The Agony House

by Cherie Priest

  “I guess Joe wasn’t much of a gymnast,” she said out loud, trying to make it sound ironic, or funny, or anything but completely horrified. Was there a spot on the hall carpet runner? A man-shaped stain that never quite went away?

  Dead for several days, the article said. Lying there in the Louisiana heat. Even in March, it would’ve almost certainly been warm.

  She could imagine the smell, even though she didn’t want to. Or was it her imagination at all? She’d smelled the perfume before, and something foul from the attic corridor … was that the stink of death, left too long in a place that was too warm, and too wet?

  Denise shuddered. “It might not be true,” she whispered. “He might not’ve died here, in the Agony House.” But she didn’t believe herself, not even a little bit.

  Denise’s phone’s battery was deceptively low; it had a bad habit of saying she had more time remaining than it was prepared to give her. It was getting late anyway, so she plugged it in to the socket beside her closet and went downstairs to tell Mike and Sally good night.

  She found them sacked out together on the couch, Sally’s hand cradled by a melted ice pack that used to be a bag of frozen corn.

  “Cute,” she whispered with a smile, and she left them where they were.

  Mike had taken a few weeks off from his job with the digital map management company, and therefore, he wouldn’t get up in the morning until he good and felt like it. His boss had offered him a month without pestering him for contract work, as a wedding present.

  Must be nice, she thought. Sally had never had any time off in her life, not that Denise knew of. Man, having a gainfully employed stepdad was a whole new world. Even if he was minimally, contractually employed.

  She crawled into bed and kicked the thin velour blanket down to the foot—then whipped the cotton sheet open like a sail. It settled down slow across her body starting at her feet, catching the peaks and valleys of her knees, ribs, belly, and toes. Last of all, it draped over her boobs, then she took the top hem and tucked it up under her chin. She blinked over at the tiny lamp that was sitting on a box beside the bed, since she didn’t have a nightstand. It didn’t make much light. She might as well leave it on.

  Not that she was afraid of the dark. And not that she needed to see anything, but she gazed around the room anyway, secure in her cotton sheet cocoon.

  The fan above the bed spun just too fast for her to watch an individual blade go full circle, and the cracks in the walls and on the ceiling looked just like they always had. They did not seem to wobble into weird stick figure pictures when she stared too long. Along the floor at the far end of the room, something crawled … but it was probably a palmetto bug, and nothing more sinister than that.

  The peculiar manuscript was sitting on the floor where she and Terry had left it. Its cover was open, revealing that title page and the big black letters that’d gone watery from old age and damp.

  “Lucida Might and the House of Horrors,” Denise breathed.

  Her eyes drooped shut. In the end, she dreamed of spiders and bats, and shadowy men, and old ladies in musty perfume.

  Denise’s bedroom was sparkling. Or not exactly sparkling … but low-key respectable.

  It was the next day and sure, the closet didn’t have a door and she had no furniture that wasn’t a box, and she still had a mattress and box spring on the floor for a bed, but it was tidy and now it was scrubbed. She’d even taken soapy rags to all the baseboards. Sometimes it felt like she was just redistributing spiderwebs, but hey. Effort had been made, and the room felt like it was properly hers.

  The bathroom felt like it was nobody’s yet. Denise had smashed out the weird shelves behind the tub with the sledgehammer—and she’d done it to her mother’s wild cheers, and a great sense of satisfaction. She’d never gone out of her way to break anything before, and it felt good. She knew she was helping the house, in the long run, and it was nice to have a good outlet for her frustration.

  Wallpaper was good for frustration too. Good for creating it, anyway. Now that the shelves were down, the wallpaper was supposed to come down too—but that was easier said than done.

  Denise shoved the scraper along the wall and dragged it up and down. The paper she slowly, laboriously peeled was once red with white pinstripes. Now it was a feeble shade of mauve, with pale lines running up and down—disappearing into the wainscoting. It came loose a single scrap at a time, slowly and none too steadily. It was the kind of job that could eat your whole life, if you let it.

