Sick House

by Jeff Strand

  * * *

  Their fries were covered with melted cheese and bacon bits, and this place had four different flavors of ketchup. The Gardner family was going to do well here.

  * * *

  Boyd and Adeline each gave Naomi a kiss on the cheek as they tucked her into bed. "Do you want us to leave the door open?" Adeline asked.

  "No, that's okay," said Naomi.

  "Really?"

  "I've got Gordon to protect me."

  The tarantula's aquarium rested on the dresser next to Naomi's bed. Paige had insisted that the aquarium be on the other side of the room, but now that Naomi had her own bedroom, she could keep it wherever she wanted.

  "And I'm sure he'll do a great job," said Adeline. "Let us know if you need anything."

  "I will."

  Adeline and Boyd left the room, shutting the door behind them.

  "Fuckin' spider," said Boyd in a whisper.

  "He's a perfectly good pet."

  "What's wrong with a gerbil? Or a lizard? Or even a hermit crab? Hermit crabs are miniature monsters; why not have one of those?"

  "She likes her tarantula."

  "I know she likes it, but why? I mean, even with something like a boa constrictor you could say that you enjoyed having it slither around your neck. A spider doesn't do anything for you except crawl around being scary."

  "Maybe she'll outgrow it."

  "Or maybe this is just the beginning. We'll have grandchildren who sleep in web cocoons."

  "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that we probably won't."

  "It better not get out," said Boyd.

  "It never has."

  "I will stomp that spider under my shoe if I ever see it running loose. You can explain to our daughter that Daddy murdered her pet."

  "You're not wearing shoes right now," said Adeline. "Would you stomp it with your bare feet?"

  "Don't even joke about that."

  "It might goosh up between your toes."

  "Funny."

  "What kind of sound would Gordon make? Do you think it's a soft squish or something more crunchy?"

  "This is why we have a daughter who talks about ball gags."

  "You knew the genetics when you married me."

  Boyd kissed her on the lips. "I assumed that my phobias would be off-limits."

  "I know where the red line in the air is."

  There was a cough from Naomi's bedroom.

  "She's well aware that you're going to pluck Gordon's legs off if he gets out of the aquarium," said Adeline. "He won't get out."

  "I'm not going to rip its legs off. I wouldn't torture it. I'd kill it quickly."

  Naomi coughed again.

  "You okay, sweetie?" Adeline called out.

  "Yes," Naomi said. Then she coughed some more.

  Adeline and Boyd walked back to her bedroom and opened the door. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing."

  "Is it the dust?"

  "Maybe." Naomi put her hand over her mouth and coughed.

  "Cough into your arm," said Adeline, reflexively, even though Naomi wouldn't be shaking hands with anybody to spread germs.

  Naomi coughed into her arm, more violently than before.

  "Do you want a glass of water?" Boyd asked.

  Naomi nodded. Boyd left the room. Then Naomi began coughing with such intensity—entire body shaking, tears pouring down her cheeks—that Adeline suddenly became genuinely worried.

  It was okay. Just a cough. Coughing meant she was breathing, so it wasn't as if she was choking or anything like that. There wasn't really anything she could do (you weren't actually supposed to pat somebody on the back when they were coughing) except put a reassuring hand on her knee.

  When Boyd returned, Naomi's coughing had subsided. She took the glass from him and drank most of the water in one swig. She belched and then took a couple of deep breaths.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "You don't have to be sorry. Are you okay?"

  "Yeah. I just coughed."

  "We need to get rid of the dust tomorrow," Adeline told Boyd.

  "They were supposed to vacuum out the air ducts before we got here. Maybe they didn't. We'll get it all taken care of."

  "I'm okay now," said Naomi.

  "I'm glad." Adeline kissed her on the forehead. "You gave us a little scare."

