Charlie and Deborah were already waiting at the front door to unit eight when the agent arrived.

“Oh, ah sorry I’m late,” she smiled sheepishly, “the complex is new, we’re – I’m representing five units, and, well, they all look the same sometimes.  Heh, heh.” 

She unlocked the door with a shaking hand.  Charlie smiled politely.  Deborah looked like she was ready to turn and leave; they had seen so many houses, apartments and townhomes over the past few days that her tolerance was at its limit.  The agent was cleanly dressed and looked professional enough but, her mind was clearly somewhere else entirely.

“Come in, come in.  As you can see, every unit has a cute little foyer, complete with coat closet –oh well, this is the hot water heater, but here is the coat closet.”  Charlie nodded and Deborah, with a tightening of her facial muscles, folded her arms.

The agent beckoned them through a door, “Here on the first floor is a guest bedroom and a lovely sitting room.  This can also be an office area, or a computer room, ah, as you can see there is a bathroom here too.” 

The rooms were bare and had all the smells of being newly constructed.  The white walls, hardwood floors and stained wood windowsills were all immaculately unblemished.  Devoid of furnishings, the rooms were filled only with sunlight, flooding in from the wide windows.

Deborah opened the bathroom door, “Not very big is it?” she said.  The agent focused on her, as if with difficultly and after an uncomfortable moment she responded tersely, “Well, the bathroom upstairs is much larger.  This back door leads into the community area, as you can see it is very nice; trees, lawns, a pool center I can show you later.  Oh! Yes, and there is a fire place,” 

Charlie jumped at having attention called to where he was crouching before the metal doors of his favorite feature of any proper living room.

“Oh, that will make Charlie happy,” Deborah smiled, winking at her husband,  “Let’s see upstairs, shall we?”

“Certainly,” the real estate agent said and then, almost as an afterthought, she forced a toothy smile.

Charlie and Deborah proceeded up the polished wood stairs, passing under the bright illumination of a broad skylight.  Behind them the heels of their host clicked singularly as if each carried out only through great effort.  The couple emerged into a spacious, carpeted living area.

“Very bright,” Charlie observed pleasantly.

“Excuse me,” the agent muttered, shoving her way past Deborah, and vanished through a doorway.

“Do you notice something strange about that woman?” Deborah whispered to her husband.

“Strange, well no, not really,” Charile said, “I mean she seems a bit overworked, distracted perhaps.”

“Distracted?  Showing a house is not brain surgery, it’s not even podiatry.”

Charlie smiled and rubbed her shoulder affectionately.
“The poor woman is trying to get by with what god gave her,” he whispered.

“Those who can, do.  Those who can’t, teach.  And those who can’t teach, sell real estate,” Deborah whispered back, breaking into a wide grin.

“You’re awful,” Charlie said and he kissed her behind the ear.

“Ah, I think it’s time to go look at the pool.”  The agent had reappeared in a doorway across the room and was wringing her hands.

“Oh, but I’m just beginning to like this house,” Deborah declared, stepping forward and placing herself firmly in the center of the room.  The agent was speechless, her hands ceased wringing.

“Let’s see the kitchen, shall we, dear?”

“Certainly,” Charlie responded, playing along with his wife’s new game, and they strolled past the petrified woman.

"Oh, so nice!” Deborah exclaimed as she reached the center of the kitchen and turned about in a circle.  “Where did she go?” she whispered to Charlie.  Charlie turned around, but the agent was no longer behind him.

“Oh and would you look at that dining room!” Deborah exploded ebulliently, making her way into the next room, barren and rectangular and awash with light.  The agent appeared suddenly behind her and crossed quickly to a line of doors along the other side of the room. 

“I just love it,” Deborah gushed to the agent.  “And what’s in these doors?”

“Ah, I ah, a pantry, washroom, broom closet.”

“I see, but that’s only three rooms, I see four doors.”

“Oh,” the agent seemed hopelessly lost, her open jaw flashed vacantly and she looked to her right and left.

“You silly, you’re standing right in front of the fourth door.”  The agent ceased moving, eyes frozen as if in ice, staring into the center of the hardwood floor.

“Hello, yes, right there behind you.”  The agent did not look up.  Charlie walked up slowly behind his wife and surveyed the uncomfortable silence from over her small shoulders. 

“What’s going on,” he asked when the stillness became too much for his nerves to bear.

“She’s trying to remember what’s in the room behind that door,” Deborah reported with unchecked pleasure in her soft voice.  The agent’s gaze still bored into the center of the hardwood floor and her hands were clutched together like a statue of torment. 

Charlie casually suggested, “I suppose the easiest solution is just to take a look inside.”  Arm firmly affixed to his spouse he led her in the initial step toward the blocked doorway.

The agent’s head jerked to attention.  The sudden movement startled the couple and they halted their progress.  The woman’s hair swung about her face like a flowing pendulum and her eyes maintained their icy vacancy.

“It’s nothing but a bathroom, like the one downstairs,” the voice was distant.  Deborah looked up into Charlie’s face with a gleam of childish astonishment.  Charlie squeezed her tightly. 

“The big bathroom!” Deborah declared, “Of which we’ve heard so much about.  We just can’t go on without taking a look.”

“I’ll, I’ll show you another one, in a different unit.  I forgot, but the bathroom in this unit is incomplete, in a rather bad state actually, and, uh, well I don’t want it to give you a bad impression of the townhouse complex.”

“Oh don’t worry about that!” Deborah exclaimed, “We’re already here, we’ll just peek in to get a idea of the size and layout.”

They pressed forward and brushed the agent helplessly aside.

“The bathroom,” Charlie declared, swinging wide the door.

Deborah screamed and shrank back behind her husband.  Shameful shock at his wife’s displeasure washing over him, Charlie looked expectantly into the room.  His vision was arrested by blackened blood which streaked the walls, dried in rivulets across the white paint.  On the floor, crumpled beside the shower doors, also swathed in streaks of blood, lay a prostrate man, dead eyes horrifically wide, with a large gash opened in his neck –a carving knife still protruding from the hole. 

Hairs from his back to his head stood on end and a cruel chill seized Charlie’s spine.  He was lost for a moment, considering who the man might be; husband, lover, competitor, client?  The moment passed and he lurched back from the macabre room, pivoting to protect his wife against the wall behind him.  Hands bunched into fists, he prepared to meet danger, whatever its form.  But there was nothing, the dining room was empty. 

Deborah sobbed and wrapped her arms around Charlie.  The sound of high-heels clicking rapidly crossed the second floor landing. Then they heard a thump; the sound of something hard colliding with a wall, perhaps.  It was followed by a rumbling series of concussions, diminishing in volume as they receded down the hardwood stairwell.

“My god,” Charlie breathed.

“Close the door,” Deborah murmured in his ear.

Charlie closed the bathroom door, and, with Deborah still clinging to his midsection, walked carefully to the top of the stairwell.  A high heel shoe rested on one of the upper steps and, at the base of the stairs lying mangled in the ‘cute’ foyer, was the twisted body of the real estate agent, her guilty neck bent back impossibly, her icy eyes vacant forever.