"Alexa, Who Is In My House?"

#"Alexa, Who Is In My House?"

Chapter One

 

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I wish I knew where to begin.

I’ve never had to reach out like this before. In the movies, we all witness the main character struggle with finding help with their problems. We watch as they battle with themselves, trying to decide if anyone will believe them.

I always knew I’d go through the same thoughts if it were me.

We yell at them, curse at them, ask them, “How could you be so stupid?! Don’t go in there!” I’m hoping you will be my audience so I don’t make those mistakes.

My name is Kick, short for Katheraine. I like it better than “Kitty”. I’ve been married to my husband Michael for exactly 4 months today. We’ve been together since I was 22. Now, at 27 and 33, we are finally coming into our own.

We bought our house in April of last year, the day of the last snow. In New Mexico, we get freakish weather. It will be 70 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny one day and then sleet and snow will blow through the next. Don’t like the Albuquerque weather? Wait five minutes.

Both Michael and I grew up here and have several generations in New Mexico. We grew up listening to tales of skinwalkers, shapeshifters, cucuy, and La Llorona. We tell stories of women wailing in the night and children disappearing from their beds. But these were all stories.

I guess this one’s mine.

 

Things were unusual when we first tried to move into this house. First of all, our realtor was trying like hell to distract me with other properties, but this one was special. It’s massive for our small family unit with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large open living room, a dining room, laundry room, kitchen, converted garage, outdoor garage, and a hot house with a hot tub. My husband and I are not interested in having children, but we do have 2 dogs who needed a bigger yard and we are avid entertainers and performers, and appreciate a house party or two. New Mexicans always do.

We were told that our seller wanted to move to smaller accommodations since her divorce. She didn’t speak English and I only speak moderate Spanish, so our realtors did most of the negotiating. I had to fight with her on fixing the water lines, but she eventually decided doing so herself would cost less than going through the bank, so she hired an approved contractor and they did all of the necessary repairs. This took longer than usual because, for some reason, she was hardly available. It was almost like she was avoiding meeting us on the property.

I won the new refrigerator and we even made enough in equity to afford a few upgrades in the future. The appraisal marked the house as a steal. I have been applauded on my efforts for this, especially because New Mexico is very poor and the both of us come from less fortunate backgrounds, barely above the poverty line. We were moving up.

Our first few weeks in the house were peaceful. Birds chirping, blossoms in full swing, Spanish cotton gliding on the wind with the break of summer – this was Heaven.

Because New Mexico is a desert, we are known for hot days and cold nights. Snow just doesn’t happen for lack of moisture. But in the peak of summer, it doesn’t matter what time of day it is. It is 90 degrees and up. That’s why I couldn’t understand why I woke up freezing in June, covered in sweat.

 

I crawled over Michael and headed down the hallway towards the kitchen. I wondered if the thermostat was broken and if we had left the air conditioner on. For some reason, in my sleepy haze, this made sense. Except when I passed the vent in the ceiling in the hallway, there was no air. I was certain I had left it on “FAN” when I went to bed - Michael had even asked me to do so, and I had set our Echo Dot for it. I flicked on the switch in the kitchen and went back to bed. I could hear the slight scraping as the fan rolled into gear and worked its way to a low hum.

In the morning, I got ready for work and left for the day. My dogs were depressed about it as usual, but quickly made themselves comfortable on the sectional. I promised them I would be home soon.

When I opened the door, the beeping for the alarm was slow and methodical. I punched in my code on the touchscreen. Michael works for a security company, so he is armed to the teeth with options. We have features in our home that aren’t even available on the public market yet, but we’ve hardly had time to rig it all, what with planning a wedding, deaths in the family, and art world politics. Still, I quelled the infernal beeping. I glanced into the hallway from the mud room while I slipped off my shoes. It was dark and seemed to be making a distance. It was like when the cameras do a focal zoom and objects begin to appear further away. I blinked. The corner of the hallway actually moved - but it wasn’t the corner at all. Something had shifted from its chameleon shadow and disappeared between the cracks in the floor. Instead of a dark corner, I could now clearly see the ivory paint.

(Link to the hallway view from the mud room)

(Link to the location of the shadow)

I called the dogs inside and stayed in the living room for the rest of the evening until Michael came home. I was raised in a strange home, so my mind stays open. Michael, forever the skeptic, did not need to hear about my supernatural paranoia.

When you live in a house like that, it never really leaves you.

Of course, the next two or three nights of bumping and rattling in the kitchen during early hours didn’t exactly relieve any of that. I must’ve had Michael get up three or four times to check the house with his pistol. This goes on for a few more weeks intermittently.

 

About two weeks went by without a sound, and I’d almost completely forgotten about the shadow in the hall. For health reasons, I have kept myself to a very strict schedule. My routine is rigid, but this is good for me and my firm standards assist in keeping me motivated. Monday is for cleaning.

When we first previewed the house, we were aware of a patch in the hallway that covers an old vent opening. For some reason, the way it was repaired is strange. The boards don’t go in the same direction as those originally planted in the hallway, and there were some pretty deep abrasions in the wood. Michael had even commented that all it would take to fix them would be a wood staining pen when I asked the realtor about the patch. I never thought much of it and we decided we would replace it later after we moved in. Maybe they were moving furniture on the way out and the lip of the patch caused it to leave marks as it was moved. This day, however, I had to go back over my tracks with the vacuum cleaner, and that’s when I noticed the marks made a perfect pattern. Why hadn't I seen it before?

I posted a video of me talking my friends through what I was seeing just yesterday. The pattern of the scrapes looked exactly like where you might expect fingers to land if one was dragged from the bedroom and down the hallway. Even the middle mark where the middle finger would be is the longest scratch, which makes sense - your middle finger is the longest one. We use a baby gate to keep the dogs out of the back of the house. Ironically, it was to keep the floors safe since we can't sleep with the dogs anymore because of asthma. Surely, the seller's chihuahua couldn't have made a mark this big. Even so, why would it be going backwards?

(Link to the scratch marks)

One of my friends suggested that my ex-girlfriend (I am bisexual) had just passed her police academy exams and she might be able to help. It took some convincing on his part, but he's forwarding the photo and the address over to her. We will see if she can search for any records of violence on the property. I can’t find any in online and public archives.

 

Guys, let’s hope I’m just going crazy. More has happened, but it’s hard to explain. The Echo Dot is particularly strange - it lights up at random times in the dark, but it does the processing rainbow before disappearing without a sound, like it’s listening but deactivates when no command is given. We have two, and only the one in the bedroom does this - the room next to the corner in the hallway.

I don’t want Michael to know what’s going on. I don’t want to seem like I’m being paranoid. I need to know if this is real before I go dragging anyone else into this, but I just don’t feel alone in this house anymore, and it feels like things are popping up left and right. I don’t have examples of previous experiences, but I’m starting to keep anything I can at this point. It’s all just feelings. How do you convince someone your feelings aren’t just that? How do you prove you’re being watched in the shower? How do you prove it?

I’m hoping you all will be witnesses.

 

Update soon.

 

####Go to Chapter Two