Matt stood in silence, thinking.
“Well,” he said.
“Well, what?”
Matt spit in his bottle. “It’s true, I would hate to see this job not get finished.”
“That’s right,” Nate agreed. “A big, beautiful house like this? It would be a great reference site.”
“There’s still a fair amount to do. But we’re in the homestretch.” He paused to take out a handkerchief and wipe his forehead.
Nate noticed that Matt looked very pale, even in the morning sun. He suddenly realized how tentative this moment was. Matt was on the fence. He was trying to talk himself into it out of pride and a sense of commitment, but he really, really didn’t like the idea of a haunted house.
“Matt.”
“Yeah?”
“You know what they say about the best way to overcome fear?”
“What’s that?”
“One step at a time. That’s what we’ve got to do here. Just get started. Pick up your hammer and install a little bit of trim. Pick up you brush and touch up a little paint. Before you know it, everything will be back to normal.”
Matt shuffled his bottle to his other hand so that he could blot his forehead again. “Uh, okay, I guess.”
“So you're in?”
“I guess.”
“No guessing. In?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m in.”
“Great. You go ahead and get started. I’ve got to run into town for a little while—”
Matt’s eyes widened in alarm. “You’re leaving me here? Alone?”
“No! I’m not leaving you. I’ve just got to run some errands. It’ll be a few hours, tops. I’ll bring back lunch from Stonewall Jackson’s. You like their sandwiches, right?”
The redneck shuffled nervously.
“Dude. Relax. It’s a beautiful day. The sun is shining. Adolf is here, he’ll keep you company—though please, keep him off the couch. I’ll be back before you know it and I’ll be bringing chow. And if you need to take a break, just do it. Make yourself at home. Anything I’ve got in the fridge, help yourself. Relax. Mi casa es su casa.”
Matt took a deep breath. The fear was clearly weighing on him. How could a redneck used to spending days in the woods hunting bears or whatever the hell rednecks did get so spooked by a fat lady who popped off a frog’s head? But he was clearly committed to finishing what he started. Matt nodded his head, pulled up his contractor’s belt, and marched inside. Nate let out an exhale himself, thankful he wasn’t going back to being a do-it-yourselfer again.
It also meant he could get along with his mission.
Still without any Internet beyond the speed-of-snail cell network at the mansion, Nate once again decided to attend civilization with a mocha Frappuccino and free connectivity at Nelson’s Coffee Bar & Washateria. This particular morning was slow, with the only other customer an elderly black woman doing a load of laundry and playing Candy Crush on an iPad. Nate picked out his usual table by the front window and set up his laptop. A few minutes later he was driving on the information superhighway.
“Okay, Google, let’s see what you’ve got for me here.”
He typed in haunted houses. Five million search results. The list seemed primarily focused on Halloween-related scare shops, the kind that charged ten bucks to have dudes in zombie masks jump out at you, or have a patient scream while a doctor pulled pretend intestines (spaghetti) from their gut. A couple more pages of results got to lists of “real” haunted houses, but they were more like historic tourist attractions and Nate did not see really any helpful information.
Try again.
Fake haunting.
Lots of websites with how-to instructions—eHow, Wikihow, Answer.com. Nate read through some of the tricks of the trade. Again, the search results came back with a large number of parlor tricks geared toward a staged production. How to build a scary soundtrack of whistles and groans. Plumbing pranks to make it seem like a faucet turned on by itself. Doctoring pictures to drop in a ghost photobomb. It was all just more nonsense.
Nate put ghost into the search box.
Hits came back. Nate skipped all the images of Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. Netflix apparently paid for some kind of AdWords because links to scary movies lined the right of the screen. Wikipedia provided a definition of what made up a spirit: “solitary essences that haunt particular locations, objects, or people.” No kidding. A link to YouTube showed a ghost hunter team allegedly capturing footage of a spirit below decks on a haunted tanker.
Hmmm. Wait a second.
