He drove a big blue pickup with the tools in his bedbox, blasting a Blake Shelton album, with whom he’d recently become enamored through watching “The Voice” on television. After a long day on the job, he needed a shower, but first he needed food and if Glen wasn’t going to answer his phone so Paul could ask if he wanted something, too, he decided fuck it, he’d get himself something and if Glen was home and hungry, too, he knew where the kitchen was. Today had been too long and too exhausting for him to give a shit one way or another.
He stopped at the Burger King on Vesey, just off The Slant, and got a Whopper with cheese, which Paul considered one of the greatest American contributions to the world of fine dining, fries and a large shake. He had the Whopper almost gone by the time he pulled up to his house on Rion St. He still hadn’t gotten past the fact they were living in their house while it was being constructed. Granted, they weren’t building it from scratch, were just adding to what existed before, but he spent all day in a work zone, then came home and tried to sleep in another. A lesser man, he thought, would run screaming.
It was Glen’s concession, his penance for moving them from their home and country to the middle of the States and this insanely confusing place. He loved the weather, when it was nice, but there was something about the town itself, something that had never quite sat right with Paul. He didn’t talk about it with Glen, because Glen would think he was being overdramatic and just complaining about the move. He’d broached the subject once or twice with people on different crews he’d worked on during his time here, but no one seemed to be interested in helping him talk it out. So he swallowed his paranoia and went about his day to day. And Glen had made him the promise of no more moves, and to show his seriousness had agreed to let Paul design their house into his dream house.
It had been decent before, but once everything was finished, Paul thought, it wasn’t going to be the best house on the block or the neighborhood, it would be the best house in the west end of Angel Hill, if not the whole town.
The addition was framed out, a towering wooden skeleton emerging from the house like a giant spider unfolding its monstrous legs in all directions.
Paul regretted not being here while the work was going on, but part of the experience was that first look at the finished product, which just wasn’t the same when you did the work yourself. So they’d hired a bigger, more experienced crew for the job.
The side of the house had been taken off before putting up the outer walls of the addition so they could get rid of the old materials. The exposed old outer wall was then covered in heavy plastic. He’d talked to the contractor earlier today who said the outer walls would be going up tomorrow, so it was just one night they’d have to sleep with plastic walls.
Paul didn’t mind, the weather was nice enough. He went up to the second floor guest room, the one with plastic over it, and stood on the edge. He had always loved the view from this room, but it was just too small to be a master. When the work was finished, this would be the new master bedroom. He looked out at the neighborhood through a haze of plastic, but couldn’t see anything. He needed to see the whole thing, the way it was going to look when he woke up in the morning.
It’s just a night, he thought, and went down to his truck, got a utility knife from the back, and went back up to cut a slit in the plastic. He wasn’t cutting it open, just enough to see.
He slid the knife into his back pocket, then stuck his face in the hole so he could look out and get a proper view. He hadn’t made it big enough, though, and was standing there sucking plastic and still not able to see around the boards. He put his hands into the hole and tried to rip it a little bigger, but it was easier to do than he’d anticipated and the hole opened too wide, too fast, shocking him into momentarily losing his balance. His right foot slipped just a little over the edge of the house and that scared him too. He gasped, tried to push himself back from the plastic, but plastic isn’t a wall, and instead of pushing himself backward, he fell forward, tumbling out of the hole, ripping it more as he went sprawling down below, impaling himself through the throat on a rebar spike.
Chapter Eight
Mike had brought his phone dock that morning, expecting another long day at the house, and this time he wanted some music. He’d loaded his phone with a mix of classic Bowie albums, Harvey Danger, REM, Drivin’ N’ Cryin’, Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. He hit shuffle, then play, and went back to working on the kitchen floor.
Laying those planks was a lot more time consuming than it looked on television and he wished he could fast forward through it and move on. His knees were killing him and he wondered why, after yesterday, he hadn’t thought to pick up some knee pads. He wondered if Kevin had an extra pair he could borrow. He would try to remember to ask when he showed up.
Steven was there early, and Keith showed up about ten minutes later. Brian had told him last night he’d try to be there some time after noon. No, it wasn’t enough sleep, but he wanted to get up early and go ahead and see about a loan for the house. He would come by when he was done with all of that.
Kevin showed up and he and Steven went to work in the basement with the sub floor, the padding, and they hoped to have the carpet installed by the end of the day.
Keith started in the bedroom, taping the trim, then cutting in around the edges before painting the walls. Around ten he got a call from the cabinet store saying his order would be ready to pick up on Saturday, which was two days earlier than he’d expected. He told Mike who said, “Good, we can get that done sooner than we planned.”
Mike was on the last row of flooring in the kitchen, his back aching as if the marrow in his vertebrae had turned to lava, when Brian showed up around one o’clock with good news; he’d been approved for the loan.
“Man, you weren’t kidding,” Mike said. “You really want to move quick on this.”
“No point in waiting when I know it’s what I want to do anyway.”
“Guess not. So you’re absolutely sure you’re buying this house?”
Brian nodded.
