Chapter Text
Phil had always had a fascination with houses. He himself had never lived in a house as a child, at least not for a very long time. The longest he’d ever stayed in a house was a week or two, and those times were usually when a member of his flock was ill, or they got caught in particularly poor weather.
His family was mostly made up of arctic tern hybrids with a bit of some other bird species like blue jays and robins mixed into the bloodline. They were a nomadic people by nature, never content to stay in one place for too long and always a bit disconcerted when they felt like they were trapped with no access to the sky.
Most of Phil’s childhood was spent camping if they were in rural areas or staying in roost hotels if they were in urban ones.
His family was a large one made up of about 20 flocks each with anywhere from 10-30 members. The flocks group owned various properties around the world, only a few of which were proper houses. Though what places were owned by the family changed from one season to the next as lesser used ones were often sold off to buy ones in more frequented locations.
Phil’s flock had had around 20 members when he’d been growing up. They’d only stayed on family-owned properties about 20% of the time, and the houses they spent even less time in. So, living in a house had never really been a part of Phil’s life.
Perhaps that was why he’d grown to be so fascinated by them.
Phil loved houses. He loved all sorts of houses. It was so interesting how many different types there were, and he was intrigued by how people would sometimes choose one and live in it for their entire lives.
Phil’s love for houses led him down the path to become an architect, though houses were not what he typically built for his job. Mostly, he was commissioned for things like large office buildings and museums, and he did love designing those things, but between those larger jobs, his eyes were always drawn back to houses.
Once Phil had established himself as an architect and had a good amount of cash saved up, he on a whim one day when strolling through a residential area near one of his newer projects, decided to pick up a rather expensive and labor-intensive hobby.
He’d started buying houses, but not to live in them. No, most of the houses he’d ended up buying were not fit to live in when he’d purchased them.
Phil bought the houses no one wanted anymore. The decrepit, the old, and the ugly: those were they types of houses Phil bought and he bought them to fix them up.
He saw something in unwanted houses that no one else could. He’d look at certain buildings that to most looked unsalvageable and could see something amazing in his mind’s eye. Then, he’d buy them when no one else would.
There was something so exciting about houses, about homes. He always moved into the houses he bought as soon as they were safe enough for human habitation. He’d move right in and get started despite still leaky roofs and drafts that left a chill in the air.
Some childish part of him loved it, loved the experience of living in a house and was giddy for the opportunity to live in a way so foreign to himself.
He always took the utmost care when fixing his houses. He didn’t do any work on houses for clients demanding things. He had no time limits. He could just fix up the house however he pleased at his leisure, and he never stopped until he was satisfied.
A lot of different work went into fixing houses, and in the early years he’d hired different people like plumbers and roofers, but over time he’d learned to do everything by himself. Except in special circumstances, everything was done by his own careful hands. He was particular about his houses and making sure they end up aligning to his vision for them.
He’d research how the houses looked when they were new, tearing up carpets to see the original floorings and peeling off layers of wallpaper to get a glimpse of what the house was and not just the shabby paintjobs it’d had. He’d try to find old pictures of the neighborhood with the intention of restoring the homes to their former glory.
He’d interview neighbors and try to see how the houses were meant to fit into the neighborhoods around them. He’d even learned to restore most types of furniture for cases where antiques were still in the houses he bought.
Then, when he was done, he’d sell the houses.
He was always just as particular about selling as he was about the renovation. He didn’t sell houses for the money like most house flippers did. He made plenty of money elsewhere. He’d much rather see a happy family who needed the house and fit it and the neighborhood than get a good price from it. Often, he even ended up taking a loss on the houses.
He’d always felt a twinge of sadness when he had to move out of a home but, well, it wasn’t in his nature to stay in one place anyway no matter how much certain houses pulled at him.
Surely, he’d have gotten bored of all of them anyway when there was nothing more to fix. Better to leave before that happened and the magic was gone.
He’d just finished one of his commissions when he found his next pet project house. His mother had messaged him that they’d decided to stop at one of the family-owned campgrounds which had been a few hours flight away from the roost hotel Phil had been staying at after selling his last house. He’d decided to meet up with his flock for a bit since it had been a while.
