There was once three neighbors, their names were Fear, Wisdom and Deception. Every day, each would wake up, and have a conversation with someone walking by, trying to get them to come inside, but each would say something different. Fear would come first, and call out, “come in here, and be safe, you have no idea what is coming ahead, you could trip and die, or break a leg.” Next came out wisdom who would say, “Come in, and eat something, and sit down for a second, that you may be prepared for the journey ahead.” Finally came out Deception, who would declare, “Enter into my house, and have riches for the rest of your life, and rule over the land, never having to return to work, and never falling ill.” Almost every body would stop, at one house or another, but only the ones who came to the house of Wisdom left truly happy.

Fear had not always carried such a name. Once, long ago, she was simply Juniper. Juniper Frye, the pastor's daughter who skipped home from school and weaved wildflowers into her bike basket. She carried on this way until she was 15.

It was the summer her father's church burned down.

No one knew how it started. The investigators said it was electrical, an old building with old wiring, but Juniper had been the last one inside that evening, and for the rest of her life she would carry the quiet, unverifiable suspicion that she had left a candle burning. She never said this to anyone. The thought said itself to her, every morning, before she had even fully woken.

Her father rebuilt, as faithful men do. He smiled and said it was God's will and accepted the lumber donations from three towns over. But Juniper watched him age a decade in a single year, watched the colour leave his hair the way light leaves a room in winter, seemingly gradual until you are plunged into greyness at 5pm. She learned something that summer that the hymns had never taught her: that terrible things did not announce themselves in any amount of hellfire or curled horns.

She grew careful after that.

First it was reasonable things. She checked the stove twice before leaving the house. She kept a candle snuffer on her person at all times, a small brass one on a chain, like a strange locket. The girls at school found this amusing. Juniper found their amusement beside the point. Soon, she stopped riding her bike, because wheels could catch on a groove in the road and send you over the handlebars. She stopped swimming in the lake outside town, because lakes had no visible bottom and no visible bottom meant anything could be waiting there. She began to map, in a small leather journal she kept under her pillow, all the ways a given Tuesday could go wrong. She filled the journal by autumn.

She bought another.

By the time she was twenty, she had stopped going to most places, slowly, in the way the colour had left her father's hair. First she stopped going to the dance hall on Friday evenings. Then to the market on her own. Then to church, which caused a particular grief in her father, though he said very little about it.

By thirty, she had the house.

She had inherited it from an aunt on her mother's side, a practical woman who had died at ninety-one in her own bed, which struck Juniper as the most sensible way to go. The house sat at the edge of the road that led into and out of town, and from the front window Juniper could see everyone who passed. She could see exactly where they were going and exactly what might happen to them if they weren't careful.

"That road floods in the rain," she called out to a young man with a pack on his back. "I'd turn around if I were you."

It wasn't raining. It hadn't rained in two weeks. But the young man slowed his pace and glanced at the sky, and something shifted in Juniper's chest.The relief of finally being understood, or of finally being useful, which to Juniper had become the same thing.

She began to speak to more of them. To warn them about the cold, about the dark, about the sharp curve two miles up the road where a horse had thrown its rider back in 1943. She was not wrong about any of these things, and she had the journal entries to prove it. The road had flooded, once. The curve had claimed its rider, though decades ago. Fear, she would have told you, is what you feel when you love something and understand what the world can do to it.

What she did not quite see, from inside the house, was what she looked like from the road.

She did not see that her warnings had grown longer every year, and her face tighter, and her windows darker, and that the travelers who came inside to be safe often found themselves sitting for hours in dim rooms, hearing about things that had not happened yet and might never happen, while the afternoon light moved across the floorboards and the road outside went on without them.

She did not see that no one left her house any lighter than when they had entered.

She had stopped picking wildflowers long ago, for fear of a dormant bee allergy or rare intolerance to pollen. But it was only when the bicycle rusted away in the back garden, swallowed by grass she no longer tended, that she forgot she had ever been Juniper at all.

After that, she was simply Fear, in a house full of reasonable precautions, waiting at the window for the next person who hadn't yet realized how much danger they were in.

Wisdom had always been intuitive. Even as a young boy, his parents would hound him for morsels of advice with their everyday decisions; "Sweetpea, should I go out today or tomorrow? Which is wiser?" His mother's favourite question. As for his father, "Son, do ya think the Hawkeyes might win this time 'round? Should I be watchin' tonight?" Every time, he would obediently respond with something thoughtfully curated.

"Live today like there is no tomorrow. And live tomorrow like there is no yesterday."

"To lose something you never had, is just as painful as losing something there once was."

And they would nod their heads, muttering how sensible their darling child was, before leaving him in the somewhat distrustful hands of the neighbour to go out for dinner for the ninth night in a row.

