The Agony House

by Cherie Priest

  So it could’ve been worse, right? If you were stuck with a ghost, better a nice old church-going lady ghost than a violent murdering poltergeist. I mean, if you got to pick. Did she get to pick?

  Denise glared around the room, silently daring any hypothetical spirits—old ladies or otherwise—to show themselves. She didn’t really want to see a ghost; but maybe the ghosts didn’t really want to see her, either.

  The music downstairs played on, and the ceiling fan overhead churned—stirring the warmish air that was only half cooled by the feeble AC that struggled against the sheer volume of hot air. The house held on to it stubbornly. It was holding its breath.

  Denise held hers too.

  It wasn’t late and she wasn’t tired. She had boxes to unpack and a bed to make, even if she wasn’t going to touch the frame still lying in pieces along the far wall. For one more night, she could sleep on the floor, couldn’t she?

  Just this one night, she could sleep knowing that nothing lurked beneath her.

  The next morning, Denise came downstairs to Sally talking on the phone with one of the contractors, who was asking her a bunch of questions. “I’m not sure … ? Where would I look? Is that important? I couldn’t tell from the fuse box.”

  While she nattered on, Denise joined Mike in the dining room, where he was tackling the mold they had seen the night before.

  “I don’t even know what to do next,” she declared. Despite all their cleaning efforts, everything still felt filthy, and everything needed to be removed, replaced, or restored.

  “We just have to keep plugging away,” he said. “If it’s broken or rotted, pull it out. Throw it away. Start yanking wallpaper—that’s one of those things that’ll take forever, and you might as well get started now. When you’re done with that, move on to that bathroom upstairs. We’re going to save the tub, but we have to clean the crap out of it first.”

  “Please let it be figurative crap, and not literal crap.”

  “I doubt anyone’s been crapping in the tub, honey. It’s just dirty as hell. We’ll get some enamel repair stuff later. I’ll put it on the list for our next trip to the store. But those shelves behind the tub are awful. Get a sledgehammer and take them down. While you’re at it, let me know when you want to wreck the vanity. None of that stuff is original, and it’s all too gross to keep.”

  “Why do I have to let you know before I sledge the vanity?”

  “Because I’ll need to turn off the water first. You smash it now, and you’ll get a geyser—so please … don’t.”

  Resigned, Denise collected the cleaning supplies and grabbed a bucket. “Fine. I’ll see what else can be done about my room, and then I’ll move on to the bathroom.”

  “Thanks, trooper.”

  She felt more like a hostage than a trooper, but if she was going to be trapped in this place, she might as well clean it up. The only thing worse than being stuck in a craphole was being stuck in a dirty craphole.

  She still didn’t know where to start. She needed a plan of attack. Maybe there was more to be done on her bedroom? She could check the closet, which was full of … she wrinkled her nose. Spiderwebs, mostly. She’d gotten all four corners with the broom, but not the closet.

  Back downstairs she went, and found the Shop-Vac, which would probably work better than a broom. Loudly she announced, “This Shop-Vac is coming with me!” because she didn’t know where either of her parents were.

  From the kitchen, her mom yelled, “Good to know!” Then she went back to her phone call.

  Mike was outside. She saw him through the sidelight windows that flanked the front door. He was directing a truck that was hauling the dumpster, which should’ve arrived yesterday, but at least it’d arrived eventually.

  There was no one else to protest, so the Shop-Vac was officially hers. For now.

  It was a pain to get it upstairs, but it was 100 percent worth the trouble. The tall nozzle end reached up into the corners to get the very last of the dust bunnies and cobwebs, and she used the wide head attachment to do a proper job of vacuuming—probably the first one the room had gotten in years.

  When she was done, the floor felt less like sandpaper and more like wood, and the last of the creepy footprints were completely gone. Like they’d never been there at all.

  (It was easy to pretend they’d never been there at all.)

  She was just thinking that the wallpaper was too daunting, and it might be time to move on to the bathroom, when Sally knocked on the doorframe. “Heads up,” she called. “You have a visitor.”

