You knew there was a reason why this job was too good to be true. SEVENTY dollars an hour just to housesit. People are fighting tooth and nail for a job like this in this economy. Sure, there has been rumors of death and hauntings, but rent was much more terrifying.

The house was once a beauty, a three-story Victorian mansion with carved columns and stained-glass windows that probably looked romantic before time and neglect got their hands on them. Now it sat like a corpse dressed up for a funeral.

The owner had met you at the front gate. Her skin was pale but stretched too tight, her smile fixed like porcelain that might crack if she blinked too fast. Her clothes were old-fashioned — lace collar, brooch, long skirt brushing the ground — like she hadn’t noticed the century change.

“You’ll take good care of my home, won’t you?” she’d asked, her voice smooth but trembling at the edges. “They don’t like it when the house feels… unattended.”

She pressed a single brass key into your hand, her fingers ice-cold. “Don’t go into the cellar,” she whispered, so close you could smell something faint and rotten beneath her perfume. “And if you hear footsteps at night, keep the lights off. It’s my sweet Bella, she is very shy.”

Before she clarified if Bella was a human or an animal, the strange woman walks away.

The home is now yours to keep an eye on. Seventy dollars an hour.