The Handyman

by Bentley Little

  “Any stories about this floor?” Evan asked.

  I looked toward the back wall. There was only a narrow pathway through the center of the loft. The areas where our beds and dressers had been were entirely blocked by boxes. I wondered what had happened to all of my posters that had been left behind when we sold the place. “The hanging man should be enough,” I said.

  “Nothing happened up here?”

  A wave of something passed through me. It was a physical sensation, like thick gummy air hitting me and moving on. I suddenly felt nauseated. I shook my head. Turning, I walked back down the stairs, pushing past the cameraman. “But if you’re looking for ghosts, that’s a good place to start.”

  I paused in the living room to catch my breath. The nausea had passed, but my heart was pounding. I was frightened, not in the abstract intellectual manner of an adult but in the direct instinctual way of a child.

  Owen was frowning. “Did you sense something up there? It looked like…like you got scared or something.”

  “I think I might have a touch of food poisoning,” I lied. “I just felt like throwing up for a second.”

  “Nausea,” Evan said. “That’s a good reaction. Make a note of that,” he told his partner. “Give it to Deb. Have her get nauseous. We won’t mention you at all,” he assured me. “Don’t worry.”

  I looked toward the spot in the hallway where the floor had collapsed, but quickly glanced away, knowing I needed to steer everyone away from that area. Not that I thought my brother’s ghost was hanging around, waiting to be contacted. But if by some miracle such a thing were possible, I didn’t want it to be with this crowd, and I didn’t want it shown on TV.

  “How about the kitchen?” Evan asked. “The hallway? The bathroom? The back bedroom?”

  “The bedroom,” I said, though I’d never had any weird feelings about my parents’ room. “The dogs were under the bedroom.” I led the way past the kitchen and down the short hall. As though on cue, a dog barked somewhere in the neighborhood, which wouldn’t have seemed so creepy had not the temperature dropped a good ten degrees the second we passed through the doorway. I glanced around to see if the others had noticed it as well, and was relieved to see that they had.

  Evan was grinning. “Thank you, Jesus!” he said. “Finally, a real one!”

  “That window might not be closed all the way,” Owen said in a half-hearted attempt to play devil’s advocate.

  “It’s warmer outside,” Evan snorted, “not colder.” He looked at me. “Any stories here?”

  “Just the dead dogs.”

  “Good enough. We can milk this one. Why don’t we go out and you can show us where you found the dog bodies, how it happened and all that.”

  Ten minutes later, we were through. In a way, I thought, trudging back down the short driveway toward the street, it was better that all of these people were here. It allowed me to look at the house objectively and kept me one step removed from emotions that probably would have overwhelmed me had I been all alone. As it was, I was filled with a profound sense of loss as I recalled walking up this driveway with Billy and my parents for the first time.

  Scott Spencer broke away from a discussion with the director. “Well?”

  “I still don’t know if we can get twenty-two minutes out of it,” Owen said. “It is a small house.”

  “If we incorporate background…”

  “Maybe,” Owen said doubtfully.

  “You need more background information?” I asked.

  Spencer grinned. “Lay it on us.”

  I told them about Frank’s in-laws, George and Betsy, describing how their trailer had blown up in a propane explosion about the same time Frank and Irene had skipped town, and how their bodies had never been found. I was glad to be sharing this information and hoped they’d use all of it. I wasn’t sure when this episode would air, but maybe Frank would see it. It was why I was cooperating with the program. While they might be using me, I was using them, too. We were each getting something out of this.

  What would be Frank’s reaction, though, if he did see the show? Nostalgia for the good old days? Would he be proud of his accomplishments or worried that someone was on his trail? Hopefully the latter. My goal was to scare him into making a move, doing something that would help me find him. I still wasn’t sure what I would do if I did, but I reassured myself with the knowledge that there was no statute of limitations on murder, and I was pretty sure a modern forensics team could easily tie him to that dead boy in his basement.

