When Things Get Dark

by Ellen Datlow

  “I want to ask you about my mother’s last day. Was she at peace? You can tell me the truth. I can take it,” she said, her incongruous smile suggesting she could not.

  “Delores and I developed a friendship.”

  “How nice,” Jean said, then pursed her lips.

  “It was an ordinary day. She went down for her nap and I took out the garbage and when I got back I looked in on her and she was dead.”

  “Just like that?”

  For a brief moment the memory fluttered. Like one of those beetles you think you squashed but didn’t. Delores struggling against the pillow, her arms flailing, the noises she made.

  “My mother was not an easy woman,” Jean said. “You don’t have to pretend otherwise. I’m glad she had your company. But I know how difficult she could be.”

  “No, really. We were friends.”

  Jean stood up and began pushing the chair across the carpet.

  Lenore had not realized she’d been holding her breath until, exhaling in relief, her ribs pressed against the confined elastic of the dress and she felt a button pop at the back.

  With a grunt of annoyance, Jean abandoned the uncooperative chair to walk around the desk where she opened a drawer, removing what looked like a checkbook.

  “This is just a small token,” she said, not looking up while she wrote.

  “Oh, no,” said Lenore, horrified.

  “Nonsense. I know how hard you people work,” Jean said, walking briskly back to Lenore. “Take it. Buy yourself something nice.”

  Her glance might have lingered just a little too long on Lenore’s dress. The woman had no way of knowing, of course, but Lenore felt like the exchange was vile, as though she were some kind of hired killer.

  Jean bent her knees slightly to place the check in Lenore’s lap, amongst the primroses. “I’m so glad we had this time to talk. I wish I could just hide in here with you,” she said.

  “Yes, of course,” said Lenore.

  “Stay as long as you like, but close the door tightly when you leave. Guests really aren’t supposed to be in here.”

  Lenore kept her expression placid as she nodded, though she did understand she was being reprimanded. She didn’t allow herself to smile until she was alone again, looking at the amount written on the check before tucking it into her purse. She stood up and tossed the paper plate with blobs and smears of food on it into the small trashcan beside the desk, but left the wine glass on the table.

  As if her hand worked without any direction from her mind, it plucked the glass bird from the bookshelf as she passed, dropped it into her bag, then closed the gold clasp.

  The party had diminished quite a bit during Lenore’s little break, making her presence more obvious, yet she passed through the rooms like a ghost, unhindered by anyone. Sometimes when she had that effect on others it bothered her, but this time it made her feel powerful.

  * * *

  Lenore frowned as she parked in front of her place. It was one apartment in a building of four she had been proud to call home for nearly a decade. What difference did it make that there were no hydrangeas outside her window?

  She hurried up the walk, in case anyone might be watching and notice how her dress gaped at the back where the button had popped. As soon as she stepped inside she locked the door and kicked off her shoes. They were too tight. It would take a few more wears for them to fit comfortably. She strained to unbutton the dress, and heard it rip before she stepped out of it. She would buy a new one, she thought as she walked down the hall to draw a bath, pouring into the stream a packet of lavender bubble powder one of her clients (not Delores) had given her in a Christmas basket the previous December. While the water ran, she took the tuna casserole out of the refrigerator and put it in the oven. She really hadn’t eaten that much, and figured she’d be hungry soon enough.

  She opened the purse, reaching inside for the bird made of blue glass, which fit in the palm of her hand. Lovely. One of the nicest things she owned. It deserved a position of honor, not to be stuffed on some shelf. She surveyed her living space from the other side of the breakfast counter she rarely sat at, the stools most often used as dumping grounds. After the daughter’s lovely house, the small living room furnished with used pieces Lenore found by the side of the road, or purchased secondhand, seemed bleak.

  She placed the bird on the coffee table in front of the sagging couch, then hurried back to the bathroom, arriving in time to turn the water off before causing a flood. She took a long soak until the scent of tuna noodle casserole overpowered the lavender, and her stomach growled.

