by Paula Guran
My father and I had been bound like that, too. If I’d asserted the right to be part of him, welcomed and treasured it, I could have been. Instead, I’d thought it was necessary for me to grow up, to separate. And so I’d lost him. Lost us both, I thought then, for without him I had no idea who I was.
I felt Ron’s presence approaching me before I opened my eyes and saw him. “She’s unconscious,” he said. “They don’t know yet what’s wrong. You don’t look very good yourself. Come and sit down.”
I didn’t let him touch me then, but I preceded him to a pair of orange plastic bucket chairs attached to a metal bar against the wall. We were then sitting squarely side-by-side, and the chairs didn’t move; I didn’t make the effort to face him. He was friendly and solemn, as befitted the occasion. He took my hand in both of his, swallowing it. “Brenda.” He made my name sound far more significant than I’d ever thought it was, and—despite myself, despite the circumstances, despite what I’d have mistakenly called my better judgment—something inside me stirred gratefully. “It’s nice to see you again after all these years. I’m sorry our reunion turned out to be like this. Kelly has talked a great deal about you over the past few months.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.
“What happened?” Ron asked. He let go of my hand and it was cold. I put both hands in my pockets.
“She—collapsed,” I told him. The more I told him, the angrier I became, and the closer to the kind of emptying, wracking sobs I’d been so afraid of. Now I know there’s nothing to fear in being emptied; Kelly simply hadn’t taken it far enough. To the end, some part of her fought it. I don’t fight at all anymore.
“What do you mean? Tell me what happened. The details.” He was moving in, assuming command. It crossed my mind to resist him, but from the instant he’d walked into the room I’d felt exhausted.
“I dropped by to see her. I was in the neighborhood. When I got there she was sick. She asked me to take her out to lunch. So we—”
“Out?” His blond eyebrows rose and then furrowed disapprovingly. “Out of the house? With you?”
I mustered a little indignation. “What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s—unusual, that’s all. Go on.”
I told him the rest of what I knew. It seemed to take an enormous amount of time to say it all, though I wouldn’t have thought I had that much to say. I stumbled over words. There were long silences. Ron listened attentively. At one point he rested his hand on my shoulder in a comradely way, and I was too tired and disoriented to pull free. When I finished, he nodded, and then someone came for him from behind the curtains and lights, and I was left alone again, knowing I hadn’t said enough.
Kelly never came home from the hospital. She died without regaining consciousness. Many times since then I’ve wondered what she would have said to me if she’d awakened, what advice she would have given, what warning, how she would have passed the torch.
I wasn’t there when she died. Ron was. He called me early the next morning to tell me. He sounded drained; his voice was flat and thin. “Oh, Ron,” I said, foolishly, and then waited for him to tell me what to do.
“I’d like you to come over,” he said. “The boys are having a hard time.”
I haven’t left since. I haven’t been back to my apartment even to pick up my things; none of my former possessions seems worth retrieval. I had no animals to feed, no plants to water, no books or clothes or furniture or photographs that mean anything to me now.
Kelly kept her house orderly. From the first day, I could find things. The boys’ schedules were predictable, although very busy; names and phone numbers of their friends’ parents, Scout leaders, piano teachers were on a laminated list on the kitchen bulletin board. In her half of the master bedroom closet, I found clothes of various sizes, and the larger ones, from before she lost so much weight, fit fine.
The first week I took personal leave from work. Since then I’ve been calling in sick, when I think of it; most recently I haven’t called in at all and, of course, they don’t know where I am.
Ron is away a good deal. The work he does is important and mysterious; I don’t know exactly what it is, but I’m proud to be able to help him do it.
But he was home that first week, and we got used to each other. “You’re very different from the man I knew in college,” I told him. We were sitting in the darkened living room. We’d been talking about Kelly. We’d both been crying.
He was sitting beside me on the couch. I saw him nod and slightly smile. “Kelly used to say I’d developed my potential beyond her wildest dreams,” he admitted, “and she’d lost hers.”
I felt a flash of anger against her. She was dead. “She had a choice,” I pointed out. “Nobody forced her to do anything. She could have done other things with her life.”
“Don’t be too sure of that.” His sharp tone surprised and hurt me. I glanced at him through the shadows, saw him lean forward to set his drink on the coffee table. He took my empty glass from my hands and put it down, too, then swiftly lowered his face to my neck.
There was a small pain and, afterwards, a small stinging wound. When he was finished he stood up, wiped his mouth with his breast pocket handkerchief, and went upstairs to bed. I sat up for a long time, amazed, touched, frightened. No longer lonely. No longer having decisions to be made or protection to construct. That first night, that first time, I did not feel tired or cold; the sickness has since begun, but the exhilaration has heightened, too.
Ron says he loves me. He says he and the boys need me, couldn’t get along without me. I like to hear that. I know what he means.
SELLING HOUSES
Laurell K. Hamilton
As mentioned in the introduction, Laurell K. Hamilton is the bestselling author of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels—the twenty-first of which will be published in 2015. She also authors the Merry Gentry series about a Princess of Faerie who must cope with the intrigues of her own kind while dealing with life in a world where humans know faeries exist. Hamilton lives in Missouri, with her husband and her daughter.