  She knew she’d lost track of time when Sally came upstairs to ask, “Pizza?”

  “Yes?” Denise pushed her hair out of her face.

  “I’m too tired to cook. It takes too much going up and down the stairs for another damn lasagna.” The microwave was plugged in upstairs, in the wasps’ bedroom, which was a decidedly inconvenient location when you wanted to cook a meal. That cursed room had one of only three-prong outlets in the house that worked, and the refrigerator was using the other one. If you tried to make it share, it’d throw a tantrum and flip the breakers. They’d learned this the hard way.

  Rather than point out that her mother had been wrong about the kitchen mostly working, Denise caved to convenience. “Yeah, I’d eat some pizza. Hook it up.”

  “Usual toppings?”

  “Y’all two fight it out. I don’t really care.”

  Thirty minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Denise dropped the scraper beside the pile of old wallpaper scraps and headed down the stairs, where Mike was trying to figure out where he’d seen the delivery guy before.

  “Swear to God, I’ve seen you someplace.” He looked up and winked when Denise hit the bottom stair. “Maybe Denise can refresh my memory.”

  Lo and behold, it was one of the only two people in the neighborhood she’d actually met. “Norman?”

  “Oh, hey. Wait, this is your place?” He looked back and forth between Sally, Mike, and Denise. He settled on Denise. “Holy cow, I am not stalking you. I had no idea.”

  She laughed and almost blushed, but didn’t quite. “I believe you. I think.”

  “I’ve just got your large pizza, that’s all.” He pushed it forward to Mike, who put it on the table.

  Mike felt for his wallet, realized it was missing from his pocket, and held up a finger. “Let me get some cash; hang on.” Then he turned away. With a short, shuffling hop, he limped off towards the master.

  “Hey, Mike,” Denise called after him. “What’s wrong with your leg?”

  He stopped short, and leaned against the doorframe. “It’s not my leg. It’s my foot.”

  “Fine. What’s wrong with your foot?”

  Her mother jumped in. “A brick fell on it. He was lucky, really. It could’ve hit his head.”

  “Never fear, though. The brick is fine. My foot broke its fall.”

  “That’s why we call you Mike. It’s Greek for ‘graceful,’ ” Denise joked. “Next time you get a case of the dropsies, stay away from the power tools, why don’t you.”

  Sally sighed. “I told him not to work in sandals. They make steel-toed boots for a reason.”

  “Maybe he should go to a doctor?” she tried.

  “Trust me, I’ll live. Contrary to all the evidence so far, the house isn’t actually trying to kill us. I don’t think …”

  Norman took this opportunity to clear his throat. It was the kind of throat-clearing that’s asking for an audience. “Um, sir?”

  “Call me Mike, son.”

  “All right, if you want. I was just going to say … you guys have a lot of work to do, here. It’s gonna feel like even more work, if you’ve got a bum foot.”

  “It’s not that bummy,” Mike protested.

  “But if you want to take it easy, or easier … I could help out. I work for cheap, and I know my way around power tools. Pete’s my uncle.”

  “Pete?” Sally asked.

  “The hardware store. It’s called Pete’s,” Denise filled her in. “But you
’ve already got a job …” She gestured at the pizza box.

  “I’ve got a couple of jobs. I also do cleanup in the cafeteria at Tulane, a few days a week. School’s out, and I’ve got to hustle. I’ll take minimum wage. How about eight bucks an hour?” He looked around the demolition in progress, no doubt realizing they couldn’t afford any more than that.

  Denise felt embarrassed by the house, but encouraged by the idea of having Norman around. He was all right, and her social life wasn’t exactly on fire. “It’ll take me another week to bring down the second floor wallpaper all by myself,” she hinted. “Oh, hey—Norman, are you afraid of wasps?”

  “Wasps?”

  “We’ve got a wasp nest. Or a beehive, or something. In one of the bedrooms.” She set aside her embarrassment in the name of practicality. He wasn’t blind; he could see for himself that the place was a dump. Why not bring him all the way up to speed on the situation? “So far, nobody’s bothered to knock it down. We just leave the door shut, unless we need to microwave something.”