  “Maybe I’ll get a new robe,” she said, wrapping herself in the old terry cloth one she’d owned for years.

  She ate her supper on the couch, only half paying attention to the real housewives on TV, fighting again. The glass bird was so pretty it shamed everything else.

  “Maybe I’ll buy a new table. And a lamp,” she said. “I liked your daughter’s lamp.”

  Lenore fell asleep on the couch, as sometimes happened, awoken by a loud commercial for a frying pan. She shut the TV off but left the light on, as was her practice, to deter any intruder. Once in bed she wondered if she might spend the money on a new mattress, which would be wise if not particularly exciting, debating this until she fell asleep for an indeterminate amount of time before being aroused by the noxious aroma of tuna noodle casserole mingled with lavender. Lenore had always been sensitive to strong odors.

  Thinking she would turn the stove fan on, she padded to the kitchen, stopping in her tracks when she saw the back of Delores’s head. Dead Delores. Cremated Delores. Sitting on the couch.

  Lenore walked slowly, pausing on her way to grab the tea kettle from the stove, only then noticing the casserole on the counter. She could have sworn she put it away, though clearly she hadn’t.

  “Not sure what you plan to do with that kettle. I’m already dead,” said Delores, sitting with a bowl of tuna noodle casserole in her lap.

  “What are you doing here?” Lenore asked.

  Delores gave her one of her looks. The one that meant “I’m just going to pretend I don’t notice you being stupid,” as she stabbed chunks of tuna noodle casserole with her fork. “Sit down, Lenore.”

  Lenore did as she was told, backing into the chair she’d purchased from Goodwill a few years before. It had only been ten dollars, but was so uncomfortable she rarely sat in it.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I think you know the answer,” Delores said, drawing fork to her mouth and chewing, though, after a while, unmasticated tuna and noodles dropped out. “Ah shit,” she said.

  “Do you need help?”

  “You know you’re stuck with me now, don’t you?” Delores asked, making another stab at the bowl in her lap.

  “You should go to the light,” said Lenore.

  Delores snorted. A noodle flew from her mouth and landed on the coffee table beside the glass bird.

  “So, I guess this makes you a serial murderer.”

  “No it doesn’t,” Lenore said, insulted.

  “Yeah. It does. You killed your husband and then you killed me.”

  “Twenty years apart,” Lenore said. “And I only killed you cause you promised not to tell anyone about it. I thought we were sharing secrets. I thought you were my friend.”

  “I thought you were my friend!” Delores shouted. “Who did I tell? I told no one. And this is the thanks I get.”

  “I saw how you looked at me.”

  “Give me a break. Can’t a person be surprised?”

  “You were going to tell someone.”

  “Was not.”

  “Don’t lie, Delores.”

  “Your tuna noodle casserole tastes like piss.”

  “Well, that’s cause you’re dead. You aren’t even chewing right.”

  Delores looked at the bowl in her lap and laughed. It was a quick bark of a sound, slightly feral, quite different from when she was alive.

  “Please,”
Lenore said. “Try to understand my position.”

  Delores glared at Lenore.

  “You should buy that new mattress,” she said. “And probably a bigger bed. Cause I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  Lenore, who would not have believed it possible of herself (because she was not a psychopath), leapt from her chair to swing the tea kettle in a wide arc at the old woman’s head. Though she couldn’t have felt a thing—she was dead, after all—she looked up at Lenore with horror, raising her bony arms to block the blow. There was no blood, and no impact. In frustration, Lenore slammed the kettle down, shattering the glass bird.

  She stared at it and tried not to cry.

  “You know what I just remembered?” Dolores asked. “In all the excitement I never got to tell you my best secret.”

  “Oh. Right,” said Lenore. “That’s why you’re here.”

  “Yep. I came all the way from heaven to help you.”

  “To help me?”

  “That’s right, Lenore. Cause your tuna noodle casserole tastes like shit.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Delores—”

  “You need to put some crunch into it.”

