The House of Dust

by Noah Broyles

  Sorrel—what if he was back there, sitting somewhere out in the cheap section, arms folded, watching him?

  Well, what if? He kept moving, swiping the light across the narrow platform. The screen rose beside him, a silver wall, an empty canvas waiting for life.

  Brad stopped. Near the middle of the stage, a lone rocking chair faced the auditorium. He put his hand on the armrest and set the chair rocking. The old woman phased through his mind: Missy had been her name. Had she sat here? Held community meetings here? But what did that entail? No clues lay around it on the gritty floor, and no doors led off behind the stage. This had not been a performance hall.

  On the far side of the stage, more steps went down to the audience. The brittle odor of old cigarettes rose from the worn carpet as he climbed the aisle to the main entrance stairs. At the top, double doors with porthole windows let out into a foyer.

  The carpet ended here. Masked daylight penetrated the cloudy façade window and seeped across amber tile. Turning off the flashlight, he approached the row of doors and raised one slat of the shielding blinds and drank in the sun and the desolate intersection.

  He must have tried to suck in the outdoor air, because another cough swelled in his throat. Letting the slat fall, he bent into his sleeve and cleared his lungs.

  When he straightened, a man standing twenty feet to his left did the same. And another to his right.

  An endless line of men with crooked glasses, untucked dress shirts, and week-old beards occupied the mirrors paneling the walls. When he scowled, they all scowled back, like a clown in a funhouse mirror. Still, Heather, his editor, might like the shot, so he snapped a picture. He photographed the rest of the foyer, trying his best in the auditorium gloom, when he noticed a door partially obscured by an untethered drape.

  The door was surmounted by a brass casting of Darrin DeWitt’s Adamah symbol. The knob turned inside his hand. Rekindling his cell phone, he prepared to step inside when a thin creaking drifted up the stairs from the theater. Faint. Unnoticeable. Like a feather brushing his eardrum.

  He considered calling out but decided it must be the rocking chair out on the stage, still drifting from his touch. Must be.

  Stepping through the door, he turned left and found himself in a narrow undecorated corridor. Heaps of discarded drapes clogged the floor. He left the door open and stepped forward, nearly tripping over a dry mop bucket and a stack of paint cans. After a few dozen feet, the corridor bent left and climbed a short staircase.

  He scaled the stairs and turned right, nudging through a door at the top. It clicked shut behind him.

  His lips involuntarily puckered in a low whistle.

  Just across the little room, beside a wooden table, a huge film projector crouched before a small square window, peering out at the auditorium. The words peerless magnarc were stamped across the rear of the machine. A metal tag on its side said rca.

  Now here was something.

  Metal racks crowded against the walls, all mostly empty, all dusty. Except for the bottom shelf of the rack nearest the projector. There lay round metal dishes, covered in dust, but marked by fingerprints. Streaks in the dust showed that they had been reorganized.

  The phone flashlight swept to the table next to the projector. Above the table, a viewing window looked into the auditorium. Behind the table sat a metal chair, scooted back. An empty Mountain Dew bottle stood on the table with the label peeled half off.

  Sorrel. The sheriff had been here. Recently.

  Crossing quickly, he squatted down and lifted one of the dishes from the shelf. A piece of masking tape was calcified to the top, marked in pen with the word Sleepwalkers. That name had also branded one of the posters in the house’s basement. Lifting the lid off, he examined the metal reel and coiled film inside.

  Yes, here was something.

  Brad took the film reel to the table. There was a switch by the door. When flipped, it dredged a greenish light from a fluorescent bulb on the ceiling. Turning the Dew bottle over, he propped the phone against it and set it to record. Then he opened the magazine on the projector and loaded the reel inside. Threading it down into the chamber beneath, he navigated the end of the filmstrip through the rollers and sprockets.

  Minutes slipped past and the phone lens watched his back, witnessing his ineptitude.

  Didn’t matter. He just needed stills. Fuzzy photographs to nestle amid the text on Southern Gothic’s pulp pages. Something to win a smile from Heather, show her that he’d tried this time.

