The House at the End of the World

by Madeleine Marsh

  He pots two more stripes and a solid, swallows his second tequila and bends over to line up his next shot. The tip of the cue sinks into the stained green baize like the edge of a knife into melting butter. He steps back, lifting the cue at the same time as he lifts his eyes from the table and looks around. Everyone in the bar is turning to stare at him. The background white noise of conversation and music has faded to a low drone, a relentless sound that starts to drill through his eardrums into his skull. He straightens slowly, feeling very much under threat. The only weapon to hand is the pool cue but as the thought enters his head the hard maple wood starts to wilt, the top half slowly drooping until it's hanging like a dead flower over his hand. Everyone's watching him, no one's approaching him, but as he glances from one unfriendly face to another their features begin to melt away. Eyeballs liquefy into viscous white goo that runs down over cheekbones, removing flesh as it goes like water washing away dirt. Lips slip to the side and down, leaving fixed skeletal grins with nicotine-stained teeth. Scalps tear away from hairlines and fall away from smooth white bone. Drinks fall from wet hands, glasses smashing in puddles of booze and flesh. Bodies melt like hot candle wax, pink and red viscous gloop draining from clothing to leave skeletons standing, still dressed, still silently staring at him from empty eye sockets. His stomach heaves in panic and he bends over, mouth open, expecting to vomit burning tequila back up onto the baize.

  But nothing comes up.

  His stomach doesn't hurt and the pool cue's sturdy again in his sweating hand. He snaps his head up as the bar fills with the sound of tall tales and arguments about baseball, glasses once again thump onto tabletops and darts hit the board with muted thuds.

  He can't tell if these things are really happening or are just in his head. He doesn't know if he's seeing behind some invisible curtain, catching glimpses of what's really under the veil, or if his own mind is playing tricks, teasing and tormenting him.

  Laying the cue gently onto the table, knocking the 8-ball with the tip, he walks deliberately to the bar and asks for a bottle of tequila, which the busty barmaid brings him with a big smile. He unscrews the cap and tips the liquor down his throat, not stopping until he's almost choking and a third of the bottle is gone. Then he thanks her and walks back to sit up on the pool table and take his time drinking the rest of the bottle. With each slug, his vision narrows and the inside of the bar blurs until he's flat on his back on the table with the cue uncomfortably under his shoulders and the smooth surface of the balls against his hand.

  ~..~

  They're standing in the kitchen, Joe and Gabe leaning against the cupboards and Emilie next to the table shifting nervously from foot to foot, all listening to Luke tell the tale of The Clockwork Man.

  ‘It's a short story by a guy called Edward Moran, written in 1969. Mom and Dad took us to see the play the night they were killed.’ Luke looks at each of them before he carries on. Matt's hand is grasped in his, both of them refusing to let go. ‘It's about a couple who die in a car crash but they don't realise they're dead. They go home but the sitter doesn’t acknowledge them. The house starts to fill up with people, first the cops, then child services for their kid. They try to talk to people but everyone’s ignoring them and they convince themselves that someone’s playing a game at their expense. Then a man appears in the hall next to the door, not a real man, he's made of clockwork and he keeps telling them to go through the door but they're scared of what's beyond it.’

  ‘You think... the landlord is the Clockwork Man?’ Emilie sounds scared. ‘And he's what...? Trying to get us to go to Heaven?’

  ‘But we haven't not gone anywhere,’ Joe points out. ‘I haven't seen a light or a door or anything that I've neglected to walk towards.’

  ‘So maybe it's not all of us. He said something about a choice. Maybe it's just one of us but the others are all holding on.’

  ‘No offence,’ Gabe starts, and Luke knows what's coming. ‘You are the only two with a connection strong enough. The rest of us care, sure, but I don’t think we care enough to do something like this.’

  Matt raises his head. ‘I think Rick might be right about dying in the battle. I don't remember seeing him at the end.’

  ‘Did you see any of us?’