  They walked out of the room again. This time Adeline left the door open a crack.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Via text message, Jack claimed that they had indeed vacuumed the air ducts before their arrival. After about twenty minutes trying to figure out where the hell they'd packed the flashlight, Boyd peered into the duct and had to admit that there were no dust bunnies to be seen. Nor could he see dust in the air when he opened the shades in the living room.

  Naomi having a brief coughing fit didn't mean that the house was filled with particles, but still, they'd be sure to give the place a thorough dusting as part of today's work.

  The whole family was in a good mood as they unpacked and turned this house into a home. By the end of the day, as Boyd flopped onto the couch, he couldn't believe how much they'd accomplished. There was a lot left to do, but if they carried the unpacked boxes down into the basement, and didn't go into the kitchen or bathrooms, and ignored the bare walls, there was almost the illusion that they hadn't just moved in yesterday.

  By the end of the next day, it was really starting to feel like their home. Maybe it wouldn't if Adeline, Paige and Naomi weren't right there with him; Boyd still couldn't find anything, and he kept noticing little imperfections like nicks on the doors and paint specks on the floorboards. But they were there, and so it did.

  Now Boyd just had to hope that he liked his job.

  On Monday morning, he got up, took a long hot shower, and put on his slacks, dress shirt, and tie. This was not a slacks, dress shirt, or tie kind of job, but since it was his first day, he wanted to make a good impression on his employees.

  "I didn't know you knew how to tie a tie," said Adeline, putting her arms around him as he looked in the mirror.

  "Yep." Boyd did not know how to tie a tie. This was a zipper tie, which required no knowledge of Windsor knots or whatever the hell they were called.

  "You're going to do great."

  "I'm supposed to kick somebody's ass on the first day, right?"

  "You're thinking of prison."

  "Oh, yeah."

  "You'll do fine," Adeline assured him again.

  "You're acting like I'm really nervous about it."

  "Aren't you?"

  Boyd shook his head. "It's just a job."

  "All jobs are nerve-wracking on your first day. Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to make you nervous. If you're not nervous, that's great. You're good with people and you know your stuff. I'll stop talking now."

  The girls' school didn't start for a couple of weeks, so they'd spend the day working on the house with Adeline, but after today they'd be more or less released from their unpacking duties to enjoy what remained of the summer.

  "Whoa, Dad!" said Paige as Boyd and Adeline walked into the dining room. "I didn't know your new job was being a fashion model."

  "Thank you."

  "Do you have to wear that every day?"

  "Nope. Just making a good impression."

  "You sure will."

  Boyd couldn't decide if Paige was being genuine or sarcastic. He decided that she was being genuine and gave her a hug.

  Adeline took four bowls down from the cabinet and set them on the counter. Then she took out a box of cereal and some packets of oatmeal. "The breakfast buffet is ready," she announced.

  Boyd added raisins to his oatmeal because he was in a fancy mood, and the four of them sat down to eat. Naomi took an oversized bite of her cold cereal and scowled.

  "What's wrong?" Boyd asked.

  "It tastes gross."

  He leaned over and sniffed the bowl. "Oh, yeah, the milk has gone bad."

  "I just bought it," said Adeline. She
leaned over to sniff it as well, apparently in case Boyd and Naomi didn't know what sour milk smelled like. She got up and took the gallon jug out of the refrigerator. "This isn't even close to expired yet."

  "You think the refrigerator's broken?" Boyd asked.

  Adeline reached inside and felt some items from their meager selection. "Everything else is cold."

  "It could've gone out long enough to kill the milk and then turned on again."

  "Maybe." She picked up Naomi's bowl and poured the contents into the sink.

  "At least it wasn't chunky," said Paige.

  "Do you want some oatmeal?" Adeline asked Naomi.

  "Ew, no."

  "We don't have many choices, kiddo. I haven't done a big shopping trip yet."

  "Can I have toast?"

  "We don't have any jelly, just butter."

  "That's okay."

