“It’s just around the corner,” my dad muttered under his breath, glancing down at the GPS again. “What was the address?”      

I winced as my younger sister over-exaggerated the turn and dug her shoulder into me. “893 Rockwell,” I reminded Dad through clenched teeth.

He thanked me and pulled into the driveway.      

My mom laughed as she opened her car door. “My God, Jeff, when you said old I thought you meant a leaky roof or something!”

The grey bricks and rotting front porch looked like an episode of Ghost Hunters. A red chimney sprouted up next to the inclined roof and all the window curtains were pulled closed.      

Dad shrugged. “I think it’s cool.”

He motioned for us to follow him, shoved his keys into his pocket, and started up the front steps. The creaking made me a little uneasy, but I shared my dad’s adventurous spirit, so I stepped over the threshold. One breath was all it took to coat my lungs in dust.

The living room was big, with paneled wood floors, walls, and ceiling, and a stone fireplace against the back wall. A staircase stood to the left, and an arched doorway led to the kitchen.      

I ran my hands over the railing as I climbed the stairs. The air got thinner, like when you drive up into higher altitudes. The upstairs was just as decrepit. The only exception I found was in the master bedroom, which had a little window box. Inside were violets and a single daisy. Still, I didn’t think much of it. Instead, flopped down on the bed, waiting for my parents to call me down to unpack.      

It took about a week to fully settle in. Eventually we took all the dusty, torn, and probably bug-filled furniture to the dump, picked out rooms, made a call to the electrical guys, and made sure we had running water.

We tore all the heavy draperies down, and the sunlight filtering in made the space enjoyable. With my mom’s “splashes of color,” you could almost believe that people lived in the house.        

A few weeks in, I was sitting in my room above the kitchen when I got a chill. I shrugged it off, pulled my sleeves down, and kept scrolling through my Instagram feed.         

A few thumps from the room next door cut into the Panic! at the Disco’s song I was listening to. I sighed. “Shut up, Rachel!” I hit the wall a couple times with the flat of my hand to show her how annoying it was. “You know Mom hates you playing in their room!”      

“I’m not doing anything. God, Morgan, why do you always blame me?” Her whiny voice floated up the stairs.      

Slowly, I tugged the earbud out of my ear, trying to shake the uneasy feeling I had. The thumps sounded again. I dropped my phone on my pillow, the next song playing loud enough to be heard from the small speakers. Standing, I nudged my door open with my foot.

“Mom?”  I called out.

No answer.

The master bedroom was empty. The bed was made, the laundry put away. The purple and white of the window box caught my attention. I cocked my head to the side, weird noises forgotten.

Two white daisies smiled up at me, one more than I remembered seeing the first day we got here.

“Weird…” I said to myself, walking toward the window.  

“Morgan, what are you doing?” My mom’s exasperated voice from the doorway made me jump.      

With a hand to my heart I turned around, breathing hard. “Did you plant another daisy?”      

“What?”      

I licked my lips and jerked my head to the flowers. “There used to be one daisy. Now there’s two. Did you plant one?”      

Mom laughed.  “Flowers grow, honey. You learned about photosynthesis, right? Seventh grade?”

I shrugged and laughed a little with her, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. It was hard to breathe in that room, like the air was thinner. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.      

Another week or so passed. Nothing out of the ordinary happened except a few bumps in the night. I shrugged it off, though. I thought it was just the old house creaking.

Then I started waking up to the hall visible through my fully open door, but I’ve always slept with my door and windows tightly closed. My dad told me it was the drafts pushing my door open. New Mexico does get pretty windy in the fall.

That didn’t stop the chill from running down my spine every morning, though.      

“Hey, Rach, have you been opening up my door lately?” I asked, but already knowing the answer.      

“That would be a really lame prank,” Rachel sighed, buttering her toast. “I’m not a little kid anymore, you know that. My twelfth birthday was last week. That makes me an official preteen.”      

Rolling my eyes, I swung my backpack over my shoulder and went outside to the bus stop. When I looked back at the house, shielding my eyes from the sun, I noticed condensation over my parent’s window. The splotches of white and purple flowers stood bright against the dull house. I thought I saw four daisies then, but I couldn’t be sure from that far away.

School was hard that day. I had trouble focusing. Getting my mind on Geometry was hard when it was still at home in the window box.      

When the day finally ended and I got back to my room, I stood in the doorway, mouth hanging open, too shocked to go in. My bed had been moved from the corner to in front of the window. The bookshelf lay on its side, the books all rearranged. My dresser stood on the opposite side of the room from where it had been that morning.

“Dad!” My voice was tight and high pitched.      

“Yeah, hon?” My dad rounded the corner, looking at his phone. I gestured wildly through the door until he came to stand at my side. “Weird place for a bed, don’t you think? You would probably want it away from the window.”      

I stared at him wide-eyed. “Dad, I didn’t do this. This wasn’t me.”      

He looked at me and laughed. “Go talk to your sister. You know she likes to mess with you.”      

“A little girl couldn’t move that bed. It took two of those moving guys!” I turned towards the master bedroom, not wanting to find out, but at the same time needing to know. “Follow me,” I said over my shoulder. My dad’s footsteps sounded behind me as I marched into his room and over to the box.

Five daisies.

One violet.

“What happens when they’re all gone?” I asked myself under my breath.      

“What did you say?”      

I quieted him by raising my hand. “You have to understand. It started with the weird noises.”

As if on cue, the same thumping sounded from nowhere.

“Then doors opening and closing on their own… Then the foggy windows.” I turned back to the box and saw, just as I expected, the same condensation.

The door leading to the master bathroom slammed shut.

“And now the furniture.”

A loud scraping sound came from my room, and I could almost see the bed moving without anyone pushing it. “Something’s going to happen, Dad. And when it does, that violet is going to be gone. The box will be filled with daisies. Why daisies!?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and ran my fingers nervously through my hair and waited for my dad to tell me I was crazy. He didn’t. Slowly, I opened one eye. My dad was gone.