  And maybe between now and then I’d be able to dig up a few other things as well.

  “Now check out the Lee house,” Spencer told us. “See what you can come up with.”

  “Frank’s place?” I said.

  “What was this Frank’s last name?” the producer asked.

  “Watkins,” I told him.

  “The Watkins House,” Evan said, trying it out. “That sounds better. ‘The Watkins House.’ Has a nice ring to it.”

  Spencer shook his head. “Too close to the Whaley House, which we just did last season. Stick to the script.”

  “The Goodwins lived there after Frank,” I said helpfully.

  The producer snorted. “Goodwins? That’s not scary at all. Keep it the way it is.”

  The writers and I walked across the street, still shadowed by the cameraman. I hadn’t been inside Frank’s house for over three decades, but it looked almost exactly the same as I remembered.

  It felt the same.

  “Jesus!” Owen exclaimed the second he walked through the door.

  His partner looked over at him. “You feel that, too?”

  “We all feel it,” I said. “But that’s only the beginning.” I moved forward, glancing behind me, remembering the glimpses of movement I used to see in my peripheral vision, the dark shadow that slipped almost unseen from the entryway into the short hall leading to the master bedroom. “I thought you guys checked this place out already.”

  “We didn’t,” Evan said. “Mark, yes. And the location scouts. And the director. But we’re just the writers. We do as we’re told.”

  “This is a gold mine,” Owen was saying.

  I’d forgotten just how odd Frank’s house was, with the doors in the wrong places and not where you’d expect them to be, the angles of the rooms slightly off in a way that wasn’t actually noticeable but that made you feel a little dizzy. The windows didn’t let in as much light as they should, and, as I remembered, directions seemed off in here, as though the inside of the building had a different orientation than the outside.

  “Where’s your stolen paneling?” Evan asked. “That’s a good hook.”

  “Upstairs.”

  But I didn’t want to go upstairs. Being here was much more intense than I’d thought it would be, and compared to the relatively benign environment of our old vacation home across the street, much more malevolent.

  Malevolent.

  That was it exactly. There was a maliciousness here. This was not the vague, diffused air of the paranormal that hung about our A-frame, but a far more focused, concentrated and intentional haunting. At the same time, my connection to Frank’s place was much less personal, so I didn’t feel the need to gloss over things or hurry through the rooms. In fact, I wanted to take my time. I wanted to study Frank’s house, learn from it. After all, this was not only a house he had built, this was where he’d lived.

  “So can we start upstairs and work our way down?” Evan asked.

  I nodded reluctantly, not trusting myself to speak.

  “Good blueprint for the show, too,” Owen said. “Starting at the top, ending up in the basement where the body was found.”

  “We like to end shows with the cause of the haunting,” Evan explained. “That way, it’s structured like a mystery, with a payoff at the end. Keeps viewers from switching.”
>
  There was a cold spot by the kitchen in the same place I remembered. Back then, we’d all ignored it, pretended we didn’t notice it, but Evan and Owen moved around in it, commenting, trying to find its diameter, while the cameraman filmed it from every possible angle, hoping something would show up on playback.

  “Excellent,” Evan said.

  “There’s another one upstairs,” I said.

  “All right. Lead on.”

  I didn’t want to be in the lead. Even as an adult, even in the daytime, with three other men and dozens of crew members and onlookers on the street outside, I was as frightened as a child alone at night. Frank’s house could do that, and, not for the first time, I wondered how Mark and his family had been able to stay here.

  Whatever happened to Mark?

  I didn’t know, and I’d never thought to find out. Obviously, the Goodwins had sold the house, but when? How long after we’d left? And where were they all now? Did they ever think about their days in Randall? Were they still in Randall?

  When I got back, I was going to see what I could discover, try to track Mark down.

