Open House on Haunted Hill by John Wiswell (Diabolical Plots, June 2020) is narrated by a haunted house, and sees it on its best behaviour when Mrs Weiss, a local realtor (estate agent), puts the house on the market:
The house misses 1989. It has spent so much of the time since vacant.
Today it is going to change that. It is on its best behaviour as the realtor, Mrs. Weiss, sweeps up. She puts out trays of store-bought cookies and hides scent dispensers, while 133 Poisonwood summons a gentle breeze and uses its aura to spook any groundhogs off the property. Both the realtor and the real estate need this open house to work.
Stragglers trickle in. They are bored people more interested in snacks than the restored plumbing. The house straightens its aching floorboards, like a human sucking in their belly. Stragglers track mud everywhere. The house would love nothing more than any of them to spend the rest of their lives tracking mud into it.
A widower and his rumbustious four-year-old daughter later arrive at the open house and start viewing the property. As they do so the house makes a number of minor interventions (it blows the door shut, gives the father a vision of his daughter’s vertigo, etc.) before finally showing them a hidden room. Unfortunately, Ana runs into a spinning wheel she sees in the room and knocks it over, cutting her hand and losing a bracelet into a crack in the floor. The father grabs his daughter and leaves. The house resists the urge to trap the pair in the room, but realises in that moment why other houses sometimes go bad.
Later that day (spoiler), the father and Ana, having realised she has lost her bracelet (which was previously her dead mother’s), return to find it. The house helps them to do so, and during the process we learn more about the pair’s backstory and the death of Ana’s mother. The father finally decides to buy the house.
A charming (and feel-good) haunted house story.
*** (Good). 3,000 words. Story link.
1. This story won the 2021 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. It was also the runner up in its Locus Poll category, fourth in the Hugo Award, and was also a World Fantasy Award finalist.