I fed the house scraps of raw meat, down the drains, into the fireplace. I had to.

It was
starving. It was a beast, living and breathing darkness and terror. It fed off anger. That’s why it
was so strong—while she lived there she had fuelled it with every inch of her spite and hatred. It
listened to her, too. She commanded it and nothing would suggest otherwise.

The house didn’t think I was its master. This didn’t bother me too much—I knew I didn’t
deserve the house, anyway, and it was much too ancient to care whether or not my name was
listed on a piece of paper. It was much older than wherever that paper came from.

I thought it was too pretentious for its own good. The house looked more like a hovel—it
had been abandoned for years before it came into my possession. It was trashed. There should
have been rooms upon rooms of the house, each with a pretentious name. The fireplace in the
parlor was small, sooty, unused. Everything was covered in a layer of dust.

I stayed in the kitchen in the beginning. It was the best of it all, but none of the appliances
worked and there was a small, square table pushed into a corner as if it was trying to hide itself
in shame. There wasn’t even a chair, just a short footstool.