The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - August 1980

by Various

  "It couldn't be that," he said.

  Edna was asleep again.

  He found one hundred dollars in the back pocket of a pair of work pants the following month, and again, balanced delicately between the wall and the framed print of a covered bridge, the month after that.

  "It's Pappa," Edna said. "He's hiding the money where we'll find it because you won't take any from him."

  "I won't take any from him because he doesn't have any."

  "He has his social security, and you know how grateful he is."

  "There's nothing left out of that."

  "It must be him. It couldn't be anyone else. He'd deny it if I asked him — he's stubborn that way — but I'll watch him. I'll count what he spends and see how much he has left over. You'll see."

  Over the next few months Harold found various combinations of bills, always in odd and random places, always summing to exactly one hundred dollars. Usually he uncovered the money the first or second day of the month; once on the fourth, once on the sixth. Edna wrote down the cost of a tin of pipe tobacco her father bought, a crossword puzzle magazine, checked the register receipts from his meager weekly shopping, hardly missed a penny that he spent. She was forced to agree with Harold. Pappa had no more than fifteen or twenty dollars a month for which she couldn't account.

  "Maybe it's some kind of ghost," she offered. "Someone rich who owned the house once and still feels attached to it. Aren't there records somewhere? Couldn't we find out what kind of people lived here?"

  But neither of them actually believed in ghosts, and there was no baffling event beyond the monthly hundred dollars, and in time even that ceased to be remarkable and was absorbed into the general flow of their lives, and they came not to pay much attention to it. Now and then Harold would comment that the money had shown up rolled into a shade or in the circuit-breaker box, or Edna would ask casually if he'd found it yet, but they didn't think about it beyond that.

  After she'd ruled Pappa out, Edna commented, "Well, the house is finally paying us back. It's what you always said it should do, that you'd make it do."

  They used the hundreds where and when they were needed, figuring the amount into their monthly income as they did the tenants' rent. For a while it was treat money, modest, but a source of pleasure and flexibility.

  Nearly seven years passed after they bought the house before they were able to finish their own quarters. They were exhausted, their savings were gone, and they had bank loans to meet. The money from their jobs and the rent gave them enough to meet their obligations, with only a small surplus left over.

  "But we have the house," Harold said the night he finished the last room. "If we sold it tomorrow we'd walk away with a nice piece of cash. Not a fortune, but a nice piece. It's more than most have, and it'll be worth even more each year."

  They had neither the money nor the energy to begin the exterior. They fell into a kind of torpor through two seasons, pumping up their spirits briefly in the winter with a vacation in Florida. It was the first in seven years, and the last for many more.

  By the time they did finish the outside of the house, they had owned it for a decade. The first apartment Harold had constructed was in need of repair and modernization. Harold began to understand that habitats were not fixed, did not exist independent of time and hard use. He had not finished the house, it would never be finished. Renovation was a cycle, not a one-time affair. A house required constant care if it was to avoid disintegration. It was a bedridden relative, a brain-damaged child. One devoted the large part of one's life to its care.

  Harold and Edna put off having the children they thought they might want until there was more time, more money. They passed into middle-age working on the house.

  The city changed, the neighborhood changed. There were times, when other buildings down the street were being renovated and a spirit of optimism and renewal was abroad, that they could have sold the house for a handsome sum. But then money was not difficult, and they were drawing a decent profit from their tenants, and the house was appreciating rapidly. It seemed foolish to sell when life there was fairly satisfactory and when, in a little while longer, the house would be worth even several thousands more.

  But such periods were brief, transient, and finally not be seen again at all. The urban renewal projects many blocks to the north, and again to the west, failed to revivify the slum neighborhoods. Instead, they seemed simply bases from which decay spread further outward. There was violence in the streets. Little family businesses went under one by one in slow attrition. Mr. Chiswycz, the owner of Dock Street Liquors, with whom Harold sometimes played pinochle, was killed in a holdup. Single rooms were rented by the week. At night, strange music from instruments they did not know, rhythms they could not keep time to, and passions they did not understand, came spilling from open windows. There were idle unshaven men about.

