by B. E. Scully
Cassie leaned her head back and closed her eyes. The sun on her face felt good after so many days of gray.
“You know,” Martinez said, “I used to love the water when I was a kid. But I can’t even remember the last time I was down here. This river is one of the city’s best features, and yet I drive by it every day without even noticing it. It’s like somehow over the years I’ve forgotten it’s even here.”
“I know what you mean,” Cassie said. “Maybe sometimes you have to go blind for a while to really see.”
And then she sat up and opened her eyes.
EACH CASTLE ITS KING
There was a castle called Doubting Castle,
the owner whereof was Giant Despair.
—John Bunyan
PART I
1
The withered brown lump was dead center on the faded “Welcome” mat. Calvin Goodman nudged it with the tip of his loafer. It did a reluctant half-roll and then decided against relocating.
His wife Rachel took a step backward. “Is that a petrified dog turd?”
“No, just a little surprised to see us.”
He’d been hoping for a laugh, but Rachel hugged her arms around her shoulders in what Cal always thought of as her war-widow pose and turned away from the house—away from him. Even in long-suffering mode, though, Rachel still looked exactly like the kind of fresh-faced, all-American girls you see horse-back riding or wind surfing on the covers of sporting magazines, right down to the sprinkle of freckles across her nose and the thick waves of honey-gold hair. Cal’s older brother used to call the two of them “Sports Star Ken and Barbie,” but these days Cal felt more like “Couch Potato Cal,” Ken’s stressed-out, chronically-tired cousin. Even though Cal was only two years older than Rachel, lately he felt more like fifty-three than thirty-three. Then again, considering the year from hell he’d just been through, he was lucky he didn’t feel seventy-three.
“Great,” Rachel said, still in the war-widow pose but at least facing Cal’s general direction again. “Now along with peeling paint, prison cell bathrooms, and twenty years of accumulated filth, we’ve got dog shit on our doorstep. Why am I not even surprised?”
Cal felt his jaw lock up the way it had started doing before the accident.
The “accident?” So that’s what you’re calling it now, Mr. Road Rage? And how exactly does jumping out of your car at a red light, strolling up to the flashy BMW convertible that just cut in front of your own fuel-efficient Subaru like it wasn’t even there, and then proceeding to pummel the driver’s face like a punching bag qualify as an “accident?” Just add in some bystander with a camera and you could have been the next fifteen-second Internet sensation—
Cal closed his eyes and pictured all of the calming images stored up from his therapy sessions back in L.A. His therapist had called them “visualization techniques,” which meant she could charge over a hundred dollars an hour for them, but even high-priced ocean breezes and mountain streams hadn’t done a damn thing to stop Cal from feeling like his head was going to explode the second he woke up in the morning. Moving to Oregon had been all about leaving that shit-storm behind. Only now it seemed as if a piece of it had followed him north and landed right on the doorstep of his not-so-new home.
They’d never intended to buy the falling down structure everyone in the area called “Blood House.” The name came from the rust-red paint some previous owner had slathered over every inch of outside surface space. The whole house looked as if someone had dumped a giant bucket of blood over it and let it there to dry. The inside was even worse, with thick coats of candy-cane striped pink and turquoise obliterating the original cedar paneling. The bathroom floors were coated in a rubbery crimson paint that had probably been specially made for fighter planes back in World War II. The building inspectors had taken one look at the fireplace in the so-called “study” and declared it permanently condemned without at least five-thousand-dollars’ worth of restructuring. There was a meteor sized hole in the back wall of the kitchen, and on their first tour of the place, Rachel almost broke her ankle when her foot went through a rotted spot in the floor of the sun porch.
Their realtor, some fresh-faced kid who looked like he’d just graduated college the week before, had taken great delight in pointing out that the wallpaper in the living room was the “exact same kind as the house in The Amityville Horror movie!”
The 1979 version, that is.
“I don’t want fixing up a house to take over our lives,” Rachel had said when Cal first floated the idea that Blood House might have potential. “Places like that can drain away your savings before you even know it. And we don’t have much draining left to go at this point.”
Cal wondered if she was talking about their money, their marriage, or both. “Look, with some fresh coats of paint, some new carpeting, and a little bit of good old-fashioned elbow grease, the place will be in basic working order by October at the latest.”
That had been five months ago. They’d already narrowed their choices down to two solid houses when their realtor called to tell them the price on Blood House had dropped even further, if they were still interested. The final price was so low it barely covered the cost of the land. It had been an offer too good to refuse.
Now, jamming his shoulder against a front door that only opened partway before hitting the linoleum flooring’s buckled roadblock, Cal couldn’t help remembering one of his father’s favorite rejoinders to Cal and his brother’s frequent pleas for some toy or trip or video game they were just dying to have—any offer too good to be true probably is.
Rachel went to retrieve the dog from the front seat of the car, where he’d been sitting staring out at them like an innocent man condemned to prison for no reason he could understand. Jackson was a city dog, a mid-sized little brown and black patchwork number whose idea of wilderness was straying off the pavement in the local park. Now he was racing around in leash-free abandon, circling the yard in joyous bewilderment about what to do with so much space. Rachel was racing after him, the war widow temporarily banished.