Nate moved the slider bar back and maximized his screen. The film crew was part of some crackpot documentary about confirming the existence of ghosts. As the hapless explorers crept through the rusty steel corridors of the ship, a British chick narrated how film often saw things the human eye could not. Nate watched the grainy night-vision footage of the crew proceeding further below decks. About five minutes in, one of the team whispered what was that and they all froze. The cameras swept back and forth through a large open space that Nate assumed was the ship’s hold. Then he saw it. A pale figure blinked in and out of existence on one of the gantries far ahead. Well, okay, it was more of a blob than a figure, but the way the film crew spoke in hushed tones, it might as well have been Blackbeard the Pirate. The blob wandered off through a distant bulkhead.
Was that really a ghost?
Nate paused the video and sipped his Frappuccino. He had always wondered if stuff like this was just sensationalist media dropped on the Internet. Weren’t the first images of ghosts on film really just screw-ups in some 1800s darkroom when a technician double exposed a negative? In today’s age of Photoshop, why should Nate believe that this crap on YouTube wasn’t done to purposely deceive?
He moved the slider bar and watched the film segment again. The blob didn’t have a lot of detail. It just kind of stood there for a moment and then blinked off to the left. Maybe it wasn’t a ghost. Maybe it was the night vision lens catching a glare from an unexpected light source. All in all, it was quite underwhelming.
But what if it was real?
Then the idea hit Nate. Of course. Those many weeks ago when his tools disappeared. Nate thought some thief had broken into his job site. He had ordered security cameras not long after. If his house really was haunted, then maybe, just maybe, his own security footage would provide a clue as to what was going on.
23
Nate sensed something was wrong the moment he walked through the front door.
“Matt?”
The wind whistled gently through the open windows. Everything was unusually still—no hammering, no drilling, no cursing, no Matt. Nate took careful steps over to the makeshift workbench standing resolute against the interior wall. A tool belt and tools were spilled haphazardly on the top. Matt’s tools. That explained the lack of work noises.
“Matt?” Nate called out loudly. “I brought you lunch.”
No reply.
Nate placed the sandwiches from Stonewall’s on the workbench and walked around. The place was empty. Climbing the stairs to the second floor, Nate called out again for a response. Nothing. Even Adolf hadn’t come to greet him, not that the Doberman necessarily cared to respond outside of dinner time. But Nate thought the smell of a sub sandwich would have allowed for a guest appearance.
A hollow doink caught Nate’s attention on the floor. He looked down and saw an overturned Gatorade bottle. He realized he had just kicked it over. A small pool of dip spit rolled around inside the plastic.
This was wrong.
Nate went into one of the front rooms and looked out the window. He hadn’t noticed it until just now, but Matt’s truck was gone. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Had something happened?
With renewed purpose, Nate walked briskly back downstairs. He retrieved his laptop and headed to the kitchen. Tucked away on the top shelf of the pantry sat the security system deck, which Nate exposed by sweeping aside cans of beans and corn
so that he could plug in his laptop with an Ethernet cable. A few moments later he was staring at a series of thumbnail video captures that formulated a timeline over the past forty-eight hours.
“Let’s see what we can see,” Nate said out loud. He was trying to reassure himself that everything was going to be okay.
Nate had installed numerous tiny little security cameras around the mansion as part of the security package. He quickly found the part of the timeline where he and Matt were conversing on the front porch. Nate watched as he pulled away in his car and left Matt standing in the front yard, spitting in his bottle and otherwise looking unsure of what he should do next.
Matt went inside. Nate switched the camera view so that he could follow his movements. First, he went to the workbench and reviewed a number of drawings and notes. Then, slowly and with obvious reluctance, Matt turned to walk up the stairs. He trudged along the hallway to the right-side bathroom still under construction and paused in the doorway as if trying to psych himself up to get to work. He put down his toolbox and knelt down by the exposed plumbing at the head of the bathtub.
