by Tobias Wade
He sold us holsters and special ammunition as well. I wondered at the ammo. I’d shot plenty of times before, and I couldn’t see what was so special about these cartridges over any other hollow point. Becky, however, was sold. She wanted any advantage the gentleman could offer. She was not going to risk a thing. While we were there, we signed up for the license to carry class, as it just seemed like the right thing to do.
Jason was staying with Becky’s folks, so we had a couple of days to explore and begin work on the new place. We arrived early with our shiny new guns in our shiny new holsters. The trunk was full of cleaning supplies, tools, gloves, and a cooler full of sandwich makings, soft drinks, and bottled water.
We began by opening all the doors and windows and tearing out the moldering antique carpet. We got it out in large chunks, setting it in a pile near the tire ruts that served as a driveway. We then swept and mopped the whole place corner to corner before rinsing out the mops and starting over. We cleaned the windows and countertops, and even the walls. Becky had picked up some color swaths and paint samples at the hardware store so while she set about marking walls, I removed the screen door from the back and started tearing out the rotten decking from the porch. This, too, I carried to the front and set on the pile of carpet. By midafternoon, the deck was almost completely demolished, the house was clean enough to work in, and we had the start of a pretty large burn pile.
“Want to walk up the trail, see what’s around the bend?” I asked Becky as we finished off a bag of chips.
She looked at the woods and back at me and she looked worried. “I don’t know. That guy really freaked me out with the hogs. You think it’s safe?”
I pulled out my pistol and racked the slide. “I think we’ll be fine.”
She loaded hers as well and we walked from the back of the house to what appeared to be an old trail that had never quite grown over. The forest was thick and rather dark, but there was no sign of killer swine anywhere. After a short time, we reached a larger clearing. It was overgrown and littered with what appeared to be rubbish piles that nobody ever bothered to burn. I was going to have to rent a brush cutter to get a trail cut through here, but as I scanned the area, it looked like a great place to build the big house when we got around to it.
We headed back to the house and began shutting it down for the night. In the morning we would buy paint and schedule the carpet and flooring guys. We’d have power in a day or two, and once I found the right size filter, we’d have clean drinking water from the well.
That night, after a few drinks in the hotel bar and some much-needed ibuprofen for aching muscles, Becky and I made love to celebrate our good fortune and then we both fell hard asleep.
Guillermo Rivas lays in a pool of congealing black gore. His eyes are closed, his blood-flecked face locked in an agonized grimace. Occasionally a large hog, brown and bristled, trots over and nudges the body once or twice before walking away. A smaller boar walks over and sniffs at the man’s innards. It leans in slowly and then snatches a piece of offal from the pile. As it tears its prize away, Rivas sits bolt upright and screams in agonized horror. His screams are cut short, however, as the larger hog runs over and knocks him back to the ground, butting the dying man with its uneven tusks again and again. Rivas’ head lolls to the side and his open eyes stare into mine as the smaller pig chews and smacks its lips.
I woke in a cold sweat, the image of the hog chewing the man’s guts fresh in my mind. It was dark still. I rubbed my eyes and found the clock. 2:45. Still a long way to go until morning. I played on my phone, scrolling through Instagram, looking for mindless drivel to take my mind off the dream that had seemed all too real. It would be hours before I dozed again, and when Becky woke me the next morning, I felt drained and lifeless.
We spent the next two days painting the walls and cabinets, followed by placing contact paper in all the drawers. We ordered a refrigerator and a washer and dryer set and scheduled the delivery to coincide with the carpet installation. Becky was diligent about making lists of things we needed to buy or do before we could move.
“I want that deck put back together before we start trying to move furniture in here. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen,” she said.
I had taken a few vacation days from work, so I was making my own lists and trying to see what I could do that would have the most impact in the shortest amount of time. “I’ll take measurements and buy the lumber on my way back out here tomorrow.”
When we finished up for the day, we would drive the hour and a half back to the in-laws and pick up our son. Then we would go back to our city house and start filling boxes. Becky stayed there with Jason and packed while I went back out to the ranch to continue working on making the house someplace we could live for a year or so as we had the new place designed and built.
The next morning, I put several boxes of miscellaneous housewares and a few power tools into the back of my SUV and drove back out to the property, stopping at the hardware store on the way to buy materials to rebuild the deck.
I’d never built a deck before but after a couple of YouTube tutorials and several questions at the store, I thought that I was ready. I dug the post holes and mixed the concrete, then sunk the posts and set them level. Once I’d placed some braces to ensure they stayed that way, I wandered out to the front to do away with some trash. I wasn’t sure if or when we got trash service this far out and I didn’t have room in my truck to carry the carpet and other junk back to a dumpster. I stacked the pile a little better, then I threw in some kindling and some paper and set a lighter to it.
The fire was small at first and I waited for the inevitable burst of smoke that told me it had gone out. Instead, however, the carpet burst into flame and a very hot, very intense fire roared. I was caught off-guard by the raging inferno and had to step back several feet to keep from getting burned. I began looking around for a water source in case it spread. We had water to the house itself, but no hoses yet. This could be a disaster.
