Home Improvement: Undead Edition

by Harris, Charlaine

  Steve lay sprawled on his back on the first floor, homicide’s hammer by his limp right hand, a railing chunk driven into his chest as another crimson pool formed around his outline.

  You owe me filled her mind.

  She ran down the stairs.

  Okay, it’s all okay now, you’re okay.

  “No!” yelled Louise as she ran down from the second floor.

  You were always the one.

  “Oh God oh God oh—”

  Whatever created us must want us here. This must be right.

  “Stop it!” yelled Louise as she reached the first floor of the house with two dead bodies. “I’ve got to stop thinking so I can see what to do!”

  Flashes. Bob’s calculations of probate problems after Parker’s death just need a good story and protracted conveyance keeps bulldozers away and might use who comes to clean up—No, Louise can do it. Say: Steve went stir-crazy, murdered Parker, raped Ali, killed Bob, crumbling house saved her I saved you keep the place, live in it, fix me up tell rescuers it’s like getting back on the horse. Could work.

  Louise ran for the door before the house got what she realized.

  She had the door halfway open when it snapped rigid in its frame.

  But halfway was wide enough for her to fling herself out into the blizzard. Cold bit her as the door slammed shut behind her. Snow swallowed her legs up to her shins as she stumbled down the porch stairs. Cold so cold Oh my God yes wonderful because it’s real! Snowflakes wet her skin and tried to refreeze. Thick white afternoon light let her see Parker’s snowburied pickup. Its steel handles burned her bare hands, but the driver’s-side door swung open to her pull and slammed shut after she was in, behind the wheel. Parker’s corpse sat rigid on the seat beside her.

  The dead man stared at the windshield as her shaking hands fished in his shirt pocket . . . Yes! Found his lighter, a half-smoked joint and a small plastic bag. Her trembling hands clicked open the metal Zippo lighter, thumbed a blue flame, lit and hoovered a deep hit.

  “Staying stoned makes it harder for the thinking to get you,” the dead man beside her had said. Hope he was right about that.

  She took another quick hit before she stubbed it out: So little left!

  I am freezing in a blizzard-trapped pickup with a dead man.

  She saw a bulge in the left front pocket of the dead man’s blue jeans.

  Keys! She leaned the stiff corpse against the passenger window, wriggled her hand into those jeans. The chunk of wood jutted from Parker’s skull but she knew, she really knew, that out here, such wood had no power.

  The pickup ground to life, blew heat into the cab.

  A quarter tank of gas.

  Even with the chains on the pickup, even with four-wheel drive, she’d need to rock the pickup back and forth to create tire tracks to follow. Even if she found roads in the whiteout, that vehicular effort needed a full tank.

  Like an electric cloud softened other voices in her brain.

  Can’t drive away. Can’t stay here. Enough gas to idle for a couple hours. Don’t look at the dead man, his open eyes. Don’t look at the board nailed to his skull. She searched his pockets, found a few bucks, coins, and in that shirt pocket, a plastic bag . . . with another joint! Could stay stoned for . . . maybe until dawn. She checked her watch: three fourteen P.M. Make that until midnight. If I come in and out of the house, run the engine . . . every three hours . . . My mind and I will make it to dawn, maybe to the end of the storm.

  Told herself: It’s not what the house can do, it’s what I choose to do. Only junk in the glove compartment. Nothing on the floor but the thirty-foot orange extension cord Parker used to connect an old-fashioned headbolt heater in the pickup’s engine to any building’s electricity.

  Three hours. Stoned enough, staying strong enough, I can survive three hours in there. I can keep me. Louise turned off the pickup, left the keys in the ignition: one less trick for the house to play.

  She ran from the pickup, stumbling through the eye-stinging snow and the knee-deep white powder that slowed her stumble up the steps and—

  The house door refused to open.

