I thought it was a great house and at a price we could afford, despite being laid off after ten years of steady employment and a new baby in my wife’s arms. The area was rural, the nearest neighbors not even a sight from our kitchen window, and the previous owner had left a lot of furniture that we didn’t have. From our small one bedroom apartment in the city to this place, it was like finding a piece of Heaven. The real estate agent had been nice as she showed us several different places, all out of our price range. Then suddenly the previous owner had passed and his children didn’t want the property, so it became available. I was eager to get the house. It was modest enough for our growing family, what else could we want?
The agent had what I thought at the time a funny story to tell us. Before she could even tell us the asking price, she said that she was required by law to inform us that a paranormal research team had visited the house under the notion that the place was haunted. She assured us that the investigation happened twenty years ago and there was no evidence of a haunting, just some old family rumors that scared the residents at the time. We all had a laugh at that, especially my wife Molly. We were both skeptics of the paranormal, we didn’t believe in ghosts and vampires any more than we believed the moon landing was real. The agent didn’t have the exact details, but it was a clean house. I put a bid on it immediately, never bothering to inspect the house for damages or insect infestations; a decision I came to regret.
Our first week was uneventful; Molly and I took the upstairs master bedroom and little baby Ethan got the room next to ours. There was a third bedroom, which sparked Molly’s interest in having another child. I didn’t have a problem with that, the attempts were the best part for me; and she never knew I used a condom so that I could be with her without risking getting her pregnant. She was so beautiful with long brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Her slight Asian heritage showed in the small slant of her eyes, my purely European ancestry didn’t mind at all. Her body was something I couldn’t be more proud of, with her skin soft as satin and her ample breasts there was no sign that she’d ever been pregnant.
The second Tuesday after we moved in the problems began. They were subtle things, all which could be attributed to faults in the house; though I could see why someone obsessed with the paranormal would immediately assume ghosts were at work. Molly was the first hit as she went to take a shower before leaving for work. As she stood naked under the spray of water the hot water stopped and she jumped out of the shower screaming; I comforted her with a large towel and then set myself to checking the water heater. I thought it odd that all the sinks still had hot water, but I was determined to check it out. I didn’t have any experience, though as a husband I felt qualified. It was like I was given a book on how to be a man when I married, just to do all the things a husband was expected to do.
I hadn’t been in the basement much since moving in, the movers brought all the boxes down and Molly was the one to search through them. In my inspection I noticed the strange architecture that formed the foundation to my new home. It was old, blended with cunning skill to the newer sections of the basement. I was never good with history and couldn’t place it immediately, but some of the carvings reminded me of what Molly and I had seen in an old Roman church on our honeymoon to Ireland. That had been a special place, the tour guide had explained that the Romans had no known success past Hadrian’s Wall in England and the church was evidence that the empire had spread further than previously known. They even might have made it across the Atlantic, the guide had joked. A lot of educated historians and archaeologists were in the news infrequently, talking about Europeans in New England long before Columbus arrived; though I barely paid any attention to it.
The water heater was in the corner of the basement in what appeared to be the newer section, though the entire place was dark and filled with cobwebs of spiders long gone. The cylindrical device was in a recently built cabinet to hide it from view, as if the notion of finishing the basement had come to mind before being abandoned. There wasn’t anything in the cabinet with the heater other than more webs that had been abandoned by their makers. I wondered how long it’d been since anyone actually checked the machine, I had to brush several webs aside just to get a good look at it.
I’ve already said that I’m not taken to believing in the unknown and mysterious, but I felt dread being in that place. I could feel eyes watching me though I never saw the source. I swallowed my pride and looked at the heater, expecting to know nothing. But I did, a valve dial was turned almost entirely to the right. A worn label was beside it but I r