by Dan Padavona
Becca led the way up the staircase. Her flashlight beam swept twin arcs from banister to wall and from the top landing down. The planks felt solid, but I didn’t like the way the banister wiggled.
The hallway at the top of the stairs was adorned by striped wallpaper that peeled and hung like snakes’ tongues. A full bathroom sat straight ahead with what appeared to be a closed bedroom next to it. At the end of the hall were two more closed bedroom doors. A dusty set of stairs led up to the attic, its door closed and the dry stink of insulation slipping under the threshold.
I walked into the bathroom and pulled back the shower door. A rusty blotch spread out from the drain. The porcelain was yellowed and streaked by age, making it difficult to tell if the tub was clean or dirty. I had a sickening vision of someone committing suicide in that tub, opening a vein and turning the water crimson. Maybe that’s where the stain had come from.
“Three more rooms to check,” she said. “Then we can get some sleep.”
I’d forgotten how tired I was and yawned automatically.
I put my hand out.
“What’s that for?” she asked. “You offering to hold my hand in the dark, Steve?”
“Give me the flashlight. I’ll go first this time.”
She shrugged.
“Fine with me. But it’s your ass if the monster behind the door bites your head off.”
“Thanks a million.”
The door down the hall from the bathroom opened to a bedroom.
This was the room with the boarded window. Without the flashlight, I couldn’t have seen a thing. Most of the glass was missing from the pane with a few jagged points stabbing out at the room. I checked the floor for broken glass and found it clean of debris.
A table lamp, useless without working electricity, sat against the wall. The shade was ripped and dented with a cobweb draped over the top.
A metal bed frame on rollers rested in the middle of the room. A mattress and box spring leaned against the opposite wall. The corner was a jumbled mess of metal clothes hangers, some bent or broken, and various cleaning supplies—a plastic bucket, a dry sponge, some rags, a bottle of Lysol with the cap lying a few feet away, a half-melted candle, and a box of matches.
In the wall bordering the bathroom was a walk-in closet. A slatted door guarded the entrance. I heard more scratching sounds and wondered if the rats were here, too.
“Ugly,” she said. “But it’s better than sleeping out in the cold.”
If it was warmer inside than out, I barely noticed.
“Let’s check the next room.”
A queen-size bed fronted the room across the hall. The mattress and box spring were in place, with a brown discoloration in the center of the mattress. I looked up and saw a brown spot mirrored on the ceiling.
“The attic is leaking,” she said.
I bent down and looked under the bed. A large ball of dust was wedged between dirty floorboards and the frame. Apparently, the cleaning crew hadn’t touched this room. Motes dancing on air tickled my nose.
A bedside table lay smashed against the wall, the legs splayed out in a star-burst shape as though an angry ogre had squashed it under boot.
“I don’t think I can sleep in here,” I said.
The closet doorknob was missing. I cringed as Becca reached into the hole and pulled the door open.
Inside the closet lay a pile of dirty clothes thick with must. Black granules covered the floor inside.
Vermin droppings.
The last room we checked was the master bedroom across the hall from the bathroom. This was the largest of the rooms and appeared surprisingly clean. It made sense for the bank to keep the master bedroom clean for showings.
I looked out the window into the backyard. It was the dead of night now; the faint moonlight couldn’t repel all that black. If someone was in the yard, I’d never see him.
The generator was against the house, the gasoline scent noticeable from the second floor. In the daytime, I imagined you could see half the county from up here.
An antique dresser held a smudged mirror, while one corner held a red-stained armoire with the doors thrown closed. The bed stood across from the windows, offering a spectacular view of the sky. The mattress looked clean, and I didn’t see any dust bunnies hiding under the frame.
So it surprised me when Becca crossed her arms, as though warding off a shiver, and edged to the doorway.
“Something wrong?”
“I can’t stay in this room.”
“Why? What’s the problem?”
She shook her head. I could see her struggling to identify her own fear.
“I don’t know. Just a feeling. It’s probably nothing, but I don’t think either of us should sleep here.”
I started to do the math in my head. That left the two unkempt bedrooms down the hall. If she chose the bedroom with the cleaning supplies, I’d have to stay in the dusty room with the roof leak. I didn’t think my allergies would survive ten minutes in that room. The only other option was to drag a mattress down the stairs and sleep on the living room floor. Alone. I didn’t like that idea, either.
“Let’s take the room with the boarded window,” Becca said.
It took me a few seconds to register what she meant.
“Both of us?”
“You don’t want to be alone in here, do you?”
No, I didn’t.
“If you’re sure.”
In the bedroom, we plopped our belongings down inside the door. The unrefrigerated yogurt’s shelf life was almost up, so I ate that first, tearing the cover off and inhaling the strawberry and cream mix. Becca ate a blueberry yogurt. The other yogurts we’d need to throw away.
We pulled the box spring onto the frame and laid the mattress on top. Leaning against the wall, the mattress hadn’t collected much dust. Except for the corner clutter, the floor was fairly clean. Nevertheless, I wasn’t in any rush to pull open the closet door.
