I try to imagine my mother entering the house and discovering her daughter passed out on the floor beside a smashed plant pot lying on the floor and a rope hanging over her from above. This was the end of me. I could already see the headline of the predictable “Coping Together with a Suicidal Child” column. All at once, I feel a tightness in my throat. I get up and go to the door of the room, even though I know that the struggle that awaits me on the other side is far from simple.
I go out of the room into a small reception hall. This space, like the room in which I awake, is windowless and unfurnished but for a large cabinet full of folders, and like the previous room, this silent and odorless area also has a massive ceiling fan that doesn’t move the air, and is pretty depressing. A clerk sits behind a simple reception desk. Tidy piles of documents lie untouched in front of her, and she doesn’t answer the phones. She sits there, expressionlessly, her hands folded calmly on the table. Everything there is detached and somewhat threatening.
“Hmm, sorry, I am Noga Reizner from room number…” I turn in the direction of the room I came out of, but there is no number on the door. “From that room.”
The receptionist gazes up and then looks at the papers that lie in front of her. It’s difficult to guess her age. Her whole appearance has an indefinable aura.
“Yes, Noga, daughter of Avner and Irit.”
“Reizner,” I complete my name.
“We don’t pay attention to family names here,” the receptionist answers dryly. Her response is typical of psychologists. Address the subject as an individual who stands alone within the kinship of the family complex. The whole “Coping Together” theory of Dr. Irit Reizner on one leg. Perhaps they know one another. The receptionist flips through the pages on her desk, and continues, “You have time until they begin, so you can prepare. If you need additional material, you can search through those folders over there.” She points to the filing cabinet. “Although, from what it says here, I don’t know how much that will help you.”
Perhaps I am still a little woozy, because I don’t understand a word she is saying to me.
“Get ready for what?”
“The trial.”
Wow-ow! Will someone here please, cool this. Trial? What have I done? It’s not like I want to kill someone. Well, I suppose I do, but that doesn’t count, does it? Besides which, I changed my mind. I need a few more seconds to consider whether the receptionist is trying to bluff me or something like that, because it’s a long and exhausting bureaucratic procedure to go to trial. I try to respond to her with the kind of smile that makes it clear to her that her joke isn’t the funniest one I have ever heard, but she stares at me blankly, making me more uneasy. I look around and don’t see anyone.
“Hmm, where are my parents?”
The ageless and odorless receptionist shrugs my question off.
“It seems they aren’t yet aware of the situation, which means you have time. We don’t begin before all the arrangements are over.” Now I am even more confused.
“So, who found me?”
“Meanwhile, no one. Your timing wasn’t so successful from that point of view.”
I look around me. The place is quiet and empty in a way that arouses suspicion.
“So, how come I’m here?”
The receptionist steals another glance at her papers and answers matter-of-factly.
“A broken neck. Luckily for you.”
That doesn’t make sense. I have no bandages, and I don’t feel any pain. I run my hand over the back of my neck and my throat to make sure. Everything feels fine. I don’t remember a thing about the chair falling. Someone found me and brought me here. Who could that have been? Alina, the maid, perhaps, but she comes in the mornings. Maybe she made a one-time change to her work hours. But the important thing is that my parents don’t know anything yet. Perhaps I can still save the day. I can go back home and hide the evidence. There are plenty of favors I can offer Alina in exchange for her silence, like classified information about where they keep the key to the cabinet of expensive liquor that always catches her eye.
“Hmm, I think I’m okay now, so I’ll just go home,” I say to the receptionist in my most casual voice.
She raises her eyebrow in surprise. That’s the first expression of emotion I see coming from her, and it’s quite comforting. But, when she shows no sign of lowering it again, I turn around and look for a door out, but there is only one door in the little reception hall, and it’s the plain wooden door I came through a few minutes earlier. I turn again to the receptionist, who has meanwhile returned to being expressionless and says in a dry voice:
“I suggest that you start preparing. Your situation doesn’t look good.”
Now, I begin to get angry. I know the rules. They can’t make me appear before a psychiatric board or diagnose me without my parents’ agreement. I’m still a minor. I won’t cooperate with them; I am an expert at non-cooperation.
“I will wait for my parents.” I want to come across as being assertive, but in my anxiety, I sound quite frightened and mostly childish.
“It doesn’t work like that,” the emotionless receptionist replies, “and it’s also impossible to know when they will arrive.”
“What does that mean?” Now, I’m already angry. “They’ll arrive as soon as they know I’m here.”
Okay, my mother will come. There’s no way she will miss it. But Father? That depends on his schedule and his level of willingness to cope with family dramas. He is never good at that.
The receptionist doesn’t respond.
“I want to talk to my mother.”
“You should have thought of that before you committed suicide,” she replies indifferently and folds her arms again.
“I haven’t,” I protest and feel even sillier and more childish. “That’s only an attempted suicide.”
“And you appear to have succeeded,” the receptionist answers matter-of-factly.
“Look, I know it looks rather dramatic, with the rope and the potted plant and everything, but it’s just a stupid accident.”