  The narrow stairwell was dark. I started walking up, but after five steps or so was filled with the overwhelming certainty that I was by myself and no one was behind me. I knew that wasn’t possible, but I paused and looked back nevertheless, grateful to see Evan, Owen and the cameraman. The sensation returned the second I turned around, though, and I had to force myself to continue up the stairs.

  At the top of the landing, I saw movement off to my right, in what had been Janine’s room. “There’s something in there,” I said, moving aside so the cameraman could get a look. He went in first, and Evan followed, flipping on the light as he entered. Owen stayed outside with me. “Do you see anything?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Evan replied. “What did you think was in here?”

  “I don’t know. A figure. I thought I saw movement.” I stepped forward, through the doorway—

  And a shadow detached itself from the darkness within the open empty closet.

  Lurching into the center of the room, it jerked about like a spastic marionette, moving toward the cameraman as though drawn by the opportunity to reveal itself. Stumbling backward, then turning around in a panicked attempt to get away, I saw what looked like a woman reflected in the medicine cabinet mirror in the bathroom across the landing.

  An old woman.

  Irene.

  No! I looked quickly away, my eyes glancing toward the room that had been Mark’s. I saw something sitting on the empty floor, a stunted dwarfish figure with an oversized head rocking back and forth in time to some unheard music.

  I ran down the stairs. My heart was pumping so hard that I could feel it in my throat. I had no idea if the others were following me, and at that point I didn’t care. Speeding past the kitchen, through a cold spot, I ran out the front door and into the driveway, not stopping until I hit the street.

  Scott Spencer and several crew members, as well as the crowd of neighbors outside the barricade, watched me, surprised and curious. A few of the rougher looking technicians wore mocking expressions, but the producer was ecstatic. He knew he had something good here, and he hurried over just as Evan and Owen emerged from the house, their faces blanched.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Get the pursuers in there now,” Evan advised. “It’s Amityville.”

  Spencer hurried off. “Petey! Deb! Ralph!” He was shouting orders to the makeup people even as he rounded up the stars. Abandoning their cranes and dolly tracks, cameraman, sound men and other crew members started scrambling.

  I frowned, noticing that our cameraman was missing. “Where’s—” I began.

  “Filming the basement,” Owen said. “That’s one brave mother-fucker.”

  He was right. There was no way in hell I’d have gone into that basement, especially not alone.

  “I’m going to get my laptop,” Evan told me. “Then you can fill me in on everything you know about the place.”

  “They’re going in right now,” I said. “You’re not going to have time.”

  “It’s a real one. They can just respond to what they see. And if they fuck up, we’ll have better lines they can re-record later. What we need from you right now is stuff for the background narration, to fill in the blanks between shots of the house.”

  The cameraman came out, well before anyone else was ready to go in, and he headed straight for Spencer. I followed Evan and Owen over, and we looked through the camera’s small playback screen at the trip into Frank’s. It unfolded just as we’d seen it, although…

  It looked fake on the screen, somehow. The shadow in Janine’s room wasn’t exactly cartoony, but it was well within what even a moderate television special effects budget could do, and I was surprised to find the scene so unbelievable. Spencer, however, was euphoric. “Even if we get nothing with the pursuers, we still have this! Home run!” he announced loudly.

  The cameraman didn’t catch anything in the bathroom, but there was a slinking movement of shadow into Mark’s closet, even though the dwarfish thing on the floor was gone. None of it looked particularly realistic, and I was not only disappointed but confused as to why that should be. It was the reason, I supposed, that every footage or photo of a ghost or UFO always proved so inconclusive, and I thought that maybe I’d been too quick over the years to dismiss claims of the supernatural.

  Oddly enough, it was the basement, where nothing had happened, that the feeling of Frank’s house really came through. There were no moving shadows, no eerie figures, and even the section of wall where the mummified boy was found had long since been repaired. But when the camera zoomed in on a yellow vinyl chair that had been left behind by the house’s most recent occupants, a wave of cold washed over me. The chair looked utterly ordinary, but something about it was fundamentally wrong in the way all of Frank’s house was wrong, and that sense leaped out of the frame at the viewer.