The nearby town where his flock often grabbed supplies had been a larger one, bordering on a small city. As Phil always did when he went somewhere new, he’d found himself wandering around and looking at the local architecture for inspiration.
He’d been wandering through one of the quieter neighborhoods, one with large, well-maintained houses and many children playing in the streets when he first saw the house.
He’d fallen in love with it before he’d even seen the For Sale sign in the front yard.
It was a stunningly beautiful three-story house even if it stuck out from the surrounding homes with its chipped paint and sad-looking sagging roof. Phil had jotted down the information on the For Sale sign instantly and had called later that day.
The realtor had jumped at the chance to show him the house and Phil was given a tour two days later.
Phil found himself even more enamored by the house upon seeing the inside. The house came partially furnished. Everything was covered in sheets to keep off the dust, but when he peaked under them, there were wonderful old pieces still in pretty good shape.
It had been a multi-generational family home, he was told, much like all of the other homes around it. This was in what was called a ‘herd neighborhood’ and was filled mostly with herding hybrids such as sheep, goats, and cows. Most herds had lived in their homes for generations. Most families were living in homes their own ancestors had built.
The family that had once lived in this house had apparently shrunk to nothing, the last of the household members dying out when Phil had only been a few years old. The furniture still in the house was the original from when the family once lived there.
It was… too good to be true, Phil thought, especially at the price point. Though, honestly, it was too late for him; he’d already bought the place in his heart.
To his surprise, his well-trained eye hadn’t found signs of any problems. There weren’t any indications of mold or structural damage. There was some water damage in the basement and the roof was in bad shape, but he couldn’t figure out why the place hadn’t sold in the last almost 4 decades.
“Okay,” Phil finally said to the realtor after the full tour of the house. “I am going to buy it, but level with me. What’s wrong with it? Why hasn’t anyone bought it in all this time?”
The realtor seemed reluctant to say, but she did eventually speak. “People have bought it,” she said. “Multiple people have tried to renovate it throughout the years. The last people bought it 7 months ago, but they gave up trying to do anything with it within a week.”
“Why?” Phil asked. “Is there structural instability? Black mold.”
“No,” she said, “Nothing like that. They just… They said it was haunted.”
“Haunted?” Phil said slowly as though tasting the word.
“Everyone who has ever tried to renovate this house has cited that as the reason they resold.”
Now, Phil had bought and renovated many homes in his time, including one or two “haunted” ones. He’d found no evidence of any hauntings unless you counted a draft or two and some faulty wiring. One home had even ended up having too high carbon monoxide levels which had caused hallucinations. Phil had figured that out swiftly since the first thing he always did after purchasing old homes was test for that sort of thing.
Phil had no doubts this “haunting” would be something similar.
“I’ll buy it,” Phil said decisively. The relator had seemed clearly relieved.
Because Phil always bought his houses up front, he was able to close on it within a week of first setting his eyes on it. In that time, he flew back to get the possessions he’d left in a storage container after moving out of the last house and rented a moving van to drive himself and his things back to the town.
His flock had already flown off by the time the paperwork was ready to sign, and there was nothing to slow him down from moving in and getting started as soon as the keys were handed to him.
He drove straight from the relator’s office to his new house. Parking the moving van in the house’s driveway garnered instant attention from the entire neighborhood.
This was not something Phil was particularly unfamiliar with; neighbors could be nosey, especially when someone moved into the unsellable house on their street. Phil watched with amusement as little heads poked up over the fences on either side of his house. When he glanced at them with a smile, they all went scampering off.
Phil shook his head, and simply started unloading the van.
Children, Phil soon realized, were not the only eyes on him. He caught the occasional curtain fluttering oddly in windows across the way and one older woman unabashedly stared at him moving in from her porch a few houses down. He waved at her. She did not wave back.
Phil shrugged the behavior off and continued moving in his things. He took the boxes labeled “kitchen” to the kitchen but left pretty much everything else in the living room for now, unsure which of the house’s many bedrooms he wanted to move into quite yet.
It wasn’t until he was unloading his last box that one of his many observers finally spoke to him.
“Moving in?” a voice called as he was locking the van. Phil glanced over to see a woman standing in the next yard over. She was leaning casually against the fence stood between them.
