Occultation and Other Stories

by Laird Barron

  Something panted under her chair, near her ankle.

  The vent shushed to life as the furnace powered on in the cellar and a cool draft swirled around her open toe sandals.

  —Jesus Mary, she said, and gulped her wine.

  Their black cat, Elvira, scuttled from between her ankles and bolted into the hall.

  He whistled and tipped his chair back and studied the timbers above the table, the cold, iron hooks. —I know, he said. —I know. Let’s get a dog to keep her company.

  —Elvira probably doesn’t want that kind of company.

  —I’m thinking of you taking one of your leisurely nature strolls. The woods are full of vermin.

  —The house is full of vermin.

  The house didn’t have a name although it was large enough to warrant one. Four generations of his family had dwelt here. His childhood bedroom was on the third floor, sealed tight as a drum.

  Gone for twenty years, he wouldn’t have returned, but his parents were suddenly dead, victims of a helicopter accident while on vacation in Colorado.

  Now everything was his, whether he wanted it or not.

  The will made it plain, much to the consternation of his immediate and extended family who’d thrived upon petty grievances and longstanding feuds, each secure in his or her place within the pecking order.

  No more efficiency flat in the city.

  The commute to the station was thirty-five minutes through somber pastoral vistas, then another hour by train to his uptown office. Meanwhile, she would work from home; she could work anywhere her computer plugged into a wall.

  Yet, she disliked the place, loathed the idea of inhabiting its haunted rooms for days and weeks and months of the years to come.

  And the encroaching wilderness…

  Money was tight and it was for the best. Maybe there would be a tragic fire and an insurance settlement. Hope sprang eternal, indeed.

  —We’ll go look at puppies at the shelter on Saturday. How’s that sound?

  —Why would your father want to frighten you? she said, not wishing to discuss the ordeal of visiting a dog shelter. Animal shelters and hospitals depressed her. She couldn’t watch the scene at the pound in Lady and the Tramp for fear of bawling.

  —He was a card, he said.

  She poured another glass of wine, leaving the dregs.

  She’d met his father twice.

  Once at an Easter dinner, again at the wedding.

  A lean man with a lean face and hair as pale and thin as straw. He’d kissed her hand and said charming things. She feared him instantly.

  —But why screw with your head? Kinda psychotic.

  —Isn’t that how fathers get their kicks? He rose and went to the cabinet and brought forth another bottle of wine she’d no idea was there. He popped the cork and filled his glass.

  He didn’t return to the table, but shoved his hip against the counter and held the glass tight to the breast of his jacket.

  His tie hung loose and sloppy. —Pop was a big Ingmar Bergman fan. Hour of the Wolf was his favorite. A sucker for those austere, Baltic landscapes. The cruel beauty of it all. He romanticized isolation and eccentricity. He fantasized about doing in his enemies in the name of art.

  —You too are a raging Bergman fan, she said.

  —And so now you see I come by it honestly. Pop raised us to be good little Yanks, but he was always a Swede, through and through, just like Grandpa. And a film lover. He met Max Von Sydow in New York at a party. Before I was born.

  —Weren’t you four or five?

  He frowned and ran the rim of the glass over his lip. —Was I?

  —Yeah, because Karl was in first grade and the two of you were hiding out under the table with the punchbowl. You stayed up all night and everybody got drunk and nobody missed you. You’ve told it to me. If your father loved Sweden so much, why didn’t he repatriate? She’d never asked before and he’d never volunteered a rationale. His strained familial ties were well documented and not a subject to broach lightly.

  He smiled a smile that wasn’t real. —What, and give up all of this? My great-great grandfather rowed us to America. You can never go home.

  —Right. All this. She was sufficiently buzzed to ignore the warning in the fake smile and feel pleased in the doing.

  Her husband was so insufferably unflappable, it was fun to needle him on occasion, and no better occasion than on the eve of their occupation of a rambling, patriarchal tomb he’d dragged her to, willy-nilly.

  —My family is persona non grata. It is impossible for us to return, ever. He smiled again, a sharp, feral baring of his teeth. —Pop got Von Sydow’s autograph on a cocktail napkin. Locked it in his writing desk. I hunted for it the other day… He trailed off, lips pursed, eyes narrowed.

  She swallowed more wine and stared with morbid fascination at her reflection as it warped in the window.

  Quite odd, his use of the word hunted. Not looked or searched, but hunted. How peculiarly specific of him.

  She wondered if he could sense her thoughts and had decided to play Something Scary, whatever that might be, with her. —Were you planning to sell it on Ebay, or what?

  —Baby doll is drunk. How can I tell? She’s getting bitchy.

  —Bitchier, you mean. I’m only half in the bag.

  —No, sweet pea, I don’t intend to hock Pop’s effing keepsake. He played with his tie loop, snaring his fingers and twisting. —I was going through his stuff. Memories from when me and Karl were kids came rushing in. I haven’t thought of that party for ages. Dunno why it hit me. Being here is stirring a lot of muck, I guess. He chuckled unhappily.

  He resembled his father as his father had appeared a decade ago, except his hair was thick and his eyes were kind.

  Perhaps not kind tonight, tonight they were mysterious.

  He acted like he’d been drinking heavily when she knew that this wasn’t the case. Her man could hold his liquor, and hers as well. —The time has come, I fear, to speak of cabbages and kings.

  —You’re so cute when you’re earnest, she said.

  —Don’t you fucking mock me.

  She said, —All right, I’m sorry. Tell me more about your faddah.

  His neck reddened, flushing as dark as the wine in his glass.

  The record skipped, making a garbled, demonic wreck of Old Blue Eyes’ voice as if someone were dragging the needle back and forth across the vinyl.

