“Yeah, go ahead,” his mom said, eyeing the clothing. “Honey, are you sure you know what you’re doing here? I mean, renovating a property? Wouldn’t your time be better spent wearing those suits and interviewing for a new job?”
Nate walked through the garage and into the kitchen. “And then what would I do with this house? There’s no better time than right now. Who knows when I’ll be in-between jobs again, with some time to invest in a project like this? I can just look for a job when I get back after I’ve sold the place.”
“I know, but the executor of the estate swung by the address and said it was really run down. Edna apparently didn’t take care of the place for years.” His mother chewed on the end of her hair. “I just don’t want you to get in over your head, honey.”
Nate wound through the hallway to his old bedroom, now repurposed as the guest room for whenever his parents had visitors. Transformers posters and piles of toys had been replaced by pastel-green walls and paintings of peacocks. He paused, wondering for a moment if that motif would work in a grandiose Louisiana mansion. “Did you get all this stuff from Target?”
“Pier One.”
“Got it.” Nate opened the closet door and crowbarred his suits onto the overfull hanging rod. “Pier One.”
He turned and saw his mother blocking the doorway. The worry on her face was as plain as day.
“Mom,” Nate said. He walked up to her and gave her a hug. “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. I’m not a little kid anymore.”
She hugged him back. “I know. But you’ll always be my baby, and I’m always going to worry about you.”
They went back to the kitchen. His mom was just about to ask him to stay for Easter dinner when Dad burst in through the back door, huffing and puffing and clearly excited.
“Nathaniel! Guess who made a visit to our house last night? That’s riii-ight! I think it was the Easter Bunny!”
Nate turned to his mom. “Really?” he whispered.
“Just go with it, honey. You know he hasn’t been the same since the accident.”
Nate sighed and put on a fake chipper smile. “Is that right, Dad? He was here?”
“Yes he waaa-as! Come out back and see!” His dad ceremoniously opened the screen door, his blond hair in disarray.
Dad’s head just wasn’t the same ever since he got hit on I-35 and surfed the asphalt like he was in the luge at the Olympics. For one thing, he seemed to have regressed into thinking that Nate was perpetually ten years old. Holidays were the worst. Halloween—“I got a Teenage Mutant Ninja Tuuuur-tle costume for you!” Thanksgiving—“I wrote a plaa-ay about the Pilgrims for you to try!” Christmas—“Oh, you need to get to be-ed or Santa won’t come!” Today it was Easter. Awesome.
Nate went onto the porch. Instantly he saw little plastic eggs poorly hidden in the grass and flowerbeds. Dad handed him a little pink basket, grinning like an idiot.
“Wow, Dad. You’re right, I can’t believe the Easter Bunny was here. Do you think he left any eggs for me to find?”
“Oh—oh, yes, I KNOW he did.” His Dad giggled a toothy smile. “Go look! Go look!”
Nate death-marched into the yard and started to collect eggs. He picked up a blue one and heard a rattle inside. Opening it revealed two quarter-inch washers.
“Cleaned out the kitchen junk drawer again, huh,” Nate muttered under his breath. He turned and saw his mom standing on the porch, watching sympathetically. Nate shook his head and picked up more as fast as he could until the little pink basket was full. When he started trudging back to the porch he saw that his Dad had already lost interest and had gone back into the house, abandoning them.
“Well, Mom, that was fun,” Nate said, sitting in a plastic chair. “How do you deal with him every day?”
“It’s not easy, honey. But what else is there? He’s my husband. He’s your father.”
“Cindy was my girlfriend, and that didn’t stop her from punting me to the curb.”
“You can’t compare dating to marriage, Nate.”
“I suppose.” Nate started idly going through the plastic eggs and found an assortment of rubber bands, gum wrappers, and twist ties.
“Have you thought about getting him professional help?” Nate asked. “I mean, like, real help—brain help.”
“Medicare’s already done what it’ll do.”
