Murder House

by C. V. Hunt

  I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. My parents had died shortly after high school. My other siblings were disasters. I wasn’t even sure if my oldest brother was still alive. And making friends was impossible when you were bullied all throughout school and never developed the social skills or drive to be surrounded by people. The doctor shoved prescriptions I was barely able to afford at me. I sure as hell didn’t have the money for therapy. Therapy seemed like a thing only rich people paid for when they didn’t have any friends or family members to talk to or they didn’t have any friends or family who gave enough of a shit to listen to them whine about their problems.

  Now I stood in the dank bathroom with the last pill of my prescription in my palm, wondering and slightly panicking about what was going to happen when the medicine was finally eliminated from my body. We didn’t have the money for me to continue taking the medication. It wasn’t like it was something I needed to take to stay alive or physically healthy. Thankfully I didn’t have some grave heart condition or cancer. This was depression. We had to make some financial cuts. Maybe once the publisher paid Brent or I found a job, hopefully one with insurance this time, I’d go back on it. It was only three months until Brent was paid. What’s the worst that could happen?

  SEVEN

  BRENT CONVINCED THE publisher to pay for high-speed internet. He argued I needed the car to find a job and he wouldn’t have access to transportation to get to a library. He added some biting remarks about them providing him with the tools to complete the job they’d asked for on time and that did the trick. Obviously, he did want me to find a job but more than anything he didn’t want to have to get dressed every day and go scouting for an internet connection. The more he got to sit at home shirtless and in shorts the happier he’d be. Even if I didn’t want to work I would find a job. I couldn’t tolerate him sighing and huffing any time I stepped into the kitchen for a drink of water or the glares and mumbles of being a distraction I received if I happened to be within view of his makeshift desk in the kitchen and I was doing anything other than sitting perfectly still. I really wanted to mention that he could help me move the mattress upstairs and he wouldn’t have to see me but, honestly, fuck him. If he was too self-involved to help me for five minutes I was completely fine with making him miserable by just being in his line of sight.

  After a couple of weeks he also started complaining of a constant low-grade headache. I wasn’t sure if it was a passive aggressive way to tell me to fuck off and leave him alone or if he were actually suffering from constant headaches. Either way, he was testier than usual and eating entirely too much Tylenol.

  It made me sad to think back to a time when we used sex for ailments like headaches instead of Tylenol, the latter he was going through like they were his savior. I wasn’t going to offer up any pussy though. Nothing I did or said was ever the right thing anymore. I knew after a few days of no antidepressants they were leaving my system because the mere thought of him rejecting my sexual advances had me on the verge of tears and every nerve in my body felt raw and exposed, like a sensitive tooth to the cold. I could blame a bit of my weepiness on exhaustion too since I was the only person who’d put every waking second into scrubbing the house down as best as I could. But I knew the majority of my low emotions were a lack of serotonin.

  Every bout of depression wasn’t exactly the same. But it wasn’t so different you couldn’t eventually realize what was happening. The episodes weren’t twins but sisters. I could feel this might end up being one of the crying kind. Tears at the drop of a hat. I hated that type because it usually came with random aches and pains as if I were getting arthritis. But at least it didn’t usually come with a lack of drive to do anything because there was a lot to do. Those were the worst.

  I sat on the mattress and tried to look for a job on the phone but found myself staring at the screen with my thumb hovering over it. I was lost in thought, or lack of thought, and nothing else. I had to force myself to concentrate and remind myself I was looking for a job. The first thing I needed was the zip code and the thought of looking it up made me tired. I wasn’t even sure what our address was and sure as hell didn’t want to interrupt Brent to ask. I knew I needed to get up and go look at our house’s address on the house but had to fight the urge to lie down and take a nap. As much as I wanted to sleep, I was certain Brent would find some way to make noise and wake me up and somehow make me feel guilty for lying around and sleeping when I should’ve been looking for a job.

  The humidity was high and felt like a wet blanket and no matter how high the fan ran there was no getting comfortable. The heaviness of the air was making me sleepy.

  Brent suddenly stopped typing. He rose from the table abruptly and walked into the living room. “I need the phone.”

  I held it out to him without question. I really didn’t want to look for a job at the moment anyway. He took it and briefly glanced at the job posting I was trying to read before heading back to the kitchen.

  He grumbled, “I gotta make a couple of calls.”

  I flopped back on the mattress and stared at the stained ceiling. A cool breeze wafted form the basement door and I could hear Brent introducing himself to someone and talking about the book he was writing. I got up and walked over to the basement door. The breeze stopped. I couldn’t make anything out beyond a few steps. I hadn’t been to the basement yet and it seemed like there should be windows down there to let in sunlight. The basement creeped me out and there really was no need for me to go down there. But there had to be an opening if there was a breeze.

  Brent had left the flashlight on the floor by the door. I picked it up and turned it on, half expecting Brent to say something but he was too preoccupied with whoever he was speaking with. I shone the light down the wooden stairs and could make out the crumbling red brick walls. I didn’t have a desire to go down there. But there was nothing to do since Brent had the phone and we didn’t own a television.

