Wallpaper on the walls had started peeling away in long, weeping strips. Clara started talking about the wonderful features, the hardwood floor that was underneath the linoleum, and how her brother-in-law could remove that wallpaper at hardly any cost at all. She went on with her selling points—and I was too polite to tell her that the sale had been made about a month ago, when I had first learned that the house was on the market—and I tried to calm down the memories that were coming at me. Over there had been a round kitchen table, I remembered that. To the right, the living room, where at night one could see the blue glow coming through the windows as Henry Lee watched his programs by himself. The living room was bare, save for a sickly yellow-looking shag rug that looked like a herd of baboons had urinated on it, and an old brick fireplace that had been swept clean, if years earlier.
Clara paused. “Would you like to go upstairs?”
Hell, no, is what I thought. “Why not?” is what I said.
* * *
About a week after the water-spraying incident, I remembered our little gang were sitting in a circle on a rise of land in Grandpa’s rear pasture, and Greg said, “Let’s go back to the warlock’s house.”
Penny started whimpering and said, “I’m going home now. No way I’m going back there.”
Even Sam and Tony didn’t seem too thrilled with the idea, but Greg being Greg said, “Anyone who doesn’t come is a chicken. C’mon.”
I remembered looking at Sam and Tony and standing up to say, “I ain’t no chicken,” then Sam and Tony suddenly recalled that they had to get home to help their dad with moving some firewood, so it was just me and Greg.
He trotted along the oil-covered dirt road until we came to the intersection where Henry Lee’s house was. It was early evening, right after dinner, and Greg said, “Look. He’s got the lights on again in his basement.”
Greg scampered across the street and I followed him, and like before, we crawled along the finely-mown grass until we reached the stone foundation. Greg whispered to me, “I’ll take the far window, you take the nearest one. We’ll spy for a while, okay?”
“Sure,” I whispered back, and I crawled closer and closer to the screen of the open window, knowing no matter what I saw, I sure as hell wouldn’t yell at Henry Lee. That had been dumb.
I got closer and closer and peered in, feeling my heartbeat bouncing off the ground that I was lying on. The light was strong and I blinked a few times, and then I had to bite my lower lip not to whimper. I looked down into the basement and could only see part of it, but I saw a long wooden worktable, with lots of brown bottles and small metal dishes. And tools. And old rags. Then Henry Lee limped into view, and he was naked. I saw his white skin and flab and scars, and his prosthetic leg, and I squirmed some, afraid I was going to pee myself. He was muttering something and he turned, and there were brown stains on his face and hairy chest.
Then he looked right up at me.
Right at me.
Stared. His lips curled back some, like an angry dog, but he didn’t say a word.
Just stared.
I knew I shouldn’t move, or do anything, but I couldn’t help myself. I slowly slid back until mercifully, Henry Lee and the inside of his basement went out of view. Greg slid over to me and said, “See anything?”
“No,” I lied. “I wanna go home.”
So we got off the lawn and trotted back, and then I remembered Greg saying, “Man, that’s strange. The warlock must be burnin’ something.”
I turned and from one of the chimneys, sparks and smoke were rising up into the night sky.
* * *
Upstairs wasn’t that upsetting, which pleased me. The rooms were empty and again, there was the peeling wallpaper, and more cracked linoleum on the floor. I remembered similar linoleum back at my grandparents, where they would put throw rugs down on the floor to make it easier to walk on in the winter, though in the summer, having cool linoleum on your feet felt so fine. Anyway, I was glad that whatever beds and other furniture had been up here had been taken away.
Despite Clara’s invitation, I refused to check out the upstairs bathroom.
And one more surprise. I looked to my eager real estate agent and said with a surprisingly strong voice, “Let’s go to the basement, all right?”
* * *
The summer dragged on, with that special delight that only happens when you’re young and out of school, with no real responsibilities or obligations. It was during one of the last weeks of August when it all fell apart, like one of those games you play with a deck of cards, trying to make a tower. You can make the tower, but it always falls down. That’s a given. Everything will eventually fall down.
It started out one dusk, as we were all sitting around in a circle again, except for Penny, who was out at some 4-H meeting. I don’t know how the talk started, but Sam was feeling frisky or something and started teasing me about being from Massachusetts. He said that his brothers all thought people from Massachusetts were soft, were losers, were real wimps who didn’t know how to drive, and who drank too much, and were sissies. Tony and even Greg chimed in, and I made the big mistake of saying something like, “Yeah, and who was the sissy who screamed like a girl when he got water splashed on him?”
So Tony and Sam and Greg started raising their voices, calling me names, calling me out, and I got mad, too, and Greg said, “You wanna prove you’re no sissy?”
“You bet,” I said. “I can do it.”
Greg looked pleased with himself, like he had caught me in something. “Then right now. You go up to the warlock’s house, to the porch, and you ring his doorbell. You do that, and then we’ll know you’re no sissy.”
I felt small and outnumbered and trapped, and I looked over at the lights of Grandpa’s farmhouse, where it was so very safe. I could walk back to that house right now and ignore it all, but the rest of the summer … I would be a sissy. That’s all. How could I come back next summer, with that insult stuck to me?