Thank god for that dog, Cal thought, not for the first or last time. Given the starring role he had in their lives, it was hard to believe Jackson had been the cause on one of Cal and Rachel’s worst nuclear meltdowns. Cal had first spotted the scruffy pup when he appeared, forlorn and terrified, in a “Looking for my Forever Home!” ad on some social media site he’d been trolling instead of doing his work. The fallout from Cal’s “accident” was still toxic at that point, and the last thing he and Rachel needed was a dog added to the pile, but maybe that was the very reason Cal had driven straight to the animal shelter after work and come out with Jackson on the end of one of those cheapo leashes they give away for free to people who didn’t even plan well enough to bring one of their own. Maybe Cal figured if they could make Jackson work, they could make the rest of it work, too. Or maybe what Rachel had accused him of was true—maybe he had been looking for a diversion, anything to keep from noticing the pile getting bigger and more foul-smelling than ever.
During his first week, Jackson managed to chew the corner off of one of Rachel’s grandmother’s handmade quilts, pee in the recyclables container, attempt to bite a well-dressed woman who leaned down to admire him in Griffith Park, and almost run away two times. After the second week, Rachel placed an ad for a “lovable but rambunctious dog, free to a good home,” and a guy called right away wanting to come see him.
On the scheduled day of the meeting, Jackson planted himself at Rachel’s feet, staring up at her with that forlorn, terrified look, as if he somehow knew he was two steps away from ending up in an ad again. The guy was late, and Rachel sat in the living room staring at Jackson staring back at her until the doorbell finally rang. Without so much as a sideways glance in his direction, Rachel told Cal to tell the guy they’d changed their minds—they were keeping the dog after all. After getting rid of the none-too-happy almost-dog owner, Cal came back in the living room to find Jac
kson curled up on one end of the couch and Rachel reading a magazine at the other end. The stand-off had been broken, and after that Rachel and Jackson were inseparable. Now it seemed as if Jackson was the one thing guaranteed to still make Rachel happy even when everything else had gone to shit.
Including, it seemed, their doorstep. Cal got a plastic poop bag out of the car and bent down to pick up the turd. Close-up, though, it looked as if the turd had a face—and in fact, the turd did have a face, a wizened, shriveled little apple-face with two rotted holes staring up at him. And was that a row of sharp little teeth just waiting for someone to reach down and—
“What is it?”
“Jesus, Rachel, you scared the shit out of me! Don’t go sneaking up on people having a stare-down with a mummified bat. You never know what might happen.”
“I wasn’t sneaking. And did you say that’s a bat?”
“Well, a dead bat. But, yeah, a bat.”
“How did a dead bat get on our doorstep? What if it has rabies or something?”
“You can’t get rabies from a dead one. At least, I don’t think you can.”
By this time Jackson had come bounding up and was sniffing around the bat, transfixed by this exotic new smell.
Rachel snatched up the dog as if the bat was booby-trapped. “Go get his leash from the car. He probably needs a walk after the long drive anyway. I know I do. We can unload our bags later.”
“Why not just let him off the leash? He’s a country dog now.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call this country, Cal. We’re a fifteen-minute drive from the city center.”
“It’s country compared to anywhere within a sixty-mile radius of L.A.”
Rachel retrieved the leash herself and latched it to Jackson’s collar. “He’s not country yet. It’s going to take more than ten minutes to get the city out of this dog. Remember that time he slipped his leash and we chased him halfway down Santa Monica Boulevard before he finally stopped to pee?”
Calvin laughed, remembering how they’d almost knocked a couple sipping espresso at an outdoor café right out of their chairs while Jackson raced onward, having the time of his life. “I’m surprised we didn’t get arrested on that one. Oh, well, boy, I hope you enjoyed your short burst of freedom while it lasted.”
They walked behind the house and stood gazing at the water throwing sparkles of sunlight off the canal. The man-made waterway was about thirty-feet wide, and one of the main reasons they’d chosen this house over those other, far more reasonable options. The canal paralleled the course of a roaring river for about five miles, bordered on one side by towering pines and on the other by a scattering of houses interrupted by more pines. One of those scatterings included a stretch of land with three properties on it—a sprawling lavender farm on one end, a flat gray house on the other, and Blood House smack in the middle of the two.
On the forest side of the canal, a winding footpath followed the water from its origin, a lake with a dam owned and operated by the power company, to its end-point at an enormous water-processing plant. The power company also owned the narrow stretch of land running behind the farm and two houses, which led to a covered bridge that allowed people to cross the canal and access the pathway.
“Every castle needs a moat,” the baby-faced realtor had told them when he’d first shown them the canal. “So here you go.”
Blood House had two round turrets at each end, and with the towers and the crazy pipes and chimneys poking out of the roof at odd angles from heating systems long since passed, the house did call to mind the kind of enchanted castles found in fairy tale books—the Brothers Grimm variety, anyway.
But Rachel hadn’t been entirely sold on the moat concept. “And the canal pathway is open to the public? So just anyone can walk there any time?”