  “You mean potato chips? I already know about that, Delores. Everyone knows about that. I just forget to buy them. Okay? You can go now.”

  “Not potato chips. Broken glass. Like what you got right there. You just try it and see. We learn about this stuff after being dead. I know things now.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Don’t be ridiculous,” Lenore said, but she carefully swept the shards into an empty pickle jar, which she set in the cupboard beside the salt and pepper shakers, the lid closed tight, turning around to discover that Delores had disappeared; gone back to heaven or hell, or the little box her daughter had put her in. Lenore sealed the aluminum foil over the remains of the casserole, which she placed in the refrigerator, checked that the front door was locked, and went to bed, tossing and turning throughout the night.

  In the morning she called the agency to tell them she was sick then drove to the mattress store, where she chose a comfortable queen-sized mattress, and a new bed frame. But, of course, as Lenore was well aware, any solution creates new problems: she needed queen-sized sheets and comforter as well. On the way home from the mall, she stopped at the market for noodles and canned tuna. A woman stared at Lenore as she loaded her cart and said, “Looks like someone has a craving for tuna noodle casserole. Don’t forget the chips,” and the checkout lady said something snide about how much tuna could one person eat, but Lenore ignored both of them. She wasn’t sure what had gotten into her, but she felt free in a way she hadn’t since buying the primrose dress all those years ago, no longer interested in accommodating everyone else’s preferences or fighting her own unreasonable impulses. If she wanted to eat tuna noodle casserole every night for the rest of her life, she would. Groceries loaded in her car, she paused in the parking lot to stare at a flock of birds circling overhead, so distant she could not identify them.

  For Sale by Owner

  Elizabeth Hand

  I CAN’T remember exactly when I first started entering houses while the owners weren’t around. Before my children were born, so that’s at least thirty-five years ago. It started in the fall, when I used to walk my old English sheepdog, Winston, down one of the camp roads on Taylor Pond. That road is more built up now with new summer houses and even a few year-round homes, but back then there were only two houses that were occupied all year. The rest, maybe a dozen all together, were camps or cottages, uninsulated and very small, certainly by today’s standards. They straggled along the lakefront, some in precarious stages of decay, the others neatly kept up with shingles or board-and-batten siding. These days you couldn’t build a structure that close to the waterfront, but eighty or ninety years ago, no one cared about things like that.

  Anyway, Winston and I would amble along the dirt road for an hour or two at a time, me kicking at leaves, Winston snuffling at chipmunks and red squirrels. This would be after I got off work at the CPA office where I answered the phone, or on weekends. The pond was beautiful—a lake, really, they just called it a pond—and sometimes I’d watch loons or otters in the water, or a bald eagle overhead. I never saw another living soul except for Winston. No cars ever went by— those two year-round homes were at the head of the road.

  I’m not sure why I decided one day just to walk up to one of the camps and see if the door was open. Probably I was looking at the water, and the screened-in porch, and got curious about who lived inside. Although to be honest, I really wasn’t interested in who lived there. I just wanted to see what the inside looked like.

  I tried the screen door. It opened, of course—who locks their screen door? Then I tried the knob on the inner door and it opened, too. I told Winston to wait for me, and went inside.

  It looked pretty much like any camp does, or did. Small rooms, knotty pine walls, exposed beams. One story, with a tiny bathroom and a metal shower stall. Tiny kitchen with a General Electric fridge that must’ve dated to the early 1960s, its door held open by a dishrag wrapped around the handle. Two small bedrooms with two beds apiece.

  The living room was the nicest, with big old mullioned windows, a door that opened onto the screened porch. The kind of furniture you find in camps—secondhand stuff, or chairs and side tables demoted from the primary residence. A big coffee table; shelves holding boxes of games and puzzles, paperbacks that had swollen with damp. Stone fireplace with a small pile of camp wood beside it. On the walls, framed Venus paint-by-numbers paintings of deer or mountains.