“So pay out of pocket.”
“We don’t have that kind of money, Nate.” His mom leaned back and folded her arms. “It’s different when you’re retired, honey. You’ve got to be a lot more careful. We have Social Security, our savings, your dad’s disability. But that’s just enough to make ends meet. We can’t afford private medical care beyond what he’s already gotten.”
Nate opened a yellow egg with stripes. Paperclip.
“Maybe I can help if I can flip this house.”
Mom looked concerned again. “That’s sweet, honey, but we’re okay. He’s still your father. He just has his—eccentricities now. Anyway, I’m still really worried about this plan of yours. I’m not sure it’s such a great idea.”
“I’ve thought this through, Mom. I’ve thought about it a lot. It’s a great plan.”
“Do you even have any tools?”
“I thought I’d take Dad’s. It’s not like he’s using them.”
“Actually, he does.” Some obviously unpleasant memory flashed across his mom’s face. “Hmm. Yeah, that’s actually a good idea. You should take them.”
“Thanks.”
“Just be careful, okay? And conservative. You can spend a lot of money fixing up a house. I thought our remodel of the kitchen a few years ago cost a lot. You’re going to tackle a big plantation house.”
“Yeah, I know,” Nate replied. “But I don’t have a mortgage, and I’m going to sell it at the end. It’ll be okay.”
“Okay.”
One more egg lay near Nate’s foot. He picked it up and examined the bunny paw prints against a lavender background. Opening it revealed a strip of paper from a long-gone fortune cookie.
Nate turned to go. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too. Be careful.” She gave him a hug.
“I will.”
Nate trudged back out the garage and waved one more time to his mother before climbing into his car. As he went to turn the ignition he realized he was still holding the fortune in his hand. He uncrumpled it and read the back.
You will soon have an out of money experience.
Lucky Numbers 34, 17, 22, 28, 36, 5
Well, how about that. Somebody in the cookie family thought they were funny.
Nate put his car in reverse and backed out of the driveway. His gas light came on warning of a tank near empty. More cash out of pocket and he hadn’t even gotten on the road.
For a split second, Nate wondered if maybe flipping this house was, in fact, a bad idea.
4
The drive went by fast. Nate started early, making it to Houston by breakfast and across the Louisiana border by noon. Everything from Led Zeppelin to Willie Nelson graced his ears as he jammed to the music on his phone. Gilligan slept in his cat carrier and occasionally meowed to get out and stretch his legs, at which point he would sleep on the dashboard (if the sun was shining) or Nate’s shoulders (if it wasn’t). By late afternoon, Nate was on the outskirts of Lafayette, Louisiana. It wasn’t long before he finally had to deviate from the straight, easy direction of I-10 East. He meandered north through the flat countryside on any number of increasingly smaller roads.
His mother had helped him line up a realtor in a place called Lyon, which apparently was the closest city to wherever his Aunt Edna’s mansion was in the countryside. As he pulled into town Nate found that description a bit ambitious. “City” usually implied more than one stoplight.
The failing evening light didn’t help with reading the street signs, and Nate had trouble finding the road to the realtor’s office. He pulled over on Main Street to check directions against Google Maps. Gilligan,
who was pacing back and forth on the dashboard, suddenly hissed at the windshield.
“What is it, buddy?”
Nate peered out the passenger-side window and saw a squat older lady locking the door to a shop. She was a piece of work: frizzy gray hair jutting out in all directions from underneath some strange kind of beret, dressed all in black, with a weird looking cane that she used to hobble about.
Nate glanced at the placard hanging over the door. It said Elvira the Voodoo Lady.
Gilligan moaned and tried to hide under the floor mat.
Elvira shuffled her way down the sidewalk. She stopped suddenly and turned to glare with menace at Nate. Nate stared back at her through the windshield, dumbfounded at the look, and her appearance in general.
He did the first thing that came to mind and waved.
Elvira scowled.
