Why does Professor Herber's study light burn until dawn each night? What ancient texts line those towering bookshelves, and why won't the housekeeper enter that locked basement room? Who are those scholarly visitors that arrive only during the new moon?
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Love is like a brick. You can build a house, or you can sink a dead body.
― Lady Gaga
I’ve been a realtor for twenty years, but I’ll never forget my last showing at Herber’s House. The property had been on the market for decades, passing from agent to agent, each of us failing to close the deal. Now I know why.
The Victorian mansion sat at the end of Maple Street, its gabled windows staring down at visitors like hollow eyes. The previous owner, Old Man Herber, had been an architect with peculiar ideas about design. The listing mentioned “unique spatial features” and “unconventional layout,” but that didn’t begin to describe it.
I arrived early to prepare for the showing, unlocking the heavy front door with its strange brass knocker – a twisted face that seemed to sneer. The foyer opened into what should have been the living room, but something was wrong. The dimensions didn’t make sense. The room was larger on the inside than the exterior walls should have allowed.
As I moved through the house, things got worse. Corridors led to impossible places. Staircases changed direction when you weren’t looking. Doors opened into rooms that somehow existed between other rooms. I found myself in spaces that overlapped, defying every law of architecture I knew.
Then I heard the voices of my clients arriving outside. I turned to head back to the foyer, but the hallway I’d come through was gone. Just smooth wallpaper where the opening had been. I tried another door, then another. Each one led me deeper into the house’s impossible geometry.
I could hear my clients calling my name, their voices distorting as they echoed through the house’s non-Euclidean spaces. Their footsteps seemed to come from above and below simultaneously. Then the sounds changed to screams.
That was three days ago. I’m still here, writing this on the back of old wallpaper. The rooms keep shifting, but I occasionally catch glimpses of other lost souls – previous agents, potential buyers, maybe even Old Man Herber himself. We wander these endless halls, trying to find our way back to reality.
If you’re reading this, the house is still for sale. The price has been reduced again. But take my advice: some properties are better left unlisted.
