No Doors, No Windows

by Joe Schreiber

  The old man moved his eyes back and forth instead of shaking his head. He was pretending to watch TV, the way he sometimes did when he was upset, so he wouldn’t have to look at her. Sonia guessed he was embarrassed that Scott had seen him like this—he didn’t like unexpected visitors seeing him on the couch, hooked to his oxygen. Most days he didn’t even open the shop. The tourist trade was dried up, and few of the regulars came by anymore. It was too awkward.

  “I won’t be gone long,” she said. “I left spaghetti and meatballs on the stove if you get hungry.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “And there’s some French bread in the oven.”

  Earl picked up the remote and changed the channel with a murmur of appreciation. “Look at that, will you? Ava Gardner in The Killers. Look at that and tell me Frank Sinatra wasn’t one lucky son of a bitch.”

  “I’ve got my cell phone.”

  He gave her a sidelong glance. “You still here?”

  She kissed his cheek and walked toward the back of the house.

  “Kiddo?”

  Sonia looked back. “What?”

  “Your friend out there—tell ’im three.”

  “Three?”

  “Golf balls on the moon.”

  EVERYTHING OKAY? Scott asked, out in the car.

  Sonia just nodded. There was silence in the car as they drove away from Earl’s junk shop. It was beginning to snow, individual white flurries swirling down, sticking to the windshield and blowing off. Finally Scott said, “Do they know how long he has?”

  “Months,” she said. “Probably no more than a year.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You know that line from Frost,” Sonia said, “‘the slow smokeless burning of decay’? That’s how it feels. Hurts like hell, but I’m glad I can be here for him.” She took in a deep breath and released it, wanting to change the subject. After eighteen years apart, she didn’t feel as though she knew him well enough anymore to go into it any further. “So the book’s going well?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah.”

  “You know where it’s headed?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” he said. “I know that it’s got to center around the house and how it fits into the history of what happened there.”

  “What did happen there?” Sonia asked. “In the story, I mean?” “I haven’t figured it out yet.”

  “You think your father knew?”

  “I guess,” Scott said. “I mean, he must have, right?”

  “And you’re on the same track that he was?”

  “I hope so. I keep telling myself it’s helpful to be in the house. If nothing else, the atmospherics can’t hurt.”

  “Right. Well, I guess places can be funny like that.”

  He looked at her.

  “Funny how?”

  Sonia glanced over, uncertain whether he was curious or just making conversation. He actually seemed interested, so she thought back, trying to remember the theory that her father had described to her, what, four or five years ago? It had appeared on one of those ghost-hunter shows on the Discovery Channel. “This scientist was explaining how certain old places, for whatever reason, can generate a kind of field around them, the way high-tension wires create electromagnetic fields. Anyway, he said that sometimes if these places are around long enough, certain intense emotional states—anger, grief, loneliness—can get imprinted there, like a scratch in a record, playing over and over again.”

  Scott nodded. “A scratch on a record, huh? That’s not bad.”

  Sonia saw him turning it over in his mind as a possibility, not for application in his life but maybe as something he could include in his novel to make it work.

  “Have you … experienced anything like that?” she asked.

  “In that house?” He shook his head. “No. Although …”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  She felt him going quiet, inhaling whatever he’d been about to confide, and wondered if she was supposed to chase after it. Scott had never been coy that way, though; if he wanted her to know something, he just said it, and she sensed whatever reluctance he felt was probably justified.

  They arrived at his father’s old house and got out. Henry stood waiting in the driveway with a flashlight. Sonia watched Scott’s mood lift at the sight of his nephew. It still freaked her out a little how easily she could read his moods after all these years, without even trying.

  Scott hugged the kid, picked him up. “Hi, Henry. What’s up?”

  “Catching snowflakes on my tongue.”

  “How are they?” Sonia asked.

  “Not big enough to fill me up,” Henry said. “Are we going out for pizza?”

