by K. Massari
door of the house, the door to the Tower is always locked.
The family members in Disneyland are sharing a meal. The mother watches her children sip Coke, munch on cheeseburgers, and dip fries into mayonnaise. She herself does not like to eat so very much. She is having coffee. Her husband stares at her. She remembers the man she liked to have sex with. Her boy looks at her adoringly, but says something she dreads hearing:
"Mom, can't we just stay here?"
"Do we really have to go back?"
He does not really say, go back to that creepy house. He has learned to fear its wrath. It seems to him, even here in Disneyland, the house is here, too, listening, breathing, thinking along. He knows that can't be, and that it doesn't make sense, but he knows it's true somehow.
I unlock the door for Ethel, as I have unlocked the door for many others. A sweet perfumed smell emanates from the Tower's main room, lilac bushes. Ethel turns to me and smiles. She walks into the room, whirls around once, arms extended, and waits for me to enter.
I do not. I slam the heavy door on her, and lock it again.
The house shudders ever so slightly. As from afar, I hear muted knocks from the other side of the Tower door, Ethel calls my name questioningly at first, then louder, then with despair. I walk slowly down the stairs. There's no way I could have not done it. I had to.
The boy's older sister blurts it out.
"I hate that place."
The three children nod in agreement. The father stares into the distance.
"I know. Bad vibes and all. I have a deal coming through. I think then we'll move."
His words are met with clapping hands and ecstatic cries. His eyes meet the eyes of the mother. Of course, it will strain their finances to move again. But there is seriously something wrong with the old mansion. They won't talk about it. There's no need to.
"It's a beautiful place," says the mother, thoughtfully running a finger along the table's edge, knowing she will never find a shrine for her pain like this one again.
The children agree. From the outside, it looks awesome. Especially the medieval-looking Tower perched high above the neighborhood. Their classmates will never envy them again in quite the same way.
Outside, in the somber moonlight, I throw my head back and worship the house. I close my eyes. When I open them, one candle is burning in Ethel's room up there.
I will spend the night elsewhere. I used to be tough enough to sleep in the house. I even welcomed the abuse, because unusual as it may sound, it was a distraction from my own pain. Now the pain has dulled, and I have rejoiced in the idea so many others have so many other forms of pain. And the house is here to channel all that pain.
The Tower is quite beautiful. It is a macabre symbol that life always goes on.
The families will soon come back, and live in the house in different dimensions of time. Ethel will be screaming throughout it all. They can't help each other, can't compare notes. The house will not permit the most insignificant interaction. They are sealed off from each other. And I don't care. Any more.
Ethel is looking timidly out of her Tower window behind the candle. She probably wonders where I am and when I will come back; if, in fact, I have utterly betrayed her.
I don't know myself. Every story is different. I slowly walk back to my car. I can't bear to stay here. I need to dance, or drink, somehow distract myself, even if it's playing Candy Crush. As I drive away, I feel the familiar pull of kindness which was once my personality. I was someone who really cared. Then everything I believed in, everything and everyone I loved, was taken. Now, I have only the house, the Tower.
Husband and wife are boarding a plane. They must bury their child. They are worried sick about coming back to the house. They would never admit it to each other, but they both fear staying at the house will amplify their grief, perhaps even drive them insane. Although the wife entertains the idea of insanity and oblivion as a welcome relief.
At a safe distance (although there is no real distance between the house and its victims), I park and get out, on a hill above the town. The Tower is unique and has a glow all its own. The house it rises from is stunning (with uncanny beauty and because of its sheer size) and because of the ensnarling vibes it sends. I can feel its pull. It's a mental thing, a form of mind control. As if I were connected with tendons and arteries, skin and bones. What makes it worse, taking to anyone about it, even the most open minded-headshrinker, will do absolutely no good.
Even from the hill, I can see the candle in Ethel's new room. She has spent an hour crying, now she has fallen asleep from exhaustion. The house lets me know. 'Come save her,' it taunts. No, some wounds do not heal. Sometimes, there is nothing anyone can do. That is the foundation the house was built upon.
