in the space above

by Kenton Sage Schmidt

I noticed it the moment I walked in.

Smoochy was sitting on the side table next to the key dish.

That wasn’t where I left him.

“Hey, babe, I’m home! Did you move Smoochy again?”

The subtle whoosh of the ceiling fan was the only reply.

It had taken exactly one month of living together before the foundation began to crack. A year of
dating had done nothing to prepare me for living with another person; I had been on my own too
long.

The tension started three and a half weeks in. We were unpacking the last of the living room
boxes, listening to the news on the TV: three home invasions in this neighborhood alone in the
past few weeks. That should have unsettled me more than it did. Instead, this situation at home
was getting under my skin.

“How did you get here?” I muttered, picking up Smoochy and taking him back to my nightstand,
where he belonged.

As I walked back into the hallway, I heard the deadbolt turn.

Hudson walked in and set his keys in the blue ceramic dish next to mine. He gave me a quick
kiss before heading to the bathroom. I followed.

“Jesus, can I not take a shit by myself anymore?” Hudson said irritably. “I’ve taken a hundred
dumps since we moved in together and none of them have been alone.”

“That’s part of the contract,” I said, trying to ease the tension. Then, more carefully, “Did you
move Smoochy again?”

“You and that damn frog,” he said. “Do I think it’s weird you keep a Beanie Baby on your
nightstand? Yes. Do I ever touch it? No. You’re a grown man—get rid of it.”

“Absolutely not. You know how important it is to me. That’s why I’m irritated you keep moving
it around. Yesterday it was in the bathroom again. The day before that, the kitchen.”

Hudson stared at me for a moment, then shook his head. “I didn’t move it.”

“You had to have.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how—”

“Oliver,” he interrupted, sharper now, “you’re the only one here during the day half the time. Are
you sure you’re not the one moving it and forgetting?”

My chest tightened. “No.”

“You used to sleepwalk, didn’t you?”

“That was when I was a kid. And I always hid my pillow, not random objects.”

“Memory’s weird,” he said with a shrug. “Stress does things. New house, new routine... it
tracks.”

I hesitated.

“Speaking of which,” he added, “if you’re going to drink all the milk, have the courtesy to
replace it.”

“That’s on you. You’re the one who uses it the most.”

“Sure,” he said flatly.

“You left a bowl on the counter last night.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

He flushed the toilet. “Or,” he said over the sound, “you did.”

*****

“So, Oliver, tell me what brings you in here today.”

Dr. Patricia Walker, PsyD, was a stern-looking woman in her fifties. Her office was as neutral as
she was: four beige walls, a gray couch, a few black frames with diplomas, a white clock, and a
beige pantsuit. Her voice was strong—steady enough to break something open.

I started talking before I could stop myself.

“My house is haunted, and my boyfriend keeps gaslighting me. I’m starting to think maybe I am
crazy.”

“What makes you say that?” she asked, her gray eyes softening. “Start at the beginning.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The smell of vanilla drifted from a lit candle on the side
table next to a box of Kleenex.

“It started a few weeks after my boyfriend and I moved into our new house. Our first time living
together. We had just gotten the last of the boxes unpacked.” I paused. “There’s this frog stuffie
I’ve had since I was a kid. Smoochy is his name.”

I exhaled, bracing for judgment.

“I know it’s dumb for a thirty-five-year-old man to still have a Beanie Baby, but I like frogs. He
was my first one. Frogs are what got me into environmental conservation.”

She nodded slightly, encouraging me to continue.

“Anyway. He’s normally on my nightstand, but lately... I keep finding him in different spots
around the house.”

Dr. Walker leaned back slightly. “All right. Tell me about the first time that happened. Where did
you find your frog?”

“In the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet lid. We never close the toilet lid—it stays up.”

“And when you saw it there... what did you think?”

“I felt a little weird, but I assumed Hudson put him there. I asked when he got home, but he said
he left everything how it was before he went to work.”

“And you believed him?”

“I wanted to.”

She tilted her head. “What happened next? Did it keep happening?”