  Another cool but faint gust of air that smelled of dirt and decay hit my sweaty skin and felt good. And for some reason I couldn’t fathom I began to descend the rickety stairs. The temperature dropped and made my skin prick.

  I panned the light around once I reached the bottom of the stairs. There were several handmade shelves painted a sickly mint green. The shelves housed rusted paint cans and a thick layer of cobwebs. A rusty tricycle sat in the corner and gave me the heebie-jeebies. I briefly wondered if it belonged to the little girl who’d been killed in the bathroom.

  More noticeable than the lack of windows was the two-foot hole in the wall near the floor behind the stairs. The red brick had crumbled and the hole looked like a yawning mouth full of broken teeth opening into a darkened void of a throat. I imagined it was the source of the cool breeze. I passed all the other weathered and worn clutter and headed toward the hole. I carefully lowered my knees to the floor and ignored the bite of dirt and debris as they made contact with the cold concrete and shone the light into the darkness.

  The light revealed the inside of a filthy steel pipe large enough for someone to belly crawl through. Cool, dank air hit my face. Water or something had moved or stood in the lower portion of the pipe as there were swipe marks in the dirt and it was slightly cleaner than the top half. I moved the light to the bricks of the opening but didn’t see any water lines or residual evidence there had been a flood in the basement. I sat back from the hole and checked the wall of the basement beside the opening.

  “What are you doing?”

  I yipped in fear and fell back on my ass. I dropped the flashlight and heard the cheap plastic crack and the bulb pop. I let out another terrified sound as the basement was plunged into near darkness. The only light was the faint trickle from the open basement door.

  “Jesus Christ!” Brent barked. “You broke the fucking flashlight. That’s just what we need. More unnecessary expenses.”

  I could barely make out the silhouette of Brent standing a few feet behind me. I gripped my chest where my
heart hammered furiously. “You scared the shit out of me,” I said. I wanted to add the flashlight only cost three dollars at the Dollar General and we probably got our money’s worth out of it but bit my tongue instead.

  “Yeah, guess so,” he said with an air of aggravation. “I’m borrowing the car. I’ve got an interview with one of the police officers involved with the case.”

  I patted the ground until I found the broken flashlight and rose to my feet. “Are you taking your laptop with you?”

  “Why?”

  “I was wondering if I could use it to look for a job instead of trying to read things off the phone. The print is really small.”

  “As long as you don’t fuck with anything except the browser.”

  “I won’t. How long are you going to be gone?”

  He sighed. “Don’t know. I guess I gotta stop and get another flashlight while I’m out.”

  EIGHT

  THE JOB POSTINGS in the area were dismal. I wasn’t expecting anything extraordinary or high paying but most of the job search websites contained the same few postings for fast food joints. Working at a chain fast food place wasn’t ideal. I wasn’t opposed to working in a fast food restaurant but being forty and working at one put a huge damper on my ego. I passed on all the fast food listings for the moment. If I couldn’t find something else within a couple of days I didn’t have much of a choice. A job was a job and I needed one. I preferred to work for an independent restaurant where you might be treated like a workhorse but at least you weren’t treated like a disposable cog in the machine for the most part, constantly having your job threatened because there was a line of teenagers aching to make enough money to buy whatever it was that teenagers were into these days. But I really wanted to get away from being a server. I was sick of old men trying to save a dollar by swapping out their pollack fish dinner with a piece of cod. Or middle-aged men who bitched about their coffee and then encouraged their teenaged sons to trash the table with open packets of salt and ketchup so they could teach me some passive aggressive message while stiffing me on a tip. And I was tired of greasy and gross ex-cons working in the kitchen hitting on me and putting off a relentlessly rapey vibe.

  I began looking for anything that wasn’t associated with food. I applied for a receptionist job I knew I wouldn’t get even though they touted one didn’t need any experience. Even if I did get the receptionist job, I didn’t own any business attire and didn’t have the money to buy some. I was certain it wouldn’t be acceptable to work in a T-shirt and jeans. There were a few pairs of black pants I owned, which were the norm when you ended up working in retail or fast food. And one pair of tan slacks from a previous job that I hated but hung on to in case I ran into another job that required tan pants.

  A position for a general employee for a pet store caught my eye. I’d never heard of the place and clicked on the ad to read through the requirements. It was all your standard stuff: high school diploma, hard worker, flexible schedule, etcetera. I checked to see where the shop was located and found it was less than five miles from the house. I didn’t want to get my hopes up but I really wanted the job. It paid much better, not a lot, but better than serving tables and relying on tips or working fast food. I didn’t know a ton about animals other than the two cats we’d had when I was a kid. Brent was allergic and the funds, time, and space were always too limited to consider any other pet. But I always found if you were willing to work whatever shitty shift everyone else hated and admitted to the employer you didn’t know certain things but were willing to learn, some employers were willing to overlook your lack of skills in order to fill the position as long as someone with experience didn’t show up and apply.