Hamilton sets “Selling Houses” in Anita Blake’s world, but it has nothing to do with the novels’ characters. Instead, the author considers what more mundane folks do now that vampires are legally alive. What if, for instance, you sold real estate?
The house sat in its small yard looking sullen. It seemed to squat close to the ground as if it had been beaten down. Abbie shook her head to clear such strange notions from her mind. The house looked just like all the other houses in the subdivision. Oh, certainly it had type-A elevation. Which meant it had a peaked roof, and it had two skylights in the living room and a fireplace. The Garners had wanted some of the extra features. It was a nice house with its deluxe cedar board siding and half-brick front. Its small lot was no smaller than any of the other houses, except for some of the corner lots. And yet…
Abbie walked briskly up the sidewalk that led through the yard. Daffodils waved bravely all along the porch. They were a brilliant burst of color against the dark-red house. Abbie swallowed quickly, her breath short. She had only talked to Marion Garner on the phone maybe twice, but in those conversations Marion had been full of gardening ideas for their new home.
It had been Sandra who had handled the sell, but she wouldn’t touch the house again. Sandra’s imagination was a little too thorough to allow her to go back to the place where her clients were slaughtered.
Abbie had been given the job because she specialized in the hard-to-sell. Hadn’t she sold that monstrous rundown Victorian to that young couple who wanted to fix it up, and that awful filthy Peterson house? Why, she had spent her days off cleaning it out so it would sell, and it had sold, for more than they expected. And Abbie was determined that she would sell this house as well.
She admitted that mass murder was a very black mark against a house. And mass murder with an official cause of demon possession was about as black a mark as any.
The house
had been exorcised, but even Abbie, who was no psychic, could feel it. Evil was here like a stain that wouldn’t come completely up. And if the second owners of this house fell to demons, then Abbie and her Realtor company would be liable. So Abbie would see that the house was cleansed correctly. It would be as pure and lily-white as a virgin at her wedding. It would have to be.
The real problem was that the newspapers had made a horrendous scandal of it all. There wasn’t a soul for miles around that didn’t know about it. And any prospective buyer would have to be told. No, Abbie would not try to keep it a secret from buyers, but at the same time she wouldn’t volunteer the full information too early in the sales pitch either.
She hesitated outside the door and said half aloud, “Come on, it’s just a house. There’s nothing in there to hurt you.” The words rang hollow somehow, but she put the key in the lock and the door swung inward.
It looked so much like all the other houses that it startled her. Somehow she had thought that there would be a difference. Something to mark it apart from any other house. But the living room was small with the extra vaulted ceiling and brick fireplace. The carpet had been a beige-tan color that went with almost any decor. She’d seen pictures of the room before. There was bare subflooring, stretching naked and unfinished.
The flooring was discolored, pale and faded, almost like a coffee stain, but it covered a huge area. Here was where they had found Marion Garner. The papers said she had been stabbed over twenty times with a butcher knife.
New carpeting would hide the stain.
The afternoon sunlight streamed in the west-facing window and illuminated a hole in the wall. It was about the size of a fist and stood like a gaping reminder in the center of the off-white wall. As she walked closer, Abbie could see splatters along the wall. The cleanup crew usually got up all the visible mess. This looked like they hadn’t even tried. Abbie would demand that they either finish the job, or give back some of the deposit.
The stains were pale brown shadows of their former selves, but no family would move in with such stains. New paint, new carpeting; the price of the house would need to go up. And Abbie wasn’t sure she could get anyone to pay the original price.
She spoke softly to herself, “Now what kind of defeatist talk is that? You will sell this house.” And she would, one way or another.
The kitchen/dining room area was cheerful with its skylight and back door. There was a smudge on the white door near the knob but not on it. Abbie stooped to examine it and quickly straightened. She wasn’t ure if the cleanup crew had missed it or just left it. Maybe it was time to hire a new cleaning crew. Nothing excused leaving this behind.
It was a tiny handprint made of dried blood. It had to belong to the little boy; he had been almost five. Had he come running in here to escape? Had he tried to open the door and failed?
Abbie leaned over the sink and opened the kitchen window. It seemed stuffy in here suddenly. The cool spring breeze riffled the white curtains. They were embroidered with autumn leaves in rusts and shades of gold. They went well with the brown and ivory floor tiles.
She had a choice now, about where to go next. The door leading to the adjoining garage was just to her right. And the stairs leading down to the basement next to that. The garage was fairly safe. She opened the door and stepped onto the single step. The garage was cooler than the house, like a cave. Another back door led from the garage to the backyard. The only stains here were oil stains.
She stepped back in and closed the door, leaning against it for a moment. Her eyes glanced down the stairs to the closed door of the basement. Little Brian Garner’s last trip had been down those stairs. Had he been chased? Had he hidden there and been discovered?
She would leave the basement until later.
The bedrooms and bath stretched down the long hallway to the left. The first bedroom had been the nursery. Someone had painted circus animals along the walls. They marched bright and cheerful round the empty walls. Jessica Garner had missed her second birthday by only two weeks. Or that’s what Sandra said.