My stomach tightened. “A couple of times a week at first. Mostly the bathroom, sometimes the
kitchen, once on the lanai. It’s been going on almost since we moved in—six months now. At
first Hudson brushed it off. But now...” I swallowed. “Now he keeps telling me I’m forgetting.

That I’m doing it myself.”

“And how does that feel?”

“Like I can’t trust my own memory,” I said. “Like everything has a reasonable explanation,
except it doesn’t.”

She nodded slowly. “Walk me through the last time you found Smoochy somewhere else.”

“I had a rare day off,” I said. “I decided to treat myself to a massage. I met Hudson at his office
for lunch, he’s a marketing manager downtown, then I came home.”

“I sat up slightly, my nerves twisting into a pretzel in my stomach.”

“I walked in and heard a thump. I went into the hallway, and Smoochy was on the floor.”

“You heard it that time,” she said, leaning forward slightly. “Did it look like he had just fallen
from somewhere?”

“No. It’s a small hallway. No shelves, nothing above it.”

“And when you picked him up?”

I hesitated, staring at the flame of the wood-wicked candle.

“He felt... a little warm.”

“Oliver,” she said gently.

I blinked and looked back at her.

“I want you to hear something clearly,” she said. “Feeling unsettled by this doesn’t make you
crazy. Something unusual is happening from your perspective, and your mind is trying to make
sense of it.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

“For this week,” she continued, “I’d like you to do something simple. When you leave the house,
take a photo of where Smoochy is. When you come home, take another if he’s moved. No
confronting Hudson about it yet—just collect information.”

She folded her hands in her lap. “Sometimes our memories fill in gaps when we’re stressed.
Pictures can help us slow things down and see patterns.”

She gave a faint smile. “You’re an environmental conservationist, right? Observation before
conclusion.”

*****

A half hour later I was sitting in my mud-covered Chevy pickup at Sonic, sipping a strawberry
slush and thinking about the session with Dr. Walker.

Observation before conclusion.

“Screw taking pictures,” I muttered. “I’m getting a security camera.”

I drove to Best Buy and asked the poor kid in the blue polo everything: Which is best? How’s the
quality? Does it have night vision? Can I control it from my phone?

Another half hour later, I was back home, setting the camera up in the living room, angled
toward the hallway.

I didn’t tell Hudson.

He’d just say I was being paranoid. Or that I was proving his point.

The next morning, I called in to work without telling him. After breakfast, he kissed me goodbye
like normal and left.

I followed him out a few minutes later but headed to the nearby gas station instead for Operation
Recon.

I went inside, bought a pack of Marlboro Smooths and a Monster Zero Ultra, and got back in the
truck.

My phone buzzed.

Movement detected

I opened the Monster, took a long sip, then opened the app.

I almost threw up.

The camera caught movement from the hallway.

A dark figure dropped down from the ceiling—a hidden door to the attic I hadn’t known was
there.

The man disappeared into the bedroom, then came back holding Smoochy.

He walked into the kitchen, poured himself a bowl of cereal, and carefully placed Smoochy on
the counter before climbing back into the ceiling.

The video looped.

The man moved easily, like he had done this a hundred times. He poured cereal. Ate standing at
my counter. Picked up Smoochy and squeezed him absentmindedly before setting him beside the
bowl like a breakfast companion.

Then he climbed back into the ceiling.

I stared at the hallway in the video.

The exact spot where I had heard the thump.

Where Smoochy fell.

My phone vibrated again.

Movement detected

For a moment I thought the camera must be glitching.

Then the new video loaded.

The ceiling panel slid open again. The man dropped down quietly into my kitchen.

Only this time...he was looking directly at the camera.

And smiling.

He grabbed a backpack from the attic, closed the panel, and walked out the door

Photo of Kenton Sage Schmidt

BIO: Kenton Sage Schmidt is a senior at Oklahoma Panhandle State University majoring in English with minors in Art Studies and Photography. At a young age, he became fascinated with the horror/ thriller genre from watching classic horror movies with his mother. As an avid reader, Kenton thought he would try his hand at writing after taking Intro to Fiction Writing.