“Temporarily,” Phil answered, moving the box in his arm to hold it against his hip.
“Temporarily?” she asked.
“I’m not one to stay places very long,” he said with a shrug. He moved towards her as he spoke. It became clear as he approached that she was a sheep hybrid. Her hair was more woolly than curly, and her ears stuck out to the side.
“Then why are you buying a house?” she asked him.
“I’m an architect,” he explained. “I like to buy houses no one wants and fix them up before moving on.”
“I see,” she said, not quite frowning at him, but not quite smiling either.
“Actually,” Phil pressed on cheerfully in spite of the lukewarm reception. “I would have ended up talking to you at some point anyway, but I might as well ask now. Do you happen to have any photos of the neighborhood from back when the house was lived in?”
“Why?” she asked, a bit of curiosity in her tone.
“I like to try to maintain the integrity of the houses I renovate whenever I can,” Phil explained. “Some things might have to change or be updated, but I like to make sure homes don’t lose what they once were and still fit into their current neighborhoods.”
She considered him for a moment. “I certainly have some old photos from when I was a kid,” she said. “I might even have some from inside the house if you’d like those.”
Phil smiled. “I’d love to have interior pictures if you have them,” he said. “I have to admit I’m not as familiar with renovating such large multi-generational homes, but I want to do it justice. So, anything that can help to that end would be appreciated.
She nodded and it could have been in agreement, but it also looked like she was deciding something.
“Puffy,” she offered, holding out a hand.
“Phil,” Phil replied with a smile, shaking the hand. “So, you know a lot about the house?” he asked.
“I knew the original owners,” Puffy replied. “Their son was good friends with my older brother.”
“Oh, I see,” Phil said. He had seen a child’s bedroom on the second floor during the tour and had wondered about it since the relator had been vague in saying the original family line had died out. “And he…”
“Car wreck,” she answered. “All three of them together, and that was the end of the Soot line.”
“That’s horribly sad,” Phil said.
“It was a long time ago,” Puffy replied with a shrug, but there was something in her eyes that belied her nonchalance.
This was a herding neighborhood, Phil recalled. Even if the two houses had held different families back in the day, the two lineages had surely lived next to each other for generations. Having the entire family that had once lived there suddenly and ruthlessly uprooted must have left a scar on the neighborhood as a whole.
“Well,” Phil said. “I hope I can do the Soot home some justice. Maybe give it some life with a new family. Seems like a good neighborhood for a family with a lot of kids.”
“It’d be nice to have kids next door again,” Puffy agreed.
Phil glanced up at the house for a moment. The curtain in the window moved much in the same way the ones across the street had been all morning. He’d have to check if there was a draft, but that also reminded him.
“I hear the place is haunted,” he mentioned to Puffy.
“Hmm,” Puffy said with the ghost of a smile. “I’ve heard that too. That’d be odd considering the family didn’t even die in the house.”
“Well, I was told everyone that’s tried to renovate has claimed there are ghosts,” he said.
“Strange,” she replied, amused. Her eyes flickered to a nearby bush where Phil suddenly noticed a couple of pairs of eyes peeking out at them.
Phil inexplicably had a feeling that perhaps some of the alleged ghosts were a bit more alive and child shaped than his predecessors knew.
“I’ll be sure to pass along a message to any ghosts I see around the neighborhood to lay off of you,” she promised.
“I would appreciate that,” Phil said, “as well as any of those old photos you mentioned.”
“I’ll stop by tomorrow,” Puffy said, turning away. “Come on Junior, Finely,” she called, “leave the man alone and come get some snacks.”
Two little figures went darting out of the bush after her. The three disappeared inside the house next door.
With a headshake and a smile, Phil turned back towards the Soot house.
Phil didn’t do much that first day. All he did was look around the house a bit more thoroughly than he had on the tour and take off all of the sheets to inspect the furniture. Most furniture on the first floor looked to be in good condition. He might need to fix a few things up, but most of it was more than fine.
He spent a bit of time investigating the two downstairs bedrooms and ended up choosing the less furnished one for himself. While taking the furniture covers off in the more furnished room, he found most of the original owners’ personal possessions were still there including clothing, jewelry, and family photos.