  “Wow,” Evan said.

  I was not the only one who’d noticed it.

  The cameraman nodded, shut off the playback. “That’s why I left,” he said. “I got scared.” He met Spencer’s eyes. “Make sure they go down in the basement. We’ll get ten minutes just out of that.”

  The producer was already leaving. He nodded in acknowledgment as he excitedly instructed the three ghost pursuers about what they needed to do once they were in the house.

  Evan glanced to the left at Frank’s place, then to the right at our old A-frame across the street. “What’s his name? The man who killed the dogs and the kid and built these buildings?”

  “Frank,” I said.

  “Jesus,” he breathed. “Who the hell was this guy?”

  That’s what I wanted to know.

  EIGHT

  I checked in with the sheriff’s office while I was in town, stopped by the local newspaper office, even quizzed some of the neighbors gathered around to watch the filming. I was impressive to the neighbors because I seemed to be somehow involved with Ghost Pursuers, and I took advantage of that, getting them to open up and talk more intimately and honestly than they would have otherwise.

  But it had been a long time, and the truth was that I knew more about Frank than anyone else I met. The reputation of the haunted houses might have spread all the way to Hollywood, but Frank was practically unknown even in his own town. I returned to California disappointed by how little I had learned, yet at the same time filled with an even firmer resolve to connect the dots, to find out how, why and where he was building these houses with stolen materials and buried bones.

  I remembered George and Betsy saying that Frank had changed after he went to Vietnam, that he was somehow “darker.” What did that mean? And what was that part of Frank’s journey?

  As soon as I got back, Teri wanted to know about my trip, and I thought about telling her the tru
th, but in the end I didn’t. To protect her, I told myself, but I was not sure that was it. Or at least not entirely. It was a small club, the people whose lives had been affected by Frank, and an exclusive one, and I didn’t think anyone outside that circle could really understand the truth of what it meant to have lived in a Frank house. Sure, I could describe it and try to explain it, but Teri would still be on the outside, and I wanted her to stay that way.

  I thought back to what I’d seen in Randall. Experiencing the sort of supernatural encounter that had only been hinted at before had invigorated me, and I vowed to track Frank down. For my brother, for my parents, for me.

  The best place to start was obviously with the houses. Frank never used a real estate agent, apparently, so I couldn’t track him down that way, but property tax records were easy enough to obtain, and though the going would be slow, I figured I’d be able to find him eventually if I stuck with it. The problem was that he probably used a different surname each time. And it was nearly impossible to track down just a “Frank.” He could also move anywhere in the country. The only leads I had were the fact that he seemed to keep using a last name that began with “W,” and Sandy Simmons’ hunch that Frank and Irene had moved to Las Vegas after selling their house in Tarzana.

  So I spent my spare time doing research—although, as luck would have it, I didn’t have much spare time. The real estate business ebbs and flows, and for one of those unknown reasons entirely unrelated to other economic conditions, our office caught a wave. All of our agents were suddenly listing and showing and selling, and as quickly as it had come, my dry spell evaporated. I knew it wouldn’t last, knew I had to strike while the iron was hot, so as much as I wanted to pursue Frank, I pushed that aside and got busy selling. It had been over three decades, and a few weeks more wouldn’t make much difference.

  Still, whenever I had an extra moment, I made phone calls, sent emails, looked up records. I sometimes thought it was stupid and pointless—and I didn’t completely understand the sudden need, after all these years, to chase Frank down—but something had been awakened within me. I was not by any stretch of the imagination a religious person, and I didn’t believe in fate or mystical signs, yet I couldn’t help ascribing some import to the fact that I had sold that Big Bear Cabin to a man who had grown up in a Frank house. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I thought there was a reason it had happened, but I’d been made aware that Frank had continued on after Randall, doing the same thing elsewhere, and I had to follow up on that. I had to know.