  ‘I don't know. I can’t remember.’

  ‘He told me,’ Emilie puts in. ‘He thinks he died. He keeps seeing Hell.’

  Joe shakes his head. ‘But why would any of us hold on to Rick?’

  Luke can’t help but wonder if it would have sounded so inoffensive if he'd said it. Probably not. ‘He might be holding on to us, too scared to let go.’ He glances sideways at Matt, silently asking if that could be the answer, hoping to God that it is. Matt clearly isn't convinced but it's a possibility, and it's better than any of the other possibilities he knows have crossed their minds. ‘So we need to talk to Rick.’

  ‘In which case you have two choices,’ Joe points out. ‘Go find him at the roadhouse or wait until he gets back. While you’re waiting you can drink coffee, find a bottle of wine and eat what I'm preparing to feed you.’

  When it's put like that, it's really not a tough choice. It's not like this requires immediate resolution and it doesn't look like their landlord's going anywhere because he's still standing exactly where he stopped, as broken as the clock next to him.

  ~..~

  ‘You don't need to keep cooking for us,’ Luke tells him and Joe knows he means it but if he leaves it up to them they'll be living on burgers, fries and salty snacks within one mealtime. It's a miracle the boys aren't three hundred pounds overweight with greasy hair and bad skin the way they were eating on the road. He doesn't like to think of them at the start, a thirteen and an eleven year old with no one to take care of them, no one who even cared that they hadn't been carried off by the horror that tore their parents apart.

  Nuked burritos, cheeseburgers, milkshakes and pie had been their staple diet according to Luke until Matt taught himself to cook using a battered and stained old recipe book and later the Cookery Channel once they hooked up cable. Joe’s tried to imagine himself as a child, having not only to look after himself but also a younger brother. He had a happy childhood. He can’t imagine a childhood at all without his parents.

  During the very short time Joe shared a car with them Luke was the one to tell some stories, to share what they knew about what was going on. It wasn't that Matt was unfriendly, just that he wasn't a talker, wasn't one to share. But his unconditional love for Luke was – is – obvious. He's possessive and protective and they’re a tight circle of two that he and the others don’t stand a chance of ever breaking into. Even after two months Joe’s still an outsider, they all are, despite fighting side by side, sharing the highs and the lows of the tail end of what he now knows was a long, drawn out battle that he was only aware of right before its climax.

  Emilie and possibly Rick, who still hasn’t returned, have come to regard him as some sort of father figure. But the boys don't want or need one. He muses on whether they were the same before the attack on their parents, if they've always been as completely focused on one another as they are as adults. Even more so now, apparently.

  The sex thing bothers him more than it should because it’s forcing him to re-evaluate his own long-held set of morals. He thought from the start Matt and Luke were together in that way; boyfriends, lovers, whatever the modern term is for two guys who sleep together and who clearly love each other. It’s never bothered him, he isn't homophobic. Whatever old-fashioned prejudices and outdated notions about gay men that he may have had, the sight of Matt and Luke standing holding smoking shotguns over a dead thing in the doorway of their motel room ridded him of them immediately. He had no idea what went on between them when their door finally and firmly closed at night, he just made assumptions. They all did. Admittedly during their week's hiatus at the diner there were no rooms, no doors to hide behind, and while Matt and Luke always stayed close, always reached for each other under the table before
falling asleep with their long legs hanging out of the booths, they didn't do anything overt, anything that would suggest there was something more going on between them. Again, he just assumed. But apparently they all assumed wrong. Whatever happened, whatever changed when they woke in the room upstairs, it shouldn't matter. It doesn’t matter. But to find out they're brothers, even if it's not by blood, has stirred something inside him that he can't name and can't pin down. They played together as children, shared beds and baths as innocents, and now that’s morphed into something that's definitely R-rated. That's what he can't come to terms with. Not that it makes the slightest difference, because he knows his opinion counts for squat where the boys are concerned and there’s no reason why it should.

