The House That Still Coughs

What Stands There

The tenement sits third from the corner on the row sealed off after the Rattling swept through six blocks of District Nine in the epidemic that took over four hundred lives during my own childhood. Boards over the windows. A door the Registry marked condemned and nobody since has reopened.
  Most of the sealed row looks exactly like what it is: old construction, quietly rotting, unremarkable. This particular house doesn't.

Why This One, Specifically

Residents on that block will tell you, if you catch them in the right mood, that you can still hear coughing from inside it on damp nights. Not wind through the boards. Coughing, wet and rhythmic, the same sound the Rattling gave everyone who caught it.
  I've stood outside it myself, twice, at night, for exactly as long as my professional curiosity could override my personal good sense. I heard nothing either time, which I report honestly, because I'd rather be a dull historian than an exciting liar.
  What I did notice, both times, was the door. Sealed tenements in that row have swollen shut with damp and disuse, the way old wood does. This one's door sits slightly ajar, by perhaps the width of two fingers, every single time I've checked it, across several years of checking. Nobody I've asked admits to opening it. Nobody I've asked admits to closing it either.
  I've considered, more than once, simply pushing it open and settling the matter myself. I have not done so. I tell myself this is because disturbing a quarantine site is poor historical practice, and there's truth in that. I'll also admit, since this entry is meant to be honest rather than merely professional, that I'm not entirely certain I want the matter settled.
  Some doors, I've decided, are more useful left exactly the width of two fingers open. It gives the street something to wonder about instead of something to grieve. District Nine buried enough that year without needing to know precisely what's still inside that particular room.
  I mention all this for the record, and because somebody ought to, before the row eventually comes down for good and takes the question with it.