The Flip (An Angel Hill novel)

by C. Dennis Moore

The point was, he felt something when he looked at this picture, and whatever it was he felt, he interpreted it as a connection to the artist. He wanted to meet her, he wanted to see what kind of personality could be behind a picture like this. He wanted to know what had inspired it. Had she been crying when she drew it? He felt she almost had to have been, he felt himself well up just looking at it.

  He was glad Mike hadn’t wanted it. Steven wasn’t an assertive man, and if Mike had wanted it, Steven probably would have relented and let him take it, but thank God that hadn’t happened because as soon as he saw it, Steven knew he had to have it.

  He could explain that feeling no more than he could the sadness he felt when he looked at it.

  He hit the display on his phone, turning off the music before the next song started. The song and the picture had put him in a mood he didn’t want to break. He wanted to see this train of thought through to the end.

  The woman. He had to decipher her signature, then see if he could find her online. He wondered if she had a Facebook page, or, if she was a local artist who sold her work, a personal website.

  Then another thought came to him and he suddenly wanted to go back to the house and see if she’d left any more behind. He wanted to find out before anyone else claimed them. And he still couldn’t explain what was going on in his head, why he was so worked up over this sketch.

  For all he knew, it had been drawn by a sixty-year-old man with a drug habit, which would explain the surrealism of what he saw when he looked at it. But that wasn’t right; he knew it. She had been young. She had been beautiful. And she had been very very incredibly sad. He wanted to find her, wherever she was, and tell her it was okay, that she didn’t need to be sad anymore, that he was a kindred spirit.

  No, I’m not, he thought. I’m not sad. So why do I keep thinking this?

  Just because you smile and laugh and have a good time, said a voice in his head, does not mean you’re happy. You don’t have to cry to be sad.

  And you don’t have to meet someone to know you want to take care of them.

  This connection, whether real or imagined, he couldn’t say, but he knew he’d never felt it with anyone before.

  Was that it, then? It wasn’t sadness. For the first time in his life, Steven was feeling a pressing loneliness all around him. But why now, and what was causing it?

  He had interpreted the sadness in the picture, almost a feeling of desolation, and it had awoken in him this need to meet the woman who had drawn it, and that in turn had brought on this new thing. Because he felt it so strong, that drive to know her, to see her and speak to her, and he had no idea who or where she was and Steven could feel that distance, that uncertainty, that utter helplessness.

  He wondered if calling in to work had been the thing to do because right now he felt he could use the company of people.

  Don’t fool yourself, he thought, you’re surrounded by people all night, and you’re still lonely.

  And that was the truth, he realized. Steven was the only person he knew who could manage to be alone in a crowded room. It was only when he was with one of the guys, Mike, Brian or Keith, that he felt the smallest connection to another person, and even then he sometimes felt like the fourth wheel on a tricycle.

  He wasn’t sad, he was lonely. And with that realization came the knowledge that it didn’t matter what he did tonight, go to work or stay home, it was going to come crashing down on him before the night was over.

  He needed something to keep him busy so he didn’t notice, and that’s when he looked, once more, at the picture, which was now almost entirely unrolled, on the passenger seat.

  “I’ll find you,” he said to the signature and the woman who had scrawled it. “I’ll figure out who and where you are. I’ll make sure you’re okay.”

  Mike was back at the house a couple of hours later. The pictures he had taken with his phone had been too dark to do anything with, so he decided to take them again, this time with the flash, and to get some measurements.

  He got to the door and looked back only to see the man on the park bench hadn’t moved at all. He was going to keep his eye on that guy, and the first time he set foot on this side of the street, Mike was going to bust him.

  He put the key in the lock, jiggled it like Lynette had showed him, and turned it.

  He stepped inside and the cold hit him again. There definitely had to be a draft somewhere, and possibly some insulation problems. It felt like stepping into the meat cooler at Wal-Mart the one time he’d done so to get Steven’s attention.

  He closed the door, thought of the man on the park bench, then decided to lock it behind him. He hit the light switch, but got nothing but a click. He looked up, as if expecting the light to be waiting on his uninterrupted attention. But the bulb was dark.

  “The fuck?” he said. “Probably burned out.”

  He went from room to room, though, testing every light, but none of them worked.

  The basement, he thought. That’s where the lights had been on, when he and Steven were down there. He opened the door and flipped on the switch, but, again, nothing happened.

  “What the fuck, man!” he said, frustrated. “I just had this shit turned on and it was working an hour ago!”

  He flipped it a few more times, wondering if there was just a bad connection, but the home inspector said everything in the house was good. Maybe it was a flipped breaker. He found the flashlight app on his phone and went down to find the fuse box.

  There was something different about the basement, but Mike couldn’t put his finger on it. There was a smell down here like a backed up sewer line. But it wasn’t that, it was more of a feeling. It may be that he was seeing it by iPhone light as opposed to full light. The place definitely seemed creepier this way, and those empty doorways stared at him like big black mouths, waiting to suck him in, or like empty eye sockets in a screaming skull.

