Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  But our current crop of reality shows has a more immediate source in The Real World. The instant success of “seven strangers picked to live in a house” led to many imitators. But I have to admit that the ones I’m mesmerized by are the home/garden improvement and find a house and fix it shows. Watching someone else transform a home is so much easier than actually working on your own! It happens so fast and always seems to turn out well!

  But if you know people who work in the reality TV genre, one quickly comes to realize that there is much less “reality” in those shows than one might expect. Often “storylines” are constructed and “surprises” are staged. In a way, reality television is improvisational storytelling that happens after the initial filming. One takes the footage one has and creates a story from it. The unexpected event can be a curse, or a ratings boost!

  Film is a strange world, and in this story, it gets one notch stranger.

  Megan Lindholm

  Second Chances

  Megan Lindholm

  It’s not a smell. It’s not a sound. It is, literally, the sixth sense that doesn’t have a name. It’s almost impossible to describe it to someone who doesn’t have it. Imagine conveying the fragrance of lavender to someone who has no nose. That’s why I didn’t mention it to the rest of the crew. The sensation permeated the house from the moment I arrived for work, and after everyone else left, it became stronger.

  I don’t encounter ghosts daily, but I’ve sensed more than my share of them. I work for that fixer-upper reality show Second Chances. A cute twenty-something couple, Bert and Giselle, with a curly-headed toddler nicknamed Sweetie and doting Grandma Chris find rundown houses, fix them up, and sell them to people who would not ordinarily be able to get financing. The touching tales of helping the homeless into homes, a peculiar variation on flipping houses, had started out as a blog, then moved to YouTube, and then became a television show. The first season was mostly sincere. Real houses, real fix ups, real homeless, and creative financing. Bert and Giselle crowd-sourced funds for down payments and deposits on utilities. Grateful families Tweeted and Instagrammed for months afterward. It truly was heartwarming.

  But suitable houses and appropriate families are hard to find on a consistent basis. It gets messy when the house has real problems or the happy family is arrested for meth production six months after they move in. So by season three, Second Chances was cutting corners. It had been an underfunded shit show from the start, and the reduced budget had cut the crew to less than bones. But for a local-to-Tacoma show, it was still the best work in town. Good crew. Cringeworthy cast when the cameras were off. But since the cast owned the production company and were also the executive producers, the cringing was something best kept to oneself. I was the art department. All of it. Tonight’s task, long after the paid crew and the overeager interns had been sent home, was for me to “prep” the house for tomorrow’s establishing shots.

  I didn’t like the late-night hours but the show had a tight shooting schedule. Can’t lose a day. Tomorrow’s episode was Giselle and Bert touring the rundown house they “might” buy. Tonight I was trashing the place they’d already bought to make it look bad enough that the rehab would be truly remarkable.

  I had stocked the old fridge with some fungus-coated leftovers from home, and stuck dirty, sticky secondhand store alphabet magnets on the refrigerator door. My cat had contributed an overflowing cat box to leave under the rickety Goodwill table I’d brought. My staging goal was at least two “ohmigawd!” shots in each room. The wallpaper beside the range was decked in greasy cobwebs. I pulled some loose to dangle in shreds. Done.

  I yawned. Not from boredom but because I was tired, and I still had five rooms to go. The master bath was easy. Smear yellow playdough on the toilet seat and sponge on a mixture of baby oil and Coca-Cola for the bathtub ring. Pull the shower curtain half down. Quick and easy, and I ticked those tasks off on my tin clipboard with the handy interior compartment. It was too warm in the stuffy house. I started to take off my sweatshirt. The long sleeves snagged on the scabs on my arm where I’d cut myself the day before. I left it on.

  Who’s down there? Monty? Is that you? Have you finally come to tell her you’re sorry, you son of a bitch?

  I looked up from my clipboard. The words had drifted into my mind in the same way that sometimes as you pass out of range of your car’s radio station, another one cuts in for a few moments. Thoughts in my head that were not mine. Ignore them. Get on with my work.