  Everything grew more expensive. Harold and Edna were forced to break the large apartments they had built into more and smaller ones. Where before they had been frugal, now they were forced to become penurious. The value of the house began to decline.

  They were trapped, though they wouldn't admit that to themselves. Gradually, they abandoned their hope that the house would support them and eventually supply the cornerstone of their retirement. Their long campaign of accomplishment ended, then slipped into a holding action, an attempt to salvage what they could. Harold became determined to make the house pay them back.

  The death of Edna's father did not interrupt the arrival of a hundred dollars every month. Harold came to expect it, as he did the rent checks. While there was no system he could perceive, he did note what seemed to be a trend toward later dates. Only infrequently did he come across the money in the first week of any month; usually it was the second, appearing now to stretch into the third. Harold grew annoyed, as he would with a tenant habitually late with the rent.

  "Damn it," he said, "I like to clear the bills off the desk by the seventh. I don't like waiting like this." he scowled at the house in general.

  "I don't know that that's a good way of looking at it, dear," Edna said. "It's not as if we have a right to the money."

  "We have a right to every penny of it, and a hell of a lot more. We put our lives into this house. It owes us its life. It owes us everything!"

  Edna began to worry about Harold.

  The two rooms that Pappa had occupied stood empty, still connected by stairs to Harold and Edna's quarters. Harold had delayed converting them into an apartment. Finally he announced that he refused to do it.

  "It would just take more money and time. We'd bring in something extra for a little while, but then that would get eaten up too, like everything else. There's no point. I'm not going to put anything more into this house. I'm going to make it pay us back."

  Harold had used the first few hundreds he'd found to buy materials and to pay off an electrician. Then, for a while, he spent the money on himself and Edna. Awkwardly, unaccustomed to such indulgence, they gave themselves nights out, magazine subscriptions, little pieces of clothing they favored. But soon the bills mounted again, prices rose even further, and the hundreds became just ordinary money, never enough of it.

  "This goddamn house!" Harold ranted. "This goddamn house! It thinks it can get away with twelve hundred a year. It thinks we'll settle for that. The hell we will!" He hurled an old cast iron doorstop against the wall, cracking the plasterboard.

  Edna bit down on her knuckle.

  Harold began to let the house go. He grew reluctant to make repairs.

  "I've worked for thirty years on it. That's enough. I'm not going to do one more goddamn thing or put one more goddamn penny into it."

  The house began to look as shabby as the others on the block. When Four-B became vacant, they had trouble renting it and it stood empty two months. A tenant on the third floor was visited by the police. He disappeared the next night, leaving the apartment in a shambles. Harold repainted it with intense resentment, but would
do nothing more, letting it stand damaged, and having to take a lower rent.

  At the end of the second year in which the hundreds had been appearing, the boiler went out.

  The repairman knocked on it with his knuckles and said, "They don't last forever, you know. This was a good one in its day, but that was twenty-five years ago."

  A new boiler would cost three thousand. Harold said he would call by the end of the week.

  They came up from the basement into the kitchen, where Edna was cleaning a cabinet. Harold led the repairman to the door and let him out. Hispanic music from transistor radios burst through the open door. Dogs barked. A car horn screamed in rage. There was some foul language from the street. Harold closed the door with a bang.

  He stood in the hallway, angry eyes flicking from the walls to the ceiling. "Oh, no," he said. "You're not going to take it back. Oh, no. That's every penny you've paid off." He raised a fist. "I'm not giving it back!"

  Edna went to him. "Harold. Please."

  He was flushed and short of breath. He allowed her to lead him into the living room, and to a chair. "Sit," she said. "Please, Harold. Sit quietly. Let me get you some tea."

  Over the stove, she heard him from the living room, hissing savagely at the house.