  He didn’t like the effect one bit. He tried to find the fuse box, but every time his flashlight swept past one of those empty doorways and the shadows moved, he felt watched. No, he felt stalked. Something in the dark was hiding just out of the reach of his meager light and when his back was turned, it would reach out a bony finger and brush the back of his neck.

  Mike shivered.

  He heard something in the dark and he whirled, trying to find it, but there was nothing, and the basement was silent.

  A creak in the ceiling as the house settled. Houses make sounds, he reasoned.

  He looked behind the stairs, but found nothing, so he made his way into the laundry room, but still no fuse box.

  It had to be in one of the rooms, if it was down here at all. Of course it was down here, he thought. He just had to find it.

  He held the phone up in front of him, following its light into the first room. While he looked, his mind was also trying to imagine this room after the renovation, looking at the joists above his head to determine which walls, if any, could be taken down to expand the space.

  He heard the noise again and this time it wasn’t the house settling. There was something down here. It was possible it could have been a mouse, he supposed, but that didn’t make it better.

  An infestation could be expensive to get rid of.

  Or it could be a rat, he thought. That would be even worse.

  He had to find the--there it was! The fuse box. Okay, check it, flip whatever needs to be flipped and get the hell out of here. Come back with an exterminator.

  He opened the flap and looked at each switch individually, but nothing appeared out of order. He checked again. Still nothing. So he went through them one at a time and flipped them himself, hoping to re-establish whatever connection had been broken, but still the lights were out and whatever was in the dark sounded like it was getting bolder.

  Satisfied it wasn’t a problem with the fuse box, he closed it and said, “Fuck.” There was no way they could afford all new wiring, if that was the problem. He prayed it was an issue at the light company.


  While he was in here, he pulled a small pad and pen from his back pocket, lay the phone face down so the light illuminated as much of the room as he could, then he grabbed the tape measure and went to the wall opposite the door. He measured across to the doorway and wrote down the figure, 12’. He measured across the other way and got 13’.

  He went into the next room and measured there, with the same results, 12X13. The laundry room was much smaller, six feet by seven feet. He would need help to measure the big room in the middle where the stairs where, but he could do the upstairs rooms.

  He looked back at the numbers he’d written already, then realized that, because of his bad penmanship, or possibly because he was writing in the dark, he couldn’t tell if he’d written twelve feet or ten. That could be either a two or a zero, and while he should remember it because he’s only measured it five minutes ago, the number truly had slipped his mind.

  He decided to measure again. That was a good practice anyway, he thought. What’s the old saying, measure twice, cut once?

  He went back into the first room, place his phone face down, light up, and measured. But this was damned confusing now, because the number he got from the wall to the door was eleven feet. He measured it once more. Eleven feet. He scratched out the previous figure and wrote 11. He measured across the other way and this time got fourteen.

  “How the hell did I get that so wrong?” he muttered.

  Just to be safe, he measure the other room again. Now it was ten feet wide by fifteen feet long.

  That can’t be, he thought. He knew he wasn’t the handiest guy in the world, but Mike liked to think he could do a simple thing like measure a room without too much hassle.

  He measured the laundry room again. It was a square eight feet by eight feet.

  He went into the center room and held his light up, shining it into the darkness and moving it slowly from the left to the right, across the rooms. The stairs were his marker; they came down along the outer wall of the second room. He measured the stairs. Thirty-three inches across.

  Okay. He measured the first room again. It was ten feet from the wall to the door. Fifteen feet long. He measured the stairs again. Thirty-three inches across.

  Then the room was thirteen feet to the wall. Eleven feet long. And the stairs were still thirty-three inches across.

  He measured the other room twice more, both times getting different numbers. He decided he was getting it wrong because it was dark and he was alone. He couldn’t see that the tape measure was against the wall, and there was no one there to hold it for him. If the lights were on, if he had help, he could get it right.

  That was the explanation he offered himself and it was the one he would live by.

  Something skittered behind him and he turned, moving the light closer to the wall, but whatever it was did an excellent job keeping out of its beam.

  He turned around, searching for the door, but it suddenly felt as if the room weren’t just a dozen or so feet square, or whatever number he got the next time he tried to measure it, but instead was infinite. He could feel the walls stretching out to forever all around him and he suddenly felt very small in this room.

  He walked forward, knowing whichever direction he was facing, eventually he’d find the wall. It felt like it took ten minutes, but surely that was the darkness playing with time, he thought. Because he wanted to get out of here so badly, it felt like everything was taking longer, like being at work on a slow day with only an hour to go before the end of your shift and suddenly five minutes feels like thirty. He did find the wall, though, and he skirted the room, knowing he’d find the door if he just kept moving to the side. By the end, he had counted seven corners and still no door.

  The fuck, he wondered.

  He noticed the sewer smell was gone, but it had been replaced by something else, something … meatier, was the only word that came to him. Like the smell of cold blood and raw meat when you opened a steak from the grocery store.