  Adeline rinsed the cereal bowl out thoroughly, then opened one of the cabinets and took out a loaf of bread. She removed a couple of pieces from the bag. "Aw, goddamn it."

  "What?" asked Boyd.

  Adeline held the pieces of bread up to him. There was a distinct streak of mold running along the sides.

  "Lovely."

  "The package says it's fresh through the 17th."

  Boyd shrugged. "So we went to a crappy grocery store. Better than finding out our refrigerator's broken."

  "I wonder if we should throw out everything we bought from them? If both the milk and the bread are bad, anything else could be, too."

  "That's probably a good idea. We'll get rid of everything that wasn't pre-packaged. I don't know about you, but I don't know what spoiled orange juice tastes like, so we should play it safe."

  "I'm going to get a refund," said Adeline.

  "Don't worry about it. We only bought enough to keep us going for a couple of days."

  "But they should know that they're selling rotten food."

  "However you want to handle it is fine with me," said Boyd. "I'm just saying that we're okay if we need to re-buy a few groceries."

  "You should make them drink the milk," said Paige.

  "Yeah," said Naomi.

  "It seemed like a perfectly good store," said Adeline. "This is pretty disappointing."

  "We're not living in the pioneer days where we have to ride two days in a horse-drawn carriage to get our rations for the winter," said Boyd. "It's not a big deal if the first grocery store we tried sucks."

  "Yeah, yeah, I know," said Adeline. "It's just frustrating."

  "Then maybe Paige is right. March back into the store, find the manager, and bash him over the head with the jug. Then jam a funnel into his mouth and pour every last blob of that milk in. Make sure the city of Kirkland knows that nobody sells Adeline Gardner bad milk."

  "I'd just planned to have them take a whiff, but your idea does have appeal."

  "No, what you should do is make a really delicious looking peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and bring it in and pretend that you're offering a gift because you had such a positive shopping experience. And then when the manager is chewing and realizes that something's not right, you scream 'I bought this bread from you! How do you like it, huh? How do you like it?' It'll be fun. Thanks to my new job, we can afford to post bail."

  "Dad's weird," said Naomi.

  "You're weird."

  "I know."

  "Anyway, I have to get going," said Boyd, pushing back his chair. "I hope all three of you have a nice productive day, and that when I come back this place looks like a royal palace."

  "We'll get right on that," said Adeline.

  "Don't work too hard."

  "You, either. No, wait..."

  * * *

  It was a pretty good first day as a supervisor. The new job was eight miles from home instead of the five that he was used to, but he didn't spend the whole commute stuck in traffic, so the drive was far less maddening.

  He was responsible for about a dozen employees, a number that would gradually increase over the next few months if everything went well. Boyd thought he'd made a solid connection with them, trying to give off sort of an "I'm here to be your boss and not your friend, but that doesn't mean we can't also be friends" vibe. He'd quickly identified a couple of slackers he'd have to watch more closely than the others, and also his achievement-seeking superstars. He could definitely work with this group of people.

  He even had his own office. Not a big office. Not a luxurious office. Not even an office with a door. Still, it made him feel like a bigwig. Boyd Gardner, VIP.

  After microwaving his lunch (he hadn't yet upgraded from the cheapest brand of frozen lasagna) he'd sat in his office and resisted the urge to lean back and put his feet up on his new desk. Maybe he'd do it after everybody else left for the day.

  He also had an apple and a can of root beer. He'd forgotten to put the can in the small refrigerator when he arrived here this morning, but that was okay. He didn't mind warm soda. He took the apple out of the brown paper sack and bit into it.

  It was kind of soft. Not soft like a peach, but definitely softer than a crisp, fresh apple should've been. Though it didn't taste bad, the inside was a light brownish color, like the apple had been sitting around for a couple of hours with a bite taken out of it. He looked around for his wastebasket then spat out the apple.

  Wow, that grocery store really did suck. Maybe they should go back and say, "Hey, everything you sold us was garbage." Clearly, there were issues with their food storage.

