The Perfect House

by Daia, Andreea

  “-dear?” someone said from far away. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes and yes. I’ll see your beautician. I think something around here is damaging my skin. Weird because I buy only the best stuff. I even asked a couple of contractors to double-check the house and the supplies. They assured me that everything is safe.”

  “You’re probably more sensitive,” Marvin chimed in. “How about you give us a tour, then we go out for lunch?”

  Lydia stretched her spine, trying to ignore the cramps that pestered her. Something in her body felt rusted. It had felt rusted for a few days now, though she couldn’t remember when it had started. “Yes, lunch break sounds like a great idea.”

  彡彡彡

  “There is nothing supernatural about this house,” Madame Astera, fortuneteller and psychic medium emerita, declared.

  Crestfallen, Lydia’s face beseeched the woman to change her conclusion. She had assembled this meeting specially for Tyler, in an attempt to persuade him that her house was special. Yet, now that the expert had spoken, Lydia realized that it had been her all along who had yearned to hear that verdict. “Are you sure? I mean, you didn’t take any measurements, like they do on TV.”

  Her fiancé tried to massage the tension out of his neck, feeble hope considering his frown. He opened his mouth to say something, but Madame Astera interrupted him. “I don’t need to dress like a clown and parade some measuring stick to be a medium. I am one. This means that I feel the emotions, which surround places and people. Well, this house is bursting with love. If there is something unusual about this place, it’s the amount of love that radiates from it.”

  “Which makes it non-supernatural?” Lydia grumbled, reaching for a croissant, then pushing it away.

  “If you were a happy spirit from across the veil, would you willingly cross over to this hell? All supernatural beings we encounter in this world are depressed, dislodged, or angry spirits. Forget the children stories about angels and protectors. The only ones who ever come here are the criminals from the other side.”

  “Even I refuse to believe that,” Tyler countered, eliciting a grateful look from Lydia.

  “All right,” Madame Astera conceded, taking a bite of her own croissant. “Maybe there are exceptions every millennium or so, when a good spirit gets lost in this world. I’ve never felt one, nor have I heard of anyone reliable who mentioned one. To all who’ve really felt it, supernatural means hatred, fear, or anger. This house of yours is a temple of love. Your love, Ms. Jordan. I feel it all around me. And whatever you hope to hear, I don’t think your house hosts some straggled angel. Because all supern-”

  “Thank you, Madame Astera,” Lydia interrupted her explanation. “That was very enlightening. The check is in the entrance hall. Take it on your way out.”

  The medium flashed the exasperated look of a grandmother, whose favorite grandchild just blundered an easy task. “I don’t need your money, Ms. Jordan. Before I leave, let me ask you something. Other than the dreams, had there been anything else that made you believe your house is haunted?”

  Lydia touched the edges of her eyes, where fresh wrinkles had ensconced in her skin. “The graffiti… When I bought the house, someone had painted on every wall ‘Die.’ Also…” Tyler gasped, but Lydia refused to make eye contact. “Then one day, the inscriptions scrambled into…” She hesitated until her fiancé whispered “Honey?”

  “The new inscription said ‘Run.’ ”

  Tyler stretched to hug her, shaking his head. “Did you wear a face mask, honey? If you inhaled some of the old paint, that could explain the hallucinations.”

  “They weren’t hallucinations,” Lydia yelled, reaching for the closest object and hurling it into the wall. “Out! Both of you, out. You can tell all your obnoxious friends that the wedding is cancelled. Don’t ever speak to me again. Out! Get the hell out of my house.”

  彡彡彡

  Lydia shuffled behind the curtain. In the dark, no one could peek at her from the outside, neither her parents, nor Tyler, nor Madame Astera. Four months had passed by since that accursed meeting with the medium, during which all who fancied themselves loved ones had taken turns at harassing her. Why didn’t they understand that she didn’t want to leave her house? That she didn’t want to see them? If not for them, she would have almost forgotten the outside world. Drowning her sorrow in work, she had moved, painted, selected, and discarded, completing the renovations in record time.

  The house was done. Her house. Her beloved perfect house.

  Only Tavia and Marvin had been permitted to visit her now and then—until she had ended their interference as well. Today though, Lydia wished they were the ones skulking in the yard. Alas, it was Tyler again, proclaiming his love and reiterating his support with loud declarations yelled from the front yard. If she were honest to herself, she ached for his touch, for his care. But it had been his jealousy that had ruined everything. His insane jealousy on a house. How deranged is that!

  She staggered away from the window, her legs too frail to scamper. The mirror in the corner tried to break the resolve of her decision, before she averted her eyes. It was worth it. Everything was worth it. Tyler, the job, her parents, her…

  She couldn’t complete the thought and for several moments her eyes dashed back towards the mirror. The woman who stared back at her whispered “It was worth it. You have the perfect house.”