  He pictured a dead animal lying splayed and dissected on the floor and he winced until the image was gone.

  He was panicking, that’s what was happening. Keep calm, everything’s fine.

  Except the thing in the dark, that was.

  What if it was a raccoon? Or a possum? Christ, those things were repulsive, and a rat was bad enough but he wasn’t prepared to face anything bigger in the dark.

  He traversed the room again, finally found the doorway and bolted through it, looking for the stairs.

  Instead he realized he was in another room. He’d gotten turned around in the dark, wandered out to the center and, when he thought he was heading for the stairs, wound up either back where he’d been, or in the second room. The dead meat smell was gone, replaced by the antiseptic smell of hospitals. This was better, but for some reason the image it brought to mind was a woman lying in a hospital bed, tubes extending from her body and the light was weak in her room, casting sinister shadows, and then she opened her eyes and reached out for Mike.

  The temperature had dropped a good fifteen degrees.

  It was behind him. It followed him from one room to the next, staying in the shadows. It was going to touch him. It was going to scratch him, bite him, whatever it was, and he would scream, not in fright, but in pain.

  It’s the dark, he told himself. It’s disorienting, but this wasn’t a big, elaborate basement. Stop panicking and you’ll get out of here in no time.

  In fact, he felt pretty stupid for managing to get lost in the first place. He definitely wasn’t telling the guys about this.

  That’s when a new thought struck. It could be the man from the park. Maybe he had come in through the back door and followed Mike down here, or come down before him. Yes, he realized, it could be him.

  It’s just a basement, he told himself. You’re panicking in the dark because you’re not familiar with the house yet. You heard a mouse, and now you’re being a pussy, so stop it and man the fuck up.

  Hard to man up when God hates you, and despite his successes in life, Mike had often said those very words, “God hates me,” when things turned sour.

  He felt hot breath on the back of his neck. Something in the corner, in the dark, something in the walls, and the wind rattled in its lungs before coming up a musty-smelling throat and out a dead and cracked mouth. The hairs on his neck stood up and Mike’s skin prickled.

  He stumbled into the dark, no longer caring which direction as long as it was away from whoever had just breathed on him.

  It had to be that guy in the park. It was obvious.

  He called up the keypad to dial 911, but before he had pushed the first button, he heard a creak in the dark.

  He stopped, listened.

  Above.

  It was the kitchen door at the top of the stairs opening.

  “Hello?” he called.

  Someone was crying in the dark, and that was probably the worst thing yet. It was a desperate sound, lost and alone.

  Like me, he thought.

  “Who’s there?” he asked. He received exactly the reply he expected: none.

  He wanted to say something else, but nothing would have mattered, and the sound of his voice in the dark only freaked him out more.

  He took a step forward. Then he took another. Another step, just one at a time, he told himself. Don’t lose your shit. Another step into the darkness, hoping with each one that he would find the stairs.

  And then he did. He stormed up them, bursting through the door into the kitchen, slamming it behind him and walking rapidly toward the living room. He looked out the bay window.

  The man wasn’t on his bench anymore, but he wasn’t in the basement, either, because he was just across the street on the south side of Irving, staring up at the house, into the window, into Mike’s wide eyes.

  Mike shoved his phone into his pocket, yanked the keys out of the other pocket, and went out to the porch, pulling the door closed behind him. He locked the door, which slid perfectly into place with
no need for jiggling, then nearly stalked down the yard and across the street, confronting the weird man by yelling directly into his face, “What the fuck is your problem, man? You need something I can help you with?”

  The man flinched and stepped back, nearly dropping a bundle of something he was clutching to his chest, eyes as wide as Mike’s had been inside the house. He didn’t say anything, so Mike took another step toward him. The anger oozed from him.

  “You just gonna stand there like a moron or what?”

  The man backed up again, looked as if he was going to turn and go away, but something inside Mike made him grab the man’s shoulder and say, “Hey, I’m talking to you. What the fuck, man?”

  “Nothing,” the man muttered, and tried to move away again. “Nothing.”

  “Then why you sitting here all day watching my house?”

  “Nothing,” the man repeated again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you, I just…”

  “Just what?” Mike asked when the man trailed off.

  Instead of replying, he shook his head and looked at the ground.

  “Just memories,” the man said.

  “Of?”

  “I used to live there,” he said, looking up again and staring into the bay windows. “Long time ago.”

  “Well you don’t anymore,” Mike said.

  “Just too many…”

  Mike waited, wondering what he was going to say. Too many cockroaches? Mice? Break-ins? What was he getting himself into with this place? Because he hadn’t considered the house’s history before taking possession of it, his only concern was making it pretty and selling it again. But now he had questions he wished he’d had answers to sooner.

  “Too many what?”

  “Memories,” the man said. “She was just fine, then she passed out.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Nothing,” the man said. “It was a long time ago and, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have bought it. It’s a leech, and every good thing in your life, it’s going to suck it out and leave you with nothing. If you’re lucky.”

  “Alright,” Mike said, “that’s enough. Get lost.”