped. There’s a creature curled up in there, though you can’t see it. It’s cramped and quivering, fetal-formed in on itself. One day, you might open a closet and find a piece of it—a flap of tattered skin or shard of shattered bone—but the beast in the walls is skittish, and will cower from you unless you look for it. And you will look for it. Your type always does. That’s why you’re here; that’s why you think you bought the house, although really, the house chose you.
3. Arteries: Sour-smelling hallways run warped through the building, running veins to the kitchen, where the spirits are the friendliest, to the bedrooms, where they bite. (Don’t worry—the bites are no worse than bee stings, and just like bees, something must die when the stinger is ejected.) You think you see eyes watching through the grate, but it’s just a crooked doll, paint chipped but smile clear. You set her on the nightstand, resolving to toss her out later. Don’t bother. You might as well make yourself acquainted; you’ll be seeing quite a lot of her in the coming weeks.
4. Organs: Down in the curdled depths of the house lurks its soft, wet underbelly: the basement, the boiler room, the dirt-crusted bunker left over from bomb threats. The guttural inhabitants of this place crawl through the dark with bulging blind eyes, rattling the pipes in their hunger. You’ll hear their heavy breathing when you stand at the top of the stairs. Now, these are the biggest beasts, but not the most intelligent—they’re not much for haunting, but their teeth are shark-serrated and the size of your fist. When you get desperate for a quick death, you should try what waits below.
5. Heart: Me. (I. We. Us.) The ones in the dark, the ones in the walls and the paint and the halls and the boiler. We are the house. We are the spooks—what haunted place would be complete without them? The blood dripping down walls is our welcoming banner, the creaks in the night our howling lullaby. We have not had guests in so long, and the scent of you makes us itch with delight.

The house wants to feed. That’s what houses do: through the crook-hinged door, into the gaping maw of an inside, all places devour you. We are sorry about your fate, you know, but at least we’ll care when we cut you up. How grotesquely beautiful, to be consumed by what wants you.

We ache to cling and claw to you immediately, but we will wait. The horror’s in the slow reveal. We are hungry, yes. Devouring, yes. Desiccated, yes. But not without manners. We’ll take you on a tour first, before we start to soften you up. We’ll show you our guts, if you show us yours.