The house on the hill was a monstrosity, a corpse of decaying shingles and rotting, wooden ribs. The roof puckered like a lemon-soured mouth above a moldering living room, and vines choked crumbling brick walls. Windows bared mouths of shattered glass teeth; the porch, sunken and pitted, awaited visitors that would never arrive.

     Anyone who had any common sense avoided the house on the hill. It was an omen, as far as the townsfolk were concerned: a sign of bad luck, like a black cat or shattered mirror. The townsfolk viewed the house almost like it was a monster itself; one with a beating heart, pumping blood, brittle bones.

     But the house's story wasn't one of broken windows, but of broken homes; not one of disrepair, but of distancing. The only ghouls that haunted the house on the hill were ghosts of armchairs that reeked of alcohol, of turtle-neck sweaters and hushed plans. Ghosts of empty dreams and empty bottles, of bruises and belonging. 

     That's where the townsfolk were mistaken. The real monster wasn't the house on the hill - it never had been. 

     The only monster was the story the house had to tell.