  Arctic air shook Louise so hard she fell into the snow on the porch. She ran back to the pickup, turned the engine on to blast heat over her, melting the snow and dampening her clothes cold, that’s cold, too, but—

  Louise closed her eyes. Like Parker’d said: If you gotta, you gotta. She ran back into the storm carrying the orange extension cord, her mind playing the movie of how she’d tie one end to the porch or the door, tie the other end to the pickup’s front bumper, and it wouldn’t matter that the pickup could only charge a few feet, its horsepower against old wood—

  The house door opened.

  “Fuck you,” whispered Louise. “You get one chance.”

  She backed off the porch, dropped the extension cord end far enough from the last step that it didn’t touch wood, tied the other end to the pickup’s bumper to show she meant business, ran back into the house.

  The door slammed shut behind her.

  Louise ran to the living room with its dried pool of Parker’s blood, with its stacks of four friends’ suitcases that had flown full of dreams from Denver, and sacks with their packed lunches and old newspapers, sleeping bags and the portable heater with a generator and a red plastic jug full of fuel oil that wouldn’t work in a pickup. She closed her fist around the plastic bag with its one-plus joint and metal cigarette lighter as she switched her wet clothes for dry garments, unrolled a sleeping bag.

  MIDNIGHT.

  Louise sat rocking back and forth on the decrepit mansion’s living room floor. She’d smoked all but an inch of the last joint. Felt her still chemical-addled mind mostly free from capture. To help, she’d crawled on her hands and knees, lapped up drops of the mixed brew spilled in the jumble of broken glass on the dining room floor near Bob’s body.

  What more are you than the home you build for your life?

  Can’t have a baby without Steve and who would want you now even if some rescuer comes. No rescuer’s coming. Not in time. And when someone does come, someone with a weaker mind than Ali oh poor Ali.

  Lucky Ali. She knew how to use what she had to get what she could.

  There’s what’s real and there’s what you believe.

  What’s real is that outside in the cold she’d die in an hour.

  What’s real is she could feel who she was slipping away.

  Here could be home.

  The something to love forever that’s been her lifelong dream.

  If she keeps this place fixed up, the place will fix what she believes. She can come up with a story for all this.

  After all, it’s what works, not what’s real.

  She clicked open the metal lighter. Knew that was real.

  Clicked it shut. Knew she was still here. For now.

  Forever is a moment.

  Like now. Louise clicked open the lighter.

  And now. Clicked it shut.

  The imperative to survive is all the house cares about.

  The metal lighter clicks shut.

  This is the moment you click open the lighter.

  This is the moment you click it shut.

  This is a moment when you’re still Louise.

  Not some species of zombie slave.

  She clicked the lighter open.

  “We’re all trapped in a house that needs fixing.”

  Bob said that. When he was alive.

  He said, “It ain’t the being dead, it’s the dying.”

  Louise thumbed the blue flame to life and fired up the last inch of the joint. Felt the house sigh.

  Like, odds are, there’ll be more months of sunshine on its wood.

  You could be not dead here for a long time.

  All you need to do is let go of every imperative except existing.

  Louise sucked in a caustic cloud of smoke.

  Held it as the house trembled its floor to shake her balance.

  Like
a movie queen, Louise flicked her lit joint onto the pile of yesterday’s newspapers and birthed a flickering blue flame.

  Dust and debris fell from the ceiling like smothering rain.

  She grabbed the red plastic jug for the portable heater and splashed fuel oil through the room.

  A ball of fire whumped up in front of her.

  Fire consumed all the house’s thoughts as flames licked its walls.

  Louise grabbed her coat, gloves. Fought open the front door that, unlike her, had no feet to flee.

  And as she stood outside in the snowy night next to the inferno where a house once lived, unzipping her coat to heat from the blaze whose coals might glow long past dawn when rescue would or would not come, Louise hoped she was right about the worth of the imperative that to survive as who you are sometimes requires fixing your house with flames.

  The Strength Inside

  MELISSA MARR

  When Chastity bought the only house on the cul-de-sac with several acres between her and the nearest neighbor, it wasn’t an accident. Privacy was a priority. At the time, her plan seemed sound. At the time, she hadn’t yet met the Homeowners’ Association or their subcommittee, the Architectural Review Board.