“Man, Gilligan, we’ve got some neighborhood here in the Bayou, don’t we?”
Meow.
Elvira turned in a huff and ambled quickly away down the sidewalk, still seemingly offended by Nate’s presence. He shook it off and went back to trying to figure out where he was. It took him a few more minutes before he got his bearings and drove down a side street. There he saw a RE/MAX sign and the lights still on through the storefront windows. Nate parked and threw a couple cat treats onto the floorboard for Gilligan.
“Well, little buddy, after that other resident I wonder what sort of hag the real estate agent is going to turn out to be?”
Nate got out of the car and marched up a short flight of steps. He tried to pull open the office door. It was locked, so he knocked.
There was some noise in the back and a figure came into view. It walked to the front and peered through the frosted glass before Nate heard the clicking of a lock being turned. The door opened and a cute twenty-something girl smiled at him. She had short brown hair that hung down over one eye.
“Hi, can I help you?” she said with a twang.
“Hi—my name’s Nate Merritt. I think I’m supposed to meet a realtor named Anna here?”
The girl smiled a cute smile. “That’s me. Come on in.”
Nate stepped inside and Anna locked the door behind him. “Here, why don’t we go back to my desk?” she said as she clomped away in her heels. “I have everything set up for you.”
“Do you always lock the door during business hours?”
“Yeah, keeps the customers out.” She turned and winked at him.
“That’s funny,” Nate said. He was thinking he liked her.
“Really, it’s just a precaution when it starts getting dark. We’re not in the best part of town.”
“Oh.” Nate thought for a moment. Lyon didn’t seem that big. “Where’s the good part?”
Anna gave him a wry look. “Lafayette.”
He laughed. Anna flashed her cute smile again, and Nate was now sure he liked her.
Another knock sounded on the door. Anna peeked through the window shade before pulling the doorknob. Elvira materialized in the entrance, causing Nate to take an involuntary step back.
“I almost forgot, dear, here are those—” Elvira froze when she saw Nate, her expression hostile. “Here are the items you asked me to help you with.” She handed a green manila folder to Anna.
“Oh, thank you so much. I can’t tell you what a help this will be.”
“My pleasure, dear. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The Voodoo Lady turned back to the door but gave Nate one last wordless frown before she exited the premises.
Anna continued like there was nothing wrong in the world with the exchange. “Come on, Nate, follow me.” They went back into the office and sat down at an old, 1960’s-era desk. Anna pulled out a yellow manila folder and started rifling through some printouts.
“What’s in the green folder?”
“The what?”
“The folder that lady dropped off.”
“Oh, that’s just an ongoing project I have. Don’t worry about it.” Anna quickly put the green folder into a drawer. “So I understand from your mother that you inherited the old McAuliffe estate?”
Nate tried to click back to the present. “McAuliffe? My Aunt Edna’s last name was McNair.”
“Sure, but your mother explained to me you were intending to sell it, so I pulled some records and found that the estate has an actual name.”
“It’s an estate?”
“Yes—though it’s been whittled down over the years. Your aunt, or other previous owners, sold off chunks of property over the last couple decades. It’s down to about twelve acres plus the house.”
Nate leaned back in his chair and the back legs squeaked against the floor. So that’s how crazy Edna was providing for herself. Regardless, twelve acres still sounded like a lovely adder to the money he already envisioned in the bank.
“Cool.” He contemplated this knowledge and admired how Anna’s blouse hugged her body.
Anna pulled out some sheets of paper. “Now, it’s a little difficult to pull comps on a unique house like this, but I got some from a number of other sales in the county that were also antebellum structures. We’ll have to discount them quite a bit because of the condition of the place. But it will still—”
“What do you mean, we’ll have to discount them?” Nate dropped the front chair legs back down.
Anna arched her eyebrow. “Have you been out there yet?”
“No. Just rolled into town.”
