The House of Lost Spirits: A Paranormal Novel

by Einat Shimshoni

  “Then we’ll demolish it and start building from scratch,” says the jeep driver.

  “I thought it was supposed to be old-style,” the thin man said, being openly cynical.

  “We’ll build it in new old-fashioned style.” The Mercedes owner raises a questioning eyebrow, but the jeep guy is completely goal driven.

  “We’ll call it restoring heritage sites. We may even be able to get funding from the Israel Antiquities Authority or some organization like it.”

  “And, what if the Antiquities Authority rejects your plan? Says that it is a protected structure or something like that?” The thin man presses him again.

  “What is protected? Look around, it’s a ruin. This building is of no interest to anyone. They will thank us for doing something with it.”

  Helen begins to say something to warn anyone from daring to call her house a ruin, but Oved shuts her up immediately.

  “They will bury you in bureaucratic paper-work. Ten years will go by before you get to move even one stone here.”

  “Not if you will help us,” the Jeep driver replies.

  “How can I help? This site isn’t in our jurisdiction, as I pointed out to you.”

  It was obvious that the slim man was enjoying finding fault with the grandiose plan of the Jeep driver, or he was just an incurable skeptic by nature.

  “It’s not in anyone’s jurisdiction. The first to take possession of it, wins. You have the opportunity of being the first. Just think of the rates and taxes you will be able to collect on this site.” The thin fellow grows angry.

  “I am thinking of the costs of the infrastructure I will have to supply the moment we take responsibility for the site.”

  The man from the Jeep leans back on his shiny vehicle and folds his arms. “That’s the problem with you people. You think of the costs and not the investment. I bring you a project that will shoot your council ten levels above where it is now, bring you revenue, job openings, branding everywhere, and you are pressured by how much money you will have to invest in an access road and connection to pipelines. That’s why things don’t move in this country. People like you lack vision.”

  The thin man was silent for a while. Clearly, he was searching for other obstacles to place before the super entrepreneur from the Jeep. At last he found something,

  “The administration won’t approve your plan.”

  “I have someone in the administration.”

  The second fellow from the Jeep finishes smoking his cigarette and throws the butt on the ground, which infuriates Helen, who is peeping over my shoulder.

  “He had better pick that up at once,” she mutters.

  The smoker pulls out some gum now and throws the wrapper on the ground, just like the cigarette.

  “Pick that up, right now,” Helen’s voice rises in volume and it is easy to sense the imminent attack of screaming drawing closer.

  “Helen, be quiet,” hissed Oved.

  “Can they hear us?” I ask in a whisper.

  “No,” Oved replies, “But if you don’t keep quiet, we won’t be able to hear them.”

  The smoker, who seems to be getting bored with not doing anything and is unaware that the owner of the house, herself, is staring at him, turns around and spits a generous quantity of human liquid on the ground. That is the last straw for Helen.

  “This is beyond the limit, a shame and a disgrace. I will not accept such behavior.”

  “Be quiet, Helen,” Oved says firmly once again, but he doesn’t stand a chance. She is already gaining momentum, and no one can stop her.

  “I will not be quiet! No one can tell me to be quiet in my own home. Upon my life, this is already the limit. And don’t you dare raise your voice at me! I will not accept that under any circumstances.”

  Meanwhile, the Mercedes man and the Jeep driver shake hands and the three people get into their cars. We miss the end of the conversation, but the general idea is clear.

  It would be hard to say that I have developed any sentiments for the place, but the idea of turning the abandoned structure into a hotel is rather irritating. I hate hotels, and always have.

  As a child, my parents would take me on a family vacation once a year, that included visits to museums and sites that mother was not really interested in, but considered to be ones that every cultured person should get to know—and that meant staying in hotels, in which my father really has no interest, but were well enough thought of in the right circles.

  They agreed to release me from these holidays, only after I made clear to them at every meal, and each time they picked up their forks, how many starving children in Africa could be rescued from starvation with just the leftovers on the buffet. Father claimed that I was ruining his enjoyment, and the feeling was entirely mutual. In the end, they changed the family holiday plan into a couple’s affair where they could quietly indulge in the extravagant breakfasts, while I was sent for four days of healthy, balanced breakfasts with my grandfather and grandmother. The memory of omelets with fried onions and chopped salad that Grandfather would prepare for me on those mornings, now fills me with a sense of loss.

  “This isn’t the first time,” Oved says light-heartedly when the clouds of dust churned up by the wheels of the cars settle down. “He was here a year ago. Do you remember? He took a lot of photographs and left. But nothing came of it.”

  “They’ll be back,” was Benny’s melancholy reply. “In the end they will build their hotel here.”

  “No one will build a hotel on my property!” Helen adamantly insists, but Oved points out that no one will consider her opinion and does not forget to remind her that, legally, the house never belonged to her.