  He doubts Matt and Luke have ever looked to anyone for anything, let alone moral judgement on how they choose to live. They've tracked down and killed all kinds of things over time and now it seems they've saved the world. What they are to one another doesn’t change what they’ve accomplished. Joe isn't their father, they’re consenting adults and he has no right to judge. But it still isn't sitting well with him. He knows he should just stop dwelling on it.

  He's made bacon and mushroom omelettes and the grateful looks on Matt and Luke's faces reminds him that he loves them and that isn't going to change.

  ‘Well? Eat up before they go limp!’

  Emilie and Gabe join them too, sitting on stools around the table.

  ‘If the landlord is some sort of guide, what does that make this place?’ Emilie asks with her mouth full. Joe bites back his first response and just scowls at her although she clearly isn't seeing it, but then he isn’t her father either.

  There's a minute or so before anyone responds, all of them too busy eating to be immediately disturbed. Finally Matt answers.

  ‘We think we're in Limbo, the place between life and death, where souls with unfinished business hang out until something changes and they move on. If they move on. When spirits aren't actively haunting old houses and creepy towns, they're floating around in Limbo. Or so most of the texts say. Obviously it's all theory because no one who's ever actually been in Limbo has had the opportunity to come back and write about their experiences.’

  ‘But,’ Luke adds. ‘Like most of this stuff, the theory's more often right than wrong.’

  ‘So... we’re all dead, all ghosts?’

  Matt picks up again. ‘Ghost isn’t the right term. Spirit or soul is closer. And no, I don’t think we’re all spirits. I don’t think we all belong here. I think we all ended up here because we were together at the end and whatever... power brought us here didn’t have time to figure out which of us to bring.’ He hesitates. ‘It’s just a working theory. But if we're right about the Clockwork Man then it follows that at least one of us is dead. The problem with it being Rick, or just Rick, is that the house seems to have been created out of our memories – mine and Luke’s – and from our imaginations. Whatever we wish for, in a manner of speaking, seems to become reality. So it makes sense that one or both of us is involved.’ The sadness in Matt’s voice is heartbreaking.

  ‘You have unfinished business?’ Gabe sounds doubtful. ‘Something you haven’t managed to kill yet?’ It’s taken a while to get used to his rare sense of humour.

  ‘No. Not that we were aware of. Not since yesterday morning, anyway.’ He and Luke share a wry smile. ‘We talked about it and we can't think what else there is. We both thought when we died, we'd die and that would be the end of it. We’ve never really believed in a life after death. But if one of us is alive and the other’s dead, you might be right in that we have a connection strong enough to do this.’

  ‘Why would you want to leave anyway?’ Emilie looks bemused. ‘You're building your own perfect world.’

  ‘Perfection isn't all it's cracked up to be,’ Matt assures her, and Emilie laughs.

  ‘Who wouldn't want everything they've ever dreamt of having?’

  ‘No one should ever have everything because it leaves nothing left to want,’ Luke sounds like he's quoting something. ‘It’s a nice thought, a worthy pipedream, but in practice it won’t work. You build Utopia but what next? If everything’s the way you want it, the boredom will drive you insane. The cracks will show soon enough, and believe me, Matt and I don't cope well with boredom because we don't know how to. Before you know it, we’ll be creating things to track down and kill just because we need something to do. We’ll recreate our old lives here and it'll be a nightmare for everyone.’

  ‘I don't understand.’ Emilie may not but Joe does. He just doesn't know what they need to do to stop the inevitable.

  ‘How do we find out for sure?’ he asks before Emilie can question this further.

  ‘A séance.’

  Joe doesn't have chance to respond because Luke beats him to it. This is one thing they clearly haven’t talked about. ‘Bro, seriously? I say again, a séance in Limbo is insane. It could get really fucking busy in here and I doubt many of them will be friendly.’

  Joe's with him. ‘Didn't you just say that Limbo was full of souls with unfinished business? Do we really want to tap into that?’

