Until... | Book 3 | Until The End

by Hamill, Ike

  So, Mom went off to make her decision in the bedroom. I peeked through her keyhole to see what she was doing in there. I watched her open her closet and fold the last of her clothes into a suitcase. It was the one she was going to take on the plane. I guess she wanted to make sure everything would fit.

  While she was doing that, I found my cousin Jackie in the kitchen. With her arms folded, she was regarding the cabinets.

  “Hey, Jackie,” I said.

  “Why don’t you have a microwave?”

  “Um… I don’t know. I guess we just don’t need it?”

  “Maybe I’ll get one of those countertop ones. I don’t want to use up valuable space with it though.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why do you want to live here so badly? Why are you putting yourself through this whole thing? I thought you loved your apartment. It’s a block away from your work and you can walk to the grocery store.”

  “Honey, this is more than just a house, don’t you know that?”

  My face must have shown the cold dagger of fear buried in my heart. I didn’t want her to finish that thought. The house hated to be talked about in that way.

  “It’s the heart of our family. When we get together for Thanksgiving, we all pack into here. When there’s a funeral, this is where we hold the wake. All the news filters through here, and this is where decisions happen. It might not seem like much to you, but these things are important.”

  “Why would all those things continue to happen here, at this house?” I asked.

  “This is the heart. Every family has a heart. That’s where I want to be.”

  I still didn’t understand and I was about to ask her more questions to try to get to the bottom of it, but we both heard the front door. She probably thought that it meant a decision was imminent, but I figured that it meant my father was home. We were both right. The conversation ended and I followed her to the living room.

  Mom came into the living room at the same time. She set her suitcase down and stood next to it.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said to my father. “I’ve made my final decision and I want you all to know that it wasn’t easy. I appreciate your patience, and…”

  I heard someone say, “Get on with it.” I couldn’t tell where the voice had come from. There were eleven people all gathered in our living room, including me, Mom, and Dad. If she was only after money, I’m sure she could have demanded a bidding war.

  “I’m afraid that I won’t be able to lease this house to any of you,” Mom said, gesturing towards her gathered relatives.

  There was a quick gasp followed by several people murmuring their anger. Jackie was beginning to turn red. I could tell back in the kitchen that she was utterly convinced that it was going to be her.

  “What are you even talking about?” Jackie asked. “You put us through all this and you had no intention of moving, did you? You just wanted to see us all squirm for your approval.”

  She looked like she was about to say something really nasty about Mom, and Dad moved to stand at Mom’s back and put his hand on her shoulder. If something physical was about to happen, they were going to have to go through him, it seemed. I worried that Dad wouldn’t get the chance to defend Mom. If the house got involved, Jackie might not live to express her disappointment.

  “Hold on, Jackie,” Mom said. “I never said that I wasn’t moving. In fact, Ted and I are leaving for Dallas this afternoon.”

  Dad took his hand off of Mom’s shoulder. He was now as shocked as the others.

  “Amber will be eighteen soon and she deserves the opportunity to finish her senior year here. We’ve decided that it would be unfair of us to ask her to start over in a new school in what should be a happy ending to her childhood. She’s responsible and independent, and we trust her implicitly.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Hold on,” Dad said. “We never…”

  Mom silenced him with a raised hand.

  I wanted to object, but I was afraid. All that time, I thought I was scared of the house. In that moment, I realized that I was just as scared of my own mother. As long as I was under that roof, her raised hand could strike me down. In a flash, it occurred to me that once my parents were gone, there would be nothing stopping me from running away again. With them down in Dallas, I could make a clean break. And, since I really was turning eighteen soon, they wouldn’t even have legal recourse.

  Mom said, “This was Amber’s decision and I respect her for making the right one. Maybe when she goes off to college, one of you will have the opportunity to take over for her. Until then, you’ll have to wait.”

  When it was clear she was finished, the living room exploded in arguments. Jackie was the first to really shout directly at Mom, and once she did, it seemed like everyone felt free to scream at her. Dad backed away from Mom. He didn’t seem interested in defending her anymore. It was pretty clear that he didn’t have to. When Jackie tried to approach Mom, the floor shook and a bookcase toppled. It crashed to the carpet between Jackie and Mom. That stifled the uproar for a moment and then it resumed even louder. People weren’t making direct threats anymore, but they weren’t shy about telling Mom how crazy she was.

  It took me a few moments to realize that they had started shouting at me as well.

  My pleas were lost in the noise of people accusing me of stealing their heritage and being too big for my britches. I had missed my opportunity to claim ignorance of Mom’s plan. If I had objected right away, maybe they would have believed that it wasn’t my idea in the first place. Even Dad looked at me like I had betrayed him. Nobody could hear me begging them to believe that I was innocent, and I’m not sure it would have mattered if they did. In the matter of a second, Mom was no longer the target of their anger. It was all coming down on me.

  Crying, I ran for the kitchen so I could escape through the back door.