  ***

  From her place in the attic, Milka heard the grinding of wheels and the banging of car doors. She has already learned to recognize this sound and it arouses a troubling feeling of impending disaster. It has always been like this. She has had to vacate each of her addresses over the course of recent years following the arrival of those sounds. Each such departure was accompanied by an oppressive sense of being an unhinged soul. She knew that this was her punishment. Retribution for all the years she had disturbed the repose of souls and spirits, the penalty for disturbing worlds that were not hers. Her soul was cursed and sentenced to an existence of detachment and suffering. Milka’s soul managed to escape a certain measure of its punishment by finding places of concealment and rest between stone walls. The first had been her own home. That same small stone abode in which she lived and found her death as a lonely, friendless old woman. She remained in the house and saw how her neighbors emptied it of her possessions and meager property, hearing them saying out loud what they had whispered quietly behind her back while she was still alive. The house was left empty for a year until it was taken over by a young couple, who were daring enough, and sufficiently poor not to be deterred by the spirit of the previous occupant, which had, perhaps, decided to stay there. Amusingly, it was precisely their entry into the house that compelled her to leave. Such a powerful presence of life was intolerable. She found a hiding place in a secluded cave in the desert, and discovered that abstinence from human beings was good for her. Perhaps she should have avoided them more when she was alive.

  There were other spirits who turned up from time to time over the hundreds of years she spent in the cave. That’s the way it is with lost souls, they are drawn to one another; but all those guests did not stay long. Some moved to other hiding places and others succeeded in doing what she didn’t dare try. They moved on to the place to which they belonged.

  And then, the automobiles arrived. Some of the spirits that visited her from time to time, told her about them, but she was unable to imagine horseless carriages speeding along on their own before seeing them for herself. The sight of them was intimidating. People got out of the vehicles, entered the cave, scraped its walls, mulled the ground
between their fingers and aimed a black object that flashed sparks of light in all directions, which startled Milka and sent her running to hide away in the far reaches of the cave. A few weeks later, they returned with even more people. Milka understood that the cave was no longer the quiet and safe haven she sought. She moved to another cave, but in the end, motor vehicles came there, too, sending her from cave to cave, until she reached a house occupied by two other spirits. The house was large enough for the three of them. She found herself a quiet corner in the attic, and but for Helen’s screaming that disturbed the peace from time to time, Milka felt that she was alone, just as she had felt in her caves.

  But now, her peace and quiet was being disrupted again. Milka did not come out of her attic to see what was causing the rumpus outside. She had no need or interest in knowing. Of one thing she was certain: automobiles bring people, and people bring life. As far as she was concerned, this meant she had to renew her search.

  ***

  I know that Oved is awake, if you can consider someone who is unable to sleep as being awake, even though he lies on the sofa in the living room with his eyes shut.

  “I don’t feel cold anymore,” I say. Not that I think it interests him, but simply because right now, I feel that the petrifying cold that has accompanied me since the night, has disappeared.

  Oved opens an eye.

  “Congratulations. That means they have taken you out of refrigeration.”

  “What?”

  “You know,” Oved says as he slides up into a seated position.

  “In my time, they didn’t have things like that. They simply left you as you were until they buried you. But, nowadays, people freeze corpses.”

  “Are you telling me that I was feeling cold because my body was stuck in a freezer ’til now?” Beyond the fact that the thought is horrifyingly grotesque, it’s also not rational. How could I be feeling my body if I am already dead?

  “You are in the stages of separation,” Oved says knowledgeably. “The soul has to detach itself from the body. It takes about a week.”

  “If they have just taken me out of the freezer…” I don’t want to continue this thought aloud. It frightens me. But Oved understands what I am thinking and completes the sentence for me.

  “So, it means they’ll be burying you soon.”

  The thought gives me the cold shivers. Pictures of my mother and father, and my grandfather, standing on the side of my open grave and the thought of my body slowly descending into it floods me with a wave of guilt. The world will manage very well without me, of that I have no doubt, but the world never loved me very much. My parents, I know, actually did. Even if they had irritating ways of showing it.

  “You can go there if you wish,” Oved says.

  A sense of guilt washes over me for all the pain I am probably causing my parents, in addition to my failed attempt to go out of the house this morning, remove any possibility of going to my own funeral.

  “Did you go to yours?” I asked.

  Oved shrugged.

  “You’re presuming that I am one of those who got to be buried.”

  There is something creepy about his answer and I prefer not to try and understand precisely what Oved means, but just change the subject. I ask him about something that is bothering me.

  “So, what is the story about the house not legally belonging to Helen?”

  A dastardly smile appears on his face.

  “Well, it’s very simple. Legally speaking, the house was registered in the name of Baron Rothschild. Helen and her husband lived here but weren’t the owners.”

  “So, why does it irritate her so much when you say that?”

  “Because Helen’s husband didn’t consider the legal side of the ownership and believed it was his house.”

  “And. So…?” I am certain that there is more to this than just a legal misunderstanding, and that Oved is simply dragging it out and pulling me along until he gets to the heart of the matter.