  She frowned and put her hands on her hips. “I have a what-now?”

  “You heard me.” Over her shoulder, she added, “Come on in, honey. Denise, this is Terry Jones. He’s our neighbor, down the street.”

  Her visitor was a freckled white boy with a glorious red ’fro. He was a little shorter than her, and a little heavy. “Hi, Denise!” he said perkily. “I’m Terry. Terry Jones. Your neighbor.”

  “I … yeah. I remember. From just now. When my mom said it.”

  Terry was wearing a sweaty yellow T-shirt and cargo shorts with sagging pockets. “I wanted to introduce myself, that’s all. Since we’re neighbors and everything.”

  “It’s um … it’s nice to meet you,” she told him.

  “Likewise.” He was angling to get a good look at her room, and being none too discreet about it.

  She sighed. “You can come on in, if you want.”

  Sally made a quiet exit, and Terry strolled inside, his flip-flops slapping loudly on the floor. Over his shoulder, he lugged a large backpack that bowed his posture with the weight of its contents.

  “Man, would you look at this place!” he announced, or exclaimed, or maybe he just said everything like it thrilled him.

  “Yeah, check out my five-star accommodations.” She didn’t get up from her spot on the mattress “Behold the peeling paint, and the plaster falling off the ceiling. You ought to see the Yelp reviews.”

  “Oh, please. My room is just like this, without the tall ceiling and the big fan. You’re lucky,” he told her. “This is the neatest house on the block.”

  “It’s the only house on the block.”

  “Okay, then it’s the neatest house in the neighborhood.”

  “Have you seen the whole neighborhood?” she asked.

  “Most of it.” Terry roamed her room like a robot vacuum, bumping off boxes and furniture. “Some of the houses are like this one.” He paused to look out over the driveway where Sally’s car was parked. He looked back at Denise. “But some of them have been restored, and not good restored. I like them better like this.”

  “What do you mean, ‘good restored’?”

  He admired the window seat covered in boxes with a hearty, “Mm, nice.” Then he said, “Most flippers gut them, and put in whatever shiny junk is popular right now. They don’t pay any attention to what the house wants, or what looks nice inside it. My friend Dominique calls them ‘Things White People Like’ houses. But you guys aren’t going to do that, are you?”

  “We definitely don’t have the money for shiny junk, but eventually my mom wants to open up for business. Maybe we’ll go shabby chic out of necessity.”

  “Good, good.” He nodded, and dragged his fingers across the windowsill. Denise was glad it wasn’t covered in dust and spiderwebs anymore. “My dad says it’s a tragedy, every time they gut a place like this. He says it’s a crime against history.”

  Denise wanted to offer him some hand sanitizer, but she didn’t have any. “So … did you just come over here to look around inside the house?”

  “Yep,” he admitted frankly. “I’ve wanted to see inside for ages, but it was boarded up pretty good. I couldn’t find a crowbar big enough to pry anything loose—not by myself.”

  “I’m sorry, are you saying … ?”

  “I didn’t break in.”

  “But you tried. That’s what I’m taking away from this conversation.”

  He thought about
it and shrugged. He set his overloaded backpack on the floor and straightened up, leaning his neck from left to right, and producing a good crack. “What do you care? It wasn’t your house. Now that it belongs to somebody again, I knocked. No crowbars, see?”

  “I don’t know. Your backpack is looking kind of fat—you could have a crowbar in there for all I know.”

  “It’s just schoolbooks, mostly.”

  She frowned at him, puzzled but not upset. “Are you in summer school?”

  “No, but some of the teachers offer summer tutoring, over at the trailer lot. I stay late on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and help the PE lady load up her stuff. She brings soccer kits and basketballs, that kind of thing. For the kids whose homes haven’t come back yet.”

  “Haven’t come back … ?”

  “They took the FEMA trailers out of the park and put the baseball field back in it, but that don’t mean everybody’s got a real roof over their heads yet. So anyway, I was walking home, and I have to go right past your place, and I thought I’d see if anyone was here. And if anyone would let me in. And if I could look around. Your mom asked if I was here to see you, so I just rolled with it.”