  “Well?” Alison prompted when Chastity walked into the kitchen with the mail. Unlike Chastity, her sister was in comfortable jeans and a longsleeved shirt. The dirt on her cheek—and the muddy footprints on the floor—told Chastity that her sister had been gardening again.

  “Another form.” Chastity clutched the latest ARB letter in her hand. By now she could recite the first paragraph:

  The River Glades Community prides itself on high community standards. As such any and all exterior architectural alterations must receive approval of the Architectural Review Board. Please submit the attached form to JUSTINE sixty days prior to the date upon which you would like to begin any alteration, addition, removal, or other visible change.

  Chastity forced herself to release her grip. She laid the paper on the kitchen counter and smoothed it out. “Every damn form includes the same paragraph. It’s like it’s their letterhead.”

  “What do they want this time?” Alison unbraided her hair, finger-combed it, and twisted it up into a loose ponytail while Chastity read—and then reread.

  Chastity made a growling noise before saying, “Sufficient neighbor signatures from . . . any house with direct line of sight with or without foliage.”

  “Umm.” Alison walked to the door, opened it, and pointedly glanced to the left and right. “They do know we are the last house, right?”

  “I’m sure they do.” Chastity kicked off the ridiculous low heels that she wore to work. Her skills were more about focus, so office work made sense. If it didn’t include such uncomfortable clothes, she’d be far happier. Alison floated from job to job when Chastity said they needed more money, but she couldn’t hold a job that involved too much time indoors. Chastity, for better or worse, was content in closer spaces.

  Which is why we need both a house and a big yard.

  For a moment, the sisters stood face-to-face in their kitchen. It was a lovely space. Beautiful granite countertops, sleek stainless steel appliances, and black tile with black grout. Greenery hung from the ceiling, lined windowsills, and clustered along all of the walls. Like much of the house, the kitchen was as close to an exterior space as possible—but without too many wild creatures or insects. Through the open door, Chastity could see the yard that was Alison’s passion. It was well on its way to resembling a formal garden that had been allowed to grow wild. Alison had the admirable ability to persuade most every plant, shrub, or tree to thrive even when they weren’t native. The result was a fabulous space filled with wildlife and ample places to hide.

  “It’s worth fighting for,” Alison reminded her. “I could persuade the woman if you say the word.”

  Chastity pushed away the mental image of the conversation her sister would have—or she herself would like to have—with the ARB chair; the process was made easier by the fact that she’d not yet met Justine. She shook her head. “I can do this.” She paused for a moment, scanned the form again, and looked at her sister. “How many signatures are ‘sufficient’? How do I know that?”

  “You could always go to the committee meeting and ask.” Alison widened her eyes in faux innocence. “Take a covered dish, perhaps?”

  Chastity flipped her little sister off. “We’re trying to get along here, Ali, not encourage the neighbors to show up with pitchforks and torches.”

  Alison shrugged and stepped away from the still-open door. Given her way, she wouldn’t ever close the doors. “So, go fill out your paperwork. I’m going to read.”

  “Don’t let the littles con you into treats because of fake hunger pains while I’m out,” Chastity reminded Alison. “They need to learn to schedule their meals.”

  After a derisive snort, Alison wandered farther into the house. Somewhere in the plant-filled rooms, their siblings hid in dark shadows, but she pretended—for their amusement and hers—that she was unaware that they stalked her. In human years, and to the casual observer, the children appeared to be young teens, but as Bori they were the equivalent of toddlers—precocious toddlers, lethal toddlers, but toddlers all the same.

  Like some mammals, a Bori’s physical growth meant they had strength far beyond their emotional growth. If the littles were left in the wild, they’d be mistaken for feral children—such nestless young were the source of the human stories about children raised by wild animals—but Chastity and Alison weren’t going to let such a fate befall their siblings. A very long time ago, the sisters had struggled as parentless Bori; they’d lived in the old ways.