  Finally, the film’s course seemed correct and he attached it to the lower reel. Now if it would just play. A lever at the front of the projector sparked the arc lamp, and a second later, with a murmuring clatter, the film began its journey through the machine.

  He turned out the fluorescent light and sat at the table, rubbing the grime from the projector’s innards off his fingers. The screen in the theater brightened. He rotated the phone toward the rectangular viewing window. For a moment, only formless light shafted above the empty seats. He could see the rocking chair on stage motionless. He imagined the quiet town outside and braced himself for a blast of old-time orchestral music.

  But the credits came silently.

  Sleepwalkers.

  Starring Miriam Larkin.

  Darkness.

  Then the front of the house was filling the screen. Its paint was bright. Its columns were twined by streamers instead of vines. The amount of light hitting the façade meant the trees were younger. What year? Sometime in the 1930s, perhaps, given the quality of the film. His speculation was cut short as the camera closed on the porch.

  Miriam Larkin sat in a rocking chair just above the steps. Her eyes were closed. The camera climbed the steps and approached. She wore a thin white dress. The dress. The one the old woman had been buried in; the one he had unearthed before the house; the one that was now, presumably, back in the Simmons Creek Cemetery.

  The camera closed in on her face. Her short hair sloped down the right side of her forehead in white finger waves. Her lips were dark. Her eyelashes even darker. Her eyelids opened.

  Long dark eyes looked through the screen and began to glow.

  They became headlights that bore down on and then swept past the screen. A black Oldsmobile Coupe was crossing the Locust River Bridge toward Three Summers. The sky was deep gray with evening.

  In almost Hitchcockian style, the camera watched from the top of a building as the car approached the main intersection. It must be the top of the theater, he realized, not far above where he sat now. All of the buildings visible on-screen were still out there now.

  The car parked by the Theater Grill, and a figure in a gray flannel suit got out. A cut to street level and his face became plain. A Laurence Olivier type, with blond hair and a pencil-thin mustache. He smiled at the town, and the camera swept around him to reveal neons in every storefront and marquee lights dancing around every sign. The man turned and went into the diner.

  As he ate, a fan swirled above him. The shadows from its blades stretched across the ceiling, longer and longer. Then they slowed to a jerky rotation. The man’s chewing slowed, too.

  Brad glanced at the projector. Its sound had not changed. This was an intentional effect.

  Yes, now a door in the diner was opening at regular speed. Miriam Larkin came inside wearing a long overcoat. She approached the startled man, smiled at him, and touched his forehead. Other people in the diner exchanged looks as Miriam took the man’s hand and led him toward the door. The lights went out as they left.

  Out on the street, the same strange viscosity was affecting the town. The marquee lights blinked slowly—on, off. The people on the sidewalks seemed to be wading through wet sand. The man smiled confusedly at them. Miriam smiled at him, the sluggish radiance reflecting in her pupils. She tugged the man down the street, and as they passed each building its lights were que
nched.

  An abrupt cut, and the camera was pointing down into the town from a low passing airplane, capturing an unsteady shot of people gushing out of buildings and alleyways to follow the couple, moving as a dark mass, like oil seeping from the bones of the old town.

  Oil.

  Brad rubbed his fingers across the tabletop. The old dirt from the projector was still ingrained in his skin, burning harsh and cool, sweetly foul, like petroleum.

  Refocus. He was back on the road, walking with Miriam and the nameless man away from Three Summers. The town was dark behind them. Among the crowd, lanterns appeared and lit dozens of faces. Bright-eyed men in fedoras and dark-lipped women in drooping bonnets. All with wide smiles. All with shut eyes.

  He shifted in his chair.

  The projector whirred.

  At the forest road, the party turned left and began the long walk toward Angel’s Landing. The camera seemed to jump ahead a mile or so and looked back at the group as a far-off collage of lights.