  It was locked, of course, and nothing I could do would budge it. My relatives were following me, shouting their way towards the kitchen. I didn’t know what they would do when they caught me. I was starting to suspect that they didn’t know either. They had turned into a mob, and I realized how true it is that a mob has a mind of its own. Rationality was gone. These people wanted a target for their frustration and anger. That target was me.

  I tried one window and then the other.

  They were frozen in their frames.

  I picked up a chair, meaning to crash it through the glass and Jackie came through the doorway with her finger raised to point at me.

  “Don’t you dare!” she shouted. “We’re not going to stand by and watch you trash this place. It’s bad enough that you finagled your way into this position. Now you’re going to ruin what’s not even rightfully yours?”

  These people were crazy. There’s no way that our house should have meant anything to them. There should have been no way for it to ignite so much hatred in their hearts.

  “Dad!” I shouted, hoping that he would hear my cry over the sound of the mob. “Help me, please!”

  Through the window, I saw him lifting Mom’s suitcase into the trunk of the car. He didn’t look in my direction, but I know that he must have spotted me in the corner of his eye at least. I was jumping up and down and waving frantically as the mob came for me.

  At that moment, a river of hate flooded through me. It felt like I had dammed up all the rage and frustration that I had felt towards both of my parents. I thought about all the times they had ignored me when the house had hurt me. I thought about all the times that they had denied anything was wrong when there was so much that was clearly wrong. They had made me feel crazy for being the only sane one in the house. Now, when I needed them most, they were leaving me. Mom had dumped the whole problem of the house in my lap and she had turned all of her relatives against me. I slammed my hands against the windows. Jackie and the others thought I was trying to smash the glass just to be destructive. I heard them coming fo
r me.

  Everything happened all at once.

  Before Jackie could reach me, one of the chairs flew out from under the kitchen table. It barely slowed as it plowed through her legs. She flipped in the air, with one leg sticking out to the side. It looked like there were no bones in her leg at all, the way it whipped around as she spun to the ground. The chair continued and slammed into the cabinet below the sink. Another cousin—Edgar—jumped over the chair as it clattered to the floor and he raced towards me.

  The mob was out for my blood. Edgar stepped on Jackie’s arm and she screamed.

  Behind me, there was a terrible crash.

  Edgar looked over my shoulder and put his hands up to cover his mouth. His eyes were so wide that it looked like his eyeballs would fall right out of his head. They all stopped behind him—everyone who could see what was going on. I heard Jackie moan as someone else stepped on her.

  I turned slowly. I didn’t want to see what had caused so much fear and confusion in his eyes.

  I spun just in time to see the thing that made the second loud sound. It was the power pole falling on top of my parents’ car. They had crashed into it, breaking it off at the base. When it fell, the bottom slid and skipped across the road and the live power lines came right down on the car. The car burst into flames and I thought I could see hands pounding at the window, trying to get out.

  “What?” I asked. I was too stunned to process what was happening. I had guessed that the demon in the house might try to make the leap to the car, but why would it want to hurt my mother? It was attached to her. It might torture her for its own amusement, but it couldn’t really hurt her. That would only mean hurting itself.

  “What have you done?” someone whispered.

  My mouth was hanging open as I turned back to the crowd and saw that they were all looking at me. Everything was completely silent for a moment, like they were waiting for me to answer the question. I didn’t have any answers.

  The silence didn’t last long.

  All the kitchen cabinets flew open at once. One or two of the doors slammed open so hard that they splintered. Plates, and glasses, and mixing bowls—everything tumbled out at first and then things started to pick up speed and they flew from the cabinets. People ducked and cowered. I saw my mother’s uncle get his arms up to protect his head just as a heavy pot struck him above the ear. The way that he crumpled to the ground, I didn’t think he would ever get up. Across the room, I saw that the back door was now open. Maybe it had flown open when all the cabinets did, I don’t know. I only saw my escape route and I ran for it, dodging flying knives and shards of glass and leaping over injured people.

  I spilled down the back stairs and tumbled into the lawn, rolling over and clawing away from the house.

  As soon as I was fifteen or twenty feet from the house, it sounded like everything stopped. I heard someone weeping and then that was drowned out by the wail of an approaching siren.

  I collapsed onto the ground and didn’t move a muscle.

  It’s true that I was afraid to go back into the house even though I knew there were injured people inside who needed help. I told myself that if I went back in, the chaos might start again and hurt them even more. But there was another motivation that was much more selfish. I didn’t think that the house would really hurt me, but I thought that the only way I could avoid blame was if I was seen as a victim too. It didn’t seem like a victim would be able to go back in and help others. A victim would be found collapsed on the back lawn, so that’s where I stayed.

  I heard the fire department come and shouting voices as they discovered the destruction. It took a long time before anyone came to rescue me. Obviously, it was immediately clear that I wasn’t in any real danger, so my cuts were bandaged and I was released. With a blanket draped over my shoulders, a pair of officers came to tell me about my parents. Someone had already identified the bodies.

  # # #

  Ricky looked down at the speedometer and realized that he was driving significantly less than the posted speed limit. He accelerated and then puzzled out the buttons to set the cruise control.