  “Whatever you want.” Scott glanced at the front door. “Where’s your dad?”

  In the glow of the flashlight, Henry’s smile faded a little and then withered away completely. From across the lawn came the faint but distinct sound of glass breaking inside the old toolshed, a pop, a smash, a tinkle. Sonia heard a voice that she immediately identified as Owen’s. It was followed by a louder crash, and the boy shuddered. In the fading daylight, it sounded like the noise of a wounded dog.

  “Wait here,” Scott said. “I’ll be right back.”

  HE FOLLOWED THE FLASHLIGHT BEAM across the yard through snow-veiled heaps of dead leaves, over to the shed where the baseball had landed. In the darkness, the landscape felt lifeless, as barren as tundra.

  In front of him, the noises inside the shed grew louder, rusty objects clanging together like old tools in a bucket. As he approached the entrance, he could hear Owen muttering under his breath, a succession of muffled curses and threats punctuated by a resonating explosion of loose metal. It was strange hearing his brother talking like this, talking to no one; the broken, start-and-stop cadence of Owen’s speech made it sound as if he were actually carrying on a conversation with some voice that he alone could hear.

  “Hey, man.” The door had been torn off its hinges, and Scott stepped over it, into the shadows. “What’s—”

  The words broke off in his throat. All around him, illuminated by the flashlight, the shed stood in ruins, crates overturned, farm tools scattered, bags of fertilizer and grass seed spilled across the floor. In the middle of it, Owen stood squinting at him blearily, shoulders rising and falling with the force of every breath. A galaxy of empty beer bottles, many broken, lay at his feet, and there was a wild slash of dried vomit cutting almost diagonally across his shirt, as if he’d thrown up while running or spinning around. In the confined air of the shed, the stink of stale beer came rolling off him in waves, no longer the smell of a brewery but more of rancid, rotting yeast.

  “Don’t you knock?”

  “What, on that?” Scott looked at the torn-off door lying on the bare concrete. He made his way forward, stepping over a shattered jar that looked as if it had contained about a thousand nails, some of them old enough to have crucified Christ. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Mind your own goddamn business.”

  Scott saw blood leaking from the back of Owen’s hand, dark red and encrusted with dirt. “Did you cut yourself?”

  Owen snorted, picked up a box, and shook it, scattering empty oilcans across the floor, kicking one as hard as he could against the wall.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Nothing.” Owen stumbled and tried to catch himself; Scott caught him, surprised at his brother’s weight in his arms. Yanking himself free, Owen lurched forward with a snarl and almost immediately lost control of his legs in a tangle of old extension cords. Dropping the flashlight, Scott caught him again and Owen exhaled in his face. It was like grabbing hold of a great, stinking pile of soiled hospital linen.

  “Come on inside. Let’s get something on that hand.” Before Owen could argue, Scott directed him out the door and across the yard, making his way by moonlight. He was all too aware of Sonia’s and Henry’s eyes watching from the end of the driveway as he walked his broth
er up the steps. It didn’t bother him so much that Sonia was watching—she must have seen Owen like this before—but no child needed to see his father being half dragged, half carried, raving and shuddering, across the lawn into his own house. They went through the front door and inside, Owen bumping into the furniture as he proceeded. His words came out in spurts, convulsively, along with his stumbling gait.

  “Lemme go. I’m fine.” One arm swung, knocking a tower of dirty bowls and plates from the arm of the couch. “Fucking fine,” I said. The crash seemed to remind him that Scott had brought him inside, and he jerked his arm back, pivoting on one heel.

  “Owen—”

  “You think I need your help?” But Owen was fading fast, tears and fatigue and bitterness brewing up in his eyes, strangling out his voice. It was like watching a man drown from the inside.