Becca sat on the edge of the mattress, bouncing to test the firmness.
“I guess this is home for a few days,” she said.
I set the flashlight on its end to light the ceiling. The light fell softly onto Becca’s shoulders. An angelic halo effect surrounded her; I realized how beautiful she looked.
Though the board was flush against the window frame, the cold found a way to seep inside.
“We’d better conserve battery life,” she said, nodding at the flashlight.
I knew how dark it would be without the flashlight on. A part of me wanted to leave the light on and kill the batteries. We could always scavenge or steal new batteries tomorrow. But I knew it was foolhardy to venture back into Barton Falls.
As cold as I was, I pulled off my top layer sweatshirt and balled it into an improvised pillow. I started to lie back and ball my knees into my chest when she spoke.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to sleep on the floor. Let’s share the bed, Steve.”
“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“We have to be practical. You’re cold, I’m cold. The last thing we need is for one of us to fall sick.” Outside, the wind threw itself against the walls of the old house. “Come to bed. I trust you.”
Until that moment I hadn’t realized how intense my feelings were for her. It transcended sexual attraction. I felt an inordinate urge to be close to her, to know and understand her, to prove I was better than those who’d failed her throughout her life. It was on shaking knees that I approached the bed, stopping only to grab the flashlight and hand it to her.
Not wanting to seem forward, I lay in the center of the mattress and turned onto my side, facing away from her. My knees were drawn up with my hands stuffed between them. Our shadows reflected on the ceiling, vast and exaggerated.
The light flicked off. The room went as black as a dungeon crypt. Somehow that made the wind seem louder.
A spring pressed into my calf. The mattress swelled and fell back as she shifted her weight.
Then her arm
draped over my shoulder, and she spooned her body against mine. Her breath was warm on my neck. Together, our combined heat formed a blanket which shielded us from the cold.
“Steve?”
The board rattled against the pane.
“Yeah?”
“Sorry about Ji Lin. I’ll be more careful from now on.”
“It wasn’t your fault. And I’m sorry about the food truck. I really botched that one up.”
“You’d never done anything like that before. I was wrong to put you in that position and blame you when things didn’t go right.”
Her words were conciliatory and pained. I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“I want to thank you for something else,” she said.
“Thank me?”
“Yes.”
She was quiet for a while. I could almost hear her trying to put her thoughts into words.
“The last three years…I never realized how lonely I was, never realized how much I needed someone to talk to. Loneliness. It was always just under the surface, you know, waiting to punch me in the gut when I least expected. All I’ve done these three years is survive.”
I pulled her arm over my chest and clasped my hand with hers.
“All you’ve done is survive? You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
“I don’t want to survive anymore, Steve. I want to live.”
I want to live.
Those four words pulled me up from clouded waters. What was I thinking, living on the run, rebelling against those who’d done me wrong? I should have been pulling her into my world, getting her off the streets. No matter how fast you run, your legs give out, eventually.
“But I can’t stay here. Not in this house,” she said. “I don’t feel safe here.”
A vehicle passed outside, a reminder of how dangerous a game we played.
Then I didn’t hear her anymore.
I kept drifting asleep and shocking myself awake with the vague recollection of a nightmare my waking brain refused to let me remember. Once I sat up in bed and heard myself whisper, “Monster.” The room was pitch black and my skin clammy with sweat.
Becca stirred and turned over, and my body finally surrendered to exhaustion.
CHAPTER SIX
Last Goodbyes
The strength of the light pouring under the door told me I’d slept through most of the morning, and I wondered how late it was. A dingy residue had settled on my skin and clothes. I rubbed a dark grit out of my eyes and blinked the blur away. My phone read eleven o’clock on the thirtieth of October. The battery strength was down to thirty percent. With no electricity, it was only a matter of time before my last tie to the outside world was severed.
Monster.
Remembering my whisper in that darkened room turned my legs to rubber. I didn’t recall dreaming, but it was easy to imagine how the creepy house could lead to nightmares.
Damn Riley. Why hadn’t his foreclosure been a Skaneateles Lake boathouse belonging to some tycoon whose stock portfolio had imploded?
Becca was gone. That gave me a spell of anxiety before I heard her moving around downstairs.
“I thought I’d lost you for good,” she said as I limped down the stairs. The tightness in my legs made me worry I’d tear a muscle if I moved any faster. “I was about to call Prince Charming to kiss you awake.”
“That’s Snow White. I think you mean Phillip.”
The insensitivity of my correction struck me. I doubted Becca grew up with Disney fairy tales, and I suppose it was just as well. In the real world, Maleficent always won.
Becca didn’t seem to notice. She wore a knowing smile as she waited for me to hobble into the living room.
“I want to show you something,” she said. “I think you’re going to like it.”
“I can say with absolute certainty that no woman has ever used that line on me.”
“Very funny. Drag yourself out to the backyard.”
The light through the windows pained my eyes. I squinted from the living room to the kitchen until my eyes adjusted.