  “You bet,” Lydia gurgled back, her heart brimming with delight. Under her fingers, the construction had metamorphosed into an architectonic and interior-design wonder. Even she admitted that the transformation seemed a bit too impressive. It was as if the return on her investment had been not only three hundred percent, but three thousand percent.

  A commotion, coming from outside, forced Lydia to wiggle back to the window. She squeezed her eyes, trying to focus on the blurred image. “Are those Tavia and Marvin? What are they doing here, talking to the Police?”

  The salvage dance of the red and blue lights filled her field of view with black spots. The flashers blinded her and the sirens deafened her, scattering her thoughts away. Recently she had been so exhausted that sometimes she found difficult to focus on any idea longer than a few moments.

  Her head bobbed up and down, the neck too weak to support its weight. Through the haze of fatigue and bi-color beams, she distinguished a shape arguing with the police officers. “Is that… Tyler? Is he fighting with Tavia?”

  For a reason she couldn’t explain, fear crawled inside her, bringing with it the musty smell of sweat. ‘RUN’ the inscriptions had said. No! The writer had lied. Whoever had vandalized her house had to have lied. Still, now when she wanted to run, her legs refused to budge. Cold crept up her fingers, arms, torso, then down her spine. She shivered and turned away, whatever energy she had left fighting to uproot her feet.

  All around her, the house exuded joy. That fact was certain—she noticed it in the excitement of the decorative ceiling fan, in the brightening of the paint color, in the speeding of the water wall, even in the aroused frolic of the sparks inside the fireplace. Above all, she could feel it.

  The house was happy.

  “This is the State Police,” a megaphone-altered voice boomed. “You are trespassing on private property. Get out of the house with your hands where we can see them.”

  Behind the curtains Lydia swayed, incapable to decipher the meaning of the words. The voice from over the speaker crippled whatever strength she still retained. Her mind tried to analyze the situation, but none of the possibilities made any sense.

  “I repeat. We have received complaints of squatting. Exit the house with your hands where we can see them.”

  Lydia’s pulse drummed in her ears. “What are you talking about?” she mumbled. “I own this house. I salvaged and restored it.” With trembling fingers she tried to steady herself. Yet, before she could cling to the table, the house spun around her and the world ceased to exist.

  彡彡彡

  “… sh
e sick?”

  Heavy steps trampled towards her, their vibrations reverberating through her skull and hurting her brain. A buzz of voices droned on, mingled with a smell of gasoline and aftershave.

  “…Sarge…”

  “… emergency vehicles…”

  “… your name?”

  Something in that last question breached the barrier of her dizziness. What’s going on? she thought, trying to ascend back to consciousness.

  “Ma'am, can you recall your name?”

  Fear parched her mouth, her first attempt to communication only an inarticulate babble.

  “She’s coming back, Sarge,” a young voice said, a woman probably, although Lydia couldn't bet on it.

  “Good. Let’s clean up this mess. My wife’s made chicken marinara. I’ll rot in the dog house, if I’m late for dinner again.”

  “Can—you—tell—us—your—name—ma'am?” the young officer enunciated, loud enough to propel Lydia into a downward spirals of headache.

  “Lydia… Jordan…”

  “Oh, boy. This is going to be a long night,” the Sarge groaned. “Pack her up and off you go to the station. I’ll be right behind you. I need to call my wife first.”

  Someone rolled a wheelchair next to Lydia and strong hands hoisted her in. The dizzying play of colors sharpened into a more manageable swirl of flashing lights. Voices surged all around her, as the chair-driver wheeled her outside. She blanked out all noises, her only concern to solve the puzzle of the Police statements.

  A shrill pierced the air and someone jumped in front of her. Angry hands shook her shoulders. “What have you done to my fiancée? Where is she?”

  Tyler.

  Lydia gaped at him, incapable to grasp the meaning of the question. “I’m right here, sweetie.”

  “Don’t you dare call me that! She used to call me sweetie. Where is she? What have you done to her? This is her house!” He yelled on and on the same questions, despair dripping from every word.

  “That’s enough, sir. We are doing our best to get to the bottom of this story. Now, I’m asking you to please step aside.”

  Tyler’s questions turned to pleas, then the pleas turned to sobs. Someone rolled Lydia’s chair ahead, until the side window of a cruiser appeared in front of her. Even to her failing eyes, the reflection of her house loomed clearly visible.

  The building glowed, as if it had just received a fresh polish.

  It looks… young, Lydia thought. Her eyes drifted to her own reflection. The spitting image of her great-grandmother frowned at her.

  “It was all worth it,” Lydia tried to argue.

  The reflection lifted her hand—an age-spotted hand almost devoid of any flesh. Under the blow, the cruiser window shuttered to a thousand pieces. The memory of the warning returned to her, clearer than any other reminiscence. ‘RUN!’ it had urged her.