  Scott somehow managed to lever him into a kitchen chair, pushing it over to the sink to run cold water across the gash on his brother’s hand. It was bloody but superficial, nothing that would require stitches. The vomit on his clothes stank worse in here, and Scott reached down and peeled the shirt off, Owen’s arms going up to allow the sleeves to slide over, then flopping limp at his sides. On his brother’s back, between his shoulder blades, Scott saw a small tattoo he’d never noticed before, one word: Henry, with a heart around it.

  He finished rinsing his brother’s cut and wrapped it with a towel. Owen had stopped talking and sprawled back in the wooden chair, as if he’d passed out with his eyes still open. After a moment, Scott picked him up under the arms and dragged him out of the kitchen, across the cluttered living room. He lay Owen on the couch and covered him with a fairly clean-looking fleece Patriots blanket, brought over a glass of water, a bottle of aspirin, and a bucket from underneath the sink. He doubted his brother would wake up before they got back or, if he did, whether he’d be in any condition to read a note of explanation.

  Walking back outside, he saw the faint, reluctant eye of the flashlight inside the shed and went back in to retrieve it. The beam was pointing across the floor at a partially demolished shelf. Amid a pile of broken glass was a single sheet of paper, plastered to the wall with mildew. Scott bent down and peeled it free. It was a typewritten page numbered 139:

  The girl in the doorway wore a blue dress. She couldn’t have been more than twelve, maybe younger. Her hair hung in flat tangles around her face, eyes sunken deep in their sockets, her skin bluish with mold.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  She raised one hand, one hooked finger to the inside of the door leading to the house’s hidden wing. Her ragged nail dragged across the wood, scratching it, making the letter Y. Then, just to the left of it, she wrote an R. And then an A, followed by an M, an E, an S, and an O. To the very left, in front of all these letters, she etched a crooked, spidery letter R.

  He read the letters backward.

  “Rosemary.” Faircloth felt faint. “Rosemary Carver?”

  He had heard of her, an outsider who had run away from home in another part of the state, come to town, and disappeared back in the late 1800s without a trace. Her father, Robert, had come around looking for her, and the local police had launched an investigation, but no one had ever found her body.

  Looking at her now, Faircloth realized why he

  End of page.

  Scott stepped out of the shed with the lost page in his hand, folding it and sliding it into his hip pocket as he walked back toward the driveway. The voice that came to him out of the darkness was first a surprise, then a reassurance.

  “Is he all right?” Sonia asked.

  “He will be.”

  She gave him a dubious glance but said nothing. It was Henry’s expression that worried him. The boy looked pale and dazed, as if shaken from a feverish state and dragged out of bed. His normally bright eyes had a ghastly, glassy sheen.

  They drove out to a pizza and burger joint on Ware Lake, a summer place that stayed open late in the season for the deer hunters who would soon be buying supplies—jerky, sandwiches, and six-packs to take into the woods. Sitting in the diner, waiting for their pie, Scott had to forcibly resist the urge to get out the sheet of paper he’d found and read through it again.

  “Was your dad out in the shed all day?” he asked Henry.

  His nephew just nodded and looked back down at his pizza.

  “You want to spend the night at my house tonight?”

  Another nod, delivered with a slight upward glance, as if Henry feared he might turn around and revoke the offer at any moment. Scott got up and walked around to the other side of the table, put his arms around the boy, and squeezed. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. He felt Henry clutching on to him, not wanting to let go. “I promise.” Henry’s nod was just a slight, almost imperceptible twitch against his chest, something that happened between heartbeats, barely there at all.

  AFTER DINNER SCOTT DROVE back over to Earl’s Emporium. There were lights on in the living room and he thought he saw the shape of a face between the curtains, a bent shadow stooping toward the glass. Sonia said good night and started to get out. Scott leaned over the seat. “Hey, Sonia?”

  She stopped, looked back at him.

  “Have you ever heard of a girl named Rosemary Carver?”

  She thought for a second and shook her head. “Name doesn’t ring a bell. Who was she?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe just a character in my dad’s manuscript, but he makes her seem like a real person.”