“And I’m hiring us to remodel mine and get it ready to sell. We’ll split the profits and put the money back into the company, I just want to be rid of it.”
Mike stretched to work out a kink in his back, then said, “You wanna run over there and take a look at it, see if we can jot down some initial ideas, what we’re gonna need to do to it?”
That was actually the last thing Brian wanted to do, but this was his opportunity to have someone else go in with him, so if anything happened he’d either have a witness or backup. There were things he had wanted to get, things he didn’t want to leave behind, but he’d left in such a hurry he hadn’t had time. He couldn’t manufacture a better excuse to have someone come to the house with him.
Then he thought, But what if we go inside and she’s there, but she’s not locked in the bedroom anymore, what if she’s had free reign of the house these past few weeks? How the hell was he going to explain any of this if Mike suspected something was weird inside the house?
He didn’t know, but he’d have to just deal with it when it came up. He said, “Sure, you wanna just go now?”
Mike said, “Yeah, I’m done in here and I could use a break. I’ll just tell Kevin, then meet you outside. We can take your car if you want.”
Brian waited outside for him, then Mike came out and they drove to the place Brian had been avoiding like the plague, the place he would be happy if he never saw again.
He parked his car and sat for a second looking up at it, waiting, watching the windows, wondering if he’d see her looking out at him. Then Mike got out and broke his spell and Brian reluctantly climbed out after him. Mike preceded him to the door but Brian finally caught up and fumbled the keys with nervous fingers, wondering if he could somehow get the door unlocked and open but let Mike go in first without it seeming weird.
Well, it was just going to have to seem weird, then, because he couldn’t go in first.
He finally wo
rked the key into the lock, turned it til he felt the click, then quickly turned the knob and gave the door and quick shove with his fingers before stepping back and saying, “After you.”
Mike stepped inside and said, “Holy shit!”
Brian felt the air rush out of his lungs and his knees wobbled for a second until Mike finished his thought and said, “When was the last time you changed the trash, dude? It fucking reeks in here.”
“Is that it?” Brian asked. “You sure it’s the trash?”
“It sure as hell smells like trash. You gotta empty that shit, man.”
Brian peeked in, trying to see the couch, the living room, to make sure everything was as he thought he left it. Nothing looked overturned or covered in dried slime. Maybe she hadn’t gotten out.
Maybe she was never there, his mind said.
No, I saw her, she touched me, she was here.
He stepped inside, just over the threshold, but didn’t want to go any further.
“Yeah, I need to clean up. I’ve been so busy with work and coming over to the house, though, I’m really not here at all. I’ll get that real quick while you look around.”
He went into the kitchen and hauled out the bag of rotting garbage. On the bright side, the central air was still working so the place wasn’t sweltering, and since he hadn’t opened a door or a window in weeks, there were no flies swarming around the garbage, laying maggoty eggs and making this an even worse job.
He tied off the bag, lined the can with a new one, and carried the old one outside where he dumped it into the black plastic bin outside the back door, then closed the lid on the bin and went back inside.
Mike was gone and Brian wanted to call out to him, but if his mother answered…
She was going to scream at him any second, he knew it. Get out of the house, she would shriek, get out of the house, and Mike would come running and asking what the fuck is that and Brian wouldn’t have an answer that didn’t make him sound insane.
But his mother never yelled. Eventually, standing in the front doorway, ready to make his escape, he heard a noise upstairs and at first was sure it was her, but then he heard Mike’s voice.
“You coming up, or what?”
“Um, yeah,” Brian called. “I was just coming.”
He found Mike in the bathroom.
“Damn, you were right, they haven’t updated this thing in forever.”
“Never,” Brian said. “This is how it was when we bought it.”
“Well, this bathroom’s gotta go completely. There’s plenty of room in here, too, we could make it really nice. Is there a master bath in their bedroom?”
Brian nodded.
“Let’s check it out.”
“You go ahead,” Brian said, “I gotta take a piss and grab something from my room.”
Mike closed the door behind him, leaving Brian to stand there, stalling. Finally he tried to do what he said he had to, but found he couldn’t, he had nothing to give, so he flushed anyway, then ran water in the sink and splashed his face.
He waited inside the closed bathroom door and thought of that first night at the house on Irving. What had he seen when he opened the door that night? He still didn’t remember.
Brian heard movement from what must have been his parents’ room, but what he didn’t hear was the sound of Mike screaming. Maybe it was okay now, maybe she’d gone back where she was supposed to be.
He opened the door and listened again. All sounded well. He crept down the hall, still hesitant, but finding his courage.
When he got to the bedroom door, he stopped and said, “You in here?”
Mike’s voice replied, “Yeah, in the bathroom. This is another gut job in here too.”
Brian stepped in and immediately looked for his mother. He didn’t see her, but he did see something that made him retreat to the doorway and wait for Mike.
“Yeah, wait til you get a good look at the kitchen,” he said, trying to get him out of here.
“Needs a lot of work?”
“You said it yourself, you gotta put your money into bathrooms and kitchens.”