“If that’s your line of defense,” the receptionist says, using her right eyebrow-raising reflex again. “I suggest you reconsider it.”
“Hey, I’ve done nothing wrong,” I cry. I really try to steady myself, but her terminology—‘trial’ and ‘line of defense’—really disturb me, and anyway, what kind of psychological approach is this? My mother wouldn’t like it at all. It’s just the opposite of containment and acceptance and all the other “Keys to Cooperation,” as she calls them. In spite of being a failure in terms of the application of these keys, I know my mother’s psychological theories well.
The receptionist doesn’t seem at all ruffled,
“I wouldn’t be so sure, if I were you.” She pulls out a large folder from below her desk and lays it on the counter.
“Open it on page 671. The Ten Commandments, clause six. They take that one very seriously.”
Nothing about this makes sense. I give up any idea of saving the situation. However hard it is to admit it, I want my mother beside me, to put things right as only she knows how, and get me out of this place that is making me more irritable from minute to minute.
“Please, can you call my parents and tell them I’m here?” It seems I don’t have my cell phone.
The receptionist raises her left eyebrow. If raising the right one signifies surprise, raising the left one looks more like an expression of resentment.
“We do things like that only in extraordinary circumstances that require instructions from above,” she replied wryly.
“But my parents have to know that I am here. You have to inform them; I’m a minor!”
The hysteria in my voice must have made the receptionist’s left eyebrow drop back to its natural place. She leans forward a little, and speaks in a quieter voice, as if she is sha
ring a juicy item of gossip with me.
“Look, there are precedents from the past. Try and read through the case of Ahitophel. It’s in folder 1,934B. And there is also the Masada incident, where the court decision was very complicated. It’s in folder 12,006Z. You have plenty of time to review the cases in the files. I don’t suppose they will complete the arrangements until noon tomorrow.”
I feel confused. Nothing makes sense. I close my eyes and try to create some order in the events of the past hour, but the humming of the ventilator is making it difficult to think clearly. ‘They won’t complete the arrangements ’til noon tomorrow.’ There is no way I am spending the night here.
“What arrangements?” I ask.
“The funeral arrangements,” is the answer. As if the matter is taken for granted.
“Funeral? What funeral?”
“Your funeral. We don’t start the trial before that.”
The room spins around me.
“Are you trying to tell me that…”
“You’re dead. Yes.”
That is too much. It’s impossible. It was an accident, that’s all. I was trying to extricate myself from the noose. I didn’t want to do this. I felt faint, that’s all. It’s like a dream I will awaken from soon. Could it be that the receptionist is my alter-ego? Not particularly flattering but, to be honest, I don’t consider myself a bargain. I look around again, this time to check out the virtual reality my subconscious has created. Not especially creative. It’s interesting to know what would happen here if I were on hallucinatory drugs. A sense of relief spreads over me. So, all I have to do is wake up, get rid of the evidence and continue my boring existence. Strangely, something about this thought is encouraging.
“Well, seems it’s time to go back.” I smile at my alter-ego. She raises her eyebrow again. Not the resentful left one, but the one on the right that expresses surprise.
“I don’t think you want to do that,” she replies.
“And, I think, I want to very much.”
The receptionist lowers both eyebrows, the resentful and the surprised, and moves her head from side to side.
“See here, perhaps it looks like an easy solution,” she says, and this time there is some tenderness in her voice, “But you are likely to regret it. They always do.”
I must admit that I am amused at the idea that my conscious and sub-conscious are still debating the issue, and I don’t bother to listen in. The ceiling fan stops turning all at once and the humming in my head is silenced. I turn back and, where I am certain the wall is blank, another door has appeared. I hear the receptionist whispering that I should reconsider my decision. My alter-ego turns out to be an obstinate creature. But my hand is firmly on the doorknob. I open the door and go out.
The door I open, in spite of the receptionist’s silent protests, does not lead me back to the living room and the smashed potted plant as I had expected, nor even to the hospital bed. I don’t find my hysterical mother and pitiful father awaiting me on the other side of the door, but a vast foyer of a dark old stone building. It isn’t what I expected. The place looks abandoned. I turn back to the door, but instead of the simple white institutional door, there is an imposing carved wooden one with a missing doorknob. Wooden boards seal the two windows on either side of the door. The little light that does enter from outside, reveals walls covered in peeling wallpaper and a thick layer of dirt on the floor. To my surprise, the dust doesn’t bother me, even though, for as long as I remember, I have been allergic and sensitive to dust since it causes me asthma attacks, and fits of cleaning for my mother.