  ‘Yes.’ There's that high level of patience he's heard in Matt's voice many times in recent weeks, almost always directed at Luke. ‘But I doubt they're all in our kitchen. If we want to know if one of us is dead, we should ask the experts.’

  Luke obviously isn’t convinced but concedes, ‘Okay. Fine. We need a Sharpie and a shot glass.’

  Emilie holds out her hands. ‘Where’s the Sharpie?’

  ‘In the drawer under the sink.’

  Joe clears the plates, snatches a shot glass from the cupboard and watches Matt draw the numbers 1 to 10 in a sweeping curve on the surface of the table in permanent marker, writing the letters of the alphabet in two rows beneath the numbers as well as Yes on the left and No on the right.

  ‘Are we actually going to do this?’ Emilie sounds nervous. ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘Nothing we've done since he was eleven years old has been safe,’ Luke points out.

  ‘And putting it into perspective,’ Matt adds, ‘it's probably the safest thing you've done in the last couple of months.’

  ‘You could just have wished for a Ouija Board.’ Emilie points that out a couple of minutes too late. Joe looks from her to Matt and Luke who look back at her as if the thought had never crossed their minds.

  ‘We’ve always done it this way.’

  Joe takes a stool next to Gabe who's watching but keeping quiet. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised by that, should I?’ Gabe shakes his head. ’You're okay with this?’

  He just chuckles. ‘I'm sitting in an ever-changing house at the end of the world after a fight to the death with things escaped from Hell. If they want to hold a séance and chat to some ghosts, that's fine with me. I've got beer. I'm happy.’ He's such an easy going guy, Joe wonders what he was like before all this when he was selling fast cars to rich kids. ‘You know that phrase, ‘once the worst thing that can ever happen to you has already happened, there’s nothing left to be scared of’?’

  ‘No,’ Joe thinks about it. ‘But it makes sense.’

  ‘Just keep that in mind.’

  ‘So... do we all need to hold hands?’ Emilie asks as they all shift their stools towards the end of the table where the hand-drawn board faces Matt and Luke.

  ‘No.’

  She frowns. ‘Should we wait for Rick?’

  ‘If Rick’s right and he died....’ Matt trails off. ‘No.’

  ‘What about candles? Shouldn't we have candles and incense or something?’

  ‘It's all bullshit,’ Luke explains. ‘The whole thing with the candles and the incense and sage, thyme, oregano, whatever herbs people have lying around. Why should the dead care what the place smells like or how it's lit? Just put your index fingers at the base of the glass, don’t touch it, and wait.’

  Joe's still not certain about this but he does as he’s instructed, their fingers meeting around t
he shot glass. He expects something to happen immediately but it doesn't. They just sit and breathe, letting a silence descend. And it is silence. Take away their movements around the house and there's nothing left to make any noise. Even the scratching in the walls has stopped. It's the first time Joe's really been aware of not being a part of civilisation anymore. It settles around them, encasing them, entrapping them. And just before it becomes too stifling, Matt speaks.

  ‘We're trying to contact whoever's here.’ His words are calm and clear. ‘We just have a couple of questions, we mean you no harm.’

  Joe's surprised to see the upside down glass move, just a fraction of an inch, and glances at Gabe to his left and Emilie across the table, they're looking up too.

  ‘Is this Limbo?’ Matt starts, and the glass starts to slide to the left. ‘Follow it with your fingers, but don’t touch it.’

  They do as Matt tells them. Joe looks at the others but the surprise on all their faces is genuine, except of course for Matt and Luke. He’s thought up until now that séances were pieces of theatre but he’s certain that it isn’t one of them moving that glass.

  It stops at Y.

  ‘Is there a chance they’re fucking with us?’ Joe whispers.

  Luke frowns at him and shakes his head.

  Matt goes on, ‘Are we all dead?’

  This time the answer comes quickly. The way the glass moves on its own really is very freaky. N.