‘But what purpose could there be in making the house look old?’
‘So that it could squat.’ Burke stuck his chin out, confident in his deductions. ‘It is an elaborate ruse perpetrated to elude zoning restrictions and building codes. And I won’t allow it!’
Burke crossed the lawn in long, purposeful strides.
Middy trailed behind. ‘I—I’ve never met the owner. Actually, I’ve never seen her,’ he called after Burke. ‘But I got one of her magazines by mistake—Children’s Digest—though I haven’t seen any kids—and it was addressed to ‘Barbara Gay’. Or I think it was supposed to be ‘Barbara Gay’ but they got the name wrong on the label.’
Middy rushed forward to catch up with Burke, accidentally jostling him when the other man stopped short.
‘Careful!’ Burke reprimanded Middy.
Middy saw what had caused Burke to come to such an abrupt halt. He had never been this close to the house before; what he had taken to be a fence of thin, white pickets surrounding the porch he now saw to be something else entirely. ‘Are—are those—’
‘Bones,’ confirmed Burke.
Three seconds of silence passed between the men until Middy gasped, as though he’d forgotten to do it right away.
The fence indeed appeared to be constructed from large bones; the bottoms of the vertical rungs were filed down to points so that they stuck into the wood of the porch; the tops met with crossbar bones at ‘joints’ fastened together with cord which was covered with a ruddy-coloured thick shellac.
‘We have to call the cops!’ Middy squeaked.
Burke bristled; he was a city official, too, and felt quite capable of handling any situation without unduly engaging other agencies. ‘There’s no code specifically prohibiting the use of animal matter in decorative building materials. Though you could collect signatures to petition for “eyesore” status—’
‘You don’t think they’re human?’
Burke rolled his eyes and stepped to the door by way of reply. He gave the door five sharp raps, evenly spaced.
After ten seconds of silence, he repeated the knock.
A faint shuffling could be heard inside the narrow house. A shadow shifted inside, barely visible through the thick, primitive glass. The latch turned and the door creaked open slowly. A face emerged from the interior gloom.
The woman’s features were so aptly defined that the doubtful phrase which snapped into Burke’s mind was exactly the same as the one Middy proclaimed, ‘A wizened crone!’
The shrivelled hag’s look of hate seemed unamplified by the insult. ‘Who sent you?’ she hissed in a thick Slavic accent.
‘Ma’am, I represent the interests of the City as an agent of the Department of Development, Building Services Division.’
There was a sort of loathsome anticipation in the smile that crept across the woman’s face. Middy shook visibly and whined.
Burke bristled at the unseemly gesture. He felt compelled to disassociate himself from his companion, and did so with the statement, ‘But I assure you, I came of my own free will.’
The words seemed to have a dramatic impact on the woman. She cried out and put her shrivelled hands in front of her face. Burke was momentarily disoriented by what he took to be a peculiar effect of the dim lighting and the woman’s floor length dress; she appeared to slide quickly away from the threshold.
‘Ma’am, are you the owner of this residence?’
The woman wheezed and steadied herself against a crude, wooden counter. ‘Yes,’ came her hoarse reply.
Burke continued his inquisition. ‘How long have you lived in this house?’
‘Ah!’ the woman cried out and waved her hand in front of her face. ‘All my life!’
‘She doesn’t look too good,’ Middy observed from just inside the door. ‘You OK, miss? Is it Barbara?’ The woman swayed into the light as though dizzy. Middy thought that her wrinkles looked deeper and her hair whiter and more brittle than when she met Burke at the door.
‘No!’ she hissed. ‘And I’m fine! Stop asking of the questions! You both leave me alone now! I want only that I live in quiet neighbourhood for retiring!’
Burke was as eager as any to depart the unruly scene, but he wasn’t going to leave until he was satisfied the situation was resolved. That the woman seemed pained and seemed to visibly shrink at each question put to her elicited no mercy from the official. He narrowed his wit and cut to the crux of the matter, ‘Ma’am,’ he drawled, ‘how long has this house been on this street?’
‘Ah! Not long!’ She glared at the intruders and amended, ‘Too long!’
She turned and grabbed something from the counter behind her.
‘Hands! Hands! You help now! I command!’
