by L. M. Boelz
***
Arriving at home, Carol went to the backseat to help carry their groceries into the house. Picking up the last small bag, she wandered into the house to put it in the kitchen.
Wanting to busy herself with something other than feeling sad, “Mom, do you think it would be okay to go explore the house before it gets too dark, since the electricity won’t be turned on until tomorrow?”
“I think that would be okay; I can put this away.”
Looking around, Carol considered which room to check out first. I might as well start at the front of the house, she thought, as she carefully made her way into the living room.
The mess in here was worse than she had remembered it. The trash and holes in the walls would take a lot more work to clean up and fix, than Carol had first imagined.
Although the room was small, it had two nice sized windows, both facing out onto the front yard. The floor was a mix of bare wood and half-peeled tiles. Carol couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would want to cover a wood floor with tile.
Sitting in the middle of the living room was one of the ugliest couches that she had ever seen. Carol doubted, even when it was new, that the old thing had looked much better. The couch was a faded, sea-foam green and chartreuse color, with flowers scattered throughout the pattern. The back of the couch was lower than on most couches that Carol had seen before. Maybe it was because it was missing the back cushions. The back and both sides of the couch looked like something had torn it to pieces from the inside out.
Most of the walls had several holes scattered across them, anywhere from the size of a dime to the size of a dinner plate. Studying some of the holes, Carol wondered why the people living here before her would have done such a thing.
On closer inspection, Carol noticed that some of the holes looked as if they had been pushed into the wall, while other smaller holes looked like they had been pushed from the inside out. Carol was puzzled as to how that could have possibly happened.
“Someone must have been very angry,” Carol whispered, while continuing to look them over.
Not able to curtail her curiosity any longer, Carol proceeded to poke one of her fingers into a small hole that was about shoulder height. This resulted in nothing more than getting her finger stuck. Pulling on it, to get it out of the wall, had little effect.
Carol’s curiosity was rapidly being replaced with the fear of something hiding in the walls. The thought that whatever she heard behind the walls, in the bathroom, was now holding onto her finger was more than she could handle.
Placing her other hand against the wall, and then placing a foot firmly on the wall, as high up as she could get it while still keeping her balance, Carol drew in a deep breath. Then, exhaling, gave it one last attempt to free herself. It was a good thing that the edge of the couch was close enough to stop her fall as her finger popped out of the wall, or she was sure she would have ended up on the floor.
Her curiosity restored, with the release of her finger, Carol again walked over to investigate the hole. On closer inspection, it now looked like it had been made from the inside out. “Okay, so that’s how they made the other small holes look like they were pushed from the inside out. Why, would anyone want to do that more than once?”
Losing interest in the holes altogether, Carol decided to investigate the rest of the house.
Turning to make her way into the next room, Carol was stopped short, by what appeared to be movement out of the corner of her eye. Whirling back around to face the couch again, Carol scanned the room, to see if she had actually seen something moving behind her. There, next to the couch, stood a large grey and white cat, with most of its fur missing.
The cat had only a few small patches of fur still hanging onto its head and back. The poor animal had just climbed out of a hole that had been ripped in the back of the sofa. Carol thought, What an odd-looking cat. However, being the adventurous type that she is, Carol decided to try and pet it anyway.
“Don’t touch that cat!” her mother yelled.
Startled, Carol stopped short of reaching down to pet it. “What’s wrong with it, that it has so little hair?” Carol asked, as she watched her mother shoo the cat out the door.
“Sometimes, cats get mange, and most of their fur falls out. You should never try to touch any animal that looks like that!” she almost scolded her daughter.
After losing interest in the cat, since she wasn’t allowed to pet or pick it up, Carol’s investigations of the house resumed.
Deciding to return to the bathroom, where she had first heard the strange noises in the wall, Carol stood viewing the clutter in front of her. She was not sure that any amount of work could ever clean up this much mess. Opening the shower curtain revealed a bathtub, that she was sure had not been cleaned in a very long time. It was as full of trash and garbage as the rest of the house.
Mystified, Carol continued to wonder how people could live like this. Even though we never had much, our home was always clean.
Returning to the living room, Carol’s attention was drawn back to one of the holes in the wall, by what sounded like muffled sounds coming from inside the wall.