So sounding braver than I was, I said, “Sure, I’ll do that. And you can watch.”
Trying to get it done before I lost my nerve, I remembered I started running out of the pasture, up the dirt road to the warlock’s house, thinking all it would take would be to run up the porch, ring the bell, and then run back across the street, dive into some lilac bushes. That’s all. Then I wouldn’t be a sissy.
There. The house was right there. Lights were on upstairs, meaning that’s where Henry Lee—warlock or no warlock—was, so it would be simple to pull it off.
I looked back. The three boys were huddled together, watching. Greg stuck his hands in his ears, wiggled them, and with that, I trotted up the stone steps to the wide porch. The doorbell was right there, but I remembered feeling put off, to be shoved into doing something like this. So I turned around and wiggled my hands in my ears and stuck out my tongue at Greg and Sam and Tony, and when I turned to ring the doorbell and then safely run away, something grabbed my left shoulder.
* * *
The air coming up from the basement was cool and damp. Chickening out again, I let my enthusiastic real estate agent go ahead of me. The stairs were wooden and old, and creaked with every descending step. I followed her down, with each step the pressure on my chest increasing, like I was in some sort of submarine, going hundreds of feet down below the ocean. I had to duck my head at one point, and then I got to the bottom of the stairs, my legs actually trembling, and—
Nothing.
I looked around.
Well, not nothing, but there wasn’t much. The long wooden table I remembered from almost forty years ago was still there, but it was bare. No bottles, no tools. There were some old cans of paint on the cracked cement floor, but that was about it. Under the wooden stairs was a collection of firewood for the upstairs fireplace and a bag of kindling. There was a large pegboard on the other wall with rusty tools hanging from it. In one corner, there was an oil furnace and an oil tank. The posts that held up the floor, I found, were made from
tree trunks.
It was an old, old house. I touched one of the posts. It didn’t look haunted, down here, not a bit.
Clara was talking some more, and I was tuning her out as I bit my lip and looked around the basement that had haunted me for so many, many years. There were the rough stones of the foundation, the two screened windows that I now found myself looking out of—instead of looking in—and not much else.
“So,” Clara finally said. “Anything else you’d like to see?”
“Not really,” I said. “Why don’t we go upstairs and sign the papers? Make this a done deal.”
If she played for the other team, I’m sure Clara would have kissed me full on the lips, that’s how happy she was, but she just grinned, and we went upstairs. I took one more look at the basement, empty and sad-looking, and felt almost a bit disappointed.
Outside, the sun felt good and we stood on the porch. I wrote Clara a check and we did some paper passing, and when the formal paperwork was over, I was given the heavy key. She looked a bit sheepish and handed over my latest published novel, Blood On the Floor, which I signed for her daughter: “To Mona, all best wishes, Holly Morant.”
Standing there, I felt the craving for a cigarette pass through me and go away, and I thought that was a pretty good sign. I saw a couple of kids, listlessly pedaling their bicycles back and forth, back and forth on the pavement, and I said to Clara, “When I was younger and came here, the roads were dirt and covered with oil, but you know what? We could play in the fields and the woods and have lots of fun. Now, it’s all developments and such. Where else could those kids go?”
Clara zippered up her leather bag with practiced ease. “Nowhere else, that’s for sure.” She looked over to me. “What do you plan to do with your house now?”
“Take some time to let it sink in. Then call you again. Maybe your brother-in-law could start working on the interior.”
Oh, that cheered her up some, and when it came time for me to leave, she shyly asked, “Can I ask you one more question?”
Even though I knew the question that was coming, I decided to be polite. “Go ahead.”
“Where on earth do you get your ideas?” she asked. “I mean … from what I know … all your books are full of nasty things, and blood, and terror, and death…”
The craving for a cigarette roared right back at me, and I snapped off an answer. “Oh, I subscribe to an idea service out of Poughkeepsie, New York. For five dollars a week, they send me a postcard with an idea for a novel. It works really well.”
When I was done with those words, I regretted it, for I could tell by the color in Clara’s face and the pursing of her lips, I had hurt her feelings. I briefly touched her wrist and said, “That was a wise-ass answer. I’m sorry. Look, tell me the most expensive restaurant in Mullen, and I’ll buy you lunch. As thanks for putting this deal together.”
Her mood quickly changed, like snapping from the History Channel to the Lifetime Channel. We both walked down the stone steps, and when I got to the bottom, I just had to do it. I turned and looked back up at the door.
* * *
I remembered screaming when the hand grabbed my shoulder, and I tried to pull away and run free, but it didn’t work. Henry Lee Atkins dragged me off the porch and into his kitchen. I twisted around, his hand firm on my T-shirt, and he bellowed, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, sneaking up on my porch!”
I couldn’t catch my breath, I was so scared. I was in his kitchen and he had on stained khaki shorts, no shirt, and his flab was old and leathery and furrowed with scars. Up close, his prosthetic leg looked scary, like some metal and plastic insect had grabbed hold of his leg and was chewing him up. His face had gray stubble on his cheeks and chin, and I tried to pull free again, but his hand was too strong, wrapped up in my T-shirt.