The old woman turned back to the bewildered men. She held before her two hands, one in each of her own, held at the base of their severed wrists.
‘Show the door!’ the woman shouted.
She let go of the hands. To the amazement of the two men, the hands hovered in mid-air. Their index fingers stretched and pointed. They began to float forward—and then promptly dropped to the floor with two dull claps.
‘Aiee!’ The woman slapped her palm on her head, and barked several curses in a foreign language.
‘Are those real?’ Middy asked in astonishment.
‘Bah! What is real? Ah, you kill me with questions! Enough! Out! Out!’
Burke, angry at what he took to be a parlour trick performed in bad taste, regained his composure. ‘Now see here, ma’am—’
The woman grabbed a decrepit straw broom from out of the corner and began sweeping at the feet of the two men as forcefully as her trembling arms would allow.
‘You want house gone, eh? House go, then!’
The men felt the floor tremble. The whole house seemed to shake and the floor began to pitch. Grabbing at each other and stumbling, Burke and Middy hurried frantically out of the door. As they emerged, they were shocked to see the horizon lowering. They soon realised that it was, in fact, the house that was rising up, creaking and groaning with the effort. The men jumped from the meagre porch, landing in a heap on the lawn. They scrambled several yards forward before rolling over and looking back. The house continued to rise, twenty feet in the air. The act was shocking, the mechanism was unbelievable: Two giant chicken legs extended from the base of the house, elevating the structure as they straightened. The house wobbled as the legs indelicately shuffled and turned to face away from the men. Then the house pitched forward as the legs quickly cantered away more quietly than either man would have expected (if they could have thought what to expect from the situation). The house turned down the next street. Burke and Middy watched the roof bob in and out of view between houses for several seconds more before it disappeared from view.
The men sat on the lawn, breathing hard but not speaking. They looked at each other, but still found no appropriate remark. Finally, Burke leaned forward and got his legs underneath him to rise.
Suddenly a huge talon hit him square in the back and slammed him to the ground. Middy screamed. Burke moaned as the claw squeezed the air out of him and the points dug through his suit-jacket. Middy sat frozen with fear as the shadow of the house passed over them. Burke jerked into the air, still caught in the clutch of the talon. The house teetered unsteadily as it hurried away, one foot clumsily rolling every time it came down on the limp form of the city official.
Middy made several phone calls and two trips to city hall in an effort to have Burke given a posthumous commendation for his dedication to his job and his sacrifice in the line of duty, but eventually had to give up the effort in the face of overwhelming indifference and an impenetrable bureaucratic process. He had to content himself with occasionally thinking of Burke when he stood at the window and looked out with satisfaction across the mixed fescue-and-bluegrass sod to his neighbour’s new-built, split-level, brick-veneer-and-vinyl-sided home.
The Mauve Blot
Lyta pulled off the asp
halt road onto the short, gravel path that led up to the lake house just as May 2nd became May 3rd. The house was completely dark; Lyta had hoped the attorney might have put the porch light on when he left the house key. Lyta panicked momentarily at the thought that maybe the attorney hadn’t been around to leave the key, but she quickly reassured herself that they had spoken only hours before and that she had been emphatic in telling him that they planned to take possession that night. Lyta excused herself the worry; there had been enough drama in her recent life and the tension of planning and executing her great escape had taken its toll. And after a thirteen-hour drive with frightened, crying children full of questions, Lyta was exhausted, she was hungry, she felt grimy, she needed to pee, but she had children in the minivan with her, and they came first. David, ten, and Missy, seven, were asleep right now and Lyta briefly considered whether it might be better to just leave them in the car until they woke up on their own, or at least leave them until she’d had a chance to look around, or, hell, at least go to the bathroom. But she hated to think of one or the both of them waking up in a strange place, abandoned by their mother, after already having been taken from their father.
Lyta let out a low, sardonic chuckle and muttered, ‘Get used to it,’ but she wasn’t sure if she was talking to them or to herself.
‘Hey, guys,’ Lyta said a little louder. She stretched out her arm and touched David lightly on the shoulder then looked in the rear-view mirror at the back seat. ‘Missy,’ she called. ‘Missy.’ Missy began to rub her eyes and straightened herself up from the mass of clothing she was leaning against. Lyta gave David’s shoulder a gentle shake. He moaned in protest. ‘Come on, little fella. We’re here.’
