Chapter 1 - moving in

We finally moved into our new house, it was an old Victorian in a mature neighbourhood that needed some work and that was fine with us. My husband wanted a place he could fix up and make our own he was one of those weekend warrior types who takes apart a deck just for fun. I'm sure you know the type right? He had one of those nine-to-five desk jobs and as a result he had put on some weight, I didn't really care but it bothered him. I think it was mostly because his family was a bunch of health nuts that looked like they never gained a pound. My mother in law was always getting on me about controlling his diet so he would lose the weight and most of the time I just half listen to her. I'm not going to make him suffer if he doesn't want to. We started the renovation with the kitchen, it was too small and cramped for us so we decided to enlarge it and take some space from a small room next to it to make the kitchen bigger, my husband isn't small and he was having most of the trouble moving around in there. When we took down a wall we found a clipping from a paper that was dated October 10th 1905.

"Hey look at this; this is a shot of the house and the original owners." I said to him.

"Wow, this place hasn't changed much has it?" My husband commented.

"I wonder how that guy fit in this house." I said.

The husband in the picture was very, very fat, and for 1905 he was a rare breed. I guessed his weight was somewhere around five hundred or so and the skinny wife next to him looked bored and ragged. However, that might be because back then no one smiled when their pictures were taken.

"Hehe, can you imagine how unhappy he must be being that big?" My husband said.

"I don't know, he looks content." I said.

"Well I don't see it. Anyway, let's get this wall down." He said.

The renovation took us about three weeks and when it was done it was double the size. The space looked beautiful. I had also noticed that my husband's clothes looked a little tighter on him, he tried to hide it but I could see it. I didn't mention it to him and I was actually a little bit thrilled he was gaining weight. I had also noticed that the groceries I just bought seemed to be disappearing quicker than before we renovated the kitchen. I wasn't using them, but I had a feeling my husband was. On one of my days off I managed to get the attic door open with a skeleton key the realtor had given us when we closed on the house, it was filled with antiques and old style objects. We had to take down a weird looking wall upstairs and that's when we found the staircase hidden behind a false wall. This was something I hadn't expected I had figured that the previous owners would have cleared this out but apparently not. I opened a trunk and coughed at the dust that came off the lid, inside there were old turn-of-the century clothing that looked like it belonged to a male of high class. I pulled out a shirt, it looked like a tent I shook it out and examined it.

"I bet this was that guy's in the photo. He was huge; I can only imagine what he would have had to eat to get this big." I said aloud.

I set it aside and dug through the chest, I pulled out a pair of hounds tooth trousers that would have fit two people, I was actually getting excited thinking about how the fat Victorian man would have filled these out back then. A pair of suspenders and a belt with several extra holes punched in it, this guy was huge and I wished that my own husband would be this big. I found a picture of the man, it was taken after the photo in the clipping I had found and he was clearly bigger than he was in the first photo. The date was faded but I could still see it;

December 12th 1910.
Edward Aldershot and wife.

I set down the picture and dug around some more in the chest, I found some more shirts and pants, a pair of shoes, and at the very bottom a photo album. I sat down carefully in a rocking chair that was behind me and opened it up. As I looked through the pages, the air felt colder around me I looked up and saw nothing there. I turned the page and then heard a bump.
"Who's there?" I said.

A chair across from me moved on its own. And the clothing I had laid out slowly rose into the air, they were filling out like someone or something was inside them I was frozen to the spot as the figure took shape.

"Edward?" I asked.

The figure nodded and his features came into view; and then he vanished right in front of me, I left quickly and closed the door.

"You must have been seeing things Andy, there's no such thing as ghosts." My husband said.

"Derek, I saw him. It wasn't a hallucination." I protested.

"Right..." Derek said.

He shoved the rest of the donut into his mouth and reached in for the next one. I looked down at the donuts and he looked back at me.

"What? I'm hungry." Derek said.

"You ate nine donuts in five minutes." I said.

He looked down at the box, there were only two left. "No I didn't..." He said.

"I saw you do it." I said.

"That's...how?" He said.

"Weird." I said.

That night after the donut thing Derek went to bed before and I cleaned up the kitchen dishes from supper. Derek had eaten a lot more than he usually did; I was secretly thrilled by his appetite although getting him there was hard enough. I just put the last dish away and felt the air get cold again; I turned quickly and saw a glimpse of someone going by the door towards the attic. I knew Derek was in bed and no one else was in the house...so I followed quietly. Upstairs Derek rolled over and pulled the covers up to his chin, the air felt colder. It was strange since there were no windows open...Derek got up and headed down to the kitchen, he was suddenly starving for some reason.