  “So, your parents…”

  “Smoke inhalation, I guess. Everyone was talking to me, but nothing was getting in. I kept trying to figure out how it had all happened. It seemed like if I could just puzzle it through, somehow I could reverse all the terrible events and get back to normal. It was a riddle and I was trying to find the trick to it so I could solve everything.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Amber shook her head. “It feels like this all keeps happening to me over and over. My mom’s will said the house would be put into a trust in my name until I was eighteen, which was only a few months after she died. A few short years later, I was put in the position to take care of Uncle Bill’s house. Now, I’m dealing with Evelyn’s. I’m so sick of this.”

  Amber put her face in her hands and hunched over for a second. A moment later, she straightened back up and composed herself with a deep sigh.

  “I take it that your relatives didn’t agree with what you decided to do with the house?”

  “Correct,” Amber said. “It took a lot of wrangling, but I eventually got my way. They tried to block me in court. I spent a good chunk of my inheritance defending myself against their claims. I turned down all their offers to buy the place and eventually found a real estate agent who would carry out my wishes. We found a family who wanted the property, but agreed to tear down the house and rebuild it. I gave them an amazing deal on it. They even agreed to set the house farther back on the lot so that it wouldn’t even be on the same foundation. My extended family was furious, of course.”

  “That must have been a really hard fight for a teenager.”

  Amber laughed. “I was twenty by the time that it was finally completed. I had to go into debt with student loans and everything because all that money was tied up in the court fight. In the end I paid a lot to make sure that nobody would ever live in that place again.”

  “Have you…” Ricky stopped the question before it could leave his mouth. He realized that there was very little chance that the answer would be good.

  Unfortunately, Amber wouldn’t let it go.

  “Have I what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, Ricky, I told you all my secrets. What’s your question?”

  “I was wondering if you ever followed up with the new family to find out if they… You know?”

  “If they were plagued by a murderous demon that ruined their lives?”

  “Yeah, I suppose that’s the question.”

  “I got lucky. The wife was a guidance counselor. She turned out to be much more intuitive than the one who made such a mess of my life in the first place. During the negotiation, I could see her looking at me. She was evaluating me and I thought that she came to the wrong conclusion. Maybe she had heard about me—how I had been orphaned by a car crash that happened right outside my door. But then, before we signed everything, she took me aside.”

  Amber looked out her window for a moment to compose herself before she continued.

  “She told me that her husband was intending on going back on the agreement. Legally, as careful as I was, there was little I could do to enforce the contract and make them tear down the place. I didn’t have the money to do it myself. The husband knew that I was fighting my relatives to sell the house in the first place, and he correctly guessed that I would have no recourse if they simply wanted to live there after we closed on the sale.”

  “That sucks. I can’t believe she told you.”

  “I couldn’t either. She told me that, at first, they both assumed that I was abused by one or more of my parents and that’s why I wanted the place torn down.”

  “At first?”

  “Right. But after one of our conversations, she changed her mind. She said that it occurred to her that it was something deeper. Her intuition told her that the house itself was the problem. Even though she didn’t believe in that
stuff, she asked me if the house was evil. I couldn’t answer out loud, but I nodded.”

  “Wow,” Ricky said.

  “Yeah. Anyway, she promised me that they would not only tear it down, but they would first have the fire department over to burn it down for practice. She lived up to her word. I watched from down the street as they burned it, bulldozed it, and then hauled the ashes away. She even had a company in to dig down and replace the topsoil from where the house had stood. In the end, you wouldn’t have known that it had ever been there.”

  “You think it worked?”

  “I don’t know,” Amber said. “After my parents died, I never experienced anything there. I’m not sure if the demon was dead or just playing possum. But I walked by the property when everything was done and the new house was built. I can say for certain that I didn’t feel anything. Coming home used to make my skin tighten up all over, and I didn’t feel any of that. The woman wrote me a letter some years ago, telling me how happy they had been there, but they were planning on selling the house. Everything worked out fine for them.”

  “Good,” Ricky said.

  “Yeah.”

  Amber took a deep breath and let it out slowly, like she had just shed a burden.

  “I like to think that it was the house itself and that burning it was the last nail in the coffin.”

  “It had to have been, right? You said that things were still flying around in the house even after the car crash. So it definitely wasn’t connected to your mother.”

  “Ricky,” Amber said. “What if it was me?”

  Ricky blinked at the road, trying to make sense of what she had just said.

  “You?”

  “Think about it. It could have easily been me all along.”

  “No. It would still be with you.”

  “Unless it’s playing possum. Unless it’s the thing that killed Cousin Evelyn. Unless it’s what drew those monsters to me not once, but twice. Think about all the terrible things that have happened around me. You don’t think that it’s a little coincidental that all these things are happening around me?”

  “No, Amber. That’s, like, survivor’s guilt or something talking. You took care of it when you had to. The other things are just… I mean, coincidence is the right word. John got infected and you solved that issue. Riley got infected and brought that back to you, but you took care of yourself that time as well. As for your cousin, I’m sorry, but old people die. It’s a part of life.”