  He opened his mouth slowly and closed it again, like he was about to ask about the microwave, but then he didn’t. “I might charge a little extra for the beehive.”

  “That settles it,” Sally declared for everyone. “When are you available, between your other two gigs?”

  He thought about it. “Tuesday and Thursday, from noon until suppertime. Then I’ve got to get home to my mom.”

  Soon it was agreed that they’d see him from noon to four o’clock, twice a week.

  “Let me leave you my number,” he said, pulling a coupon out of his pocket and using the pen he kept on hand for credit card signatures. While he scribbled across the back, he said, “Call me if you need to. If you change your mind, or anything.” Then Norman took Mike’s cash and said, “Good-bye, Coopers. I’ll see you Tuesday. Unless …” He looked at Denise. “Do you ever go down to the po’boy place, a couple blocks past Pete’s? They’ve got Wi-Fi and the beignets are cheap. That’s where everyone kind of … kicks around, when school’s out. It’s called ‘Crispy’s.’ It’s got AC.”

  “That’s … good to know. Thanks. Maybe I’ll see you there.”

  After he left, Denise cocked her thumb awkwardly back up the stairs and said, “Sooooo … Trish finally messaged me. I need to text her back. I could use a break from the wallpaper, anyway. I’ll take my pizza upstairs with me.”

  “Shouldn’t you start studying those prep books, for your ACT and SAT?” Sally said. It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t. “You’re still taking both of them. The real versions, not the ‘pre’ versions.”

  “I’m sure I’ll do great on the real thing. Anyway,” Denise stressed. “At this time, I’m going upstairs to text until my fingers fall off. When I’m done, if I still have the energy, I’ll open those stupid books to see how much studying I really need to do.”

  “All of it. You need to do it all, whatever it takes.”

  “Mom. I know. Have a little faith. Please?”

  Sally tensed up tight, squeezing the back of her chair and loudly not saying anything she’d said a thousand times before. Unspoken keywords included: “scholarships,” “amazing opportunity,” “exorbitant college costs,” “broke-ass family,” “so much potential,” and “don’t screw this up.”

  But all she said in her outside voice was, “I have all the faith in the world. And you only have another year to go. Then you’re free to go have a first day of college somewhere else, on someone else’s dime, and I will be the proudest mom on earth. I know it’s hard now, but—”

  “Mom. I’ll be fine. I’m tired, and I have some trashy food, and I have my phone and books. Holler if you need me,” she concluded.

  It wasn’t quite a masterful exit, but it worked well enough. She picked up her backpack and messenger bag, grabbed a couple slices and some napkins, and lugged everything up the stairs to keep her word about the texting and the studying.

  She had to.

  The next day, Denise decided she could use some Wi-Fi. Her beat-up, secondhand laptop was slower than Christmas, but it had an antenna—and it was easier to type on the keyboard than on her phone. She had some more questions for the Internet, mostly about the writer named Joe Vaughn.

  Sally was stuck on the phone with the plumbers, so Denise asked Mike if he’d give her a ride to the po’boy place. “I’ve got the directions on my phone. It’s not very far past Pete’s.”

  “What you’re saying is, you could easily walk there.”

  “But it’s hot …” she whined. “Come on. It’ll only take you a minute.”

  “As opposed to the five minutes it’d take you by foot. We gotta get you a bicycle or something.” But he reached for his keys. “Come on, now. I’ll tell Sally where you’re off to when she finally pries that phone off her ear.”

  Crispy’s looked like a chain restaurant—which was to say, it wasn’t very sketchy, and once Mike saw it, he felt a little better about dropping her off there for an hour or two of nonmanual labor. “Call or text when you want a pickup, okay?”

  “I will,” she promised. She heaved herself out of the car, slung her messenger bag around her chest, and stepped into the parking lot—then shut the door with her butt.

  Mike waved and drove off.