The next hour or so was a lot of wrenching and fiddling. Apparently, Matt was having trouble getting some joint properly affixed to one of the pipes. At one point he stood up and wandered down the hall to the opposite side of the house. He entered the other second-floor bathroom and started fiddling with those pipe fixtures as if trying to understand how he had placed this identical set of pipes behind the wall.
Matt was staring at the wall when his gaze slid over to the right. Nate watched as the redneck stared at the spa gift set Anna had given Nate.
Matt looked over his shoulders. He stood with uncertainty as if mentally wrestling with a dilemma about some irreversible choice he was about to make. His eyes settled back on the spa set.
Nate shook his head. What was the big deal?
Matt shook his head and walked back to the first bathroom. He went to work using what looked like an acetylene torch to solder a pipe joint. When he stopped, Nate initially thought the operation must have been complete. But instead of packing up his tools, Matt flung the acetylene bottle onto the floor and stomped out into the hallway with a huff. He looked mad. Matt plodded back downstairs and quickly deposited his tool belt onto the workbench. Then he turned right around and marched back up the stairs to the finished bathroom, where he picked up the spa set once again and cradled it in his hands.
Then he started running water in the bath.
“You’re shitting me,” Nate said.
Nate watched in fascination as Matt opened the spa kit and deposited bath salts in the water. He swished the water around and then started taking his clothes off. Nate observed an impressive man vest of hair before he shuddered his way to the fast forward button. Some things were best left unseen. After ten seconds to safety, the video resumed at normal speed to reveal Matt immersed in a bubbly bath. He propped his feet on one end of the tub. He scrubbed them with the loofah. Then he looked like he painted his fingernails with nail polish—did spa kits include nail polish? A facial scrub all over his cheeks and forehead delivered the finishing touch. Relaxed and rejuvenated, Matt laid his head back against the tub edge. Every so often, he would lean forward to spit in his dip bottle.
Nate watched in amazement. The detail work still had to be done, Matt had told him. Was this the detailing?
Matt sat up suddenly in the video. The washcloth that had been across his eyes oozed its way down into the water.
Nate’s smile evaporated. He leaned forward.
Matt leaned forward too. His eyes were wide in alarm and he shrunk down to hide in the bubbles. Then he jumped as if startled by an unexpected noise. He jumped a second time. The third time he thrashed his way clear out of the tub, slopping water all over the floor in a mad scramble. Matt’s face veered between fight and flight. Unwilling to commit either way, he crept naked into the hallway to investigate something that remained out of view.
Nate fumbled through the video feeds but a better camera angle proved elusive. Matt shuffled toward the door to the attic stairs, holding the loofah in front of him like the shank of a prisoner waiting to get jumped. After a brief pause to listen at the stairs, he began to make his way up, leaving wet, sloppy footprints on each of the steps.
Nate cursed that there was no audio in his security footage. What was going on here?
The cameras weren’t installed in the attic. All Nate could do was watch the recording in the upstairs hallway. He kept it at normal speed for fear of missing something crucial. A long several minutes went by with nothing. Then a flurry of shadows played across the bottom of the stairs. Nate felt a sense of dread in his stomach. He just knew in his core that something bad was happening, Blair Witch-style.
The light in the hallway trembled.
The shadows jerked.
Suddenly, the swift, Bigfootesque shape of Matt exploded at full speed down the attic stairs. He hauled ass down the hallway, reached the grand staircase, and channeled James Bond to slide down the banister without missing a beat. At the bottom, Matt forward-rolled like some naked hairy ninja and was back on his feet, sprinting out the front door. The last thing Nate saw was Matt throwing the loofah over his shoulder.
Nate was stunned. What could have happened to terrify his contractor so much? He rewound the footage back to where Matt fled from the attic. He played it forward at quarter speed, looking for clues.