  “You’re a weird one, Terry.”

  “I wear it as a badge of honor.”

  “You might as well. You um … you mentioned a dad. Do your parents know where you are right now?”

  He sat down on the floor and unzipped his bag, then started poking through it. “I have a dad, and no mom anymore. Dad’s an EMT, and he works third shift. Unless somebody tells him otherwise, he assumes I’m home safe.”

  “Maybe someone should have a word with him. What are you … Terry, what are you doing?”

  “Looking for my digital recorder.”

  “Because … ?”

  “Because this place is haunted like crazy. Everybody says so,” he solemnly assured her. He located an old recorder and brandished it like the key to the city. Its battery compartment was held together with a strip of medical tape, wound around it twice and going gray from all the lint it’d picked up in his bag.

  Denise swallowed. She’d almost forgotten the stink from the attic and the door that moved by itself (except that she hadn’t), and she’d almost forgotten the old lady perfume, and the humming and the footsteps that went right through her (except she hadn’t forgotten those things, either). “What makes everybody think it’s haunted?”

  “Because somebody famous died here.”

  She sat forward on the bed, idly wishing she could offer him a real seat someplace—but there was no place but the floor for now, or one of the dozen boxes that held her clothes, shoes, and bags that hadn’t yet been unpacked. “Oh God, seriously?” She wasn’t surprised, but she was definitely horrified. “Who?”

  “Some writer, that’s what I heard. Can’t remember his name.”

  “Then he must not have been that famous.” She flopped backwards, sprawling her arms across the blanket. “Where did he die? How did he die?” For no good reason except a grossed-out suspicion, she flashed a glance toward the hall and the creepy attic door.

  Terry continued, fiddling with his gadget. “Don’t know. It’s just a rumor. Have you seen anything ghostly since you’ve been here?”

  “Of course not.” She didn’t want to encourage him.

  “Then you’ll be totally fine giving me a tour of your ghost-free home, while I run my recorder and ask questions.”

  “Now you want to interview me?”

  “Not you. You don’t know anything. I’m going to ask the ghosts, and see if they’re willing to communicate.”

  “With an old digital recorder?”

  “So what if it’s old?” He pressed the power button, and a tiny green light came on. “Old things are great. They’re built to last. And things like this …” he wiggled it in her direction, “… can record things we can’t hear.”

  “Like ghosts. Talking ghosts.” Or humming ghosts, she did not say.

  “Yep.” He climbed to his feet and flashed her that undaunted, unrelenting grin of his. “I don’t care if you believe me. Heck, it’s probably better if you don’t. That way, you won’t unconsciously interfere with my results.”

  “You do this kind of thing a lot?”

  He vigorously bobbed his head. “Every chance I get. Are you going to show me around, or what?”

  “You’re going to keep asking until I give up and say yes, aren’t you?”

  “ ‘Never give up,’ that’s my motto.”

  “It ought to be, ‘Wear ’em down until they admit defeat.’ ”

  On that note, Denise grudgingly ran Terry through the house—pointing out such highlights as the broken windows, the duct tape repairs of yesteryear, the fixtures that didn’t work, and the wasp nest that they still hadn’t knocked down yet. Against her will, she started to enjoy herself. After all, here was somebody with an honest interest in the house, somebody who wasn’t utterly repulsed by it. If anything, the happy little nerd was enthralled.

  All around the second floor, Terry stopped and held up his recorder, asking silly questions. “Are we alone in this house?” “Are you a man or a woman?” “How did you die?”

  Denise never heard anything in response, but supposedly, that’s what the recorder was for.

  She wrapped up the tour back at her bedroom, since they’d gotten a little warm just hiking around from floor to floor. They took a minute and cooled off under the ceiling fan while Terry went through his voice recordings—revealing nothing new as far as Denise could tell. Just awkward pauses and fuzzy static.