His eyes caught on one family photo sitting on the dresser. It was of a smiling young couple with a boy of about 5. The parents seemed to be sheep hybrids like their neighbors, though their son showed no hybrid features in the photo.
Eventually, he’d need to empty out that room and sort through the contents, but for the time being, the other, much less personal bedroom served him much better.
It was one of the more livable places Phil had moved into, he decided after uncovering everything on the first floor. It was a bit dusty in some places and the appliances were old, but it was clear that at least the main downstairs rooms had been cleaned out repeatedly over the years even if no one had managed to get around to cleaning out the personal items.
He took a break to grab lunch at a nearby diner and picked up groceries and a more updated television than the house currently had so he could watch Netflix on something other than his phone. Then, he drove the van back to the local drop off place for the company he’d rented it from.
The neighbors’ eyes on him seemed to be slightly less antagonistic when he flew back to the Soot house, though he could just be imagining it.
His afternoon was spent uncovering the furniture on the second floor. There were three good sized bedrooms and a bathroom, though one of the bedrooms was empty and the other only had a bed and a single dresser. The third bedroom, however, was filled with all sorts of things.
It also was the only room that didn’t have furniture coverings. He’d noticed that when he’d been given a tour, but since everything still seemed to be in good shape, he’d guessed that the last owner had started with this bedroom and hadn’t remember to recover everything before selling.
The sheets that were meant to cover everything were in a pile in the corner of the room.
Phil guessed that this had been the bedroom of the little boy in the photo downstairs. The theme of the room seemed to be rather simple: sheep and blue. The walls were painted a nice baby blue color and the sheets were of a similar color but with an additional faded design of little jumping sheep.
There was a toybox in the corner and to Phil’s confusion, a few of the toys were spilled out on the floor. Had no one even touched this room enough to clean up the boy’s toys in decades?
With a frown, Phil walked over to one of the toy trucks and bent down to pick it up. He jumped when he felt something cold touch the back of his neck, whipping around, but there was nothing there except the window’s curtains fluttering lightly.
That was strange, but he shook it off, assuming it had just been a draft and his mind had jumped to odd conclusion considering the supposed haunting was on his mind. He turned and put the truck back in the toybox. Nothing else happened as he placed the other few toys scattered about in it as well. That confirmed his thoughts that the initial coldness had really been nothing.
He stood up and went about inspecting the rest of the room. Everything seemed fine despite having been uncovered for an indetermined amount of time. He felt around the windows to see if that was the source of the draft he’d felt, but he couldn’t feel any air blowing leaking through and the curtains were now still.
As he pulled away from the window, his eyes fell on a flash of color. There was a feather on the windowsill and a strange one at that. It was a bright, almost incandescent blue and about as long as the palm of his hand.
Had a bird managed to get in? Phil wondered. Or perhaps the last owner had been a bird hybrid. Phil studied the feather for a long moment but couldn’t place the species.
Odd.
He set the feather on the nearby desk for now and turned to leave, but he stopped when he almost stepped on a stuffed animal.
It was a fragile looking old blue sheep that looked as though it had been hand sewn long ago. Phil bent down to pick it up with careful fingers.
There was a slam from behind him and Phil jumped a foot, wings mantling, only to realize that he’d left the toybox slightly open and the lid had fallen shut on its own. A hand over his heart, he stood up and placed the stuffed sheep carefully on the bed.
He stepped back towards the doorway, eyes instinctually going towards the toybox even though logically he knew gravity had been the only reason for the movement.
He headed back downstairs after that and spent the rest of his evening setting up the television he’d bought earlier and getting it to connect to the wi-fi that one of the previous owners had thankfully managed to get set up in the house before bailing.
The first few days were normal. Puffy came by with all sorts of pictures from inside and outside of the house, which was a great help to Phil refining the imagine he had for this house in his head.
He spent a good couple of days cleaning everything, though he spent less time on the second floor and found himself avoiding the child’s bedroom upstairs without even realizing it until later.
He found three more of the feathers as he cleaned, but still could not identify what species they were from.
Phil spent around a day uncovering things in the basement and inspecting that water damage he’d seen before.
