a haunting

[_to_the_bone]

The house stands empty for many years, and for good reason. It isn't the kind of place that people stay in for long: musty, filled with cobwebs, mice and little visitors, as well as drafty and dark, you'd have to be a fool or desperate to try to live here

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[singlesoledjest]

A front bedroom window which he opens slides silently shut when he turns his back.

[_to_the_bone]

He doesn't see it at first, but turns back to get it with a sigh a few minutes later, attributing it silently to drafts in the building.

The next room, and the next, and soon the first breeze to run through the house in years slides through.

[singlesoledjest]

The bedroom window closes again, but he's not there to see it.

And there's something a little odd about the way the breeze stirs the dust, the motes dancing in the air in shapes which occasionally, from the corner of the eye, might seem unnatural.

[_to_the_bone]

One's mind doesn't jump to ghosts- at least not in the daytime. But around nightfall, Roman stops his work to get out food from his bag... small, nonperishable things, mostly in tins that he eats on the floor by himself in the living room.

He can hear every creak in the place.

[_to_the_bone]

The next day, Roman is gone for most of it, but he comes back with a truck heaped high with cardboard boxes and parcels. He starts unpacking, and is still loading the unconstructed furniture into the kitchen, bedrooms and living room come dinnertime.

[singlesoledjest]

Nobody makes an appearance that night. Mercutio is exhausted from his first conversation in years upon years, and his consciousness is barely able to gather enough of itself together to be aware of his own existence, let alone materialise.

[_to_the_bone]

Faintly disappointed and entirely unsure why, Roman spends the next day putting the furniture together- trying to make as little of a din as possible, in case Mercutio is napping.

[singlesoledjest]

Towards the end of the afternoon, with the sunshine slanting in lazy stripes across the floor, there's a breath of presence in the room.