  Denise stood there, looking up at the big light-up sign. She’d never heard of Crispy’s before, but the place was bright and shiny, with a sign on the door that said WI-FI FOR PAYING CUSTOMERS ONLY. She had three dollars in her pocket, plus the change from her soda the other day. Mike hadn’t asked for it back, so she’d kept it.

  She might not be able to afford a po’boy, but she could get a drink and some fries or something. They’d let her use the Internet for that much, right?

  The glass door chimed when she pushed it open and came inside. There were a dozen other customers. Many of them were about her own age, but none of them were Norman or Terry, so she didn’t know anyone. She went to the register and ordered a Coke and some beignets, because those sounded better than fries right that moment and you could get an order for ninety-nine cents. When she got her food, she picked a seat and tried not to feel weird about being the only white person who wasn’t working behind the counter.

  She opened her laptop. It would only last for ninety minutes without the cord, but she didn’t see a place to plug it in. She pulled up a browser window, and started to type.

  Before she could check the first round of results for Joe Vaughn that weren’t on Wikipedia, several girls sidled into the table right behind her.

  One of them started talking, loud enough and pointed enough that Denise knew it was intended for her ears. She ignored it until the girl got more direct about it. “Hey. Hey, you. I heard somebody bought the old nail house on Argonne. Was that you?”

  Denise looked up from the laptop and turned around to make eye contact with a black girl about her own age, lean and tall, with short, natural hair. “Nail house?” she asked her. “What’s a nail house?”

  “A house that sticks up, like a nail on a board. And there’s …” She sat back. “There’s nothing else on the block. Just the one house. A nail house, get it?”

  She must be meeting more of the neighbors. “Yeah, that’s us. My mom and stepdad bought it.”

  “Aw, man …” A guy sitting alone at the next table over turned to look at her. “The Argonne place? I know that house. You’re lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  “Everybody knows that house,” said the girl who’d originally asked the question. “And now you’ve bought it, and I guess you’re gonna fix it up.”

  “My mom wants to make it a bed-and-breakfast. Like … a little hotel, kind of.”

  The girl rolled her eyes. “I know what a bed-and-breakfast is, and now I know you’re a carpetbagger. You gonna wind up at Rudy Lombard this fall, or what? I know y’all usually get homeschool, or you go someplace private.”

  Denise swiveled on the seat to face the girl head-on. She wasn’t alone, and Denis
e was, but that didn’t stop her from responding. “Excuse me? How am I gonna carpetbag out of Houston?”

  “You can carpetbag from anyplace,” the girl said offhandedly, like it was something everybody knew. “Y’all come in from Florida, from California, New York. Wherever. It’s always the same: You kick people out of their houses, and make them so much better, nobody here can afford them.” She returned her attention to her lunch, and to her friends. “I seen plenty of her kind, coming and going. They look better going.”

  Denise closed her laptop. “Come on, now. The house my mom bought was abandoned—we didn’t take it from anybody. And for real: Do I look like money to you?”

  “Hell no, you don’t,” offered the guy who’d almost been nice, a minute before. Maybe he was still being nice. It was hard to tell.

  Most of the girls at the other table still had their backs to her, but she told them anyway: “I got a laptop that’s old enough to go to preschool, and a bedroom without a bed, for Chrissake. We didn’t come here to flip. We came back home.”

  “Back?” Another girl drew up her knees and stretched out one leg, taking up two seats beside her. “How come you left in the first place?”

  “The Storm chased us to Texas. Couldn’t afford to come back, not until now.”

  “Yeah, you sound like Texas.”

  “Well, that’s where I been.”

  “But now you’re back? In a house?” asked the guy.

  Denise didn’t quite shrug, and didn’t quite roll her eyes. But she kind of did both. “If it makes you feel any better, the nail house is a total craphole.”

  The first girl was unconvinced. “Maybe you started out here, and maybe you didn’t—I don’t always know a liar when I see one—but I know when I see another damn gentrifier.” She gestured with a spoon, and announced to the restaurant at large, “My aunt and cousins lost their place to people like this. My grandma did too. Landlords sell out fast; they take that flipper money and run. Then new folks push out folks who belong here, and let in folks who don’t.”