The basement had obviously at one point been a sort of apartment. Perhaps teenagers or young adult family members would live down there. It looked like it had originally been a set of 5 bedrooms and two bathrooms with a main living space in the middle. It still had a couple of counters where Phil imagined a small kitchen once was.
He'd need to pull up the entire floor that had been damaged as well as take down a couple of the internal walls, destroying two bedrooms. He might think of rebuilding the walls afterwards, but he’d have to think about it. A larger living space might be more beneficial for a family that moved in here.
Most of the downstairs bedrooms were used for storage and there were plenty of family heirlooms he’d have to move out before he could fix the water damage, but overall, the basement was stable and not a priority.
The attic was a different story. The attic was a huge space and knowing the type of home the Soot house had once been, Phil wouldn’t be surprised if it was originally used for extra sleeping space, but it had clearly been used for storage for years even when the Soots lived here. He doubted the family had even known all of what was up there.
Unfortunately, Phil quickly found many places where the roof had clearly leaked and there were signs that various animals had gotten in there and made some of the old boxes their homes.
Upon seeing some of the ruined heirlooms, Phil resolved that fixing the roof would be his first big project. He moved everything from the attic to the two extra bedrooms on the second floor and then started to plan a design.
The house currently had a pitched room, and according to the pictures Puffy had lent him, it pretty much always had, but Phil had a bit of a different idea in mind that he thought would still fit into the neighborhood well.
Still, even though he liked the idea with his bird brain, he had the feeling the neighbors might be a bit tetchy about that sort of change. As his resident neighborhood expert and appreciated liaison to the locals, Phil brought his idea up with Puffy for approval before starting anything.
The Soot house didn’t have much of a yard, and while that was fine considering there were plenty of spots for kids to run around and play at around the neighborhood, Phil thought perhaps turning the pitched roof into a flat roof with a nice rooftop patio would be beneficial to any family that moved in.
Despite it coming from Phil’s sky-oriented brain, Puffy voiced none of her own or other’s objections to the idea. She and the other neighbors just seemed to appreciate that he’d asked.
So, Phil took a few weeks to remove the original roof and replace it with a flat one. Later, he’d design the rooftop patio, but for now the place just needed a nice solid roof.
Throughout the whole process, Phil didn’t really see many signs of the so-called haunting. True, he spent most of his time outside working on the roof, but he still slept and ate in the house without any problems.
Sometimes he’d notice a draft he couldn’t find the source of, or he’d swear he heard footsteps creeping upstairs. Every so often there’d be a bang from deeper in the house or something would not be where he remembered putting it. However, overall, there was nothing that would send him running like the previous buyers.
The one time he’d almost freaked out was when one morning, he’d found the same stuffed sheep he swore he’d put on the bed upstairs sitting innocently on the couch downstairs. The television had also been on even though he’d have sworn he’d turned it off the night before.
Phil had not touched it. He’d simply left the house to go work on the roof. When he’d returned to have lunch, the sheep hadn’t been on the couch anymore. He’d dared to look and had found it upstairs on the floor near the bed much as it had been when Phil had walked in there the first time. Phil had left it there, thoroughly creeped out and certain he had to have just imagined its presence downstairs that morning.
That sort of thing only happened the once while he was fixing the roof though, and he’d managed to pretty much forget about it by the time the project was finished.
He’d turned his attention to the basement next, wanting to get a start on replacing the damaged floor.
The first step would be, of course, to get everything out of the basement. Unlike the roof, there was nothing pressing he had to do structurally, so he decided to take his time and sort through things as he moved them upstairs.
There wasn’t much furniture down there anymore except for a very, very old couch and some chairs. He brought those things upstairs first and found only one of the chairs looked salvageable. The other things he hauled out to the curb.
Then, he started to move the various boxes of heirlooms and junk upstairs. Most of the boxes from downstairs were clearly put there long before the Soots’ untimely deaths, though they seemed to be a bit newer than a lot of the things Phil had moved from the attic. He hauled them upstairs one by one.
That’s when the stranger occurrences began to get more frequent.
At first, Phil just assumed he was being forgetful and putting things in places he didn’t mean to while distracted. The piles he was making would get messed up and some things he swore he put in the throwaway pile would end up in the keep one.