“The power company gets a huge tax rake-off for providing public access to its land, so anyone can use any of the pathways,” the realtor told her.
“Including the one right behind our house?”
“Technically, yeah, but hardly no one ever comes out this far. It’s like having your own almost-private park at no extra cost.”
“In L.A. this place would be crawling with people every weekend,” Cal said.
“No worries,” baby-face assured them. “Even though you’re less than twenty miles out of town, most people consider this the boonies. Like I said, only farmers, rednecks, and eco hippies live out this far.”
“Great,” Rachel said, giving Cal a sideways look. “Since we’re not any of those.”
They hadn’t been crazy about the high-speed two-lane highway running in front of the house, but the huge front lawn and canal in back more than made up for it. And now it looked as if Baby-face’s “almost-private park” claim had been true—even though it was a gorgeous September afternoon, there wasn’t a soul in sight on the canal pathway.
“Come on, boy,” Rachel called to Jackson, scratching the velvet soft fur behind his ears. “Let’s go get some wilderness.”
But first they had to figure out how to get out of the backyard.
A short, steep embankment marked the boundary between their property and the walkway owned by the power company. The only problem was that some previous owner had encircled the entire acre of land with a triple-layer of long-rusted barbed wire fencing that gave way only to the narrow driveway entrance.
Rachel touched one of the jagged barbed wire spikes and then pulled her hand away. “Isn’t there a gate or something back here?”
Calvin tugged on one of the fence posts, but despite its age, the fence held fast. “I guess the old guy who lived here last didn’t leave the house much.”
Blood House’s previous owner had been an elderly man named Melvin Stockton who’d lived there for over twenty years before he died. He’d left no heirs, and after his death the property had been turned over to a trust company that didn’t take much better care of the place than Melvin had. By the time Cal and Rachel saw the house, it had been sitting empty for almost three years. After they’d signed off on the mortgage, of course, their realtor had told them that if they hadn’t bought the house when they did, it probably wouldn’t have made it another three years without being condemned.
Rachel had been horrified, but for some reason Cal had felt secretly pleased with the news. We saved you, he’d tell the house every time he shouldered his way through the battered front door.
Maybe now the house could return the favor.
Cal hoped it wouldn’t waste any time getting started, because the war widow was threatening to possess Rachel again.
“Great,” she said. “Now we can’t even get out of our own backyard.”
“Wait a minute, just give me a chance, okay? Just let me give it a try.” Cal went over to a place where one of the posts had tilted sideways in the soft ground. The barbed wire strands were hanging loose, and he took hold of them and pulled away a hole big enough to walk through. “See, there you go. Tomorrow I’ll dig up some wire cutters and start taking this thing out.”
“We don’t own a pair of wire cutters. And look what you did to your hand, Cal—you cut it open on that rusty barbed wire.”
Calvin looked down at an ugly red tear zig-zagging across the top of his right hand. “Ouch. When did that happen?”
Rachel frowned down at his hand as if it were leaking poison. “Let’s go inside and clean it up.”
“No, no. I’ve got a tissue right here in my pocket—I’ll just wrap it around for now to stop the blood.” He leaned down and ruffled Jackson’s fur until the dog had panted himself into a frenzy. “What do you say we go get some wilderness?”
They walked down the embankment and turned right toward the covered bridge. In less than twenty-five feet they were behind their neighbor’s house, a flat one-story ranch-style with a rickety wooden back porch and an enormous brick chimney holding court in the middle of the roof. The house’s siding had once been gray, but years of exposure had worn most of it down to the dingy white
underside.
“It looks like an old bone,” Rachel said.
In fact, the whole property was like a crime scene waiting to happen. Along the far edge was a row of tumble-down wooden shacks without so much as one window among them. And just like Blood House, their neighbor’s entire property was surrounded in barbed-wire fencing.
Rachel narrowed her eyes at the squat, plain house. “So we’re Blood House and this is Bone House. All we need is Skeleton House and this whole stretch of canal can fuse together and become one great big Frankenhouse.”
“Guess we’ll have to come over and introduce ourselves sometime,” Cal said.
“You’re kidding, right? Did you happen to notice the six-foot high steel gate across the front of his driveway? Not to mention the hospitable prison yard look that seems to be so popular around here.”
“You the folks that just moved in next door?”
Cal and Rachel both jumped at the sound of the man’s voice. Less than ten-feet from where they were standing, an elderly man was hidden in the shadows of an apple tree as old and gnarled as he was. He was peering out at them from beneath the brim of a battered straw work hat.
Jackson let loose a volley of high-pitched yips until Rachel bent down and scratched behind his ears. Cal tried not to laugh—she was probably dying with embarrassment at being overheard criticizing the old guy’s place.
Cal stuck his hand over the barbed wire fence and then drew it back, remembering his fresh wound. “Hi, we’re the Goodmans. I’m Calvin and this is my wife, Rachel. I’d shake, but—” He held up the hand wrapped in the blood-stained tissue. “Had a bit of a mishap on the fence. Ours, not yours. Our fence, that is.”