After a few minutes of angry flame, the carpet had been burned away. The pile of wooden planks and other refuse collapsed in on itself and the fire calmed down to a steady, contented burn. A plume of smoke replaced the wavy heat mirages that had been there before. I used a stick to poke at the fire and watched it consume the pile of garbage. I glanced around and realized there was plenty of deadfall and miscellaneous rubbish that could go into the fire today.
I went back and checked the level and the concrete. It was still wet to the touch and it would be another fifteen or twenty minutes before I could trust building on it. I gathered up the empty concrete sacks and threw them onto the fire. There were old plastic buckets and brittle plastic flower pots in the shed and I threw them on as well. After a time, I was walking back and forth through the yard looking for, well, anything I could add to the pile. I figured it would all be ash by nightfall and scattered to the breeze by morning.
I stood and watched the stuff burn, my mind on other things. Occasionally, the smoke would waft in my direction and I’d catch the odor of burnt plastic or rubber. I would move out of its path, but as smoke is wont to do, it would catch me again and then again. My eyes began to water, and I became light-headed. I moved away from the fire and went back to my project. The pylons were sticking out of the ground waiting for me to start attaching joists. But instead, I walked past them, past the house and toward the trail into the woods. I felt strange; not altogether well. Some combination of nausea and migraine. I needed fresh air, but the burnt plastic smell had permeated my nostrils and infected every breath I took. Poisonous plastic smoke hung in the air as well, as there was no breeze to carry it off.
I made it through the woods and into the larger clearing before my eyes began to clear and I could breathe again. All at once my head began to pound and I nearly stumbled into a strand of prickly pear. I needed to sit down, to clear my head, to breathe. I stomped through the high grass to the middle of the clearing. The grass was shorter
here. I looked around for a moment to get my bearings and to make sure there were no ants around, then sat down in the grass. I was still quite dizzy, and the day was cool and bright, so after a moment I lay down on my back and closed my eyes.
I don’t know how long I slept. I don’t know if I slept at all or just zoned out listening to my pulse pounding in my head. But when I opened my eyes, my headache was gone. I squinted across the clearing as the late afternoon sun created a glare across my field of vision. The air was wavy with heat mirages. Then, something moved in my periphery and I turned to see what it was.
It was the ghost of a house. In the clearing. A house. It was bathed in what looked like heat mirages and it was very much and obviously there and not there at the same time. Had someone lived here before the Johnsons? It would have had to have been very long ago, considering the pedigree of the land as Murphy had explained it. And wouldn’t prior owners or tenants have shown up in the records when the court cases were raging?
I took a few steps toward the wavy structure. I can’t describe it now other than to say that it was very, most definitely there. Not structurally, but spectrally. It was right there. As I moved toward it, the grass got higher and I got wrapped up in some thorny vines. I stepped back and cut myself free and when I looked up, the house was gone. All I could see across the field were the trees opposite the way I had come. I considered moving forward, wanting to see if maybe there was some sign of an old foundation or something. But as I took another few steps toward where I thought the phantom had been, the ground became uneven and the thorn vines thicker. I stood still for a few minutes, trying to will the vision back, but it was gone. After a time, I became convinced that I had either dreamed or maybe hallucinated the specter. I had inhaled an unhealthy bit of polluted air, after all. It was then that I remembered the fire I had left unattended and the drying concrete and my desire to have the deck completed by the end of the day. I retreated to the forest trail and returned to my various home improvement projects, leaving ghost houses to be concerns for another day.
I returned to the yard and checked on the fire. It had burned most of the way down and had not spread anywhere. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had already been on the bad side of responsible for burning this stuff to begin with; leaving a fire that large unattended was plain reckless. I pushed the remaining material together to keep it burning, the fire now much smaller and easier to maintain, and retrieved a shovel from the shed so that I could cover the coals with dirt later.
The concrete had long since hardened and all my posts had stayed level. I laid out and attached the support joists, then the deck itself. The work went smoothly and by dusk I had most of the decking in place. A couple hours at most in the morning and this project would be complete.
At this point I decided it was time to get ready for the evening. I had brought some camping gear—a cot and sleeping bag, several flashlights, a propane stove, a lantern, and other miscellaneous items. I unloaded the SUV and brought everything into the house. I assembled the cot and bedding and put the cooler in the kitchen. I placed the lantern and the stove out on my half-completed back porch and set about getting ready for my first night in my new home.
After a meal of hot dogs and ranch-style beans, I broke the seal on a fresh bottle of Maker’s and lit a cigar. I enjoy a cigar from time to time, finding that I usually don’t have time to finish one. So, I look for the peaceful moments where I can. I sat on the porch smoking and sipping the whiskey and watching squirrels play in the yard, when I saw lightning off in the distance. I pulled out my phone to check the weather. The app said there were storms in the area, but they should be gone by morning, so I should still be able to complete my projects the next day. I set the cigar aside and moved anything that I didn’t want wet into the house. I then called Becky and told her about all the things I’d accomplished. The first drops began to fall as Becky signed off and I stubbed out the cigar and took the Maker’s inside with me. I changed clothes and lay on the cot playing with my phone. Within just a few minutes, though, my eyes became heavy and I felt fatigue overtake me. I slipped into a thankfully dreamless sleep; cradled by sore muscles and the oncoming storm.
