The Decorators

Saturday, 1 pm

I think I’m going crazy. No, I’m pretty sure of it. Every night I hear strange noises coming from upstairs. It sounds like heavy furniture being dragged across the floors. But whenever I go look, I don’t see anything out of place. The other weird thing is, I’m the only one who hears the racket. The house can be full of people, but they all look at me like I’ve lost my mind if I mention it.

I think I’m going crazy. No, I’m pretty sure of it. Every night I hear strange noises coming from upstairs. It sounds like heavy furniture being dragged across the floors. But whenever I go look, I don’t see anything out of place. The other weird thing is, I’m the only one who hears the racket. The house can be full of people, but they all look at me like I’ve lost my mind if I mention it.

I guess it would help if I explain a little. See, I have a two-story Victorian that happens to be a historical site. I can’t tell you which one, though, sorry. It’s just me here, so I only actually use the lower floor. The upper floor is for guided tours and special events. Because of that, it’s all decorated in antiques, from the appropriate era, of course. All those antiques are solid and very heavy. Very.

Every once in a while, I hear voices. Like girls chatting and laughing. It’s very odd, but I do live not far from downtown where all the nightlife hotspots are. So I’m going to say it’s probably just party-girls walking by and their voices just drift through. Nevermind that the voices sound the same every time. Besides, I really don’t think a pair of girls could move such heavy furniture by themselves. So it couldn’t possibly be related. Could it?

Today, before the noises begin, I’m going to mark a place in the hallway outside one of the bedrooms, where the most racket originates, to take a picture. Then, tomorrow, after all the moving around, I’ll take another and compare the two. Surely it will show that it’s just my overactive imagination. Alright, here I go.

UPDATE: Thursday, 2 am

At first, I thought it was a fluke. I went upstairs on Saturday to mark my picture taking spot. I made sure to outline my feet with chalk so I could stand in exactly the same place on Sunday. Then I took the picture. Everything looked fine. The four-poster bed, the bedside tables, the highboy, all looked perfectly normal. The rugs on the floor weren’t mussed, nothing was missing from table-tops. Normal.

Sunday, I went back upstairs. Everything looked exactly as it had on Saturday, even though, like every night, the noises had appeared; heavy furniture being dragged and pushed across the floor. I placed my feet perfectly into the marks I’d made Saturday. I took the picture, sure everything would be fine. But it wasn’t. I couldn’t quite figure what was different, though. So I decided to take several days’ worth of pictures and compare them all at the same time.

It’s Thursday, now. Every night, like clockwork, someone is moving the furniture upstairs. I have five sets of pictures. I know, for certain, that things are moving. In every single picture, taken from the same spot of the same tableau, everything is the same. But not. Every night, something goes into that room and moves everything. About six inches. To the left, or the right, or toward the door… Absolutely everything.