He shook his hand, making me tremble. “Who the hell are you? Are you one of the local kids, or are you from away? Hunh? Tell me right now!”
I managed to take a deep breath by then, and stammered out, “I’m from away … I’m not local … I didn’t mean to come up on your porch…” and I started crying, and said, “Please … let me go … I’ll go away … please let me go…”
My tears and pleas seemed to make him happy, for he grinned and said, “You’re from away? Really? Then no one’s gonna miss you, will they…”
He pulled hard on the T-shirt, started dragging me across the linoleum floor. One of my Keds sneakers popped free from my right foot. I was screaming, twisting, crying, and with his free hand, he opened the door to his basement. “Nope,” he said, “no one ‘round here’s gonna miss you…”
I saw the open door and it looked so dark and scary down in the basement. Then I remembered feeling paralyzed and ashamed and suddenly warm and wet, as my terrified bladder let go and I peed all over his kitchen floor.
Another bellow. “You stupid little bitch, what the hell did you just do?”
Right then, his hand loosened, like he was disgusted at what I had just done. I pulled hard one more time, and the T-shirt tore. I broke free and raced out of the kitchen, throwing the door open, and still screaming, and with a torn shirt, one sneaker and soiled shorts, I made it out of Henry Lee’s yard and out into the darkness, where I wrongly thought I would finally be safe.
* * *
By our parked vehicles, I lit up a cigarette, and inhaled it, and didn’t toss it down. Clara paused and I said to her, “I apologize for what I said back there, about ideas. That was a rude thing of me to say. What I should have said is … ideas come from everywhere. They really do. A half-remembered conversation. A newspaper clipping from a year ago. Old memories, sometimes ones you don’t want even to think about. But those old memories, they hang out and make trouble, and sometimes, the only way you can tame them is to write about them.”
Clara still stood there, like I was suddenly speaking in Vulgate Latin, and I said, “Do you know what I mean?”
She seemed embarrassed. “No, not really.”
I took another satisfying drag from my cigarette. “That’s fine. Let’s go have lunch.”
* * *
Twelve hours later, here I was, back at my haunted house after spending some time at my motel room. I had pulled my rental car some into an open space among some nearby trees, so it wouldn’t be spotted, for I didn’t want anybody in the neighborhood to know I had come back. I walked quickly along the back yards and now I was on the porch, heavy key in my hand. I waited, the craving for a cigarette slumbering inside of me.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s do it.”
I unlocked the door and went inside. The kitchen flickered there before me, the now of a dusty room, lightly illuminated by a streetlight, and the then of a terrified nine-year-old girl, certain she was being dragged to the cellar, never to be seen again.
I took a deep breath. From inside my purse, I took out a small flashlight, switched it on. I went to the cellar door, opened it up, and went down a few steps, before I sat down on one of the wooden stairs. I slowly moved the small light around. Here is where it all began, I thought, where it all started. From the ghostly voices coming up here, to the time Greg thought he had been splashed by acid, to the night I saw a naked Henry Lee ambling about his basement, to that horrifying dusk when I had been captured, violated, almost dragged in here …
Damn. My knees were quivering. And for what? I’m no psychologist or psychiatrist, but from this house and this basement, I knew how it all came about. My two failed marriages, where I found it so hard to trust somebody, found it hard to enjoy the touch of another. To a life of being single, of being the kind daughter and the slightly nutty and spoiling aunt. To a writing career full of terrors that no doubt made my college instructors shudder at what they helped bring into the world, but which brought me financial security and fame.
I brought my legs up, hugged my knees, rocked back and forth.
And for what? Because of a brave little girl who had the bad luck to cross path with an old, c
ranky and one-legged vet, who probably just wanted to be left alone, and have a life of peace … and who was tormented and teased by the local kids. That’s all. No warlock. No evil. No badness.
Just an old guy who wanted to be left alone.
I looked around the basement again. It was now mine. Whatever my plans, whatever my desires to exorcise whatever ghosts or demons existed here by taking the place over and making it my own … it was beyond silly. It was now pathetic. I had a house I neither wanted nor desired, all to come back and face a demon that had never existed.
It was like being brought to the scariest place on earth, after years of wanting to face your deepest, darkest fears, and learning it had been entirely built and operated by the Walt Disney Corporation.
I wiped at my eyes. Felt sorry for the nine-year-old girl who had made a choice that had echoed over the years, that had ended up with this solitary woman, nearly ready to start her fifth decade alone.
I got up and went upstairs, looked to the kitchen and to the empty living room and its fireplace, and I started to walk out and—
Stopped.
Something was wrong.
Something wasn’t right.
Something didn’t make sense.
I turned again. One fireplace in the living room. Built right over the oil furnace in the basement.
But the house.… it had two chimneys.
Two.
I went back into the basement.
Breathing hard, hands shaking, I finally had to put the small flashlight in my mouth to keep the beam of light secure. I went to the other side of the basement, to the large pegboard. It took time, two broken fingernails, and a lot of cursing, but the pegboard finally swung open on hidden hinges. I flashed the light again to the interior, to the open woodstove, to a damp brick wall, to the—
The Malfeasance Occasional Page 14
