We Are Always Watching

by Hunter Shea

  “It’s just sandwiches.”

  “I don’t need a plate. I’m not hungry,” West said. There was no way he was eating liverwurst and he’d lost his taste for bologna somewhere around third grade.

  His mother got up. “I’ll not only get plates, but wash them when we’re done.”

  “Suit yourself,” Grandpa Abraham said. He reached under the sink for a bottle of amber booze and poured some in the glass. Leaning against the sink’s stained skirt, he knocked the drink back in one gulp, then poured another.

  While his mother made two sandwiches, West asked, “Have you lived here all your life?”

  “I was born right there,” he replied, pointing at the table. West pulled his hands off the table, as if bits of the old man’s afterbirth were still jellying on the surface.

  “In the kitchen?”

  “Came out on my own terms. Been that way ever since.”

  “Was there a doctor?”

  “That quack was miles away and we didn’t have a car then. My older sister helped my mother deliver. She must have done something right because here I am and my mother was doing the laundry the next day. Who needs a hospital when you have common sense? Dogs can do it all by themselves. I’ll never understand why we like to complicate things.”

  His father dropped his sandwich. He looked like he was going to say something, then took a breath, picked it up and took a hard bite.

  “God bless her,” his mother said. “I could barely get my butt out of bed the day after this guy was born. There was a point I swore he’d decided not to come out. That labor is the reason he’s an only child.”

  He’d heard her say that a hundred times. She chuckled, winking at West.

  “I was the last of nine,” Grandpa Abraham said. “They don’t make them like my mother anymore.”

  No one knew what to say, so his parents ate while Grandpa Abraham drank and West willed himself to astrally project back to New York.

  There was a soft thump that sounded as if it came from just under their feet. West looked at the scarred linoleum, then at his grandfather.

  “What was that?”

  “I told you on the phone.”

  Now his father spoke up. “There’s no ghost in the basement. I’m sure there are living critters, though, and plenty of stuff to knock around.”

  “What makes you the expert?” Grandpa Abraham said, the edge of his voice dull and sloppy.

  “Because I grew up here, too. Please, stop trying to fill West’s head with ghost stories. He obsesses enough with that stuff as it is.”

  “You’re not afraid of ghosts?”

  West shook his head. “No way. My friend Anthony and I want to start our own paranormal investigation team some day. We’d love to spend a night in a haunted house.”

  His grandfather considered what he said, then grunted, rolling his eyes. “What lives here just might change your attitude.”

  “Come on, Dad.”

  The old man shrugged. “Suit yourself. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. When you’re done cleaning up after yourselves, come get me and I’ll show you to your rooms.”

  He shuffled into the living room, glass in one hand, bottle in the other.

  West’s mother touched his arm. “He’s just trying to scare you.”

  “He’s just a you-know-what,” his father said, lowering his voice.

  “It doesn’t bother me. This house looks haunted...”

  “You sure you don’t want a sandwich? I could see if he has some cheese in the fridge.”

  “Nah, I’m good. I kinda want to see my room.”

  When he got up from the chair, the thump came again, this time so close, he could feel it through his sneakers. He stamped his foot down in reply.

  “You may not have talked to a ghost, but I do think you just scared the heck out of a squirrel,” his father said. He managed to get up on his own, using the cane to steady himself for a moment. “You want me to take my old room down here?” he called to Grandpa Abraham.

  “Can’t have you falling up and down the stairs now, can I?”

  West had learned a lot about his grandfather is just a few minutes. He was an entertaining buzzard, in a cranky kind of way, but making light of his dad’s condition showed the man had a deep, dark mean streak.

  That could prove to be very important information somewhere down the line.

  ***

  “You don’t have a stereo, do you?” Grandpa Abraham asked. They were in one of the two upstairs bedrooms. West’s bedroom was at the end of the hall. He could see into his grandfather’s across the way, the heavy oak door partially open. He spotted an old bureau, a white doily on top, little bowls everywhere. He wondered what was in those bowls.