She paused, then drew her lips into a tight smile. “I’m afraid the house itself isn’t in the best of shape. Your Aunt Edna … well, apparently she let it fall into disrepair. It’s going to affect the comps.”
Nate waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Oh, that’s okay. I’m not planning on selling it as-is. I’m going to flip it. You know, do some renovation, a little remodeling.”
There was a really long pause.
“Are you handy?”
“What, like with tools and stuff?”
“Yes.”
“Of course,” Nate said confidently. He thought back to the movie posters he had hung up in his bedroom last summer and beamed with pride. The frames had almost been level with one another.
Anna smiled her cute little smile, but this time, it seemed forced. “Oh—okay. Just curious. I’ll keep these comps handy, just in case.”
“How much were you discounting them?”
Anna quickly waved her hand. “Not important. They’re all going to change, right?” She seemed embarrassed.
“So, you think they will go up? There’s room to move up?”
“Oh, definitely. What you really need to do is see what it is that you’re getting int—I mean, visualize what you think you want the end result to be. That way you can plan out your renovations. Do you know what your budget is going to be?”
Nate shrugged. “I don’t know. Ten or twenty grand.”
The forced smile stretched. “Oh dear, that … much?”
“Sure. You know, whatever it takes. I’d like to be smart about what I do, though. Maybe you can help me understand where it is I should make the investments to get the most return back? Is it better to remodel the kitchen, or put in landscaping? Change out the bathrooms or repaint all the interior walls? That sort of thing.”
“Or maybe all of the above!” Anna said enthusiastically.
“Yeah, exactly.”
Anna put the comps back in the yellow folder and slapped it shut, as if she were afraid her high school teacher was going to confiscate a note being passed between two giggling girls. “It’s settled then! Whatever I can do. I’d be glad to help.”
“Great! Let’s go.” He stood up.
“Go?”
“To the house.”
The smile on Anna’s face started to buckle. “Oh. Why don’t we head out there in the morning, so you can look things over in the daylight? It’ll give you a better idea of the things you might want to do.”
Nate looked at his watch. “It’s only six-thirty. Couldn’t we go right no
w?”
“Morning will be much more productive for you to make those decisions.”
“But there’s still some light—”
“Morning.”
Ah, she must want to go home from work, Nate thought. Fair enough. “Okay, that’s fine. We can do it your way. What time should we meet there?”
“How about nine o’clock?” Anna said.
“That’ll work. See you then!”
After some minor pleasantries and farewells, Nate went back out to the car. As soon as he opened the door he was greeted by an agitated protest from Gilligan.
“Oh, jeez. Sorry buddy. Didn’t think I was going to be in there that long.”
Meow, meow, meow.
“I thought you were going to sleep, anyway?”
Meow.
Nate sat in the driver’s seat and fiddled with his phone map. “You know, this mansion really isn’t that far out of town. You want to go check it out? Just you and me?”
Meow.
“Yeah, that’s what I think, too. Let’s go.” Nate turned the key, antsy with his own excitement, and plotted a route to the mansion.
An hour later, Nate was wishing he’d waited.
It looked bad.
Really bad.
The light was failing by the time he got to the estate, but it didn’t matter. Nate could tell just fine that the mansion was a dump. The structure itself was a big design from before the Civil War, a broad two-story house with an upper and lower porch that wrapped around all sides of the house. The plantation shutters were all either broken or missing, and there was a ton of Spanish moss hanging off the corners. A collection of clucking and bok-bok noises announced a chicken coop behind the house. Next to that lay a small cemetery—yes, a cemetery—in a little fenced-off area with about a dozen headstones that were chipped or broken. And the yard leading up to the stairs—what was left of the stairs, anyway—was overgrown with enough weeds to double as a salad bar at an all-you-can-eat buffet. It would have been perfect for the cover of Southern Living if the magazine featured homes from the zombie apocalypse.
The House That Jack Built: A Humorous Haunted House Fiasco Page 3
