The first letter arrived three days after they moved in.
It was in the mailbox, no stamp, no return address, the envelope typed on a typewriter. They had just bought the house — the house on Oldham Drive that they had spent four years saving for, the house with the original hardwood and the oak in the backyard that was older than any of them — and they had been inside for three days and the letter said this:
657 Oldham Drive has been waiting for the right family for decades. I have been its Watcher, and my father was its Watcher before me, and his father before that. We were sent to watch the house and keep it and observe all who came to it.
Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what lives in its walls? I am anxious to learn the names of the young blood you have brought to the house. Will the young blood play in the rooms of the house?
I have been waiting for you. It will be time soon.
The family called the police. The police took the letter. They knocked on doors, talked to neighbors, found nothing. The neighborhood was quiet. Nobody had seen anyone at the mailbox. The police said: it is probably a prank, probably someone who didn't want new neighbors, probably nothing.
The second letter arrived two weeks later.
I see you have made progress with the house. The workers have been busy. I watch them from my car on the street. I watch them come and go. I see what you have done to the bones of the house and it does not please me. You are changing what has always been.
The Watchers do not like change.
Have your young blood come to the windows at night. I like to see young blood in the windows of the house.
The police took the second letter. They increased patrols on Oldham Drive. They checked the registered sex offenders in a twenty-mile radius. They found no viable suspects.
The family installed cameras. They reviewed footage. A car drove slowly past the house fourteen times in one week, always between 1 and 3 AM, always the same route, always slowing in front of number 657. The car was never close enough for the plate to read.
The third letter came inside the house.
Not in the mailbox. On the kitchen counter, under a coffee mug, as if it had always been there.
My grandfather first began to watch the house in 1927. My father continued the watching. I have watched it for thirty years. Now it is time to find who will watch it after I am gone.
You have three children. The youngest sees things the others do not. She knows I am here. Ask her about the man who stands on the lawn at night. She will tell you. She has been afraid to say.
They asked the youngest daughter.
She was seven. She said there was a man who stood in the yard at night and looked up at her window. She said he had been there many times. She said she had not told them because she didn't want to be afraid about it — she said this with the specific logic of a seven-year-old who has decided that not-speaking is the same as not-happening.
She described the man. She said he was tall and wore a hat and stood very still.
The family sold the house eight months after buying it at a loss of significant money. They moved to a different state. They changed their names for a period.
No arrest was ever made.
The house on Oldham Drive sold again eighteen months later. The new family received a letter three days after moving in.
I have been watching this house for a very long time.
I am still watching.
It is almost time.