“You really do. Look at the Irving house. That’s the bulk of our budget on those two things. At least here everything looks like we won’t need to move anything like we did over there. Just updating and stuff. Let’s look at the kitchen.”
Brian led the way, glad to be out of his parents’ room. His mother wasn’t there, but he wondered why Mike didn’t mention the very obvious trail of dried slime stuck to the carpet. It led from around the far side of the bed where he’d first seen her that night, around the foot and over to where she had grabbed him, then it turned and disappeared under the bed.
She’s still there, he thought. She’s under there waiting, she’s been there since I ran out of here. This isn’t my problem, they can move everything out of here, they can sell it, trash it, I don’t care, I don’t want any of it. This is the last time, he decided. I will never come inside this house again.
They looked at the kitchen and Mike said, “This isn’t that bad, actually. New cabinets. Plenty of room for an island. This laminate countertop gotta go, dude.”
“Definitely,” Brian agreed, but he wasn’t really listening. “Some paint, new carpet, you got yourself a whole new house.”
“Pretty much,” Mike said. “Well you got my vote. The other guys agree, this’ll be our next flip and we’ll get it off your plate.”
“Cool. Let’s get the fuck out of here, I can still smell that trash.”
“Yeah, we still got a lot to do over at Irving, anyway, if you wanna get in there.”
They headed for the door and Mike stopped him and said, “Hey, you get what you needed from your room before we leave?”
“Right,” Brian said, considering faking it, but then decided he better take the chance while he had it. If she was gone, she was gone, but if she was hiding under the bed, he had Mike here if he needed him.
He ran up the stairs, meaning to be quick, but was stopped as soon as he hit the hallway.
Mike hadn’t closed the bedroom door when he came out, and that trail of slime was now leading out from the bedroom, across the hall, and into Brian’s room. He stared at it for a second, then felt himself shaking and knew he had to get out of here right now or else he’d feel his sanity slipping and it may never come back.
He backed down the hall, refusing the turn his back on whatever was at the end of that trail, then got to the stairs, turned and took them two at a time as he said, “I don’t even remember what it was I was coming over to grab, I’ll just get it later maybe.”
“Cool,” Mike said and walked out the door.
Brian followed, locked it, then double and triple checked it was indeed locked before hurrying to his car. He pulled away for the last time, determined to never lay eyes on that house again.
Back at the house, Paul hadn’t shown up. Kevin and Steven were mudding the drywall in the basement while Andrew and Gary were working separately in both bathrooms, installing tile. Keith and Ed had gone to pick up the carpet for the office and bedroom downstairs.
Mike went down and asked “Paul isn’t coming in?”
Kevin went out to what was going to be a rec room with Mike and said in hushed tones, “I got a call right after you left earlier. Paul had an accident when he got home last night. He must have lost his balance or something, his partner I guess, Glen, said he wasn’t sure. But Paul died last night.”
“Holy shit,” Mike said, genuinely shocked. “Man, that’s terrible.”
He didn’t know what to say next, so he just stood there silent for a moment. Then Kevin broke the silence, “Yeah, the funeral is in a couple days, so we’re all gonna knock off early that day, if you don’t mind, and go get cleaned up. We’re making good time, so we’re not gonna lose much of it.”
“No problem,” Mike said. “In fact, just take the morning. If you wanna come in after, no problem, but, I wouldn’t expect you to all to come and paint and mud the hou
se on a day like that.”
“Thanks,” Kevin said. “I’ll go ahead and come in anyway, but I might give the other guys the day off.”
“Do you want me to call around and get a plumber in here from outside?”
“What for?” Kevin asked.
“To finish off what Paul had left to do?”
“Well, that’s the good thing,” Kevin said. “If you have to find something good, he was all done, with the plumbing side anyway. He was gonna be off helping the other guys starting today.”
“Oh,” Mike said. “Right, I think I knew that.”
But in his mind he was thinking about what Sean Ellis had said. It keeps you around until it’s done with you. But, as he’d told himself over and over already, that was stupid superstition and paranoia. Like Lynette’s heart attack, this house didn’t go over to Paul’s house and kill him. The idea alone was ridiculous. But the timing of Paul’s death sure was stretching Mike’s belief in coincidence a bit thin.
Mike went upstairs and told Brian what had happened and Brian was solemn, even though he’d been here the least and admitted he could barely remember who was who among Kevin’s crew.
Then he said, “When Keith gets back, do you wanna get everyone together and talk about what to do at my house and stuff like that?”
“Let’s wait til later tonight,” Mike said. “They’re bringing the carpet for downstairs and I’d like to see it installed. I think the more of this stuff we know how to do ourselves, the cheaper the labor will be for the next one. As it is, this is a huge education and I think we can easily do most of this stuff ourselves except the stuff you’d need a license for, like the plumbing and electrical.”
“I’m not a builder.”
“Me neither, but we know how to knock it down now, and once someone else puts it up, we can do the insulation and drywall easy. I think the more of this stuff we, as a company, learn to do ourselves, we’re only helping our bottom line further down the road.”
The Flip (An Angel Hill novel) Page 18