David pushed himself away from the window and glared at his mother. Lyta wasn’t sure if the hostility came from being woken, or because of what she’d done, or if it was just because she’d called him ‘little fella’ for the first time in a year. David’s inscrutable eyes peeked out from under unmanaged auburn bangs; he’d need a haircut again soon, and that would be another fight. Rather than try to parse the meaning of David’s look, Lyta opened her door and got out.
By the time she came around to the sliding door to let Missy out, David was standing in the driveway and staring at the house.
‘Gloomy,’ he opined, which was hardly the word Lyta expected.
‘It’s dark. Wait’ll daylight.’
Missy took one hand away from rubbing her eyes to let Lyta help her down to the ground. She kept holding her mother’s hand. Missy didn’t have any opinion of the house; she looked positively bewildered, and made sure not to let go of her mother’s hand as they walked up the drive.
‘Should we get our things?’ David sounded almost as if he thought they might just turn around and drive the thirteen hours back the way they’d came.
‘Leave it for now. Let’s get inside and look around.’
The house was in the Dutch Colonial Revival style; Lyta thought it had been built after 1910 as it lacked the ostentatious design elements of that style’s early period. Rough shingle siding gave the house an inviting antiquated feel, and the long shed dormer sticking out from the gambrel roof promised a playful space upstairs she hoped the children might enjoy. They stepped onto the quaintly columned porch beneath the flared eaves of the roof. Lyta saw that one corner of the welcome mat was unsubtly folded over. She kneeled down and lifted the mat to one side, sending a centipede scurrying to a crack in the concrete.
‘Yuck!’ Missy hid her face in her mother’s shoulder.
‘Yuck, indeed.’ Lyta picked up the revealed key and straightened. ‘Ready?’
Lyta had often wondered if she had learned that Jack enjoyed gambling during their relationship and then discovered that Jack was a gambling addict during their marriage or if Jack had simply enjoyed gambling earlier on and became an addict after they’d married. The timeline didn’t matter so much as the end result, but Lyta found it useful in building her anger against her husband by believing that she’d always been a dupe, and he’d always been a snake. This way, his self-destruction was a form of neglect visited upon his family with full knowledge of the consequence—if he’d known what his addiction might cost them, he had no excuse for marrying her and fathering children. She thought, but didn’t he love her? No, not the way she loved him: she changed her behaviour to endure the problems brought on by the behaviour he would never change. She knew she was his enabler; Lyta could never resist Jack. He was always so desperately earnest whenever he promised to change; he would tell her how he held her in such high esteem and that he looked to her for salvation. And when he had eased some of the tension and Lyta began to listen again, he could charm her so well that he’d have her laughing at her own anger. In no time at all, he’d have her back in bed, and when she was in bed with Jack, Lyta’s worries would disappear and she was sure that this time he would change. Then Jack would disappear again, and more of their (well, her) money would disappear with him. The cycle went unbroken, even as their financial situation deteriorated beyond endurance, even as Lyta’s anger and anxiety grew, because she could not stay angry when the object of her anger was there to erase it.
Then her Aunt Sally died. Lyta hadn’t spoken to Sally in several years; they exchanged Christmas cards every year, but that was the extent of their communication. But Sally always thought well of Lyta, and Lyta always included fond remembrances of her aunt from her childhood in with her annual family update, so that when Sally had made up her will, she had decided to leave the lake house to her favourite niece. Sally herself hadn’t lived in the lake house for years—her own financial shortcomings (Sally often referred to the house as ‘my folly’) and the need for assisted living forced her to stay in Syracuse; she’d let out the house for the past decade. Sally’s insurance paid her funeral expenses, and a few meagre possessions and savings bonds went to the other, scattered nieces and nephews, none of whom could make it to the service. As they’d never met Aunt Sally, Jack and the kids stayed home, so Lyta found herself alone at the reading of the will when she discovered her inheritance. Immediately upon hearing the news, something clicked in Lyta’s head: she must not tell Jack. And that little click signalled the beginning of her new life; all that was needed was some planning—Lyta had no doubt that Jack would inspire her to go through with the plan as well as provide the opportunity to do so in no time at all.