He’d walk into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and would hear something in the living room moving, but when he went to check there was nothing there.
The worst it got was when he found a box of antique toys. Phil had glanced away from the box for a moment only to hear a whirling noise. He turned back to see one of the wind-up toys walking merrily across the floor.
Phil started to feel disconcerted as he sorted through the boxes. Sometimes he could get through the whole day without anything particularly strange happening and some days it felt like he was always sensing something strange happening out of the corner of his eye.
And then he’d finished with all of the boxes that had been shoved in the old bedrooms and moved onto the group of boxes he’d found under the stairs.
These boxes were different because they were more recent things, things that had likely only been in temporary storage like holiday decorations, a fancy tea set, and little trinkets.
Phil had been sorting through one of the boxes of trinkets like normal. He’d moved to put a small jar of seashells into the throwaway pile. However, as soon as he’d put it there, one of the old, already broken plates in the throwaway pile suddenly shatter on the ground.
The odd thing was Phil was pretty sure that plate had already been on the ground.
He’d felt cold air brush across his skin like someone was looking over his shoulder and literally breathing down his neck.
“Okay,” Phil had said as calmly as he could. “We can put that one in the keep pile.”
The cold had left as soon as Phil put the jar into the keep pile.
Phil had taken to asking out loud before putting anything into the trash pile after that. The corrections were a lot less violent when he asked first. Phil’s arm would simply be pushed by what felt like cold fingers towards the keep pile if he wasn’t supposed to throw the object away and nothing would happen if it was okay for the item to be pitched.
Phil really didn’t… he didn’t know what he was doing. He’d started out thinking that the haunting was a couple of neighborhood kids let loose by parents who didn’t want a family home ruined even if its owners were gone. Now he was asking his living room permission to throw away a paper towel with a crayon drawn Christmas tree on it.
And he was being told “no.”
He was surprised how calm he was able to be about it all.
He still slept in the house. He still cooked in the kitchen and ate while watching Netflix on the couch. He still planned out home renovations.
He just sometimes got woken up by the sound of banging doors and running feet in the middle of the night. He just sometimes felt eyes on him while he cooked and felt the couch shift next to him while he watched a movie. He just always asked permission before doing anything to the house.
It was fine.
Everything was fine.
Perfectly fine.
Until the old plumbing in the kitchen burst.
The water pressure had suddenly dropped to nothing, and Phil had known what that meant. It took him a few hours to figure out where the leak was based off the wet patch on the wall.
Phil had already anticipated that he’d have to replace all of the plumbing in the house eventually, but he’d really hoped it’d last him just a bit longer. He knew how to fix a burst pipe, but it was still going to be a hassle since he’d have to cut into the wall to get to the leak.
He was so distracted by the frustrating task at hand that he’d somehow managed to forget his… friend.
At least, he’d forgotten his friend until he had turned off the main water, had gotten his toolset, and was just about to cut into the drywall.
The air went suddenly frigid in a way that stole the breath from his lungs, like he’d stepped out of a warm car into a blizzard. Eyes bore into the back of his neck like an actual weight. There was a slam as his toolkit hit the floor.
Phil went deathly still.
“The pipe burst,” he explained through dry lips. “It’s going to damage the house. It’ll make the walls moldy and weak and will make it hard to use water. I need to cut into the wall to get to the broken part.”
There was a pause as Phil’s words were considered and then the room slowly thawed out. Phil shivered as warmth returned to his fingers and toes. He took a steadying breath even though he could still feel himself being watched.
Phil went about the task he’d set himself as calmly and as efficiently as possible, though his hands were a bit shakier than normal. There were no more protests, but the presence did not leave. It continued to watch him the entire time as he patched the leaky pipe. He’d eventually have to find a way to replace everything, but it looked like his repair should hold for now.
He stepped back from the wall, still feeling like eyes were watching him.
“I’m probably going to have to replace more of the pipe later,” he said out loud. “I’m going to leave the hole for now, but I’ll patch it up later and repaint it good as new.”
The feeling of eyes still didn’t leave.
Phil swallowed and tilted his head in the direction from which he felt the gaze coming from. He instantly froze.
There was something there.
