In every room the walls and ceilings seethed and bubbled. Paint hailed down in chunks or peeled away in delicate curlicues. One morning, a medallion of yellowed paint blistered, burst and plopped into Angie's cereal blow. All in the time it took her to turn around and pluck a bagel from the toaster. Angie decided to try out the shower in the downstairs bathroom. The room was impossibly small. When she sat on the toilet, her knees bumped up against the  tub. The shower was a Seussian affair: a metal pipe ascended straight up from the faucet of the claw foot tub and became a showerhead. Then it morphed into a
circular shower curtain rod. Angie had to buy three matching shower curtains and liners just to go around. In anticipation of a bracing shower, she undressed and turned the water on full-force. Before she could high-step into the tub, the metal pipe burst from its fitting. Like a towering, berserk serpent, it thrashed violently back and forth, spewing hot water all over Angie, all over the walls,
the floor and out into the kitchen.

What was it that was there, in the house? Whatever it was, it didn't drag chains or rock chairs or stomp up and down the stairs. It was the odd way the shadows fell at night. They were too black. Not logical. Present in places where there was nothing to cast them.

The bay windows in the dining room were original. The leaded glass was thick and in some places almost opaque. Still...that didn't explain why the panes seemed to move; to undulate.

And in the past few nights, underneath the noise of the fan, she thought she heard voices. The rise and fall of human voices, engaged in an urgent ceaseless conversation which fell silent only after she got up and turned off the fan.