  I finished sending in my application when someone knocked on the front door. I’d been so lost in what I was doing the sound startled me and my heart leapt into my throat. At first I thought about ignoring it. We weren’t expecting anyone and I didn’t like the thought of answering the door when Brent wasn’t home. An occupational hazard of dating Brent meant I’d heard too many home invasion stories. I’d also read too many news sites to not be nervous about a random knock at the door. But then I thought Brent might have scheduled an interview for the book he’d forgotten to tell me about or maybe the landlord was checking in and it was probably best to at least answer the door. It was the middle of the afternoon after all and I couldn’t imagine anyone being bold enough to do it in broad daylight or anyone wanting to rob the place after taking a look at the outside of the house.

  I made it to the door when the person knocked again. I cursed the lack of a peephole. I opened the door just enough for the other person to see my face and simultaneously braced the door with my shoulder and placed my foot along the edge to keep anyone from shoving it open and barging in.

  A thin, clean-cut man with dark hair and translucent skin stood on the porch looking around at the empty boxes I’d stored out there after unpacking. He wore a short sleeve, black button-down shirt and slacks, held a small basket, and appeared close to my age. Maybe a few years older. He turned to me and I had to refrain from slamming the door shut. He had a large scar running down his forehead and cheek and it looked as though whatever had caused the scar had also damaged his eye. It was milky in color and didn’t quite sit evenly or move equally with the other. It was a bit alarming. He smiled shyly.

  “Can I help you?” I said.

  “Hello.” He extended his hand. “I’m Dan Miller. I run The Meditation Temple down the road.” He tilted his head toward the end of the street where the abandoned looking church was located. After a few awkward seconds of holding his hand out and me staring at it and not reciprocating he finally dropped it. “I’d noticed a car in the drive the past couple of weeks and the plywood had been removed from the windows and assumed someone might’ve moved in. They normally don’t remove the window coverings if they’re gonna bulldoze the place. Heck, they don’t even bulldoze anything anymore. They just let it all fall in.” He proffered the basket to me and I noted it was full of fruit and also contained a small paper booklet. “I brought you a home warming gift.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I reluctantly opened the door enough to retrieve the basket. I thought, If you noticed a car before why didn’t you come when it was here?

  Dan stood expectantly as if he were waiting for me to invite him in. As a woman, you never told a stranger you were home alone. When I was single and a repairman came I always told them my boyfriend would be there any minute, even if they were there for three hours, to keep them on their toes if they planned on doing something terrible. I definitely wasn’t going to invite the guy in and he had to assume I was there alone since the car wasn’t in the drive at the moment. Alarm bells started going off in my head. He had to know there were only two of us and he had to have seen Brent leave. I could feel gooseflesh rising on my neck and was about to slam the door in the guy’s face. He must’ve recognized something in my expression as he intervened on my horrific downward spiral of thoughts.

  “I stopped by to invite you and your family to The Meditation Temple.”

  “We’re atheists.”

  “Great!”

  His response caught me off guard.

  He chuckled. “I know what you’re thinking. This weird looking guy shows up on your step, offers you a gift, and invites you to some bizarre place. You probably think I’m trying to get you to join a cult.”

  I wasn’t thinking that at all but now that he mentioned a cult I really wanted to slam the door in his face. But his statement about him being weird made me feel guilty, as if I were staring at his unusual eye too much. I opened my mouth to respond but I didn’t know what to say.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I get it all the time. The Meditation Temple isn’t a church or a cult. It’s a free space for any person of any religion to sit and meditate for as long as they need. The doors are always unlocked and we’re open twenty-four seven. Sometimes that meditation involves a person talking to a god or opening their mind fo
r some guidance or answers. There’s really no right or wrong way to do it. Some people say it helps with their depression and releases stress.” He gave a nervous smile.

  The mention of depression piqued my interest. But ultimately, as with anything that sounded interesting, or something I might be into, it most likely came with a price. Anything that sounded too good to be true usually was.

  “How much does it cost?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I keep a coffee can by the door. It’s sorta like the leave a penny take a penny jar you see at a store’s cash register. If you feel like donating, feel free to leave what you can. If you need some money, feel free to take what you need. It’s not a requirement though. I didn’t purchase the place to make money and I’m not an ordained minister or anything. I won’t guide you through the meditation. That’s something everyone has to do on their own.” He nodded toward the basket I was holding. “I gave you a pamphlet all about it in the basket. It also has some recommended books for anyone new to meditation.”

  I glanced down at the basket. “I’ll give it a read when I get a chance.”

  “Good.” He paused. “Well . . . I’ll let you get back to whatever you’re doing.”

  I don’t know why I offered an answer. “Job hunting.”

  “Oh, yes. That’s got to be difficult. Hard times around here. Especially since Zug Island.”

  I wanted to ask him what Zug Island meant but decided against it, figuring it was something I could look up later if I remembered the name.