  Probably old pennies and leaking batteries.

  “No. Just my headphones,” West said. He could hear his parents settling in to their room downstairs. Their voices carried through the floorboards, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  “Good. Keep your loud music to yourself. Those things make you deaf, you know.” He jabbed a thick, nicotine-tinged finger at the headphones wrapped around his neck.

  “By the time that happens, they’ll have discovered a way to reverse it,” West replied, dropping his duffel bag on the four-poster bed. The box spring made an awful racket, the mattress sagging so much, he wondered if there was any stuffing left. “I read it in Discover Magazine.”

  “Nobody likes a wise ass, kid.” His grandfather ran a hand through his long, wild hair. Lifting his arm gave West a chance to catch a whiff of the b.o. that had been fermenting in his armpit. He tried not to cringe.

  “I wasn’t trying to be. Doctors are working on all these kinds of implants that will mimic the inner workings of the ear. Kind of like laser surgery for eyes.”

  Grandpa Abraham raised an eyebrow. “Well, I guess you just gotta hope you live to see that miracle come true. They told us twenty years ago that cancer would be cured after they found all that DNA-chromosome-genome crap. I see people dying every day from it. Even the rich bastards, like that Steve Jobs. Don’t believe everything you read.”

  West turned his back to him, unzipping his bag. It was filled to bursting with clothes, books, and magazines.

  “You hear what I said?”

  West locked eyes with him. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well, make yourself at home. Bathroom’s down the hall. I’m in it a lot at night, so don’t be surprised to hear me knocking around.”

  Now West smiled. “I’ll assume it’s either you or one of the ghosts.”

  He thought he saw the tiniest fraction of a smile start to curl the corner of his mouth. “Laugh now. You’ll see.”

  He took a faltering step to the door, reaching for the handle to steady himself. “Guess your dad’s not the only one with a case of the dizzies today. Maybe your dad and I should enter ourselves in one of those potato sack races. That would be a sight, wouldn’t it?”

  When he laughed, it sounded like there was a stormy sea of phlegm rattling in his lungs.

  To his surprise, West chuckled, picturing the two of them bonding in a race where they would have been doomed from the start.

  “I’ll be watching the Phillies game downstairs. You like baseball?”

  “I could take it or leave it. I guess the Mets are okay.”

  “The Mets? Do me a favor and don’t bother me during the game.” Grandpa Abraham went down the hall, wondering out loud how in the hell he had a grandson who didn’t care about baseball and liked the Mets of all the goddamn teams. West watched him turn the corner, holding on to the newel post, and clomp down the stairs.

  What the heck was he to make of the man? Was he always all over the place, or was it just the alcohol? It was painfully obvious he’d rather they weren’t here, but they were family. How could you not welcome your family with open arms when they were down on their luck?

  “Forget him,” West said, plucking his stack of horror magazines and placing them on the dresse
r. There was a dusty shelf above it just the right size for his books. He had to get rid of a lot of stuff before the move, but his books were sacred. Most were packed in a box in the moving truck, but he kept his favorite authors with him – Bentley Little, Stephen King, Brian Keene, Brian Moreland, and Clive Barker. He’d gotten most of them at a second-hand bookshop in Harstdale, and even though they were beaten and battered, they were his most prized possessions.

  After wiping the dust with his sleeve and sneezing four times, he settled them on the shelf. There was an old steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. It looked like something people would have brought with them on the Titanic. It had two brass clasps on the front. He tried to open them, but they were either locked or fused shut. He gave it a kick. It sounded full.

  I wonder what’s in there.

  No sense asking Grandpa Abraham. Not now, while the Phillies were on. Maybe in a few days when he got used to them being here.

  Maybe he’s just set in his ways, and we’re screwing up his routine.

  But then, he and his father had had a falling out over something. It was one of the things West was determined to find out.

