Page 7 of Claimed By the Mothman
A prickle ran up her spine. She marked:I'm not sure what this means.
7. If your apartment developed a personality, what trait would you hope it didnothave?
She typed without hesitation:Judgmental.
8. What is it you are trying to find?
There was no checkbox. Just a blank line. Her hands hovered above the keys, her breath shallow. Carefully, she typed:Something that feels like mine. Somewhere I can belong without having to earn it every day.
She should have been confused by the strange questions, or should have laughed at the absurdity of them. Instead, each question felt less like a screening and more like a gentle probe to understand what she truly needed.
Holding her breath, she hitsubmit.
The screen gave no fanfare. Just a blinking cursor, as if the site was thinking it over. She shut her laptop, decided to think nothing more of it, and polished off the last of her tea in a gulp. Outside, the man and his cat walked back across the front of the cafe, both of them looking pleased with themselves.
Five minutes later, her phone pinged. She pulled it out of her purse and saw a response to her inquiry. Heart pounding in her throat, she opened it and read:
From:Ebbin Lyle, Management
Subject:Your Viewing at Greymarket Towers
We are pleased by your interest. You feel resonant, and we look forward to introducing you to Greymarket Towers. A viewing is scheduled for 3 p.m. tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Management
Nell stared at the message. There was no address. No request for confirmation. Just calm certainty, like it had already been accepted.
A faint tingle lifted the hairs along her arms. Then, slowly, she smiled.
—
By the time Nell reached Greymarket Towers, her cheeks were flushed from the uphill walk and her heart was still buzzing from the interview at the library.
It had gone better than she could’ve hoped.
They’d offered her the job on the spot: admin work at the Bellwether Center for Alternative Literacy, starting Monday. The office was quiet in that charged, library-sacred way. Light filtered through dusty stained-glass skylights, casting fractured color across the tile floors. A black cat (not a pet, she was informed, just a regular visitor) had been asleep on the copier.
The walls were lined with shelves of esoteric titles in languages she didn’t recognize. The manager, a pale, elegant woman named Ms. Kephra, had looked over Nell’s resume with a faint smile and said, “You seem like a good fit. We value resonance here.”
That word again.
The front door of Greymarket Towers creaked open as she reached for the handle without her actually touching it.
Inside, the lobby was high-ceilinged and dim, the air cool and scented with lemon oil and something faintly metallic. Time-worn mosaic tiles spread across the floor in curling patterns—vines, eyes, knots, a sun half-swallowed by a moon. Oil paintings lined the walls, heavy in their gilt frames. Most showed people. Some showed things that looked like people, but weren’t quite. One canvas shifted when she turned her head, the figure’s posture subtly different when she looked again.
A man and a woman passed her on their way out of the building, both dressed in colors that seemed to shift depending on how the light hit. They smiled at her and whispered something to each other that made her skin prickle. Nell took a step back, heart fluttering.
A voice behind her said, “Ms. Townsend?”
She turned.
A man stood there, holding a clipboard and a ring of keys that jingled softly like wind chimes. He wore a rust-colored cardigan, neat slacks, and a pleasant expression that looked oddly unfinished, like someone had sketched him carefully in charcoal and then smudged the edges. Brownish hair, neatly combed. Pale, ageless skin. Eyes that might have been gray, or green, or silver, depending on how the light hit.
Nell had the strangest feeling that if she asked three different people to describe him, they’d each say something slightly different. Taller. Thinner. Younger. Older. The kind of man you’d never recognize twice but would instinctively move aside for.
“I am Mr. Lyle,” the man said, offering a smile as mild as chamomile. “You are precisely on time.”