“Mom! Mom! Come over here and listen to this. It’s the same kind of sounds that I was hearing from behind the wall, under the bathroom sink,” Carol called out, as she leaned in closer to press her ear against the wall.
“Get away from there. If it’s a mouse or something bigger, it might reach out and bite you!” her mother warned.
“It’s probably just mice, Mom,” Carol moaned in protest, not wanting to move away from where she was listening.
“Come away from there before something reaches out and bites you!” she repeated, while grabbing Carol by the shoulder.
Carol’s high-pitched scream echoed through the empty room, “E-E-E-E-E-E!”
“Maybe, we need to have someone come out to give it a look see, just to make sure,” Carol heard her mother say, as she walked out of the room still laughing at her.
Stepping just out of biting range, Carol stood for a couple more minutes, staring at the wall, straining to hear anymore sounds.
Shortly after her mother left the room, the sounds returned, and Carol’s imagination was not far behind. Soon, she was hearing strange noises and low muffled voices, Voices? There must be goblins or little creatures in there, Carol thought, since she could not understand any of what she heard.
Looking around and not seeing her mother anywhere, Carol wondered, What harm can come from trying to peer into one of the larger holes? Starting to lean towards the wall, Carol stopped, as her mother called for her to come get the sandwich that she had just finished preparing for them.
Had Carol stayed in the room, she would have seen tiny claw like fingers and red eyes glowing back at her from inside the walls. The secretive little creature, vanished back into the darkness of the wall as quickly as it had appeared in the hole that Carol was about to look into.
Arriving in the kitchen, Carol picked up her sandwich, and then turned to follow her mother outside. With the car parked under the shade of an oak tree, the hood of the car made a perfect place to sit and eat lunch.
Reaching over to ruffle the top of her daughter’s head, “It won’t be so bad here,” she promised. “Just a little elbow grease and the place will be as good as new. Maybe, we can plant a few flowers over there, under the front windows.”
Carol looked over at the place under the windows that she mentioned. It was filled with dead weeds and grass. Oh no, Carol grimaced. Although she was sure that under the windows would look quite nice with flowers, it only meant more work for her.
“Which room do you think we should try to fix up first?”
“Well, I think we should hurry and clean one of the bedrooms, so we can bring in one of the mattresses and have a place to sleep tonight.”
Looking surprised at her daughter for coming up with such a sensible choice, Carol’s mother quickly agreed. Then, swallowing the last bite of her sand
wich, “First one in the house gets to choose which bedroom we do first,” she challenged.
Suspecting that she might try to pull a fast one, again, Carol had already slid off the hood of the car and was well on her way to her room, just narrowly making it through the front door ahead of her mother.
After surveying the amount of work it would take to be able to bring a mattress into Carol’s room, it was decided to work on her mother’s room instead. Finished just before dark, a clean set of sheets were put on the mattress that had been placed in the middle of the floor.
“Just think of this as a camping trip without the bugs,” Carol heard her mother say, as the flashlight was turned off.
Carol’s thoughts faded back to the warning the old man had told that last night camping, as she made sure her feet were tucked in under the covers.
It was just after dawn when the sun came pouring through the window, landing right in her mother’s eyes.
“Oh, my…” she grumbled, while putting her hand up to cover her eyes against the sunlight. “We will have to do something about that today,” Carol’s mother groaned, as she rolled out of bed and onto her knees.
Dressing quickly, she said “Okay, Little Lady, let’s take a good look at the house, in the daylight, and see which of the rooms is in need of the most work.”
“Let me have the notebook, Mom. I’ll take notes while we look around.”
Finished, Carol joined her mother on the rickety swing on the front porch, to review the notes that she had written, while surveying each room.
“Okay, my bedroom is already in fairly good shape. The walls only need paint, since there are no holes in them. The floor is in pretty good shape too, except for needing a good sanding and staining. I think I’ll start on the bathroom. I think it would be best if you got started in your bedroom. It’s going to need a lot of work, clearing it out and patching up holes, before we can even think about painting.”
Carol was relieved about this, since she really didn’t want to clean the bathroom after what she had seen in the tub. Not to mention, the noises that she heard under the sink that had given her the willies.
Getting up to grab some bags for the trash and some cleaning supplies, they headed off to tackle their separate projects. Even though they were starting over again, Carol did not feel so bad about it this time.