  Grabbing an old copy of Rue Morgue Magazine, the one with the tribute to Barbara Steele on the cover, he plopped onto the bed. The ancient mattress sucked him in like quicksand. He kind of liked it. It was like being wrapped in a cocoon or a cushioned hammock.

  The baseball game blared downstairs. He thought he heard his father yell something. It was a quick outburst. West paused, waiting for more. After a while, when all he could hear was the cheering of the crowd and steady warble of the analyst on TV, he flipped to an article about some 60s B-movie where sea monsters from the bottom of the ocean attacked Miami Beach.

  No arguing today Mom and Dad, he thought. Grandpa Abraham is enough fun for one day.

  He wondered what Anthony was doing right now. Probably going to the movies or out to an early dinner with his parents. They liked to skip lunch on weekends and go out to eat in the late afternoon.

  Lucky.

  A sharp breeze battered the house, rattling the warped frame of the room’s sole window. West stiffened, dropping the magazine on his chest.

  “Ha ha, maybe you are afraid of ghosts,” he croaked, his heart thumping against his ribcage.

  He stared up at the ceiling, scolding himself for being such a chicken shit.

  There was something up there. It was faded and looked like it may have been painted over a long, long time ago. But the cheap paint had dried and flaked away, revealing crudely drawn words that hovered right over his face.

  West squinted.

  WE SEE YOU

  ***

  “Why don’t you go watch the game with your father?” Debi said. She was busy stuffing drawers with their clothes, removing pungent mothballs and dropping them in the dented waste pail beside the dresser. They pinged against the metal pail, their odor singing the hairs in Matthew Ridley’s nose. Christ, he hated the stench of mothballs. His mother and father kept the industry alive over the years, sticking them in every corner and pocket they could find.

  “That should be a lot of fun, especially with him two sheets to the wind. A couple of more drinks and he’ll make it the full three.”

  Matt sat on the edge of the bed, gripping the handle of his cane with both hands. The spins that had almost swept him off his feet when they first came into the room were starting to abate. He knew they’d never fully go away, but at least he didn’t feel like tossing up that horrible sandwich.

  “When do you think he bought those cold cuts anyway?” he said. “I’m pretty sure liverwurst isn’t supposed to have crusty edges. Nothing like a little food poisoning to start our prison sentence.”

  Scooting the empty suitcase into the closet with her foot, Debi shook her head in exasperation. “You know, you’re not doing a whole hell of a lot to make things any easier. Your father is an old man who was as crusty as that liverwurst on his best days. He’s not going to change his spots now. That leaves being the bigger person in your court. The last thing West needs is more tension in the house.”

  Waving her off, Matt said, “He has his headphones on most of the time. I’m surprised he even remembers who we are.”

  Debi glared at him, slamming a drawer closed.

  “Don’t you dare turn our son into a teenage caricature just to make your lack of effort acceptable.”

  “Give me a break. We just got here.”

  “I’m not just talking about now.”

  Hi bit back his reply. They’d stepped into discord déjà vu. He wasn’t up to it just now. And she was right about one thing – West didn’t need them adding to the tension in the house. With all of the things he couldn’t do anymore, that was something he was able to control. Why he didn’t more often was a mystery even to him. He often thought that maybe people were right – misery really does love company.

  “Baseball with my father without a drink. This should be fun,” he said, pulling himself up from the bed by leveraging his weight against the cane.

  His wife touched his shoulder before he left the bedroom, the same room he’d done his homework in, put together model battleships, and dreamed of one day getting out to New York.

  Putting her arms around his neck, her deep amber eyes demanding all of his attention, she said, “We’re going to get through this. I know it hasn’t been easy and this is far from a step in the right direction, but if we work together, we can get out of here in no time and back on our feet.”