  Which is exactly why we won’t fail the littles now.

  Despite their considerable longevity, few Bori were left in the world. Too often over the centuries humans declared them demons and murdered them, caged them as freaks in carnival sideshows, or destroyed their habitats. Protecting young Bori from such horrible fates was daunting. Chastity whispered a silent Thank you to whichever deity had granted her Alison as a sister. She could’ve handled the littles without extra help, but having Alison there made it far more manageable. Alison was maternal in a way that made her playmate as much as authority. Chastity, on the other hand, wasn’t fun. It simply wasn’t part of her skill set. There were plenty of things that Chastity considered as skills she possessed: she was a hard worker, kept her promises, killed easily, and generally could get along with just about anyone. She might not genuinely like seven out of ten of the people she smiled at, but now that blending was important for survival, faking friendly was essential.

  Faux smile in place, Chastity took the papers in hand and went out to start knocking on doors.

  “CAN I HELP you?” The older woman stood in the open doorway, not inviting Chastity in but not refusing to answer the door like the people at the first house.

  “I’m Chastity. My sister and I bought the house at the end of Eden Street.” Alison held up the paper. “I’m trying to get approval for a fence for my younger siblings.”

  “And Miss High and Mighty said no, did she?” The old woman lifted the glasses from her chest, where they dangled like a necklace. “You know, she tried to tell me I couldn’t have azaleas up front. Azaleas! Who ever heard of azaleas being an issue?”

  “I think they’re lovely.”

  “Well, of course they are.” The woman took the pen and paper from Chastity’s outstretched hand. “I had to hire a gardener in order to get approval. That woman needs a job, or a hobby, or something.”

  Chastity smothered a laugh while the woman signed Mrs. Corrine A. Kostler on the form and held it out.

  “You might as well skip the Hinkeys.” Mrs. Kostler pointed toward a red brick colonial that sat kitty-corner from her house. “They do whatever Justine says. Edward files complaints on me right regularly. You just wait until he wants me to sign a form. Ha!”

  Wisely, Chastity made a mental note to never anger Mrs.
Kostler—and to invite her to tea. Maybe even a human meal. The food humans ate was peculiar, but there were things that Chastity could stomach. The littles would have to eat early, but we could work it out.

  “Did you want something else?” Mrs. Kostler prompted.

  “No, ma’am.”

  The old woman took her glasses off, smiled, and announced, “You’re not half as weird as Justine said you were, girl. I should’ve known. Go talk to the others. Not the Hinkeys, mind, but the Valdezes and the Johanssons are decent enough.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Chastity nodded. She paused. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t step in the grass this time. I have a sidewalk for a reason.” Mrs. Kostler scowled. “Bring those children for cookies some afternoon.”

  Then she closed the door before Chastity could reply.

  Like Mrs. Kostler, the rest of the neighbors seemed friendly. They looked at the signatures on the form, made a few comments—mostly polite small talk, but more than a couple bitter remarks about Justine—and signed. After the fourth house, Chastity figured she might as well keep knocking. More signatures couldn’t hurt her case.

  WHEN ALISON ARRIVED at the builder’s office the next day, she was reassured. She had been discreet in her inquiries. Chastity isn’t the only one with a plan. Once she’d narrowed in on the builders in the area with the sort of specialization skills they required, the choice was immediately clear. Damek Vaduva had achieved an odd, almost cultish following for his designs, but he also provided the more traditional building skill she needed. Unfortunately, his reputation for design made it near impossible to get a meeting, so Alison had to persuade the receptionist that she had, in fact, made an appointment but the poor dear had forgotten to enter it into the book.

  What Chastity doesn’t know won’t hurt me.

  Alison shook her head. “I can reschedule.”

  “No, no. It’s my mistake, and Mr. Vaduva had a cancellation earlier, so he’s in. Maybe I told him, but didn’t add it in my book. I’ll go in and tell him,” the young woman murmured. Then she nodded to herself, apparently pleased that she’d resolved the dilemma satisfactorily.