  The master bedroom had a smell like vintage Avon Brocade mixed with old urine. Too bad a camera couldn’t capture that. There were two badly patched holes in the Sheetrock at fist height. I made a note to myself. A particle-board dresser and an old bed frame beckoned. I tugged the mattress slightly off the bed and then staged some dingy tighty-whities with Hershey’s stains on them. I pulled a drawer from the dresser and left it on the floor. A sprinkle of fake rat turds along the wall. Done. I checked my phone and nodded to myself. I might finish before midnight.

  As if he had heard my thought, a text chimed from Raymond. Progress?

  Raymond’s our AD, or Assistant Director. He’s a top-notch talent working in a third-rate market at crap wages. He shares custody with his ex-wife, so he lives in Tacoma instead of Burbank. Going good, I texted back.

  Text when done, he instructed me.

  OK! I tapped back. I knew if he didn’t get a response, he’d be at the door in five minutes. He wouldn’t sleep until he knew I was done and home.

  I keep my kit in a sturdy metal toolbox. I grabbed my mug of coffee and my toolbox and headed up the shag-carpeted stairs. Nothing I could have done to them could have made them look worse. At the top of the stairs, the landing offered me the open door of the half bath, or either of two small bedrooms to either side of it. All three doorframes showed signs of splintering around the catches. That almost always meant someone had broken through a locked door. Domestic violence. And three doorframes to repair or replace. I noted them on my list.

  The cheap toilet seat didn’t need help to look disgusting. The finish was warted with moisture damage, and mold had grown in the rough surface. I took out my squirt bottle of homemade “gas station dirty-soap grunge” and slimed the sink with it. There was a half roll of toilet paper on the hanger. I took it off, smudged it on the dirty floor, and put it back. Perfect.

  My phone buzzed. Done?

  Almost. Raymond’s like that. If I fell down the stairs and broke my neck, he’d be liable. But even if he weren’t, I think he’d still check on every crew member every night. He cares almost enough to make up for the crap wages we get. I feel like he knows each of us better than any of us know him.

  Almost, I’d told him. Two rooms to go. I twisted the lid on my commuter cup and took two gulps of coffee while I did a quick survey of the smaller bedroom. Little to work with. The abandoned furnishings were a bare twin-size bed frame and a nightstand missing a drawer. Cheap cracked linoleum with a speckled pattern was peeling up from the scarred hardwood floors. Three walls were ecru-painted Sheetrock with the seams and tape showing through and a few amateur patches. One wall had terrible wallpaper, even worse than the teapots and flowers in the kitchen. Scotty dogs in tartan coats. I stepped inside.

  It was akin to walking into a garage full of exhaust fumes. Ghost permeated the room.

  No matter. Get the job done and get out. I set my coffee and phone on the nightstand and opened my kit.

  The wood-framed window had only a curtain rod above it. I knocked the rod loose so it dangled across the pane. From my kit I took bread pellets rolled in ash and did a sprinkle of fake rat poop along the sill. By the bed frame, I peeled a long strip of wallpaper and let it dangle in dusty shreds. The dust was from a ziplock bag, courtesy of my home vacuum cleaner.

  As I was carefully dipping the wallpaper in dust, the ghost suddenly demanded, What the hell is wrong with you?

  I made no reply. It’s best to ignore them, generally speaking. Most people can’t sense
them. If you pretend you can’t hear or see them, sometimes they give up.

  Monty sent you, didn’t he? The coward. I know what you’re looking for. Better be careful. You might find more than you want.

  It was harder to ignore that threat when I peeled back another strip of wallpaper. I exposed tally marks, the old four strokes and a cross stroke to mark groups of fives. There were letters next to each group. B, NS, DR, R, and a couple of others that I couldn’t make out.

  I told you so, said the ghost. Or didn’t Monty tell you about any of that?

  Give no reaction. Pretend that I have no sixth sense.

  B was for a beating. NS means no sleep. DR is drunken rage. R is for rape.

  I touched the strokes by R. There were over fifteen by the other letters, but only two by R.

  And that makes it acceptable? the ghost asked acidly. Only two rapes as opposed to seventeen beatings and twenty-seven nights with no sleep? Twenty-seven nights of “scrub that floor again, I don’t care how tired you are, I’m not coming home to a filthy kitchen?”