I awoke to the sound of water dripping. At first, I was confused and couldn’t figure out where I was. The house without power, the lack of street lamps, and a whisky buzz were not a comfortable combination. I found my pocket lantern and turned it on. The living room and kitchen were bathed in an ultra-bright pale white light. A light that, now that I think about it, is the same color and intensity they use in scary movies to amplify the dread effect. Drip. Drip. Drip.
I followed the sound to the kitchen. Drip. Drip. Drip.
I checked the ceiling for any discoloration then, finding nothing, decided it must be in the attic. The roof had leaked and was dripping onto the sheetrock. Not a good thing, but fixable. I got back into my bed and shut off the lantern, grumbling to myself about having to go into the attic to find the leak.
I woke up at dawn. It was dreary and grey, even a bit foggy from the storms. I rolled out of my cot, stretched, and found a bottle of water. Although I had only drunk two glasses of whisky, my head pounded and my throat was dry. I drained the first bottle and grabbed a second. I dug through my pack for the little bottle of aspirin I kept there and washed down three of them, finishing the second water bottle. I found my little percolator in my camping gear and went out onto the porch to start the fire on the camp stove, setting the kettle there to boil. In a few minutes I would have coffee and would be able to think straight.
Early morning mist hung over the yard and I took in the sight of my first true morning out in the sticks, my own place far from civilization where I could do my own thing. I went back in and slipped my boots on and wandered into the yard in my boxers. “This is freedom,” I imagined as I took a long hard piss against a tree. I looked all around me and saw nothing. I was nearly naked, pissing where I liked and there was nobody anywhere who could say a thing about it.
That’s when I heard the first grunts.
Startled, I pinched myself off and looked slowly over my shoulder. There in the yard between me and the house were about a dozen hogs snorting and rooting about. My blood turned to ice and images of a torn and half-eaten Guillermo Rivas sprung to mind as I also realized I’d left my gun inside with my pants. The largest of the hogs had tusks jutting out from its bottom jaw that I could only guess were between four and six inches long. Squeaks and grunts came from the bristly and nervous creatures. I stayed as still as I could, still facing the tree, looking back over my shoulder, watching the beasts nose around, sniffing, investigating. How long before they realized I was here?
I thought of Jason and of Becky and of this stupid idea we’d had. What business was it of ours to come out here and try to live like some sort of suburban pioneers? Nature had a name for creatures like us: extinct. The hogs rooted around and I realized as they spread that there would be no way for me to find shelter before one of them noticed me. I began to pray. I asked please God send something to distract the monsters. Please take them away. Oh God, please, don’t let me get torn apart like Rivas. I’d do anything. I’d be anything. Just please God, please.
Off in the distance there was a woman’s voice. “Hey! Hogs! You leave dat man be!”
The hogs all ran in different directions, their snorting mixed with squeals. They were maddened now and looking for a fight. They clustered in a group and ran off in the direction of the voice. I spun around, half expecting to feel a tusk in my belly for the effort, but the hogs were gone. I ran toward the side yard, then decided that whoever that was who called the hogs had helped me, but I couldn’t help her any standing in my underwear. I ran into the house and snatched up my pistol, then came out the front door.
The hogs were gathered around a girl who was feeding them by hand from a sack of oats and corn. The maniacal squeals had turned to satisfied grunts and the swine rubbed against one another and jockeyed for position to r
eceive the next handful. The girl was young, dark-skinned, maybe twenty-five years old. She wore an old-fashioned dress covered by an apron and her head was adorned with a wrap, like a scarf or a turban. She fed the hogs a few more handfuls of feed, then called to them, “Get on, now! Ain’t no pesterin’ our new neighbor. Go on! Git!”
And as one, the hogs ran across the dirt road and into the forest.
When the last of the beasts left her side, she looked up at me and smiled. “Well good morning, Monsieur” she said.
I was not sure what to think. Despite her strange dress, here before me was the most exquisitely beautiful creature I’d ever seen before. Her presence was absolutely spellbinding. In but a second, my fear of being mauled and ripped apart by animals gave way to an almost uncontrollable desire to impress this girl. I felt like I was twelve years old again standing on top of the monkey bars to impress Stephanie Walden, my junior high school crush. That had ended up with my arm in a cast and a lecture from my teachers and parents about not doing stupid things to impress girls. “Just talk to them,” they’d said. But at the end of it all, Stephanie had signed my cast with a heart over the “I” in her name so as far as I was concerned, it had been worth it.
I stood there staring for a moment before the girl said again, “Good morning sir.”
I shook myself out of the trance. “Uh, good morning. Um, thanks for helping with the hogs.”
“It’s not no thing,” she said, “Jus gotta know how to talk to them.”
I thought about the large herd and of Mr. Rivas and wondered if she was skilled or just lucky. “All the same, I appreciate it.”
“You’re fixin’ up Ole Mr. Johnson’s house.”
It was a statement, not a question. I looked back over my shoulder, “Yeah, I guess. For now. Planning to build a house further back, maybe, in the future.”