No one has walked here in many years. I take two steps forward to better check the place out. On my right, I discover a narrow corridor and an entrance to another room. Before me stands a broad wooden staircase. Even in the gloom, I can see stairs are missing, and the wood in the remaining ones is cracked and split. Dust also covers the rusted wrought-iron handrail. It’s a ruin.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” When I don’t hear anything, I immediately think I’m still dreaming, but something about this place is so different from the reception room I have just left. Although I have no reasonable explanation for why and how I got there, the house has a presence I cannot explain. Two more steps in, the layer of dust on the floor is so thick that my footsteps make no sound. I peek into the room on the left and discover a vast living room with large French windows with some of their panes missing that are also boarded up and framed with moth-eaten velvet drapes. A wood-framed antique velvet sofa and a few other pieces of furniture dispersed around the room confirm that additional items had once been there. A large marble fireplace in the corner signifies past grandeur and fine, somewhat old fashioned, good taste. It was the home of people who were willing to spend a great deal of money so that visitors would know that they could. I draw closer to the old sofa and stretch out my hand to wipe off a little of the dust to discover its original color, but a voice from behind me stops me.
“Don’t try that, it only makes everything worse.”
I turn at once. I admit—I caught fright. Standing there is a tall, slim man with large, sunken eyes that lend him a tired, melancholy expression. He is dressed in a manner that was very fashionable in the ’70’s, and now looks funny rather than anything else. His hair is strangely styled like Elvis Presley’s, with a shock of hair in front and sideburns on his cheeks. I have a strange feeling I know him from someplace, but I can’t remember where.
“Hey, hmm, sorry.” I don’t know exactly why I am apologizing. What am I supposed to say, what is this place, or even how have I landed up here? If my subconscious mind has cooked up this whole business, then I’m more creative than I think.
The man at the entrance to the room shrugs.
“You don’t have to apologize to me. I’m just advising you for your benefit.”
“Why? What will happen if I touch the sofa?” I have this tendency to ask questions about things that don’t make sense.
“Nothing.” He shrugs again, and I sense an air of despair in the way he replies with that single word.
“So, how will that make everything worse?” I ask.
“Nothing happens, whatever you do here, and it doesn’t help to keep on trying,” was his forlorn reply. Well. I have reached the same conclusion. That was my reason for taking down the pot plant. A wave of solidarity with this stranger washes over me. I wonder if I also seem as despairing and lifeless as he does, and the thought does not please me, but reminds me that I still have to clear up a big mess.
“Hmm, if you don’t mind my asking, what exactly is this place? Like, where are we? Because I think I really need to get home.”
The melancholic looks up as if he is trying to remember, and I can’t shake of the sense that I know him.
“Somewhere close to Zichron Ya’akov. If you look through the cracks in that window”—he points at one of the French doors—“You will see Zichron, and from the kitchen window over there”—he indicates in the direction of the narrow hallway—“you can see Binyamina. It’s possible to see other houses from one of the rooms on the upper floor, but I don’t know the name of the place. Leah says perhaps Givat Ada, but that it’s different from how she remembers it. Truth is, I have never roamed around here much.”
I approach one of the windows. Through a crevice between two boards of wood, I see a vineyard spread out with a line of houses behind it that look like villas belonging to people who have enough money to pay for a view of the vines. I recall the landscape from a school trip in sixth grade to the ruins of the first settlements and the famous Binyamina vineyard. It’s all very confusing and completely illogical. What am I doing between Zichron and Binyamina? What’s going on here? Was I snatched and brought, unconscious, to this abandoned house? Maybe Alina decided to take advantage of the situation and kidnap me for ransom? I could understand her. If my mother employed me, I would also look for some way
to make her pay me a lot more money. If this is so, I am the captive of this strange man who is one of the gang. Maybe it’s just him and Leah. And who is Leah, anyway?
Although it’s not my favorite genre, I have seen enough thriller and action movies to know that kidnapping is always a gang job, not a one-man show. I can cope with Alina, even sympathize with her, but a strange man is keeping me locked up in a deserted house, and warns me not to touch anything, because that would seriously worsen my situation—this is already worrying.
Just as I conclude that it is time to become hysterical, I hear the melancholy man mutter in English, “This is the town where everyone would like to grow old.” He recited the sentence in a deep baritone voice, and then it struck me that it comes from the movie “Autumn Leaves,” and I love thinking of dead film stars.
“You’re Ben Fox! Like, you’re the spitting image of Ben Fox, and you sound just like him. My Dad has all his movies.”
The man smiles a tired smile and spreads his arms to the sides.
“The very same, at your service,” he announces, taking a little bow.
I have already forgotten that a minute ago, he threatened me and I am supposed to be frightened of him. Mimics of former actors from the ’70’s are not rapists and killers. At least, I feel that this should be a basic law. The truth is that it was kind of weird, because I always thought that my dad was the only person, together with a few other enthusiasts of dust-covered movies, who knew the name of Ben Fox. He had video copies of all the films. I told him so many times that he could transfer all of them onto computer files and load them on his cell phone, but he insisted on keeping the video cassettes, even though we haven’t had a functioning video player for ages. He said they were a collector’s item.
“You imitate him so well,” I tell Ben Fox. “And you look so much like him, even though you’re a bit too thin.”
The kidnapping impersonator dropped his slumped shoulders and shook his head as if he had just heard the most stupid remark ever, then turned to leave the room.
The House of Lost Spirits: A Paranormal Novel Page 2