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Frank’s eyes danced over the terms of the contract again. It really did seem too good to be true.
Oh well. He didn’t have a degree, he worked as a tattoo artist, and he was single.
Very, very single.
Frank sighed as he scribbled his signature over the paper. Maybe this was a mistake, but the price tag was too good for him to refuse. The house did seem fine, after all, it was just the history that deterred people.
The history, that’s all, he told himself. That’s all.
—
Setting the last box down in the living room, Frank looked at the rather pathetic array of stuff he’d brought. His whole life, packed into such a small amount of boxes, bags, and suitcases. And now he had this whole house to fill. It wasn’t an especially large house, but he had no furniture, and it felt so empty that it made Frank’s chest hurt a bit.
“Well, here you go,” Mikey said, coming up behind him, dangling something on his finger. “Here’s the keys.”
“Thanks, man.” Frank took them.
“Let me know if you need any help moving in, okay?” Mikey looked around quickly, furtively.
“I will.”
Frank wouldn’t.
Mikey looked around once more, nodded his head once, decisively, and walked out, closing the door behind him. Neither he nor Frank said goodbye.
With that thoroughly awkward interaction behind him, Frank looked around the space, the ache in his chest returning. Was this where–
No. Don’t go there, Frank.
Frank decided to get to work hauling his mattress up to the second floor room he’d be sleeping in. He was huffing, puffing, and sweating by the time he was halfway up the stairs.
There was a giggle in his ear.
Frank froze. What was that?
He looked wildly around, searching for anyone or anything that might have made the noise.
Must have been the wind, or the stairs, or something. Nothing to worry about.
He finished pulling the mattress upstairs, getting it set on the floor where he wanted it. he didn’t have a bed frame yet, so this would have to do.
Frank went back downstairs and began moving boxes, putting each in the room it would eventually be unpacked into. He still needed to find furniture. He had a coffee table and a few decent chairs, but that was about it.
Once Frank had moved his stuff around to his satisfaction, he decided to look around the house a bit. There were a few rooms he hadn’t spent much time in yet, such as the recording studio.
The house’s last owner was a guy named Gerard Way, a couple years older than Frank. He was a pretty successful architect who did music on the side, hence the nice house and home recording studio.
Or at least, he had been a successful architect and musician, until he killed himself in this very house.
That was why it was so cheap. That’s why Frank was the only one willing to live there. There were bloodstains on the floor in a couple of rooms, Frank didn’t know the details, but he had to assume it was a rather gory death.
There was that, and then there were all the other oddities of the house.
Gerard had apparently bought the property and then completely redone it. The exterior of the house was original, a run down Victorian, but the interior was crazy. It was almost like some sort of haunted maze, with doors that went nowhere and secret compartments in the cabinets and weird symbols scrawled on the doorways. Frank thought it was the coolest house he’d ever been in, but he could see why other people wouldn’t like it. He was leasing it from Gerard’s younger brother Mikey, who seemed to have mixed feelings on the house. He seemed to want the house out of his life, but he’d leased it out instead of selling.
“Just–take care of it, okay?” He’d said when Frank had sat down with him and signed the lease.
“I will.” Frank had promised.
He intended to keep that promise, he didn’t want to change anything about the house. He really did think it was the coolest house he’d ever been in, it was big but not too big, and again, the price was great. It was perfect.
Almost too perfect.
Frank couldn’t afford to look a gift horse in the mouth, though, so he decided he’d deal with any problems as they arose.
He walked through the house to the recording studio, which was past the kitchen and up a short flight of stairs. He let out an appreciative hum as he walked in.
A huge panel of dials, sliders, and gauges stood in front of a giant glass wall. Through the window Frank could see a few stools and chairs strewn about the space, and there was a huge amp in one corner.
Frank opened the door to the left of the sound board and walked into the recording space. There were a few monitors on the wall, and the aforementioned chairs, stools, and amps, but besides that, the room was empty.
It was eerie, Frank thought. This room should be filled with people playing guitar, keyboard, drums; there should have been someone in the booth working the sound board, giving the musicians the thumbs up to start playing.
Frank shook his head, shaking off his thoughts. He should be unpacking right now.
Walking back into the kitchen, he got a couple of plates out of one of the three boxes sitting sadly on the ground and went to put them in a cabinet. As he walked over, his foot caught on something and the plates went flying as he fell to the ground.
The thing he had tripped over was the edge of a floorboard, raised just enough to catch his eye. Crawling over to it, he pried it up with his fingertips, laying on his stomach to try and see it better.
He got the floorboard up enough that he couldn’t see anything under it, but attached to the bottom of the board itself were three photographs, which Frank pulled off, noticing the tape carefully affixed to the back.
Straightening up, Frank looked through the photographs.
They were all pictures of Gerard Way.
One was him and Mikey in some sort of bar or restaurant, laughing over something. The second was a photo of Gerard looking over his shoulder, startled by the camera and its bright flash which lit him up and cast his surroundings into shadow. There was something red between his hands, and he looked somewhat guilty.
Frank squinted at his hand, trying to discern what the object was. A necklace, maybe? He could make out beads, and something that looked like a pendant in Gerard’s far hand. He set it aside.
Frank’s eyes widened as he looked at the third picture. It was Gerard, in a black suit, his eyes black, tears of blood down his cheeks, looking up at a spot slightly above the camera. He looked terrified, and there was a red rosary clutched between his clasped hands. It was a perversion of prayer, a scene that you’d see in a horror movie.
It had to be some sort of photoshoot, right? Looking at the photos in sequence, Frank could see Gerard wearing the same clothes in all three pictures. This must have happened all in the same night. Did Mikey know about the last two pictures? About whatever the fuck had gone on that night?
Frank turned the first picture over.
6/11. 8:36 PM.
The second.
6/11. 10:12 PM.
The third.
6/12. 1:24 AM.
What the fuck?
—
Frank didn’t sleep very well that night, the thought of the pictures unsettling him. He tossed and turned on his mattress on the floor, feeling very vulnerable.
“Did we all fall down…”
He froze. Was that singing?
“Did we all fall down… did we all fall down…”
Frank sat up as quietly as possible.
The voice disappeared.
Strangely enough, Frank didn’t feel scared. Whoever had been singing had sounded more plaintitive than malicious.
He fell asleep pretty quickly after that.