  Matt felt some of the tightness in his chest loosen. He hadn’t realized how wound up he’d been until this moment. “I like the together part.” Placing a hand on her hip, he pulled her closer. The little bit of extra padding she’d always carried had melted away over the past year. He’d never tell her, but he missed it.

  She kissed the tip of his nose. “I wouldn’t count us out yet.”

  “I guess I need to stop counting myself out.” He breathed in the floral scent of her hair. “But it’s getting harder and harder not to.”

  “Maybe what you need more than anything is to get out of your own head for a while. Spending time, quality or otherwise, with your father could be just what the doctor ordered.”

  He gave a small laugh. “If that’s true, I want a second opinion.”

  Debi swatted his ass. “Now get out of here. I have work to do to get this room in shape.”

  When he leaned down to kiss her, the floor nearly slipped out from under him. Instead of launching into his usual string of invectives and bemoaning his situation, he closed his eyes, steadied his rolling brain, and smiled.

  “Let’s go Phillies!” he said, heading for the living room.

  If life was a bitch, vertigo was the head bitch in charge. Walking to the living room was like stumbling down a shifting hallway on a ship at sea.

  To be more precise, central vertigo was the bane of his existence. It had been three years since the car accident. Getting T-boned off that exit on the Taconic Parkway had nearly killed him. The other driver was drunk as hell, blowing a 1.2 when the state trooper pulled her out of the car. Naturally, she was fine, though her Nissan SUV was barely good for scrap metal.

  Matt’s seatbelt had kept him from bouncing around the car like a pinball on speed, but even the airbag couldn’t stop the car from crushing him. He’d fractured his sternum, broken the arm and leg on his left side, punctured a lung, had internal bleeding and lost most of the teeth on the left side of his mouth. The left side is where the Nissan had tried to cleave his car in two.

  But the humdinger was the head trauma. He still swore it was the airbag that did it. Apparently, his brain had smacked against the inside of his cranium good enough to cause permanent damage. His short-term memory wasn’t as sharp as it had been before the accident, and now he had migraines that made him wish the drunk bitch had just ended him right there at the Fahnestock Park exit.

  The lasting injury that had really done a number on him was the persistent vertigo. F
or most people, vertigo was a passing malady, a temporary but disorienting condition or inner ear infection that liked to set their world off its axis from time to time.

  Central vertigo was a different story. It stems from issues within the brain.

  The doctors kept telling him he might just wake up and be fine one day, but that day had yet to come. Until it did, he spent every waking moment alternating between spins and nausea, his eyes sometimes rolling in their sockets uncontrollably. Treatments like the Epley Maneuver didn’t help, nor did drugs like Meclizine. When things got real bad, he had diazepam, a fancy word for Valium, to help take things down a notch. The stuff left him logy, this side of useless. He tried not to take it too often, as tempting as it was to down them like popcorn throughout the day.

  Naturally, he couldn’t work, and the long-term disability had dried up a long time ago. Matt had always been a laborer. He loved working construction. Even when the weather was boiling hot or cold enough to freeze the snot in your nose, he ended the day with a sense of complete satisfaction. Being outside, and building things with his hands, was what he was meant to do. Vertigo robbed him of that. Inactivity withered his muscles and made him weak. He could no sooner swing a hammer than erase the national debt.

  No one understood his frustration. Empathy could only go so deep. On his best days, he hated himself.

  SSI paid some bills, but not near enough. When Debi was laid off from her teaching gig last year, it had finally broken them.

  Matt stepped into the living room, taking a moment to watch his father watching the game. He hadn’t aged well. He looked like a crazy prospector from the gold rush days. When was the last time he’d had a shower, or washed his clothes? It was a little embarrassing. Would West now assume he’d degenerate the same way?

  “What’s the score?” Matt said.

  His father scowled, a finger of booze sloshing around the glass in his hand. “Phillies are down by five. They need a cleanup hitter worse than that president of ours needs a set of balls.”

  Sports and politics. His father’s favorite diatribes.