The House of Dust

by Noah Broyles

  “The thing is,” Brooke said, “it looked to me like it was all the same day. Like extremely rapid decay.”

  He nodded slowly. She was right. The wrinkle in the boy’s cravat remained the same in all four pictures. And the position of the curtains behind him. And the progression of light was right. Each had been taken perhaps two hours apart.

  “What do you make of it?”

  Again he said, “I don’t know. I think there’s a personality cult that surrounds the person who lives in the house, but that doesn’t explain why her body would break down so quickly. She can’t have been very old, either, dead before 1946, when the next couple moved in, John and Ellen King.”

  “I don’t see anything about them.”

  “They were the last registered owners on the house’s deed. At least, they were when I checked last week.” Brad opened the final envelope—“Recent.”

  His weak grin faded as he examined the materials. As with the first file, this one was sparse, two items only. A newspaper clipping from the Lexington Progress dated the week of June 9, 1963. “One Year Later, Fate of State Prosecutor in Locust River Mine Case Remains Mystery.”

  The story briefly detailed an investigation into unsafe working conditions at the Locust River Mine the previous summer. It then stated that a few weeks after the investigation’s conclusion, a key player, Walter Lloyd Collins, left his Nashville office on a Tuesday evening and was never seen again.

  The other item was a map from the county surveyor’s office dated 1978. It depicted the streets and structures of Three Summers, as nearly as he could tell identical to how they were today.

  “I found an item belonging to Walter Collins in the house,” he noted. “His Book of Common Prayer. Marilyn Britain kept it—that’s the woman who died recently. She must have come to the house with him.” He sat up straighter, running his thumbs along the bunched-up shirt inside his pants. “Nothing about the Kings, though. And nothing about the court battle for the mine.”

  “You could try the courthouse.”

  He nodded. “And nothing about old Walt Collins building anything. Nor the Kings.”

  “Pattern kind of runs aground, huh?”

  “Kind of.” His hands were sweaty inside the gloves. He slipped the items into their sleeve, then drew the map back out. “Is there any way I could get a copy of this?”

  “Absolutely.” Brooke stood up and carried the map toward the desk.

  Brad looked around at the shelves of brightly colored plastic-covered book spines. The daylight had nearly withdrawn from the windows. How long had they been sitting here? Slipping off his glasses, he rubbed bleary eyes. But he could feel excitement buzzing below his weariness.

  The photocopier hummed. Brooke returned and handed him a warm printout.

  “Thanks.”

  “I forgot, there’s this also.” She held out a small color photo. “I took it to my office to clean off some residue. It’s from the ‘Recent’ folder.”

  Replacing his glasses, Brad took the picture. Another portrait. Another woman standing before the house. Another itch in his brain.

  This time it clicked.

  The dress. All the women had worn the same dress. It was the white gauzy thing the old woman had been clothed in when he found her in the garden. The dress she had worn into her grave. He recognized it now because this was the old woman, at least fifty years younger.

  Loose brown hair, glossy in long ago sunlight, was pulled over one shoulder. The camera had caught her mid-laugh, full lips pulled away from white teeth. One of those teeth, the front right one, was chipped at the corner.

  “She’s beautiful,” he said lingeringly. He flipped the picture over.

  Missy, 1962.

  THEY THAT SLEEP

  17

  In the early sixties, a couple named Missy Holiday and Walter Collins came. Walter, a state prosecutor, was investigating the recently constructed Adamah Mine for safety concerns. Missy, called Marilyn by some, was the one I found that day, the one I drove to her grave.

  The man who had delivered these artifacts to the library was named Richard Hettinga, a regular patron of the library. He had left for Atlanta during the previous week, but Brooke Carney was kind enough to give me his number, despite the fact that he hadn’t been answering her calls. In the car, I tried Richard Hettinga’s phone. It went to voicemail, so I left him one. Then I drove back.

  —“The House of Dust”

  Southern Gothic

  For a week, the cat did not blink.