  I pressed my lips together, holding back my words. The ghost was getting angry, and that could be very bad. I zipped my bag of dust shut and marked on my tin how I’d dirtied the room.

  But maybe it was more than twice. I didn’t always know what he did to her after the beatings. After she stopped shrieking and begging him for mercy. I was too scared to know.

  I shook my head. A moment later, my cell phone fell from the windowsill to the floor. Okay, that wasn’t funny. I wiped my hands down my jeans and picked it up. Screen intact. Good. I wasn’t due for phone upgrade for eighteen months. I kept track of these things. I shoved it in my hip pocket and turned in time to see my commuter cup teetering on the edge of the windowsill. I caught it. But it was open, and that meant I drenched myself with what was left of my coffee. I’d filled it up at Starbucks, an expensive treat for myself. One I was now wearing for the rest of my night’s work. “Goddammit!” I shouted, shaking hot coffee from my hands.

  Don’t blaspheme! Not in Jenny’s house! the ghost shouted, and the overhead lightbulb flared sun-bright for a moment.

  “Okay, okay. I get it.” No ignoring these manifestations. Best to acknowledge the ghost and try to calm it down. “I’ll respect Jenny’s house.” A sudden breeze blew my hair into my eyes. That was more engagement than I wanted. I softened my voice. “I work for a TV show. They’ll be filming here tomorrow and they want the house to look messy. They’ll come in, walk through, gasp, and be horrified at all the work ahead of them. Tomorrow evening, we clean it up. Then paint and Sheetrock and refinish the hardwoods. Maybe some carpet up here. Day after that, stainless steel appliances and granite countertops and new cupboard doors. An island in the kitchen. Updates and dress ups. Then a family in here for you to haunt. Are we good now?”

  No response. That happens. Sometimes, if you acknowledge a ghost, they seem as terrified at knowing you are aware of them as most people are at encountering one. That veil is there for a reason. Neither side really wants to part it. I put my pouch of dust back in my toolbox. Finish up and go.

  The day after or a few days later, he would always say he was sorry. Sometimes he brought her a cheap box of chocolates or a gas station rose. She always forgave him. I always knew he lied. She always seemed happier after he apologized. Like she believed he was really sorry. How could she believe him?

  I made no response. What can you say to something like that? It doesn’t matter if it’s the next-door neighbor or the ghost of a teenager, there are some questions that have no simple answers. The waiting pause stretched until it became an ear-ringing silence. Maybe my listening was all she had needed. Maybe I was connecting with her on a deeper level. I decided I didn’t want to know what we had in common.

  What about the sag in the foundation, and the water pipe in the utility room that’s leaked so long the floor is rotting out? Will they fix that?

  Oh Lordy. She was back. I spoke calmly, not looking around to try to see her. “Those aren’t my job. Maybe they’ll fix them, maybe they won’t.” They wouldn’t go near them. There would be some hand-waving at major repairs. Fix one leaky spot in a pipe instead of replace all the corroded piping. Maybe put a house-jack under the floor where the foundation was failing. Band-Aids over spouting arteries. So far, no one had sued the show. So far.

  I opened the closet door. Small by today’s standard, only about four feet wide. It had a shelf, a three-foot dowel to hang clothing on, and a slanted ceiling. And the ghost. She was wearing fleece pajamas and was barefoot. The teenager she had been sat cross-legged in the corner, her right hand clasping her left wrist. She was colorless, all grays except for the bright leaping of blood piping up between her clenched fingers. A very determined suicide. I only looked at her from the corner of my eye. A lot of ghosts get a charge of energy from the shriek response. That’s why they take the trouble to scare. I wouldn’t bother to trash the closet. The small size would be enough to make Giselle nearly faint with horror. I picked up my kit and my coffee.

  The ghost suddenly materialized in the doorframe, blocking my exit. Don’t you dare dirty Jenny’s sewing room!