The bathroom was across the hall. It was good-sized, done mostly in white with some browns here and there. The mirror over the sink was gone. The cleanup crew had carted away the broken glass and left the black emptiness in the silver frame. Why replace anything until they knew for sure the house wasn’t being torn down? Other houses had been torn down for less.
The wallpaper was pretty and looked undamaged. It was ivory with a pattern of pale pink stripes and brown flowers done small. Abbie ran her hand down it and found slash marks. There were at least six holes in the wall, as if a knife had been thrust into it. But there was no blood. There was no telling what Phillip Garner thought he was doing driving a knife into his bathroom wall.
The master bedroom was next with its half bath and ceiling fan. The wallpaper in here was beige with a brown oriental design done tasteful and small. There was a stain in the middle of the carpet, smaller than the living room’s blood. No one knew why the baby had been in here, but it was here that he killed her.
The papers were vague about exactly how she had died, which meant it was too gruesome to print much of it. Which meant that Jessica Garner had glimpsed hell before she died. There was a pattern of small smudges low along one wall. It looked like tiny bloody handprints struggling. But at least here the cleanup crew had tried to wash them away. Why hadn’t they done the same in the kitchen area?
The more Abbie thought about it, the madder she got. With something this awful, why leave blatant reminders?
The little bathroom was in stainless white and silver, except for something dark between the tiles in front of the sink. Abbie started to bend down to look, but she knew what it was. It was blood. They had gotten most of it up, but it clung in the grooves between the tiles like dirt under a fingernail. She’d never seen the cleanup crew so careless.
The boy’s bedroom was in the front corner of the house. The wallpaper was a pale blue with racing cars streaking across it. Red, green, yellow, dark blue, the cars with their miniature drivers raced around the empty walls. This was the only carpeting in the house that had some real color to it; it was a rich blue.
Perhaps it had been the boy’s favorite color. The sliding doors to the closet were torn, ripped. The white scars of naked wood showed under the varnish. One door had been ripped from its groove and leaned against the far wall. Had Brian Garner hidden here and been flushed out by his father?
Or had Phillip Garner only thought his son was in here? For it was certain the boy had not died here.
There were no bloodstains, no helpless handprints.
Abbie walked out into the hallway. She had walked into hundreds of empty houses over the years, but she had never felt anything quite like this. The very walls seemed to be holding their breath, waiting, but waiting for what? It had not felt this way a moment before, of that Abbie was sure. She tried to shake the feeling but it would not leave. The best thing to do was finish the inspection quickly and get out of the house.
Unfortunately, all that was left was the basement.
She had been reluctant to go down there before, but with the air riding with expectation she didn’t want to go down. But if she couldn’t even stand to inspect the house, how could she possibly sell it?
She walked purposefully through the house, ignoring the bloodstained carpet and the hand-printed door.
But by ignoring them she became more aware of them. Death, especially violent death, was not easily dismissed.
Rust-brown carpet led down the steps to the closed door. And for some reason Abbie found the closed door menacing. She went down.
She hesitated with her hand almost over the doorknob and then opened it quickly. The cool dampness of the basement was unchanged. It was like any other basement except this one had no windows. Mr. Garner had requested that, no one knew why.
The bare concrete floor stretched gray and unbroken to the gray concrete walls. Pipes from upstairs hung from the ceiling a
nd plunged out of sight under the floor. The sump pump in one corner was still in working order. The water heater was cold and waiting for someone to light it.
Abbie pulled on all three of the hanging chains and illuminated all the shadows away. But the bare lightbulbs cast shadows of their own as they gently swung, disturbed by her passing. And there in the far corner was the first stain.
The stain was small, but considering it had been a five-year-old boy, it was big enough.
There was a trail of stains leading round the back of the staircase. They were smeared and oddly shaped as if he had bled and someone dragged him along.
The last stain was in the shape of a bloody pentagram, rough, but recognizable. A sacrifice then.
There was a spattering on one wall, high up without a lower source. Probably where Phillip Garner had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Abbie turned off two of the lights and then stood there with her hand on the last cord, the one nearest the door. That air of expectation had left. She would have thought that the basement where the boy was brutalized would have felt worse, but it didn’t. It seemed emptier and more normal than upstairs. Abbie didn’t know why but made a note of it. She would tell the psychic who would be visiting the house.
She turned off the light and left, closing the door quietly behind her. The stairs were just stairs like so many other houses had. And the kitchen looked cheerful with its off-white walls. Abbie closed the window over the sink; it wouldn’t do to have rain come in.
She had actually stepped into the living room when she turned back. The handprint on the back door bothered her. It seemed such a mute appeal for help, safety, escape.
She whispered to the sun-warmed silence, “Oh, I can’t stand to leave it.” She fished Kleenex from her pocket and dampened them in the sink. She knelt by the door and wiped across the brownish stain.
It smeared fresh and bloody, crimson as new blood. Abbie gasped and half-fell away from the door. The Kleenex was soaked with blood. She dropped it to the floor.