  “So, in the will he wrote, he indicated to whom he was bequeathing the house,” Oved replies, playfully.

  “And it wasn’t Helen,” I guess.

  Oved nodded. His eyes were still shut, and his arms were folded behind his head.

  “So, who inherited the house?” I ask.

  “Sophie,” Oved replies, nonchalantly.

  “Who is Sophie?”

  “Helen’s younger sister.”

  “And…”

  He is trying to make me angry. That’s clear, and the conversation really is beginning to irritate me. Why can’t he answer in one full sentence? And it doesn’t make sense. Helen died young, probably before her husband. Clearly, he would not leave the house to Helen if she were dead already. So, what does she care that her sister got the house?

  “Well, that is connected to the story of how Helen died,” Oved says. And, at this point, he has already opened one eye.

  “How did she die?”

  “Ah, Leah doesn’t like anyone to tell this story.” Oved raises himself to a sitting position. Clearly, he is enjoying playing a game. He wants to tell the story as much as I want to hear it, but he enjoys the feeling of power he gets at the opportunity of telling me. I am pretty much convinced that everyone in the house knows everything about each other and that this story has been told several times, with or without any regard to Leah’s opinion.

  “Did she take her own life?”

  It suddenly clicks. This could be what it’s about; only people, who commit suicide get stuck in abandoned houses for eternity. This is a kind of punishment. After all, the receptionist said several times that my position didn’t look good. She recommended I check the Masada incident, which, to the best of my knowledge, ended in a mass suicide, that, somehow, gave birth to a gigantic myth. Well, now I can testify from first-hand experience that there is nothing heroic about suicide. I know that Benny took his own life in his dismal apartment in Netanya after his Hollywood career crashed and he got into debt with the underworld. It seems to be the common denominator of all the inhabitants of this house. Who knows how many more houses there are like this, in which cursed and outcast people, who have taken their own lives, wander around in eternal boredom. Perhaps it’s worth looking for another house, where some cooler suicide victims hang out, people like Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, or even Virginia Woolf. Although, according to the characters around me, there is a basis for assuming that suicides find their eternal site in their countries of origin, or at least in the countries where they took their own lives. He who spends his life in the puddle of the Levant, will have to continue paddling in it even after his death. How fitting.

  This still doesn’t answer my question of where they all are. Even if Israel is at the bottom of the table of suicide statistics, at least according to the data I read, and even if our list of suicides does not include that many culturally interesting individuals, we’re still talking about thirty thousand suicides in only the past seventy years. If we take into account the long human history of the region, as evidenced by the presence of Oved and Milka, there are a great many frustrated spirits wandering around here after the world of souls is closed to them because they took matters into their own hands and didn’t wait patiently until the Angel of Death took the trouble to come and get them. Not that I truly believe in the existence of the Angel of Death. Nor do I really know what to believe in, now. Either way, the difficulty I have getting out of the house will severely delay my investigation of the situation.

  Oved doesn’t seem perturbed by the pause for thought I am taking. He has folded his arms and waits with his arrogant smile. Only now, I realize that he has not answered me.

  “No, Helen did not take her own life. It is possible she would have done so in the end, but Jacob and Sophie didn’t have the patience to wait for that to happen.”

  The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place in my head.


  “So, did her husband and sister, who were having an affair, murder her?” I admit—I am pretty excited about this idea, even if it destroys the cursed suicide theory I have just begun to develop. Murder in the family for romantic reasons is one of the plots only found in books or movies. What are my chances of getting close to a case of murder? And what likelihood is there of me wandering around with the victim of a murder, at the very scene of the crime? I’m not proud to admit it, but I find this fact so exciting. Perhaps, I have landed up in a place with interesting characters after all. This information is so thrilling that, for the present, I push aside the unresolved issue of where’s-everyone-and-just-we-are-here, even though there is another more urgent question. What has all this got to do with Leah? From Leah’s story, I understand that she knew Helen in her lifetime and that the two met in the early years of Zichron Ya’akov.

  “Oved, how did Leah get involved in the triangle of Helen, her sister, and her husband?”

  Oved smiles in amusement.

  He gets up and says, “Well, she really doesn’t like us to talk about it,” and before I can respond, he propels himself up through the ceiling.

  A second before I manage to shout at Oved to come back, I hear Benny, who is standing at the entrance to the living room, say, “Let it go. Don’t talk about it. Besides, you’ll be better off if you don’t yell.”

  I try, I really try to get it out of Benny, but he just shrugs, rubs his hands together from time to time, and keeps his silence. I begin feeling sorry for the tax investigator, who had to question him about his financial messes, but when I say that to him, he responds with a bitter smile, saying, “Actually, there, I talked more than I should have.”

  “And what did you say?” I ask.

  “I told them everything I should not have,” he replies, still smiling bitterly.

  “So, why won’t you tell me? You all know, anyway.”

  But Benny shut up like a bank vault.