  Back with the crowd again. On and on through the trees. With each minute of film, their movements became more and more drawn out. Spoken words twisted faces out of shape. Newcomer man’s uncertain grin became a grimace. Miriam’s steady smile seemed maniacal.

  The ebony surface of Deep Creek reflected their passage over the clay-stained bridge. Then the camera pushed in around their feet as they walked up the road and spilled into the fields blanketing the northern half of the island. The whir of the projector became the whisper of grass blades across clothing.

  The man’s feet grew unsteady. A pronounced limp developed in his right leg. He stumbled on the pavement. He looked to Miriam. Her hand, now on his back, compelling him forward.

  And then another abrupt cut: the bright face of the house seen from the dim parkland of trees across the front drive. The focus was on the porch, on the line of rocking chairs, but something closer was obscuring the central one. Slowly, focus shifted. A noose was dangling in front of the lens.

  Another cut. Looking down the rope to a tear in the ground below. A gash between two huge tree roots. The pit that Jennifer had gone down. The place she had started changing.

  Brad’s spine tightened against the back of the chair.

  Then a steady pastoral shot. Crowd on the right edge of the frame, lanterns lifted. The house on the left, a quarter of a mile off, windows bright through a sparse assemblage of trees. Journeying up the road.

  Then darkness.

  Brad’s hand was on his throat, massaging its way up toward his chin.

  A slow fade-in. A great tree silhouetted against the house, all limbs rising except for one that jutted straight out. The one that held the noose.

  The next instant, the light was dizzying and the camera was circling a heaving assembly gathered around the tree. The man in the gray flannel suit was being borne up on their lifted hands. His clothes strained as dozens of fists gripped the borders of his pants and coat, and reaching arms spread away, like petals from the heart of a flower. Like the spokes of a web holding writhing prey.

  Miriam appeared in the crowd. She had shed her coat and wore the white dress beneath. She lifted her arms, and the man was lifted. His jolting head was pushed through the noose. His legs were pulled to tighten the loop. As the man was lowered down, she leaned out from the top edge of the hole to clutch his head. To squeeze his cheeks.

  The man thrashed in slow motion and bellowed silently as she guided his body into the ground.

  Miriam took her hands away, and with a snap, all the others let go.

  Again, the shot switched to straight above. The rope slackened, and the man plummeted into the ground. Everyone else retreated from view. For a moment, it was just him in the spotlight, sprawled far down in the grave. Slowly, he stood up. Then he reached up. Then he jumped. But the grave was deep. Then he tried to free himself from the rope, but it was too taut. Then he tried to climb it. He was too weak.

  As he scrabbled at the sheer sides, the party people reappeared. They advanced from all corners of the frame, arms laden with dark earth. They came in ranks. Reaching the edge of the hole, they lowered their arms and the dirt gushed down; then they turned away so the next row could advance.

  Amid the cascade, the man leapt and threw his arms against the walls and yelled, the rope jostling, his frenzy almost mistakable for that of a frolicking child. The people came and came and the dirt poured down. Then bucket carriers advanced and poured silver streams of water down atop the man until the sides of the grave were gleaming and the ground was oozing around his frantic feet and climbing up his knees. And then more dirt came on huge shovels and the thing in the pit became dark with mud.

  Soon it was waist-deep and stuck. Then it was chest-deep. The soupy earth writhed around it. Then it was shoulder-deep, and the chin was pried back and pointed at the sky in a final gasp. And then it was just the hands, filthy, clawing at the lights and the camera.

  The film skipped and the grave was full. Hundreds of hands flooded in to smooth it flat. The light faded.

  Brad’s fingers were sunk into his cheeks, locking his palm across his mouth.

  The view returned. Low to the ground. Camera moving. Wandering over the grass like the nose of a prowling animal. The outer edges of the picture were in shadow, while the center was a quivering orb of light. The operator must be holding the camera at waist height with a light mounted to the top, moving through the park. Roots appeared starkly on the massive screen and were passed over. The fat white bodies of crickets leapt away from the intruding lens.