He had always been a solemn person, sitting quietly in front of the television surrounded by the neighbour's pets, matts of fur drifting around him accompanied by the moist smell of wet cat. He disliked the odour that clung to him like wisps of a ghost, but had grown to miss it in the coming years, when he was wizened and thought of nothing more than the past.

Once he was old enough, he moved out of his parent's house, his mother and father tearfully waving him off at the airport. Though he discerned from their forced frowns that they would only miss the counsel he provided. He picked a place at random on the map of the Great United States of America, knowing that Fate would guide his hand towards a remote city, and his mind drifted to Escalante, Utah. Isolation was his goal. He needed to get away from the people that knew him and his affinity.

He had to make many detours to reach the town, and when he arrived, he thought it more like a village. He managed to swiftly acquire a property on the edge of town using money his parents had lent him, a quaint little cottage equipped with all the basic amenities. He had one neighbour, but had only seen her poke her head out of her window to curiously watch him move his boxes into his new home. She never left her house, and had everything delivered to her front door. All the better for him.

He soon noticed that anyone passing on the road that connected them to the town was called to attention by the shadow of a woman next door. She would gently tell them of the horrors that had occurred on this road, warning them of what awaited them if they continued. She would invite them in to continue the stories, and if they were swayed to enter, they later exited with anxiety and paranoia emanating from their entire being.

Sympathising with the poor souls, he would welcome those who had not been influenced by the woman yet into his own abode, offering them a refreshment and enlightening them with the truth of the path they were taking. He could almost feel their relief, as they thanked him and went on their way.

He found some solace in genuinely helping people and providing comfort to the troubled. It had surprisingly become his newfound joy in life, to rise early in the day, get his chores done and go out for the groceries, then return by the afternoon to console the lost and direct them back on track. By evening, he'd be back in bed, memorising the faces and words of those he met and swore to keep them close to his heart.

And so his destiny was set for a century to come. With every new sun, he awoke to meet the day with a smile more jubilant than the last.

Deception didn't like her name. She didn't deceive people. She helped them. She welcomed them into her house, promising everything, and that is what she gave them.

She couldn't remember it, but she had once been a normal girl with a real name. The name itself was swallowed by time, but the fact it had been there, once upon a time, gave comfort. This girl had a brother. He had a good name. It fit him very well. The girl and the boy lived in the same house.

The house was not a good house. It was dark, and chilly, and there was an invisible layer of oppressive weight on everyone who came in. There were two boys and two girls who lived there. The girl, The brother, The mother, and The man. Most would think to call The man the father. The girl did not think so. The father was another man. One who had lived in the house a very long time ago. The father liked happy, and he liked bright. The man liked the dark. And he fueled the fog settling on everyone's souls. The man was not The father.

The mother was confused. She thought that The man was The father. She treated him like he was. The girl thought this was very wrong. She wanted The man out of the house. If he was gone, the house could have happy again. It could have bright.

The brother agreed. He hardly ever spent time in The house. He spent his time in The town with friends, trying to shake off The fog. But every time he went back to The house, The fog settled back on top of him. He couldn't get rid of it, no matter now hard he tried.

The brother always told The girl of a special place. A place where nothing ever went wrong. There was no fog, no bad house, and there was lots of happy and lots of bright. But to get to the place, you had to leave the place you were in. The brother told The girl that he was going to that place. The girl wanted to come too, but The brother said she wasn't allowed.

The brother left The house that night, and he never had to go back. The mother cried. She cried every day, and it made The fog heavier. The girl wondered why she was sad. The brother had gone to a beautiful, special place, and didn't have to live in the house. That should've been a good thing. The mother didn't think so.

But The girl loved The mother. She wanted the mother to have lots of happy. So The girl sent The mother to the special place with bright and happy. The girl felt good. The mother never had to come back to the house. The man got mad. Very mad. But he was also scared. The girl wondered why.

The man brought lots of people with blinky cars and metal things in their hands to The house. The people took The girl to scary places. They asked her lots and lots of questions. They put her in an odd place. There were lots of bars, and a different kind of fog. She didn't like it. But she was there for a very long time.

But one day, she noticed their interesting metal things. They could take someone to the place with bright and happy very quickly. The girl managed to get one. And she helped lots of people to that place.

The girl turned into The woman, and she went lots of places looking for somewhere to live. The woman found a lovely house. The new house didn't have any fog. The woman had neighbors. There were two of them. They lived in houses right next to hers.

The woman had realized that only some people wanted to go to the special place. So anyone who passed by, she welcomed them into The new house. She told them that they would get anything they could ever want. All the bright, all the happy that could ever exist. And some people didn't want happy. They stopped at her neighbors' houses and kept going. But some people accepted her offer. And she helped them go to a good place with lots of bright and lots of happy.

They started to call The woman Deception. No one knew what happened if you went into her house. And no one could ever seem to remember what happened to those who did.

Deception doesn't deceive. She helps.