Do Not Let It Eat Alone

I had just finished preparing dinner for myself, as usual.

The knife was rinsed and drying on the rack. The pan cooled on the back burner, a thin sheen of oil catching the light. Steam clung to the kitchen windows in pale crescents.

My house always felt bigger than it actually was, like a toddler who wanted desperately to be a big kid. Defiant. Delusional. Confident. Not too much unlike myself.

Though I was in my thirties, I still moved through rooms as if I needed permission. As if someone might appear in a doorway and tell me I was doing it wrong.

I carried my plate into the dining room with both hands, careful in a way no one was watching for. The dining room was the way a museum is, with everything preserved, everything arranged to imply living without allowing it.

The table sat in the center like an altar no one had agreed upon. Eight chairs ringed it, their seats pale with disuse. Above, the chandelier of brass and glass held itself there like a complicated statement.

I set my plate down at the nearest place setting. Knife, fork, napkin. All inherited. All too formal for one person who ate standing up half the time.

And then I sat.

My food smelled good. It mattered that it smelled good. I had sautéed onions until they were sweet and brown, added garlic at the right moment, and simmered tomatoes with dried basil until the sauce turned dark and glossy, then poured it over pasta. I had even made a small bowl of salad, because the nutrition apps told me to.

I picked up my fork.

Brought the first bite to my mouth.

The house creaked.

I froze, fork hovering.

It was not random settling. The creak came from the hallway beyond the dining room, from the narrow corridor that led to the stairs and the locked attic above.

A single, measured complaint, like someone shifting their weight.

There was no one else here.

I waited, breath shallow.

Nothing.

I ate the bite anyway, like I could prove something by chewing.

The food tasted like what it was: savory, warm, sufficient, the kind of meal you make when you want to feel like you have your life in order.

A second creak from the same hallway.

Then the faintest scrape of wood against wood, like dragging a chair leg across the floor.

My stomach tightened.

I set the fork down and stared at the long table. Eight chairs. Seven other spaces waiting for weight.

When I was a child, I used to hide beneath the table during storms, convinced it could hold the sky up if it fell.

Back then, the house had been alive with voices. My mother’s laughter in the kitchen, my aunt’s heavy footsteps on the stairs, my cousin with the television too loud in the den. And my grandmother, before the word inherited attached itself to this place, moved through it with the calm authority of someone who had decided what her life was.

After she died, the house emptied the way a body does when the last heat leaves it. A slow, quiet retreat.

I told myself that’s why it felt so big now. The same rooms, just one person instead of many.

But it wasn’t only that.

Even as I sat there, chewing slowly, the dining room felt attentive, as if the table itself were concerned about whether I was eating.

I swallowed.

A scrape came again. This time, unmistakable.

One of the chairs, furthest down the table, shifted back an inch.

Enough to be felt in the muscles of my spine.

I stared at it until my eyes watered, and nothing moved.

Old house, temperature, creaky floorboards, drafts.

Those were the words I used to explain it.

I attempted to finish my plate on stubbornness alone. Then my appetite folded in on itself. The food became too heavy.

So I carried the plate back to the kitchen and scraped the remaining pasta and sauce into the trash with the flat of the fork. Wasteful and automatic. A small punishment that felt like maintenance.

Then I washed the plate until it was clean.

And the moment I set it in the drying rack, the house seemed to relax. The heater clicked on. The refrigerator resumed its soft hum. The hallway fell back into silence.

I stood with wet hands over the sink and watched my own reflection in the fogged window. A woman alone, in a bright kitchen, in a house built for eight.

I whispered, without meaning to, “There.”

Like I was reporting to someone.

The first time I noticed the pattern, I called it a coincidence. The second time, anxiety. The times after that, a problem with the house.

It happened again on a Tuesday that felt like a placeholder. I’d worked late (remote work, where you forget your voice can sound different when spoken aloud), and by the time I logged off, my eyes were gritty, my head full of concrete.

I didn’t cook.

I stood in front of the refrigerator with the door open, looking at the leftovers I’d made myself before. A container of pasta. A container of salad. A container of sauce. And more than that. More than enough.

I didn’t want any of it.

I closed the refrigerator, leaned my forehead against the cold door, and said, quietly, “I’m not hungry.”

Behind me, in the dining room, that damn chair scraped.

I turned so fast I nearly pulled something in my neck.

The dining room was dark. I hadn’t turned on the light.

But I could still see the table as a pale shape in the gloom, the chairs around it like waiting animals.

The scrape came again, slower now, as if the house had decided to make itself understood.

Something in me insisted: don’t go in there.

So I didn’t.

I went upstairs instead. I took a shower. I brushed my teeth. I watched myself put on pajamas like I was watching someone else do it.

The scraping continued below, intermittently, like a reminder tapping on the underside of my life.

I got into bed.