  He was surprised that Adeline had bought the apples in the first place. With milk, all you'd do is check the date; she obviously wouldn't break the seal on the jug and open it up to smell if it was spoiled or not. The bread had been in tinted plastic wrap that would've hidden the moldy parts unless you did a thorough inspection. But she'd purchased the apples individually, not in a bag, and she would've made sure to pick the best ones. She wouldn't have bought apples that were soft to the touch.

  It wasn't a big deal. Just a bit weird.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Before

  Maddox, Fletcher, and Heck sat in the car. They were several miles from the scene of the crime, and as far as Maddox could tell they'd completely gotten away with it. Normally this was when they'd be having a few celebratory drinks, or, if that didn't seem smart, going their own ways. Instead, they'd been sitting in the car for almost ten minutes, not speaking.

  Well, somebody had to break the silence. "Fuck," said Maddox.

  Nobody responded.

  It had gone exactly according to plan. Heck had popped the lock on the front door, and the three of them quietly went inside. The lady did indeed have a tiny yappy dog, but by the time it started barking, they were already in the bedroom. Maddox shut the dog in the closet while Fletcher and Heck held the woman down.

  And then they did what they'd been paid to do.

  It didn't bother Maddox how Heck had reacted. The guy was a psychopath. What bothered Maddox was how he had reacted. Yeah, he'd expected it to be a fun night, but he'd never imagined himself turning into a giggling, cackling madman.

  Seriously, what the hell was that? The three of them were like savages. Again, that was the whole point of the job, but Maddox had assumed that they'd just be playing the role. Hack her up, splash some blood around, figure out something "funny" to do with her corpse, and be done with it.

  They'd stayed in the house for almost two hours. Two hours! That was an insane risk. They should've been in there for ten minutes at the absolute most, but they simply didn't want to leave. They were having too much of a thrill behaving like lunatics who'd gone off their meds.

  Heck had indeed tried to drag the lady into a private room. When Maddox had told him to knock that shit off, it wasn't out of any sense of decency. It was because he didn't want Heck having fun without him. Maddox had done far worse things to her than he'd ever envisioned Heck doing, and he did them right out there in the open, with Heck and Fletcher watching and laughing and cheering him on.

  The
thing was, the whole time Maddox kept thinking about how he shouldn't be behaving like this, and the thought amused him, made it even more fun, like he was getting off on being oh so very naughty. He was like a little kid who says a bad word just because he knows it's not allowed.

  And then, when they were finished with the lady, when there was nothing more they could possibly do to her, Heck pointed to the closet where Maddox had put the dog and winked. Instead of punching him in the face, Maddox grinned and agreed that it was a fine way to keep the party going.

  When they were finally done, they'd left the house silently, but as soon as they were back in the car they'd started whooping and laughing like drunken college students on spring break.

  It took them a while to calm down. Fletcher was the first one to chill out, though since he was always the quiet one Maddox didn't really notice. The impact of what they'd done didn't hit him until they were stopped at a red light and he noticed a tuft of fur stuck in his shoelaces.

  It was dark in the car and he couldn't even really see his shoes, but it didn't matter if the fur was imaginary or not. Maddox felt like total garbage.

  They'd pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four hour diner and just sat there.

  "Did what we had to do," said Heck.

  "Not like that."

  "Exactly like that. This wasn't supposed to be a quick hit job. We knew what was going to happen." Heck looked pale, though it could've been the light.

  "Like that? That's how you envisioned it?"

  "More or less."

  "Bullshit."

  Heck sighed. "So it got out of control. There was the scent of blood in the air. Who cares if we went feral?"

  "I don't like that we took such a big risk. We weren't smart about this job. Not at all."

  "I agree with you. We got so caught up in what we were doing that we stopped being cautious. It could have bitten us on the ass. But it didn't."

  "You look like you're gonna throw up," said Maddox.

  "I have no regrets. I don't need you judging me."