Everything looked normal. The lighting dimmed and brightened. Okay, that was weird. Next, the shadows twisted their shape, almost as if a hanging light had been batted back and forth. Of course, there was no hanging light, let alone anything to knock it around. Matt rushed out next. Nate couldn’t quite read his facial expression—if anything, he seemed focused on just getting the hell out of there. As he passed the camera, there was some distortion in the hall. And then …
Nate saw it.
It.
The shape was only there for a few frames. Nate rewound the video and rolled it slowly back and forth. A blurry distortion swelled into the frame, turned inside out … and then a giant, ghostly, four-legged thing was crawling—no, shambling—out of the attic, a terrible and unholy praying mantis from Hell. In one of its pincers it carried what looked like …
“Is that a Confederate battle flag?”
And then it was gone.
Nate understood now how the expression you look like you’ve just seen a ghost came about. He could feel his own clammy skin underneath the cool flush of adrenaline. Because there it was, on film. A ghost.
“I’m losing my mind,” he whispered.
An urgent pounding on the front door startled Nate from his trance.
Nate wrestled with his own fight-or-flight dilemma. The pounding was from the ghost, it had to be. Or was it? Why would a ghost be outside? Was it coming to finish the job?
Wait a minute. Dammit, this was his house. Nate decided he needed to man up and see what was going on.
He hurried with measured urgency from the kitchen. The front door seemed a flimsy barrier against the tirade of noise from the other side. Pounding. Rattling. Wailing. The sounds of the apocalypse made the portal shudder. The noise was overwhelming, a living thing with an incredible urgency at getting into the house.
His foot kicked something on the floorboards. Nate looked down and saw the loofah Matt had dropped. Nate grabbed it and, like Matt before him held it out by the handle for protection.
“Who’s there?” Nate said, his voice breaking.
The frantic cacophony outside stopped.
Nate stood frozen. “Hello?”
“Nate?” a frail voice said from the other side of the door.
Nate lowered the loofah. “Shelby?”
He slid open the deadbolt and opened the door. There stood Shelby, clearly a mess and looking like he was out of his mind. His hair was disheveled, his cheeks covered with stubble. He was wearing a bathrobe and slippers, but underneath was an untucked oxford shirt where he had misalign
ed the buttons with the holes, and one side was higher than the other.
“Shelby, are you okay? What’s going on?”
His old neighbor stood disoriented, his eyes unfocused. “N-Nate?”
Nate grabbed him gently by the shoulders. “Shelby. It’s me, I’m here. What’s wrong?”
Shelby’s gaze tracked toward Nate’s voice, a blind man discovering there was a new person in the room. For a brief second his eyes were lucid. Then the tears began to flow, running down his cheeks alongside the stains from previous weeping.
“He’s gone, Nate. My beloved Tobey—he’s gone.”
24
Tobias Martin Broussard died around midday on a bright and sunny July 18th. The official coroner report listed the cause of death as respiratory complications related to suppressed immunodeficiency. Shelby had discovered him unconscious in their solarium while bringing him iced tea. Now Shelby was a wreck, although that was a significant improvement from catatonic.
The funeral took place at the Johnston Mortuary back near town, with a small gathering of close friends and associates. Shelby’s people were easy to spot—pairs of men, dressed somberly, but with a splash of color or other certain something that made each of them look fabulous, now-now. Anna looked stunning as usual, even in a conservative black dress and hat. Matt was nowhere to be found. Nate didn’t have anything that even approximated dress clothes and had to make an emergency trip to Walmart. He stood next to Anna in a black Dickies shirt and slacks, soaking up the humidity.
The ceremony unfolded exactly how Nate would have pictured a gay, gentrified, Southern memorial service. A hefty woman with a dark butch haircut named Mac acted as minister. Mac. Reverend Mac kept the service on track, opening up with a couple hymns before parading through the friends who wanted to say nice words about Tobey and share stories of more joyful times. When she finally allowed Shelby to speak, she consoled him when he completely went off the rails into a blubbery, honking mess.
The House That Jack Built: A Humorous Haunted House Fiasco Page 15