Lyta opened the door and pawed along the wall, searching for a light switch. The first she found lit the porch. She felt Missy flinch at the sudden illumination. Lyta found two switches next to the first and flicked them up, lighting the interior. Thankfully, Sally had let the house furnished and the contents therein were stipulated to be part of Lyta’s inheritance. The furnishings were adequate and in decent repair, even if unspectacular and outdated. Lyta thought she’d have to refurnish even to show the house if she decided to sell, but she filed that away as a concern for the future. She looked over the hardwood floors approvingly and was glad to see the high-traffic areas covered with large, oval rugs, even if the rugs themselves were dilapidated. Missy let go of Lyta’s hand, walked purposefully through the entry hall and into the living room to an easy chair, and plopped down, releasing a small puff of dust. She giggled and waved her hands in front of her face. David eased around his mother and looked up the darkened stairs. Lyta found another switch and the light above the landing at the top flared to life.
She could sense David’s curiosity overcoming his trepidation and decided to use it to her advantage. ‘Why don’t you have a look upstairs?’
David looked around at his mother for confirmation; she nodded and he ascended cautiously.
Lyta watched as every other light downstairs came on, one after the other in the wake of a flurry of giggles and golden curls.
‘There’s nothing in the ’frigerator!’ came the call from the kitchen.
Well, thank God for that, Lyta thought. The idea of someone else’s leftovers did not sound appealing. Overall, Lyta was quit
e satisfied with the condition in which the renter had left things, though she surmised that the lawyer might have had someone out to touch up before she took occupancy.
‘Mom!’ The complaint carried down the stairs.
Lyta had been apprised of the layout and the current sleeping arrangements. She smiled at the very normal reaction from her son.
‘You’ll have to share a room just for a day or so,’ she called up. ‘Then we’ll get things the way we want them.’
The downstairs activity had stopped and again Lyta could guess why. She went to the back of the house and found Missy with her face pressed against the sliding glass door, looking out at the deck, the gentle slope of the back yard, and the path winding past the maple, the peeling birch and the two blue spruce, on down to the lake.
‘Pretty, huh?’
‘Yeaahhh,’ Missy replied absently.
‘That’s for tomorrow,’ her mother said. Lyta turned off the exterior light, plunging the back yard into darkness, leaving mother and daughter to look at their reflections in the glass.
To Lyta’s pleasant surprise, her children succumbed to sleep more quickly than expected, and with minimal further complaint about having to share the room for the evening. Lyta guessed that, despite their protests, their mutual companionship gave them some sense of security, in contrast to their sudden uprooting. Lyta lay in bed, in the dark, wishing she had a cigarette. She hadn’t smoked regularly since she became pregnant with David over a decade ago, but damned if now wouldn’t be a good time for one of those secret treats, those little, sinful rewards she occasionally allowed herself in return for maintaining a larger discipline. Lyta sighed, knowing that none was available to her at the moment; for all her planning, she hadn’t expected that to be the denouement to her exodus.
It’s three hours earlier in Vegas, Lyta thought. Jack might not have even lost all his money yet. But soon, she knew, soon he’d attempt a cash withdrawal from one of her credit cards, first the one that he’d asked her to lend him, then the other he didn’t know that she knew he’d taken. Would he even suspect something was wrong when both cards were declined? Or would he simply dismiss the inconvenience to be addressed later, focusing instead on finding an immediate revenue source to continue his binge? Would he once again beg for a line of credit? Lyta knew that no casino in Vegas would extend one to him. He might even try to sell his return ticket, counting on Lyta to pay his way home. She cringed to think what sort of unofficial game he might find himself in if he was desperate enough, and the violent consequences that might ensue from him losing more. But what more was there to lose? He should know already that he’d lost everything. Would he be surprised to see the realtor’s sign outside of their (her) house when he finally found his way home? Lyta tried not to think of the look on Jack’s face when the process server knocked on the door and handed him the divorce papers. Though she wanted to think with satisfaction of the pain he’d have to endure, the humiliation, the abandonment, she knew if she thought too hard about it, she would see his face just as it might be, and she would lose her resolve. Lyta sniffled and choked back a sob. God, but she wanted him to suffer—as long as it didn’t hurt too much.
Black Horse and Other Strange Stories Page 12