Then hunger arrived. Not gentle. A sharp stab in my stomach, enough that I sat up with my hand pressed to it.

It felt like I hadn’t eaten in days.

My mouth filled with saliva. My throat constricted. My skin prickled cold.

I stared into the dark bedroom, blinking, trying to decide whether I was going to vomit or cry.

From downstairs, soft as a lullaby, came the sound of silverware clanking.

I got out of bed.

I went down the stairs with my phone in one hand, flashlight on, casting jagged triangles across the wallpaper. Every step made the staircase complain. The house loved to remind me it was old, that it had outlasted other bodies.

The dining room entrance was open.

I swung the flashlight beam across the table.

Eight chairs. All empty.

The table was bare.

No plates. No silverware. No napkins.

A chewing sound, wet and deliberate, started, as if someone sat just beyond the reach of my light and savored each bite.

“Hello?” My voice came out thin.

The chewing stopped immediately.

The silence afterward was worse. The kind that feels like a hand placed over your mouth.

I stood there until my flashlight beam began to shake.

Then, without thinking, I went back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

I took out the pasta container.

I didn’t plate it. I didn’t warm it. I ate it standing at the counter, in cold, hurried bites, like I was bribing myself through a hostage negotiation.

With each bite, the hunger receded.

And with each bite, the house seemed to quiet, satisfied.

When I was done, I threw the container away.

I washed my hands.

I wiped the counter.

I cleaned until the kitchen was empty of evidence that I had needed anything.

Only then did I go back upstairs.

In bed, I tried to be a person who believed in rational explanations. Stress. Blood sugar. Poor sleep. Old house noises. Childhood echoes.

But even as I did it, the last sound I could remember from downstairs was chewing.

Over the next week, I tested it in small ways, the way you test an electric fence with a stick before you touch it with your hand.

I cooked and ate, and the house stayed quiet.

I cooked but didn’t eat, and the house groaned. Pipes ticked in the walls like impatient fingers. The dining room went cold. The hallway creaked in slow intervals.

Once, I made a full meal of roast chicken, potatoes, gravy, and green beans, and sat down at the dining room table with three candles lit, because I admitted I liked ambiance.

I ate two delicious bites.

Then my appetite died.

The candles’ flames flickered with something like frustration. The shadows under the other chairs deepened.

I could feel the house’s attention on my plate.

So I ate more.

Three more bites. Four.

My throat tightened around each swallow as if I were forcing down what wasn’t food.

When I finally stood to clear my plate, the house made a soft sound from the hallway that might have been relief.

I washed the plate until it was clean.

The candles steadied.

That was the night I admitted the truth: my life here had become a ritual, and the house was participating.

Or directing…

The next morning, I found a plate already set out on the dining room table.

A single place setting.

Knife. Fork. Napkin.

All perfectly aligned.

The plate was clean and empty.

I stood over it holding hot coffee, while inside me, something went cold.

I hadn’t set it out.

I checked the doors. Locked. The windows. Latched.

No sign of intrusion.

The house, or something in the house, had done it.

And it wanted me to see.

I went to the attic that afternoon.

I hadn’t opened the attic in months, maybe longer. The small brass key hung on a hook in the kitchen like an heirloom or a warning.

As a child, I loved the attic. Costumes, antique toys, books, boxes of holiday decorations that smelled like cedar and pine. My grandmother used to let me rummage, but she always supervised.

“Not because it’s dangerous,” she’d say, “but because it’s easy to forget what you came in for.”

As an adult, I avoided it because it felt like a place where grief could multiply.

The attic stairs folded down with a groan. Dust sifted in a thin curtain. The air up there was cold.

My phone’s flashlight made a small, inadequate pool of light.

I found boxes labeled in my grandmother’s handwriting. Christmas. Taxes. Photos. Recipes.

I hesitated at that last one.

Then I opened it.

Inside were not just recipe cards. There were three identical notebooks with black covers. My grandmother’s handwriting filled them in tight lines.

These were not recipes.

These were logs. Dates. Times.

Throughout, repeated in different phrasing, the same core directive:

Empty plates.

No leftovers.

Eat when it asks.

Do not leave food unattended.

Do not let it eat alone.

Do not let it set the table without you.

I flipped through the next one, heart beating in my throat.

Some entries looked normal at first: neighbors, repairs, my mother’s divorce, money. The mundane scaffolding of life.

But, threaded through it, a quiet accounting of the house’s appetite.

March 3 ‘96: It was restless. The table was set before dawn. Ate breakfast.

March 9 ‘96: Did not eat dinner. Heard chewing. Woke with blood in mouth.

March 12 ‘96: Two places set. Only one chair moved. Lit candle. Ate anyway.

April 6 ‘96: It wants company. It always wants company.

My mouth went dry.