  At the end of the week he rejected a new boiler and ordered five hundred dollars' worth of repair's on the old one. "That's all it gets," he said. "I'm not giving it a nickel more."

  They limped through the winter with the old boiler, calling twice for emergency service.

  By spring Harold wasn't finding the hundred dollars until the third and often the fourth week of the month. The waiting dominated him. He was sour and angry with the house until he uncovered the money; then he had a few days of joyless respite until the new month arrived and his surly impatience began once more.

  On the last day of June, Harold still hadn't found the month's money. He was angry. When he got home from work he told Edna to call and cancel a dinner they were supposed to have with friends.

  "We haven't seen them in almost a year," Edna pleaded. "We haven't seen anyone for months. Please, Harold. It won't help to stay home and wait for it. It comes when it comes, you know you can't do anything about it."

  "All right," he said. "All right. But I want to be home by eleven. That gives it an hour left."

  He dressed. They went out onto the street. He looked back at the house. "Just like everyone else," he said bitterly. "They want you to pay what you owe them immediately, but they never want to pay what they owe you until the last minute."

  The evening was subdued. Harold couldn't keep his mind on the conversation and was quiet for long periods. They left early, and walked down Lowery Avenue. It was eleven o'clock when they turned onto Dock Street. A ragged drunk was on his hands and knees next to the supermarket on the corner, vomiting against the steel shutters that were closed over its windows at night. Fair Street was empty except for a couple of feral cats slipping through the shadows. Harold had been silent on the walk. Edna was holding his hand. As they neared the house, she felt sweat prickle onto his palm. His stride lengthened, his pace increased. He hurried down the few steps to the entrance, keys already in hand.

  The carriage light beside the door had shorted out months ago. Harold probed in the dimness for the lock. Edna jarred into him from behind.

  "What are you doing?" he said. "I—"

  He was seized by the shoulder, spun around and thrown up against the wall. A big youth with bushy sideburns locked a hand around his throat and stuck a pistol in his face.

  "Just shut the fuck up, man!"

  There were two others. One in a yellow T-shirt was already tearing I through Edna's purse. The remaining one, tall and pock-faced, jerked Harold's wallet from his pocket.

  "Three dollars," said the one with Edna's purse.

  The tall boy extracted the bills from Harold's wallet and flung it aside. "Shit, there's only five here."

  "Eight stinking lousy dollars!" The boy with the sideburns slashed the pistol across Harold's face. Harold dropped to his knees. Blood dripped down onto his shirt.

  Edna screamed. The tall boy clamped a hand over her mouth.

  "Eight dollars!" the boy with the gun said. He kicked Harold.

  Harold fell over on his side. His vision wavered, he tasted acid in his mouth. The boy moved to kick him again.

  "No. Please. I've got money," Harold gasped. "I've got a hundred dollars. I'll give you a hundred dollars. It's inside. Inside the house." He held up his keys.

  The boy in the yellow T-shirt bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. "Let's get out of here."

  The one with the gun took the keys from Harold. "They got a hundred bucks, man." He opened the door.

  The other two brought Harold and Edna in.

  "Get it," the leader said. He pointed the gun at Edna. "If you try anything, I'll blow her fuckin' brains out."

  "It's cash," Harold said. "You can have it. Don't hurt us. Don't hurt us. Please."

  He ran to the end table in the vestibule, pawed through the magazines. He opened the knick-knack box atop the table, dumped its contents, threw it aside.

  "Come on, come on," the boy said.

  "It's here! I'm getting it!"

  He rushed down the hall into the kitchen.

  "Go with him!" the leader ordered the tall boy.

  The boy sprinted down the hall after Harold.

  There was the sound of cabinet doors banging open, drawers being pulled out. Pots clanged. Crockery broke. Chairs were knocked over.

  Harold burst out of the kitchen.

  "It's here!" he cried. "A hundred dollars. There's a hundred dollars every month."