  Camps had a particular smell in those days. Maybe they still do. Mildew, coffee, cigarette smoke, woodsmoke, Comet. It’s a nice smell, even the mildew if it’s not too strong. I spent a minute or two gazing at the lake through the windows. Then I left.

  The next camp was pretty much the same thing, though with two canoes by the water instead of one, the dock pulled out alongside them. The door was unlocked. There were more games here, also a wrapped-up volleyball net and a plastic Whiffle Ball bat. Children’s bathing suits hanging in the bathroom. Nicer furniture, scuffed up but newer-looking, blond wood. The chairs and table and couch looked like they’d been bought as a set. The view here wasn’t as open as at the first house, because some tamaracks had grown too close to the windows. But it was still nice, with the children’s artwork displayed on the walls, and a framed photograph of Mount Cadillac.

  I made sure the door closed securely behind me and continued walking. Winston stopped chasing squirrels and seemed content to stay beside me. I idly plucked leaves and sticks from his tangled fur, making a mental note to give him a thorough brushing when I got home, maybe a bath.

  For the next hour or so it was more of the same. Only about half of the camps were unlocked, though all the screened porch doors were open. In those cases, I’d check out the view from the porch, angling among stacked-up wicker or plastic furniture, folded lawn chairs, life preservers and deflated water toys. On one porch, the door to the living room was open, so I got to take a look at that.

  There was a pleasant sameness to the decor of all these places, if you could call it decor, and an even more reassuring sense of difference between how people spruced up their little havens. A tiny, handmade camp that consisted of only a single room had fishing gear in the corner, a huge moose rack over the door, and a six-point deer rack on the outhouse. In the neighboring shingle cottage, almost every surface was covered by something crocheted or handwoven or knit or quilted, and the air smelled strongly of cigarettes and potpourri.

  I took stock of each place, and considered how I might move around the furniture, or what trees I’d cut down. Once or twice I recognized the name on the door, or a face in a faded family photograph. I never opened any drawers or cabinets or took anything. I wouldn’t have dreamed of that. Like I said, I just wanted to see what they looked like inside.

  Finally, we reached the end of the camp road. Winston was tired and the sun was getting lo
w, besides which I never walked any farther than this. So we turned round and walked back to the head of the camp road, then onto the paved road, where I’d left my old Volvo parked on the grass. Winston hopped into the back and we went home. I spent about an hour brushing him but didn’t bother with the bath. He really hated baths.

  For the rest of that autumn, I’d occasionally walk along different camp roads in town and do the same thing. By the time Thanksgiving arrived, my curiosity had been sated. As the days grew darker and colder, I walked Winston close to home. A year later I married Brandon, and a year after that our daughter was born.

  By the time I started walking again, a decade had passed. The old dog had died, and we never got another. I walked with other women now, the mothers of my children’s classmates. I grew close to one in particular, Rose. We began walking when our boys were nine or ten years old, and continued doing so for almost thirty years. Like me, Rose liked to walk along the camp roads, where there were few cars, though in summer the mosquitoes were terrible, and over the decades we learned to be increasingly mindful of ticks.

  Rose was small and cheerful and talked a lot. Local gossip, family news. Sometimes we’d rant about politics. Our friend Helen joined us occasionally. She walked faster than Rose and I, so there’d be less conversation when the three of us were together. Over the years, Rose, like me, had stopped coloring her hair. I went mousy grey but Rose’s grew in the color of a new nickel. Helen continued to dye her hair, though it wasn’t as blond as it had been. Our husbands were all friendly, and the six of us often got together for dinners or bonfires or the Super Bowl.

  So it was odd that I had known Rose for almost a quarter century before I learned that she, too, liked exploring empty houses. We were walking on the dirt road that runs along Lagawala Lake. It was late fall, and the weather had been unseasonably cold for about a week. There were few houses along the camp road, all clustered at the far end, all vacated till the following summer—we knew that because we’d gotten in the habit of peering through the windows. I never mentioned my old habit, though once or twice, when Rose wasn’t looking, I’d test the door of a cottage. But everyone kept their houses locked now.