Near the back of the third notebook, my grandmother’s writing changed. The lines grew less tidy. The words pressed harder into the paper. The entries shortened.

It is hungrier.

It is lonely.

It is learning.

Then, dated only a month before she died:

If she stays, she must eat.

If she eats, she must not eat alone.

If she will not bring someone, then she must leave an empty plate, and let it think she intends to.

I stared at that last line until the words blurred.

The house below me creaked, like it knew I had found the truth and was waiting to see what I would do with it.

That night, I didn’t cook.

Though hunger had become the weather in this house, I wanted to know what would happen if I refused it. I wanted to see whether the rules were real or if my grandmother had been, as everyone had said in her last years, confused and superstitious.

I sat on the couch, blanket over my legs, and watched a boring documentary.

At 7:00 PM, the dining room chandelier clicked on softly.

At 7:15 PM, a single chair scraped lightly across the floor.

At 7:20 PM, the smell of a candle burning.

Then the thick, sweet smell of sugar caramelizing, past the point of pleasure. The scent of something heated until it stopped resembling what it was.

At 7:30 PM, I heard dishes clank, then the first bite.

The chewing came from the kitchen this time.

I sat up fast, and the blanket slid to the floor.

The sound was so close.

Intimate, like someone was standing at the counter exactly where I had stood the night I had panicked and fed myself cold pasta like an offering.

I didn’t move. My muscles locked in place, an archaic part of me whispered. Do not go.

The chewing continued.

My stomach tightened into a hard knot, and hunger arrived like a wave. My vision narrowed. My hands tingled. I pressed my palms to the couch cushions, hoping I could anchor myself to something real.

My phone buzzed on the coffee table.

A notification from my grocery delivery app.

I stared at the screen, then opened my contacts and scrolled until I found the number I hadn’t called in months.

Mara.

A friend from college. The one who had stopped inviting me out after I declined too many times, who still occasionally texted, because maybe she suspected my solitude wasn’t just a preference.

The chewing slowed, listening.

My thumb hit call.

It rang twice, three times.

I almost hung up, doubt rising.

Then I heard Mara’s sleepy voice.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

Something in my chest cracked open, but I couldn’t tell her about the house. Not yet.

So I said the thing I could.

“I’m not doing well,” I whispered. “And I’m eating alone too much.”

Silence on the line, then, “Where are you?”

“At the house,” I said. And the word house sounded like a place with a mouth.

“Your grandma’s?” Mara asked gently.

“Yes.”

Another pause. Then, “Do you want me to come over?”

The chewing in the kitchen stopped completely.

The silence felt like pressure equalizing.

“Not tonight,” I said, because fear still had a grip on me, because part of me didn’t want to bring another person into whatever this was.

Mara didn’t push. “Okay. Then tomorrow. I can come tomorrow.”

“Yes,” I said before I could reconsider. “Tomorrow.”

When we hung up, the house did not resume chewing.

But the hunger remained.

With unsteady legs, I went into the kitchen.

The refrigerator hummed.

I opened it and stared at the shelves.

I thought of my grandmother’s notebooks. The rules. The line that felt like a map out of a maze:

If she will not bring someone, then she must leave an empty plate, and let it think she intends to.

I closed the refrigerator.

I walked into the dining room.

The chandelier light glowed.

A single place setting sat waiting at the head of the table.

Clean plate. Knife. Fork. Napkin.

I could feel the house’s attention in the air like a held breath.

My hands shook as I went back to the kitchen and took a plate from the cabinet. The everyday one I used when I ate at the counter. One that didn’t match the inherited set.

I carried it into the dining room and set it down across from the first.

Two plates now.

One arranged by the house.

One by me.

I didn’t add silverware to the second. I didn’t add a napkin.

I just placed it, deliberately.

The house creaked, low and deep, a stomach settling.

In the cabinet, I found an old candle. One of the plain white ones, my grandmother would light during storms because she claimed it made everyone feel less afraid.

I set the candle between the two plates and struck a match.

The flame caught, small and steady.

The light it cast was warm and intimate, complementing the dim chandelier.

For a moment, the dining room looked like it belonged to a family of two, a table waiting for conversation rather than compliance.

I stared at the second plate and felt my body loosen.

Then I turned off the chandelier and left only the candle burning.

I went upstairs and did not look back.

In bed, the hunger finally eased despite my not eating. Because I had offered the thing the house had always wanted and I had always avoided: the shape of another presence.

I lay awake for a long time, listening.

No chewing.

No scraping.

Just the soft, steady sound of the house breathing around me, like it was waiting too.

Tomorrow, I would set a real plate with real food in front of Mara, and when she asked why there were only two chairs pulled out in a house built for eight, I would tell her something honest.

Not the whole truth. Not yet.

But enough.

And Downstairs, the candle continues to burn, and the plates sat empty by my own hand, saving a place for someone who was finally going to arrive.