  It did not eat or drink, either. It lay as it was laid and sat as it was set and never moved. It was slumped at the foot of their bed on Wednesday night when Walt snapped shut his little praying book, tossed it on the nightstand along with his glasses, and rolled on top of her.

  “Not tonight,” Missy said.

  He scowled toward the cat, then nudged it with his toe beneath the covers. “That thing’s ready to go in the ground.”

  “We can’t just throw it out,” she said. “Look at its eyes. It’s eyes are alive.”

  The cat’s eyes sent a pining feeling through her as she remembered Mutt’s eyes. She’d adopted Mutt out of an alley behind their Piggly Wiggly in Atlanta. Because she was still recovering from breaking her tooth, Grandmama had decided to let her keep him for a little while.

  Missy cleaned his fur and eyes, but his fur always matted and his eyes refilled with goo.

  Still, she loved those eyes. Old and hazy, they were the only ones that looked at her with real adoration. The only ones that needed her. The only ones that mourned as she was hauled off to HUG, the Home for Underprivileged Girls. What ever happened to Mutt?

  The next morning, Thursday, Missy force-fed the cat. Between futile sessions of scrubbing the dance hall floor and tearing up the molded carpet in the parlor and tearing down the wallpaper in the main hall, she went out on the porch where she had made a bed for the creature with a bowl of warm milk.

  It was a struggle at first to get its mouth open. Once the jaws were wide, though, the muscles seemed to disconnect from the brain. Just the slightest touch and its chin would drop down and it would gape at her like a piece of roadkill. She then took an eyedropper and trickled milk across its tongue. Invariably, though, after a couple minutes, the liquid began to build up in the back of its throat.

  It wasn’t swallowing. Rubbing its throat with her thumb only made bubbles well up through the milk. She turned the cat over and the milk splattered onto the porch.

  For two more days, she kept trying. Nothing changed. The cat became stiffer, and Missy stopped sleeping. At night, she lay and watched the motionless lump in the dark. She thought she could hear tiny howls coming through its teeth, like cries far down in a well.

  A week after she had dug the cat out of the ground, Missy set the unused bowl of milk on the wire table beside her chair and cradled the cat’s limp form. She sat and looked around at the mats of leaves and sticks that still covered the porch and the cushions decaying in the chairs. Then she stood up, putting the cat back on its bed.

  She walked down the hall and entered the study. The air was stagnant despite the open door. Her fiancé hunched in his chair, his hands plastered atop the pages of a binder, reading text between his fingers. Stacks of yellowing papers cascaded around on the desk. He hadn’t shaved all week, and a mangy beard had gathered around his mustache, making his face seem heavier. Gently, she approached and touched his greasy dark hair.

  Walt jerked, and his fingers closed across the page. Collecting himself, he sat up and blinked at her.

  “The cat’s dying.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m gonna try to find a vet in town.”

  “Okay.”

  Missy’s fingers withdrew. No condolences? No protestations? No I don’t want you around those people? No I want you here where I know you’re safe? B
ack in Nashville, he had discouraged her from going out without his company. Glancing down, she caught a title at the top the page he was reading. MTMC Safety Commission Report on Locust River Facility. Surely, that couldn’t be holding him enraptured.

  Working too hard, she thought, and softened a bit. “We need groceries, too. And some varnish for that floor. And paint. I’m thinking of a nice creamy yellow in the main hall, instead of that yucky floral print. Wouldn’t that look nice?” She reached toward the nearest desk drawer. “So, if I can borrow the car—”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Brushing her hand aside, he opened the drawer just a few inches, snaked his fingers inside, and drew out the keys to the Pontiac. She reached for them, but he hesitated, then placed them slowly in her palm and folded her fingers shut. He didn’t let go.

  “You know, I never taught you how to drive.”

  Looking up, she found a vague focus had coalesced behind his glasses.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just into town.”