Becca stood beside the big generator, hands on hips, toe tapping with sarcastic impatience. The sun shone strong, but the day was cold enough to see my breath.
“Thinking of putting in a garden?”
“Just watch.”
She pulled lightly on the rope, then yanked hard. I was stunned when the motor rumbled to life. Inside the kitchen, a light flickered on over the sink.
“Impossible. I thought the gasoline was stale.”
“Obviously not.”
I recalled my theory about the bank cleaning crew. Maybe someone had filled the tank so the workers could power their vacuum cleaners and shine lights into dark corners. But why had they cleaned the downstairs and the master bedroom while leaving the other two bedrooms filthy?
“Does this mean you don’t hate the house as much as you did last night?”
Her look of distaste told me nothing had changed.
“I guess that’s a no.”
The generator hummed softer than most I’d encountered. It still made me edgy.
“You can’t hear it from the road,” Becca said, reading my mind again. “I checked.”
“But you can see the lights on in the house.”
“Which is why we need to have ground rules. No lights on in the living room or bathroom ever, and we need to be especially careful after dark.”
“Running the television in the den shouldn’t be an issue. It might be a good idea to tune in the local news with the rabbit ears. See if anything is going on in town that we should know about.”
“Be truthful. You just want to watch movies.”
“That, too.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Come on,” I said. “It might be fun.”
“What we really need to do is plan where we’re heading to next. If you can find the local news, figure out when this cold will break.”
“Tomorrow is Halloween. This late in the year, the cold might not break until May.”
“Well, find out. I don’t want to be here more than a few days. It’s so filthy in there that I swear something is growing on me.”
I followed her inside and turned on the television. It took some antenna twisting to bring in the local station. A game show was on—Drew Carey was in Bob Barker-mode while a fat lady bid one dollar on a Jamaican cruise to undercut her competitors—and the news was scheduled next. I turned the volume high enough to listen from the kitchen. Game show bells, buzzers, and cheering echoed off barren walls like screams in a cavern.
During my brunch of granola bars and packaged nuts, the news never mentioned food truck thieves, residential break-ins, backyard beatings, or a manhunt for two suspicious young people carrying sacks. Nor was there mention of a dead junkie at the bottom of a gorge. Either the police hadn’t connected our crimes or weren’t concerned. After all, it was Ji Lin who attacked us, not the other way around. What proof did he have that the shadowed characters in his backyard were the same people who’d broken into his house?
Between bad jokes which would make an FM drive-time deejay seem like Rodney Dangerfield in comparison, the weatherman predicted a major warming trend starting three days from now. Sixties, if he was to be believed, plenty warm enough for travel. His short-term forecast called for a continuation of the polar express and featured a cartoon graphic of a pumpkin covered with icicles.
Outside, a blanket of dark clouds snuffed out the sunshine. The chill in the air deepened, making me hope the previous homeowner had left behind a space heater.
Becca lay napping on the bed when I climbed the steps to the attic. Voices from afternoon soap operas followed me through the house, strangely comforting.
The kitchen phone rang.
The sharp jangle made me stumble up two steps and knock my head against the door.
“Steve? What happened?”
Becca squinted her eyes from the doorway. I’d hit my head, but it was my knee that had take
n the brunt of the fall. I rubbed the pain away and pulled myself up.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. The phone rang.”
Becca gave me a muddled look.
“The phone line isn’t active,” she said. “You checked it yourself last night.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the power turning on.”
I didn’t think the generator had anything to do with the phone working. I’d grown up with a rotary phone in the house and knew old phones still worked when the power went out.
She followed me down the stairs. The television seemed louder with my nerves frayed, so I stopped in the den to turn the volume down before investigating the phone.
I waited for the dial tone, then dialed the first number that popped into my head—my parents’ house. The call never went through.
“See?” I asked, holding the phone in front of me. The line beeped in error. “No service.”
Becca pressed the receiver to her ear and confirmed the obvious.
“So why did it ring?”
“How the hell do I know? Bad wiring, phone company running a test, ghosts.”
She didn’t find amusement in my joke. Leaning against the door frame, she stared out from the kitchen into the backyard. The wind grew stronger, pulling leaves through the overgrown grass.
I felt an undefinable threat when she opened the door and swept her gaze along the back of the house.
“Becca?”
A tree branch clawed against the walls.
She shut the door, the cold air having already invaded the kitchen.
“Huh.” She leaned against the door with her arms crossed and brow furrowed. “Ever get the sensation that someone is watching you?”
Sure I did. Most of the time I was right when it came to Donna.
The panes rattled with menace—the wind was trying to get inside.
“I don’t think they’re watching us through the phone.”
Again my attempts at sarcasm fell flat.
It was awfully dark for early afternoon. I stared out at the yard, past the brown tufts of grass and barbecue pit to where forest swallowed meadow a hundred yards down the hill.
“It’s just me making myself paranoid,” she said. “I shouldn’t have woken up so early this morning. Hearing you fall scared the heck out of me.”