Haunted House by Haily Fukuda

We remind each other to keep quiet. In just a week, we have gotten good at creeping, at bulging our eyes and flicking up one stern finger. My grandfather is resting in the back room, and these old floorboards protest the moment you touch them. Their groans startle him, and I am living just down the hall, with my new dog and my new husband. My uncle is here too, living down a different hall. It is an unusual arrangement in this modern age, and the house is not as big as it sounds, but we are all family and in various states of need. 

I am told to keep his door cracked while he sleeps. In just a week, the house has become attuned to his breath. Even while we talk, email, do the dishes, we are listening. My mother beckons me with a wave and wide eyes one night. I try to levitate to her. She looks like a little girl standing in his doorway, “What do you think of his breathing?” It sounds bad, but it is hard to tell what is an emergency when someone is terminal. I do not ask why we would call 911. She is still my mother and she is still trying to save him. 

My grandfather moved back into the Wilton House a week ago. It is a hasty move, a reaction to shifting circumstances, and the decision is ultimately made in a day. My mother apologizes for the inconvenience as rooms are rearranged, but what can be done? It is his home more than mine and the time is precious. But it is the initial thought of it happening down the hall that makes me hesitate.

The dying happens differently than I imagined. Here, he is already living among ghosts. He cries for my grandmother his first morning. Her name was Joanne, but she was always Nana to me. His memories have become impossible to pin, to parse the past from the present. My aunt is patient without being condescending. She sits with him and his questions. 

My grandmother passed almost a decade ago. That is an incredible sentence to write. It doesn’t feel right until I do the math, tick off the years on each finger. They are finite and next year I won’t have enough. At some point, my mother brings her ashes into my grandfather’s room and I tell her it is morbid and much too early. My grandfather shuts me up by telling me it has always been her favorite room. He points to the small sunlit window. It overlooks the yard and there are pink magnolia bushes overtaking both walls. They position her urn as if it has eyes. 

When my grandfather wakes the next morning, he swings his legs out of the bed easily and wants to know what he is doing here, how he got here, where his sports car and his current wife are. He no longer lives in this home, he knows that much, and he wants to return to the one he has known for the last twenty years. “She had a stroke,” my aunt reminds him. “We are visiting her tomorrow in the ICU.”  

This news crashes into him again and again and day after day. “Wait–wait” he says, “I get confused.” He raises his arms as if it is something physical and can be pushed back—but it is all coming at him anyway, and he is remembering. His hands sink to his face, then over his eyes. After some silence, we cover him in blankets. He has become so skinny. 

My grandparents bought this house for cheap in the ‘70s, and despite one recent renovation to the kitchen and adjustment to the structure, it is the same. They had only seen a couple photos prior to purchasing. They arrived knowing the bedroom count and that there would be a small backyard. My mother still remembers opening the front door and being disgusted. The previous owners turned out to be hoarders who ran the local deli. 

My grandparents had rented before, various apartments from Long Beach to LA, but this was theirs, their first home since moving from Ohio. To be told this story growing up was to understand the stakes. They had left it all behind: family, ideology, the familiar. My grandfather, who had intended to become a priest, earned his PhD in Philosophy instead. My grandmother, who at twenty years old had already survived an absurdly hard life, found saying yes to a new one easy. 

Together, they’d packed up their bundle of belongings and hit the road in a VW van. Somehow all their stories involve an iteration of this car. They inevitably break down somewhere between A and B, but it won’t ever stop them. 

My grandparents will live in the Wilton House for the next ten years. My grandfather will stay even years after the divorce. He will stay because it is the house they will come to raise their three children in, host in, and have impromptu seminars with his graduate students. He will stay because in the backyard is where all the cats, hamsters, and one miscarriage is buried. Because it is the house his children still live in, and will come to raise their children in, at various times in their own lives. He will stay because this 1,427-square-foot home is huge to him. 

Even after he moves, he makes sure the door is always open. To this day, a Wilton room is offered cheap and often free for those of us in limbo. It is a house where no one knocks. Where the past often enters without warning. 

I spent my first two years in this house. That is to say, my parents needed a place to stay. They were saving and in a position I can now appreciate. My father was a flight attendant and my mother was an elementary school teacher. She had been bowled over by baby fever her first year on the job. 

Two years ago, I moved back into the Wilton House with my own husband. Now I am somehow the same age my mother was when she had me, when we slept side by side in that backroom with the window. Time feels almost tangible in this house. My husband says it is haunted.

From where I am, I can hear my grandfather’s breathing, the places it catches on his congestion. The house creaks as it resettles but is otherwise quiet. It is pneumonia or bronchitis. He has started antibiotics but it is not better. When I check on him, his mouth hangs open, and he twitches beneath his blankets. I wonder what he is dreaming. 

He is tired today. I am used to him being up early, but it is already seven-thirty, and he is still snoring softly. Gone are his morning runs. His books and pens are where he left them a week ago. He has taken to texting and my aunt has asked us to keep his correspondence. That he wakes up most mornings to a, “Good morning.” I smile when I see one of my cousins’ names illuminating his screen. It falls when I see that he has tried to text his wife. Of course, he misses her, but she has not replied, and he will wonder why. 

Wait–wait.

I make sure to leave the door cracked before I tip-toe to the kitchen for coffee. My aunt is already there. She has left the lights off, and the whole room is soft and blue. Her shift will be over soon, and my mother will come to stay instead. My aunt, who is a naturally private person, has been sleeping in the middle of the living room for the past week. I can tell she is torn. She is tired, but she is scared to leave. The contents of her luggage are still unfolded on the dryer, but she waves me away when I reach for them.

I tell her to please take care, but she is not listening. She is looking past me at an old picture pinned to the fridge. She is in the eighth grade—or ninth—and she is sitting on his lap. They are a blend of blue jeans and shy grins. They have always been alike, two introverts in a family of fireheads. His snapback has been turned around for the photo and you can see where his curly hair has started to thin. I let her linger there.

Back in the kitchen, it’s time to go. My aunt is no longer a student but a professor, like her father. Her own classes will be starting up again soon in San Diego, and the world outside has not slowed an inch. She will be back on Wednesday or Thursday, depending. I promise to keep the door cracked and to call if anything. She’s got a long drive ahead.

Haily Fukuda (formerly published as Haily Lewis-Eastman) holds a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from UCI. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Ariel Miranda Caldwell Prize in Fiction. She lives in the South Bay and is currently at work on a first novel.

3 September 2026