  He veered into the bedroom. The tall boy hurried after him. There were bangs, breaking and tearing sounds.

  The tall boy came out, frowning nervously. "He's gone crazy in there. He's tearing every thing apart."

  Harold shouted, "Where are you? Goddamn you, where are you?"

  "He's freaked, man."

  The boy with the gun pinched his lower lip between his teeth. He pointed into the living room. "Grab the television." He jabbed the gun at Edna. "If you call the cops, we'll come back and kill you!"

  They ran out of the house.

  Edna leaned against the wall, moaning. She made her way down the hall to the bedroom. The bedroom was in ruin. The closet doors gaped. Clothes and opened boxes were strewn about the floor. The drawers had been stripped from the dressers, one of the dressers thrown over. The drapes had been pulled down and the metal screen-cover ripped from the radiator, the carpeting yanked up. Harold stood in the center of the room, disheveled, breathing stertorously, blood from his wound soaking his collar.

  "It's got to be here!"

  Edna held her hands out to him.

  He pushed past her. She followed him awkwardly, light-headed. She stopped midway down the basement stairs and held on to the banister with both hands. Harold was hurling tools about, boxes, cans of screws and nails, jars of hardware which broke on the concrete floor. He ripped down the fluorescent light over the worktable. "Where are you?" He whirled, eyes darting, and ripped the door off the circuit box. He threw his shoulder against a standing wardrobe, toppling it. He grabbed a crowbar and beat it against the wardrobe, splintering open the veneer, pulling out winter clothes.

  He charged up the stairs, ignoring Edna, crowbar in hand, screaming, "Where did you hide it? Where?"

  Edna whimpered.

  In the living room, he smashed the mirrors on the wall, tore the stuffing from the couch and chairs, hurled books down from the shelves. He went into Pappa's old rooms, flung the furniture about, tore the medicine cabinet down, slashed at the framed prints with the hooked end of the crowbar.

  "Don't think you're going to cheat me!" he screamed at the house.

  He went out onto the street, up the half flight of stairs to the tenants' entrance. Edna stumbled dumbly after him. He smashed the glass panel from the door, reached in, turned the lock and jer
ked the door open. He battered the row of mail boxes in the wall.

  "Where is it? You owe me!"

  The door to Two-A opened. An alarmed young man in glasses and a cardigan sweater stood there. Harold shoved past him into the apartment. He tore a chandelier down from the ceiling, grabbed up potted plants from a room divider and threw them to the floor. He destroyed a radio, attacked the walls with the crowbar, punching jagged holes into them.

  "Give it to me!" he shrieked.

  Edna leaned against the wall crying. The young man put an arm around her and backed with her through the vestibule out past the broken door onto the steps.

  Harold staggered out of the apartment, climbed up the stairs to the next landing. He beat the crowbar against the door of Three-B, and when it was opened by a frightened woman with a child in her arms, he threw her into the hall and plunged inside, swinging the bar....

  The tenants gathered outside on the street, looking up to the building in silent fearfulness. Edna stood with them. Her head was bowed and her hands clasped up to her lips. People began to come out of other buildings to stand in the street and look up.

  Crashes and shatterings sounded. Occasionally some object would burst out through a window with a shower of glass, causing everyone to shrink back. Now and then a glimpse of Harold could be caught, rushing past a window; or his shadow, deformed and enlarged, in violent action.

  "Give it to me!" they heard him shout. "Give it to me, you bastard. I'll kill you!"

  In time, someone thought to call the police. A little later a station wagon marked Police Emergency and filled with first-aid and rescue equipment pulled to the curb at the edge of the crowd. The two officers conferred briefly with the nearest persons, then went into the building. Other patrol cars began to arrive.

  There was screaming from the top floor. Silence followed. The officers emerged onto the steps with Harold between them, wrists handcuffed behind his back. His clothes were torn and bloodstained. His face was vacant.

  They led him down the stairs. "All right, it's all over. Give us some room there. Go back home. It's over."