  Suddenly, the camera was moving over the body of a woman. She was curled up on the ground. It paused for just a moment on her peaceful face. Sleeping.

  The camera veered away and lurched through the trees until it found another face and paused above it. A man, also sleeping.

  And then another man. And then another woman. And then the view rose and looked toward the house. The lights were softer. The rocking chairs on the porch were full. Miriam sat in the middle, eyes closed, face placid. They were all asleep.

  The End.

  The screen went out.

  Brad didn’t turn on the lights. He sank forward until his forehead pressed against the table. He finally knew. He knew the old woman he had driven to her grave—she hadn’t been dead. Not quite. And dozens like her across decades. Hundreds. Folded into the land around this town, smothered by damp earth. Forgotten.

  He breathed in the dark and whispered, “I’m sorry, Missy.”

  28

  I left the place reeling. Jennifer and I would leave today. There was just one last call to pay.

  —“The House of Dust”

  Southern Gothic

  The dust was coming away now.

  Missy didn’t really notice. Wringing the wet rag into the bucket, she felt the water bubble between her fingers, falling droplets breaking the murky surface and sending ripples across a sweaty face with tied-up hair. A pointless sort of face, when not dolled-up. Forgettable. Like a mannequin’s in a shop front.

  She looked back at the glistening dance hall floor where she had spent the four hours since returning from the church. It would be ready for varnish when it dried. But what was the point if it wasn’t even hers?

  But it is.

  She squeezed the rag until it was stiff and warm inside her fists, then she got up.

  Roy was standing before one of the open windows in the dining room, crushing fossilized fly carcasses on the sill with gentle taps of a hammer.

  “Did you get those nails out of the wall in the kitchen?”

  He nodded.

  Coming around the table, she held out the rag. “Let’s trade. You can clean that.”

  Glancing over, he blinked and took the rag.

  “If you want water, there’s some in the bucket in the other room. Okay? I’m going upstairs for a minute. You be sure a
nd tell me if you see anyone coming.”

  He began scrubbing the windowsill with jerky movements.

  Missy rubbed wet knuckles across her forehead and wiped her hands on the baggy front of her shirt and left him. Armed with the hammer, she climbed to the second floor and went down the hall to the study. Working the stiffness from her shoulders, she reached casually for the handle. A spike of disappointment struck as the door opened. No lock, no excuse. He had gone somewhere on foot while she was away in the car. She had waited, expecting his return. But he hadn’t returned, and probably wouldn’t until late in the evening. Which left time. And no reason not to try to find out.

  None of the hallway air followed as she stepped inside. The study’s atmosphere was marshy. Clogged by cigarettes and rebreathed to the point of sourness, it had curdled against the ceiling.

  She approached the desk, and memories of the Boss’s office at the Club leapt behind her eyelids each time she blinked: sour breath, the National Geographic magazines on his couch, the turtles in their tanks across the room, blinking at her sleepily beneath their heat lights.

  Walt’s desk was the aftermath of a hurricane, awash with loose sheets of paper and jumbled pens and empty water glasses and the edges of plates containing stale lunches eaten thoughtlessly and alone.

  She knew where the truth lay. Not among the mess; in the drawer below.

  Still, she glanced at the newspapers and documents, more to stall than anything else. Shifting the hammer between hands, she glimpsed headlines and the first few lines of stories. Most concerned industrial accidents where people died by burning or suffocation, or they were crushed. The grainy pictures showed billows of black smoke and heaps of rubble.

  An uneasy admiration twisted in her belly when she thought of Walt, an inhabitant of this realm. Her own situation had enthralled him in a similar way. A mutual cocktail of revulsion and respect that they’d gotten drunk on together.

  And now he’s sobering up.

  Her gaze dropped to the drawer that he’d opened so cautiously the day she asked for the car keys to drive the cat to town. The drawer she herself had opened so quietly this morning while he sat there sleeping, taking the keys to drive to the church. Moving to the chair, she leaned down and tried the handle.