How to Sell a Haunted House

by Grady Hendrix

Louise held Poppy’s feverish, limp body for hours, wishing harder than she’d ever wished before that for just sixty seconds someone would hold her, but no one holds moms.

All those opinions, all her crafting, all her notes and phone calls, her constant need to be the center of attention, her exhausting need to be liked by everyone, her mood swings from euphoric highs to depressed lows, it made her mom who she was, but at an early age it also taught Louise that her mom was unreliable in a way her father was not.

The cane, the hammer, the TV being on, the dolls in her dad’s chair . . . it all felt wrong. She looked at the dolls. Whatever had happened, they’d seen it all, but they weren’t about to tell.

Something had happened right before her mom and dad had left their house for the last time. Something bad.

Whenever Louise got anxious, her dad always said, You know, Louise, statistically, and there’s a lot of variance in these numbers, but in general, from a strictly scientific point of view, everything turns out okay an improbable number of times.

Women talked about their mother’s cooking in the quiet, tragic whispers they reserved for somebody dying of cancer.

Louise told her dad the plan: give it all to her, make her the executor; she’d sell the house and put Mark’s half in a trust. Mark would be upset at first, but once the monthly checks started arriving, he’d calm down. And it would give her a nice tax break. Her dad approved of tax breaks.

Pupkin had been here before her or Mark were even born. He’d known their mom since she was seven years old. He’d traveled with her to all her shows while they’d waited for her at home.

Dolls don’t have feelings, she told herself, cutting off that thought before it could get out of control. She needed to stay under control.

Every single person in this room, every story, every song, every memory, it all started on the floor of a house without enough furniture, with her mom desperately trying to entertain two little kids with nothing but a threadbare glove puppet she’d had all her life and whatever she could find in the trash.

As you’ve seen, if your mother predeceased your father, he left everything to Louise. But if your father predeceased your mother, if you’ll read the pages you skimmed, he leaves everything to your mother.

“According to the accident report we got Friday,” Brody said, “your mother’s time of death came after your father’s, and I’m sorry to sound a bit ghoulish, but sometimes the law requires that we be precise. Apparently, when emergency medical workers arrived on the scene, your mother was still conscious, but your father had already passed. She passed on the way to Roper.”

“Your mother leaves her estate to your father in case she predeceases him,” Brody said. “If he predeceases her, she inherits his estate, then she leaves her entire estate, which now includes his, to Mark. One hundred percent.”

“Sometimes a parent will appoint their adult children as co-personal representatives of their will, but in this case she’s not only willed her entire estate to Mark, she also decided to appoint him as her personal representative.”

Every kid has the same question for their parents: who do you love more? Your parents could dodge that question all their lives, they could avoid it for years, but eventually, one way or another, the answer came out.

“Turn to the schedule at the back,” she said, pulling out her phone. She read from the email, “Beneficiary designations. Page 8. Beneficiary Name—Louise Joyner. Relationship—Daughter. Bequeathed Inheritance—Art collection. Inheritance Percentage—100%.”

“Do you understand what she meant by art collection?” Louise asked. “It means everything Mom ever made. All her art. All her paintings, her string art, her picture frames, the squirrels. Everything.”

She heard Buffalo Jones, Red Rabbit, Hedgie Hoggie, and Dumbo from her bedroom, stranded on their shelf. Louise, don’t leave us.

“But if Mom said he’d been attacked, the next question is ‘By what?’ and that leads to the question we’ve been avoiding: why’d they board up the attic?”

“You tried to kill me,” Mark said. It wasn’t true. He was lying. She didn’t try to kill Mark. Pupkin did.

It makes Pupkin so angry, Pupkin said. “You’re scaring me,” Louise said. Sometimes Pupkin gets so angry Pupkin wants to do something bad.

To her surprise, the more she did funny things to Mark, the closer Mark wanted to be. He followed her everywhere. He brought her his toys. He watched her play without talking. He glued himself to her side. She may have belonged to Pupkin, but Mark belonged to her.

“This has nothing to do with Mom,” Mark said, “or Dad. I thought it was their ghosts, but now I realize it has everything to do with Pupkin. I saw him move. He tried to kill you. Those dolls in the bathroom wrote that note on the wall, but the one who’s behind everything is that creepy little puppet.”

Put one on and your posture changes, your voice alters, and you can feel what it wants, you can feel what it’s scared of, you know what it needs. You don’t wear the puppet. The puppet wears you.

“Pupkin home! Pupkin home!” Pupkin danced from side to side, chanting it over and over again, his voice higher because Poppy’s vocal cords were less developed, her lungs smaller, her palate softer. Louise heard Pupkin screaming through Mark’s throat, bringing the hammer down on her skull. The left side of her forehead gave a sharp, precise pang.

“Because you’re real, Pupkin,” Louise said. “And nothing real can last forever. That’s how you know you’re real. Because one day you die.”