  I walked through her, snapping off the light as I went. She was a waft of cold on my skin, as if I’d opened and shut a refrigerator door. People walk through ghosts all the time. The difference was that I had seen her. I’ve seen ghosts since, well, since I figured out they were ghosts. My mother called them “strangers.” As in, “We don’t talk to strangers.” I’ve inherited her attitude toward them. Like any strangers, some are benign, some don’t register your presence at all, and a few are dangerous.

  Jenny’s sewing room was plain beyond bland. Cream-colored walls, worn hardwoods, original wood trim on the single-pane window, a bare lightbulb in the ceiling fixture. Not a stick of furniture. The sliding doors for the small closet were missing. Nothing here. The room was empty. Filled to the brim with chill emptiness. The presence in this room was a compelling absence so strong that it was hard to breathe. I’d taken one step into the room. I took two backward steps out of it and into the other bedroom before taking out my cellphone.

  Raymond answered on the third ring. “You trying to wake up Marcella?” he asked me.

  “We have a problem,” I replied.

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No. It’s the house.”

  “Structural danger?” he asked immediately. “Electrical? Plumbing?” As the AD on the show, any problem is his problem. But Raymond’s particularly sensitive about sending any crew into a hazardous situation, such as a partially flooded basement or an attic where the previous owners had cut out roof joists to increase the storage space. It’s a good thing that he cares so much, since the producers do not, and they would happily insist that Grip and Electric set up lights in the flooded basement and then expect the director to stand hip deep in water to catch the shot where Bert and Giselle come down the rickety wooden steps and act surprised by what they find. Raymond always has all our backs and, as a result, we all have his.

  “You remember when I told you we had a poltergeist in the little bungalow, and you helped me deal with it before the show filmed?”

  “Yes. Not again.”

  “No. This is a ghost. Two, I think. One very cold haunt in one upstairs bedroom and one angsty teenage suicide in the—”

  My phone flew out of my hand. It hit the wall hard enough that I heard the screen crack. Not suicide! Murder! The silent scream made my ears ring.

  One step to snatch up the phone, turn and walk—do not run—down the shaggy stairs. Do I take my tool kit? Too late, I left it on the landing at the top of the stairs. I walked to the door, opened it, and as I closed it behind me, my toolbox came flying down the stairs to land with a crash at the bottom.

  I locked the door and walked to my car. I’d left the lights on upstairs and in the kitchen. They all began to flicker wildly, surging to white brilliance and then deathly yellow.

  I got in my car and
waited, damaged phone in hand.

  Raymond pulled his van up beside my car. He motioned to me and I transferred into his car. I moved the baby’s diaper bag from the front seat to the back as I got in. “Who’s watching Marcella?”

  “Suzanne across the street. She owed me a favor. I picked her up at the airport at 3 a.m. last week. You hung up on me.”

  “No. Ghost smashed my phone.”

  He nodded curtly to that. He drove and I knew where we would go. There are not that many all-night coffee stands, even in Tacoma. I think Raymond knows them all. He got a twelve-ounce black and bought me a vanilla chai. We sat in his car and drank them as I told him my tale.

  “Well. Rats.” Raymond doesn’t curse anymore. Not since Marcella started talking. “We’re scheduled for establishing shots tomorrow morning, and Bert and Giselle come in the afternoon. So we have maybe six hours to fix this.”

  “The show must go on,” I said.

  “That’s right,” he replied. “I was surprised when we got a second season. Shocked when we got a third, since our numbers weren’t that great. In this market, it’s hard to find houses that we can get on our budget. We can’t have any shooting delays.”

  “I don’t think this is a ‘fix it in six hours’ thing, Raymond. The teenager ghost is territorial. And angry. But whatever is in that other bedroom is . . . cold. Beyond anger. Beyond hate.”

  “Let’s go see,” he said, just as I’d feared he would. Raymond. He gets things done.

  When we pulled up outside the fixer house, the lights were on and steady. I handed him the keys. He drank the last of his coffee and I finished my chai. “Time to do this,” he said, and opened the car door.

  I followed him up the steps to the house. He stepped inside the door and looked all around. “Is she here now?”

  “No. She’s upstairs.” Raymond doesn’t see ghosts. I give him points that he accepts that I do. Though perhaps I should credit the poltergeist for that.