  “Never got you a license or anything,” he continued, studying her dry, cracked knuckles. “You know, I was just thinking, if something were to happen to you . . . if you were to end up in a bad spot, folks wouldn’t have a way to identify you, wouldn’t know who to contact. They’d check your purse and find, what, a little cash? Some gum? They wouldn’t even know your name, Missy.”

  Something about the words made her throat dry. “It’s just to town, baby.”

  “Yeah.” He raised her hand to his bristly cheek for a moment, then let go. “Just watch out.”

  Missy put the cat in a covered basket and put the basket on the passenger seat.

  Potholes were abundant on the green tunnel road, so she drove slowly, one hand on the basket to keep it steady. Each time she glanced over, an excruciating awareness swept her of the skin flaking off her knuckles. She’d tried to conceal it, but had he finally noticed? Was that the reason he seemed so oddly detached? The enamel wearing thin on his doll? Because the dryness wasn’t going away. In fact, it was getting—

  I’ll add lotion to my list. She buried the thought.

  It was the middle of the day, one o’clock in the afternoon, but the town was comatose. Along Adamah Road, vines twined across white wicker gates, and rows of trees shot out of the forest behind the houses and separated the unkempt lawns. Since no one was on those lawns, she continued driving until she came to the grocery store. Cars moderately populated the parking lot, so she pulled in.

  As Missy stepped from the vehicle, the crumbly smell of cigarette smoke caught in her nose. Turning, her gaze was drawn to the side of the neighboring warehouse. A beauty in a red gown grinned from an ad on the worn bricks. Behind her, a small group congregated. Even through the flaking paint, it was easy to see the expression in the eyes turned toward the woman: adoration.

  She closed the door carefully. “Just a silly old cigarette ad.”

  Inside, the day’s heat was pooling atop the dirty tile, and roaring fans propped in doors at the back of the store tried to make ripples in it. Hornets wandered among the rafters and the half-dead lights, and people wandered about with wire baskets. Some smiled, some chewed their lips, all watched her from the other end of the aisles. How many had written her those cryptic letters?

  Quickly, she went through the store, conscious of the temperature in the car where the cat was still motionless in the basket. Dumping boxes of dry pasta and two cases of tomato paste at the register, she wiped hair, sticky with perspiration, from her face. “Do y’all have a vet in town? I’ve got a sick animal outside.”

  A blond-haired woman with short bangs and no eyebrows stared at her as she wrote out a receipt. “You’re . . . ”

  “Yes, we just moved here.”

  “Her. From the house.”

  “My name’s Missy.”

  “Mmmmmmmm-issy . . . ” The woman’s body began to jolt. Her throat clenched, as if she were about to vomit. Then her lips split, revealing teeth that stabbed through her gums like broken-off fingernails.

  Leaning forward, her eyes darted left and right. Fetid breath washed across Missy’s face as the woman whispered, “You’re very welcome here.”

  Missy kept her lips together and turned them into a smile. Paying, she gathered up her things and shouldered out into the simmering parking lot. She was within ten feet of the car when a raspy little voice called, “Hey! It’s the fake queen!”

  Missy rotated on her heel. The horrible little boy who had buried the cat was crouched before the advertisement mural. He couldn’t be more than ten years old, but he had a smoke clamped between his teeth. “The fake queen has come to town, well, well. Tryin’ to win us over, fake queen?”

  “Are you tryin’ to get smacked, little brat?” Missy called back. “Have you already tortured an animal for the day?”

  “Aw, gettin’ mad, fake queen? I’ll show you what happens to people like you in that house!” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a worm. He tossed it on the pavement and dug a loose brick from the wall behind him and pounded the wriggling creature to pulp. “See? See?”

  Her stomach churned. Dragging her purse off her shoulder, she tossed it onto the hood of the car. “Stay right there, and I’ll come show you what happens to little boys like you.” She walked briskly toward him.

  “Gonna try and hit me again?” the boy shouted. “I don’t think so!” He hefted the brick and flung it at her.