Towards morning, it begins to rain softly. A mist undulates through the lawn underneath the cherry trees. Ethel is being hurled from wall to blood-stained wall, whipped about, but still conscious, trying to catch her breath. I can see her suffering on the ceiling of my motel room, images flickering as I lie awake and remember. She will survive for quite some time, always hoping it will stop, it will be as I promised.
One time, I forgot to lock the door to the Tower chamber. The man inside was too scared out of his wits to escape, but eventually, bruised and battered, he clung to the door knob, which turned. He went crashing down the two flights of stairs, staining the pretty pink carpet and vomiting all the way.
I was in the house still, and he grabbed me begging for a doctor. I knew what the house wanted and expected. I knocked him unconscious and dragged and pulled him back up. Their misery is fuel for the whole estate.
As the mother returns to the house, she loses it and bangs on the back door, the walls, the windows, anything, any way she can get back at this monster which stole the child she loved above all else. The father stands back and watches grimly. He realizes he cannot fight this. He imagines taking a gun and shooting his wife, and then taking his own life, to be closer to their child.
What he doesn't know, the house, you can never leave it. Once the lease is signed, it is forever.
They are all so naïve with their sickening pictures of angels and heaven. There, the Tower, that is what awaits. There are other Towers, other places, but there is no beyond. There is only a Here, and it is Hell.
Ethel's face collides with the window, and the glass shatters. Her hair is matted with blood, one eye swollen shut. Poor old hag. No, it won't be over soon. You're in the washing machine of death.
"I won't go in there," the husband says.
"But all our stuff?" the wife wants to know, thinking of her son's toys.
"Just forget ..." says the husband, because that is what he sincerely wants to do. He even thinks about forgetting the boy, letting him go, seeing him as an extension of the house, and the house was just a mistake. A wrong decision. He will move on, with or without the wife.
It is then that he feels the searing pain in his chest, his wife is stabbing him. As he moves a hand to halt her vigor, she cuts his hand with an unearthly energy. She has lost her mind. She will continue stabbing, him, her own body, any other body, the way Ethel will be rotated around the Tower's room until nothing remains but a small sorry heap of bones.
The family returning from Disneyland has exited off the highway. The young boy puts on a Mickey Mouse mask. In a spur of the moment decision, the father misses a turn on purpose. The wife looks at him questioningly, but then understands. Something is so seriously wrong with this house, there is no use continuing the fight for normalcy. They've lost this one. So what.
None of the three children in the back seats objects. They will spend the night at the hotel - they love hotels -, checking out all the features, running down the hallways, riding the elevators, watching cable, and enjoying the splashy dinners their dad buys them.
In a twist, the father feels a pain in his chest. Heart attack, his mind singsongs, as the house listens carefully. In his mind, he hears Ethel's first screams. He hears the screams of an
guish of all the others after the realization sets in they are not in the Tower to feel less pain, they are in the Tower to experience the ultimate pain.
The father checks the mirror and looks into the eyes of his children. Not yet, he thinks and drives faster, as far away as he can get. And if that does not help, he will leave the continent, for he knows his money is the one corrupting power that can trump the evil house.
Fast forward, and I am once again taking my eager little steps up the plush pink carpet. I can bury another one. Another one has reached a place called peace. With my key, I open the door to the Tower, and walk in. The blood is gone, the candles are still high; they never burn down. A small heap of bones is in one corner. I go there and weep. I cradle the femurs and run my hand gently over the skull.
Just knowing there is an end is all the reward I need.
I hear Ethel screaming far away in another part of the house. There are muted voices, the voices of the children and their parents, in yet other parts and corners. For a few minutes, though, as I kneel next to Ethel's earthly remains, I delude myself into thinking, the Tower is the very heart of the house, and at least here, at least here, there is a very little bit of hope sometimes.
THE END