  “Get anything good?” she asked, for the sake of being polite.

  “I can’t tell yet. Hey, what about that skinny door, on the far side of the staircase?”

  It should’ve been easy for Denise to say, “Oh, it’s just the attic. No big deal.” Instead, she froze.

  He crinkled both his lips and eyebrows. “What? Did you see something? Did I say something wrong?”

  “No. It’s just the door to the attic—on the other side, there’s a little corridor with some stairs.”

  “Have you been up there?”

  She sniffed with derision. “No. It’s too gross. Nothing but bugs and dust and the corpses of rats or possums or raccoons.”

  “If you’ve never been there, how would you know?”

  She cooked up a fib on the fly. “My mom and Mike checked it out. They said I shouldn’t go up there, because it isn’t safe. They’re going to pay someone to clean it out, and get rid of all the nasty stuff.”

  Terry’s eyes narrowed down to tiny, skeptical slits. He leaned out into the hall. “Hey, Mrs. Cooper!” he called at the top of his lungs. “Is it okay if me and Denise go see what’s up in the attic?”

  A reply wafted up from downstairs. “Knock yourselves out. Be careful, though. Okay? It’s not super safe. Holler if you need help!”

  “Yes ma’am!”

  It was Denise’s turn to dole out the ol’ squint-eye. “Terry?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “You’re a jerk.”

  “Yeah, but I’m a jerk who’s going upstairs. Are you coming with me, or are you chicken?”

  “That is a logical fallacy, because those are not my only two options,” she insisted, but all the same, she followed him out.

  He went directly to the too-tall, too-narrow door and yanked it open.

  She waited for a cloud of dust and doom and terrible smells to roll out into the hallway, but it didn’t. Not this time. This time, she saw nothing but grimy stairs, and smelled nothing but mildew and staleness.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” he fussed.

  “Me either,” she countered. “I can’t imagine why you want to go up there.”

  “Does this light work?” He flipped the switch on the wall, back and forth, and on the third try a light bulb somewhere in the distant beyond fizzled to life. It didn’t do much to brighten the stairwell, but Terry was determined to take it as encouragement. (As far as Denise could tel
l, he took everything as encouragement.) He thrust his recorder ahead, and before he climbed onto the first step, he asked, “Are there any spirits in this house?”

  Without waiting for an answer he started up the stairs—leaving Denise to trail behind him. Hey, at least he was going first.

  She let him take a pretty big lead—not because she was chicken, but because she didn’t want his butt jiggling around in her face. She also didn’t want him falling down backwards and taking her out like a bowling pin. The stairs were narrow and steep, and they were only meant for one person at a time.

  She didn’t know much about Terry yet, but she was pretty darn sure he didn’t have her gymnastics background.

  When Terry was near enough to the top that she couldn’t see his feet anymore, Denise took a deep breath and brought up the rear. She stretched out her arms and put one hand on each wall, using it to support herself as she climbed.

  Up she went, counting the steps … one, two, three … and listening to Terry articulate his questions with the speed and precision of a kindergarten teacher explaining vowels to five-year-olds. “Can you tell me your name?” Four … five … six … “Did you die in this house?” Seven … eight … nine. “Man, I wish I had the money for an EMF meter.”

  Denise passed the struggling light bulb and reached the top of the stairs. It should’ve been a relief; it should’ve come with a sense of accomplishment. But it only came with a muggy, hot cloud of mold-speckled air. “What’s an EMF meter?” she asked him.

  “It’s a tool that measures electromagnetic activity. Sometimes you can detect spikes, when there are spirits present.” Then, more to himself than to her, he added, “While I’m wishing for toys, I’d love a laser thermometer too. That’s a—”

  “I can figure that one out on my own, thanks.”

  The afternoon sun was orange and sharp through the attic’s two round windows. Denise shielded her eyes from the dying westward glow, and Terry waved about in an odd little dance. At first she thought he’d walked through a spiderweb, but it turned out he was only fishing for the string to a light bulb that hung from the center of the tallest vault in the ceiling.