  “Am I ever going to get a chance to read this legendary manuscript?”

  “If I ever finish it.”

  “Patience isn’t my strong suit.” She was still looking at him. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is any of this weird for you?”

  “What?” he said. “Being back?”

  “All of it.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You?”

  “A little.”

  He watched her walk into her father’s house and drove away. Taking Henry home, he found Owen sitting up on the sofa staring blankly at the Home Shopping Network, clutching a bag of frozen peas over his hand.

  “You okay?”

  Owen didn’t look at him.

  “I thought maybe Henry could sleep over at my place tonight.”

  Silence. Water from the bag dripped down between Owen’s knees into a wet spot on the rug.

  Scott went upstairs and gathered the boy’s pajamas and toothbrush in his Finding Nemo backpack, along with a fresh change of clothes and some toys and comic books, and his sleeping bag. When he came down, Owen hadn’t moved, and the puddle between his feet had grown slightly larger.

  “We’re leaving,” Scott said. “I’ll have him back in the morning.”

  “Yeah, great.”

  Scott took Henry’s hand and they went outside.

  THEY DROVE OUT OF TOWN, along the empty highway to where the woods got thick, and down the dirt road leading through the open gates. Scott stopped, and Henry looked blankly at the enormous house without comment. He clutched Scott’s hand tighter as Scott led him across the yard and up the stairs to the front door. It was late, but the boy didn’t seem particularly tired. As they went into the entryway, Henry stopped and gazed at the different hallways and doors that went off into separate parts of the first floor. Something about his calm, introspective expression made Scott feel sleepy.

  “I’m camped out in the dining room,” Scott said. “It’s this way.” He unrolled Henry’s sleeping bag next to his. “I’ve got a bunch of movies if you want to watch one on the laptop.”

  “Sure.”

  He had patched the air mattress with duct tape; it finally stayed inflated. Scott dozed off a little while later with the sounds of a Disney movie droning in the background. Sometime later that night, he woke up to find Henry playing on the other side of the dining room, pushing a small toy car along the rounded embankment where the wall met the floor, making small growling noises
as he crashed it over and over into the radiator.

  “What are you doing?” Scott mumbled.

  “They’re crashing,” Henry said, not looking up. “They’re all crashing and dying.”

  “What time is it?”

  The boy didn’t seem to hear.

  “You don’t want to lie down?”

  No answer.

  “Henry?”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “What’s wrong? Is it the house?”

  A shrug. “Just can’t.”

  Scott lay back down, allowing his eyes to sink slowly shut. A moment later, just as he was falling back asleep, he heard light footsteps and the boy crawled onto the air mattress next to him. The warmth of his small body felt gaunt and rail-thin. As he huddled closer, Scott caught a whiff of something sour coming off his skin, the odor of dried sweat and oily hair. Was there a washer and dryer in the house? He couldn’t remember. In the morning he would bathe the boy and take him shopping for new clothes, something he should’ve done a long time ago.

  Next to him, the boy stirred and settled. Scott was just beginning to doze off again when he heard noises from across the dining room.

  He opened his eyes, lifting himself up on his elbows, and saw that Henry was still by the radiator playing with cars. He’d never come over. Jerking upright, Scott looked down at the empty spot on the air mattress where he’d felt the small body curled next to his.

  It was still warm.

  THE NEXT MORNING, HENRY woke him up and asked what day it was.

  “Sunday.”

  “Are we going to church?”

  “I don’t know,” Scott said. “Do you go with your dad?”

  “If he’s not too sick, sometimes.”

  “Which one do you go to?”

  “The stone one.”

  When Scott was growing up, his mother had taken them to First United Methodist at the corner of Hawthorne and Grove, four blocks from the Bijou Theatre. It was one of several local churches that had supported Great-Uncle Butch’s mission trips. Scott vaguely remembered hearing that his father had stopped going after the fire. His wife’s funeral had been the last time he’d set foot inside a church.