  It didn’t hit her, but it hit the car. Missy jolted to a stop. And she was driving his car. “Do that again, and I’ll get the police on you.”

  “Tell ’em!” the boy responded. “They’ll tell you what happened to the last fake queen!” He was pulling another brick from the crumbling wall.

  “Don’t you—”

  He threw, and again the missile impacted on the car. There was now a definite bent to his throw, and a definite dent in the passenger door. Steel gray showed through the Pontiac’s red paint. The window was rolled down, and the cat’s basket was just inside.

  “Fine!” Missy said. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  She controlled her pace most of the way back to the car, but when a third brick clanged against it, she ran. The boy bellowed a laugh. She grabbed her purse off the hood and scrambled inside. Starting up, she drove blindly out onto the street and turned deeper into town. With her foot firmly on the gas pedal, she relaxed her shoulders and blew out a burning breath.

  In the side mirror, she saw the boy chasing after her on the sidewalk, chanting his stupid “fake queen” moniker.

  “I know what he said about not getting involved in anything,” she explained to the cat. “But I’m not going to let that little bastard get away with this.”

  She pressed the accelerator even harder.

  Three Summers jutted up around her.

  At the intersection in the town center, she slowed and examined the vehicles parked along the curbs. The police cruiser stood before a quiet redbrick building with curtained upper windows. An open sign was displayed on the first floor, along with a placard out front: Theater grill. Missy drove across and pulled in behind the police car.

  When she stepped out, the echo of the boy’s voice was distant down the road. Distant, but approaching. Pushing more sweaty strands into her ponytail, she put her purse on her shoulder and crossed the sidewalk to the diner.

  Fresh cigarette smoke assailed her as she opened the door. There weren’t many people in the place, eight on quick count, but every hand was clutching a cigarette. And the skin of nearly every hand was wrinkled. Not old, but weathered, like a sailor after years in brilliant sun. Except the opposite seemed to have occurred; instead of too much light, it was too much darkness that had sunk into their pores, until they were as withered as a winter garden. She looked away as a gawky man with a rooster crest of red hair stared at her. They all stared at her.

  Why were
they all—

  No, there was someone. A ninth.

  Someone with his back to her and a full head of greased black hair, sitting at the counter in the rear of the room. He turned slowly on his stool as the door creaked shut, and a smile spilt his very smooth skin, drawing it tightly across his checks, spreading tiny wrinkles around his eyes.

  “Ms. Holiday.” There were those perfect black lines between each of his perfect white teeth. Ezra.

  Gradually, she approached. “I just had a run-in with a dreadful person, and I wondered if the sheriff might . . . ” Arrest him? Lock him up? Punish him.

  “Can you describe the person?” the sheriff asked.

  “Yes. A bratty little boy with black hair. He’s following me here now.”

  “Roy. Perhaps he’s been a nuisance for long enough.” His chin rose. “Abe? Would you and the men see to him?”

  Missy turned away, a smirk tickling. The way he spoke those last words was delicious.

  The lithe fellow with red hair and the weary men stood up, and she acknowledged them gratefully before walking aimlessly toward the nearest wall, her purse strap twisting between her hands.

  Dozens of black-and-white photos hung on the walls, most stuck in place with thumbtacks. She strolled along the wall, examining the pictures, feeling the sheriff’s eyes. The photos showed the Theater Grill and various other parts of the town. They also showed people. Many groups of young people spread randomly through the array of location shots. She stopped.

  People stood before the theater across the street, and behind them the poster boxes were lit, and the border lights were dancing.

  People sat inside the theater, only their faces visible in the light of a giant screen.

  People stood on the bridge over the river, holding lanterns that glowed in their hands like shapeless orbs.

  People stood in a great field while behind them fireworks shot up from a lonely house on a lonely little hill and glittered across the sky.

  All were happy. All were beautiful. And all their eyes were closed.