Day 428

The house was simultaneously there and not, real and unreal.
The neighbours were both charming and delightful and what neighbours, that's just a field?
If you asked, most of the town "knew" the people who lived there.

No two stories were the same, the house was full of life and vacant.
The sign outside said so, it also said that there was a room to rent and a yard sale.
It seemed that the house(or lack thereof) responded to what the viewer expected or needed.

Some tearful diner goers spoke of how they knew people who'd gone into the house.
The reasons were perfectly normal, they needed a place to stay or they'd been invited in.
How could they go inside a place that managed to not exist?

Even on photos, depending on what day and time it is the house is there and not and vastly
different each time, sometimes it looks like a new apartment block and a crumbling mess of
brickwork and overgrown gardens with ornate iron fencing.

To the outside world it was just another small time internet "legend".
To the town it was just another thing to be avoided.
Either way the house remains in constant use, people coming and going and going and going.

Someone from out of town, owner of a small time TV channel or so he said, went there to film.
Thought he'd be able to and thought he could finally solve it for good.
He quickly found otherwise as he viewed a caravan through the camera and saw nothing in person.

Things were more complicated than he was prepared for but the caravan door was wide open.
Closing his right eye and peering through the camera with the left, he stepped inside.
Through the viewfinder he saw an old man slouched over a table, heard is heavy breathing.
This was nothing like the houses that everyone else had described to him, this was a hovel at best.

The floor was covered in what appeared to be animal skins, beer cans and torn envelopes.
Opening his right eye he saw only the field and his feet hovering a foot or so in the air.
Still he could hear the unseen caravan's occupant and feel the walls around him.
The old man's wheezing seemed to be coming to an end as he lifted his head with great effort.

They looked almost exactly like his grandfather, the only difference being the eyes.
His grandfather had brown eyes, the old man here had glassy white ones.
As the other spoke the caravan began to change and shift, distort into a much larger room.
There was so many of us.... Now... not so much... talk to Sylvie...

The room continued to shift until he could see it clearly through both camera and eyesight.
Still he kept his right eye shut and peered through the viewfinder, better to immerse himself
and figure out what was going on in the house that was and wasn't.
The former caravan was now a dimly lit sitting room with thick, dusty drapes over the windows.

Everything was different except the old man who was now slumped over a stained chaise longue.
The door he came through no longer existed or had it always been across from him?
Before he quite realised what he was doing he had already walked up to it and pulled it open.
A gust of stale air hit him warmly in the face as his feet took him left of the doorway.

It was too dark for him to see yet he somehow knew the way to a grand staircase.
Higher and higher he climbed, his camera's night vision barely enough to see his feet as the
staircase continued seemingly without end.
According to the camera's screen he'd been in the "house" for two days already.

He should have felt hungry, thirsty, tired anything but this numbness that was quickly spreading.
His limbs felt like lead and feathers all at once, unmoveable and steady.
By day 3 (according to the camera) he finally reached the end of the stairs, or rather a ceiling.
There was some kind of a door there and through the viewfinder he saw his hand open it.

Glancing down his hand was still by his side, he could feel it there yet he saw it in two places.
He was greeted with stale air once more as he stepped into the next floor - or was it an attic?
It wasn't nearly as dingy as the staircase at least, it was fairly well lit by a large window.
Moving closer towards it he saw a figure hunched underneath, was this "Sylvie"?

The numbness he felt on the stairs lifted as he moved closer to the stranger by the window.
By the time it had lifted completely he was a few steps away from them.
In a shaky voice he asked what their name was only to be met with the screech of radio static.
The numbness returned in full force as the stranger stood up.

Their hunched silhouette had hidden their actual height well, the stood at almost eight feet.
Where a face should have been there were bloodied rags that dripped down the figure's body.
He was left a visitor in his own head, helplessly watching as the figure led him to a stool nearby.
The camera was dropped and all he saw was his body floating above the field and under a noose.