Pinwick

Every haunted house was built by someone.

You keep a small workshop at the back of your house, and in it you make rooms. Clients write to you; you never meet them. The letters are courteous and exact. A bedroom as it stood in the spring of 1974. A parlor copied from a photograph with water damage across one corner. A nursery, with the ceiling a little higher than a nursery would need.

You make what is asked. It is good work, and you are careful about it.

The work

Furniture begins as lumber and cloth on your bench. You cut the frames and glue the joints and upholster the seats, holding your breath over the small parts, and when a piece is finished it goes into the room, and the room, little by little, becomes somebody's. The walls are papered from a library of 50+ materials, velvets and oaks and florals, and among them is a particular green that one client remembered from somewhere and asked for twice.

The photographs

When a room is done, you photograph it. This is ordinary practice among miniaturists, a record of the work, and you are more thorough about it than most: every object, from every angle, with the date written on the back. The photographs go into a drawer. The drawer is the only other witness you have.

From the workshop logbook

Mar. 4 - Room six delivered. Payment enclosed, with a note of thanks.

Mar. 9 - Began room seven. The green again.

Mar. 11 - Light in room seven found turned on. Checked the wiring. There is no wiring.

Mar. 12 - Photograph of room seven no longer agrees with room seven.

Mar. 16 - Letter from the client, thanking me for the alterations. I have made no alterations.

Mar. 17 -

From an estate-sale catalogue, 1994

Lot 34 - Roombox, walnut and glass, maker unknown. Interior complete and of unusual quality. Eleventh of a numbered series; the others not located. Some staining to the textiles. Key present, lock sound. Sold as found.

The rabbit

You never made a rabbit.

Terms

• All furniture made by hand, on the premises

• 50+ materials kept in stock; particular requests accommodated

• Every finished room photographed, dated, and filed

• Older pieces cleaned and repaired, with discretion

• Correspondence answered in the order it arrives

The workshop is taking new clients. Wishlist Pinwick, and a letter will find you.

No AI was used in creation of the trailer.