  Six times, then it abruptly stopped and the house was silent.

  They remained very still, heads turned toward the doorway.

  She felt sick, right on the edge of spontaneous diarrhea.

  Finally, he set his glass on the counter and walked out of the kitchen.

  His footsteps faded.

  She waited, not realizing she’d held her breath until her temples throbbed.

  He called from the living room, —Damned cat. What do you want to listen to?

  —Something upbeat.

  —Like what?

  She visualized the pile of records by the record player. —I don’t know. Put on the Abba.

  —Abba. I don’t see it.

  —It’s there. Probably under The Village People.

  He cursed. —Okay, looking. A minute later Billy Joel began to sing “Movin’ Out.” A minute after that, he reappeared and walked over to his wine and drank it all in a single steady draught, which was unlike him, he being a consummate wine snob. One didn’t gulp wine unless one was a boor. He refilled his glass. —No Abba today. The defiance in his tone sounded playful, except she knew better.

  —Why do you hate Abba so much?

  —Truly, I hate Abba with a pure white hot passion. So did Pop.

  —Shit, isn’t that ironic. The drummer died a couple of years ago. Brunkert. He tripped into a glass door. The glass shattered and cut his neck. He wrapped a towel around his neck and went for a neighbor’s house. Died in the yard. Tragic.

  —Not tragic.

  —That’s cold, honeybunch.


  —The drummer in the famous bands always gets offed. That’s part of the pact with the Devil. Somebody’s got to take one for the team.

  —Tell it to Ringo. Down to him and Paul, unless Paul’s dead for real.

  —Ringo is a special case. Best got the hook, then Satan traded up for Lennon. Exception that proves the rule.

  —I’ve got nothing, she said. —Even now, in the gloaming of our lives, every day I discover a new facet of your personality.

  He rolled his eyes and poured more wine. He nodded toward the ceiling. —Did you notice the door to my old bedroom is nailed shut?

  —I thought it was locked.

  —Uh-uh. No latch on the door. Pop nailed it shut. With spikes. Who does that?

  —He was hinting that you were dead to him.

  —The bastard wouldn’t let go that easily. He liked to think his claws were in deep, that me and Karl would come crawling back to him one day. He took the long view. This is something else.

  —You don’t mention your sister.

  —Honey bunny, I don’t mention my family, if you hadn’t noticed. Thus the confessional.

  —Yeah, but you don’t mention her with a vengeance.

  —Would you feel better if I did?

  —She’s nice. I like her. Elvira likes her.

  —When the hell was Carling at our place? His eyes bulged slightly.

  —Lots of times. She came over for tea or we’d go have lunch. I did her hair. She did mine. Billy Joel sang “Stranger,” and the part about the masks made her shiver.

  —She’s not as nice as you think. I don’t want her coming around here.

  —What do you mean, not as nice as I think? I’m not simple. I didn’t fly off a turnip truck.

  —I mean she’s good at fooling people. Better than Pop. She’s all teeth. Beware, beware!

  —Does she take after your mother?

  —She takes after Pop. Mother wasn’t anything like either of them. Too bad she was so beaten down when you met her. Mom used to argue with him like cats and dogs. He broke her eventually. By the time I graduated she just sat around knitting. His opinions were her opinions. Mom survived breast cancer. Too bad, really. What did Carling want, anyway?

  —Company. You won’t talk to her. Karl won’t talk to her. Neither you nor Karl talk to one another. None of you talked to your parents. Carling is sad. I think she’s holding out hope there’ll be a family reunion of sorts.

  —Ha! I hope she liked the funeral, because that’s the last reunion she’s gonna get for a while. Trust me when I say, don’t trust her. She’s a witch. She even collaborated with Pop when he played Something Scary. I’m convinced she helped him drive Mom over the edge. She was a daddy’s girl, all right.

  —What did she do?

  —What do you mean, what did she do? She’s a monster, a witch. Pulls the wings off flies, torments kittens. Worse than that.

  —I did not notice these qualities. Does Karl feel the same?

  —Hell yes. He hates her worse than I do. He tried to kill her when we were in middle school. Pushed her off the balcony on the second floor. She fell into the rose bushes and thus his assassination attempt was foiled by the gods.

  —I’m sure Karl wasn’t really trying to kill her.

  —Oh, yes, yes he was. He put rat poison in her lemonade. She didn’t drink it, though. Once, and I can’t swear it’s true, when they were on spring break, he slipped her a roofie and left her in Daytona with a local biker gang. There’s real sex on the beach for you. I wouldn’t leave them in a locked room.

  —Remind me to spit on your brother the next time I see him. Unless he’s on fire…unless you’re lying.

  —I’m lying about the poison and the bikers. Karl did shove her fat ass over the balcony. You wonder why none of us talk, now you know. Both of them suck in their own special way. Childhood was survival. I kept my head down and put one foot in front of another. I bled my folks for an education, then I beat feet and never looked back. I did find something weird in Pop’s study, by the way.

  —Oh?

  —Yeah. A black robe hanging from a hook in the closet. Only thing in there.

  —Like a magistrate’s robe?

  —You know that’s not the kind. I guess it’s not weird so much that he owned the robe, but that nobody packed it away or locked it up. Not a speck of dust on it either. Could’ve easily just been returned from the dry cleaner.

  —I’m cold, she said. —Let’s start a fire and knock the damp off this joint.

  They adjourned to the living room. She arranged the plush pseudo-leather divan near the fireplace and fetched a quilt from their bedroom on the second floor—a very large guest room, actually. She wasn’t ready to set up shop in the master bedroom. The bad vibes were overpowering. Surprisingly, he acceded to her decision without comment. Maybe he had the creeps too.

  He brought wood in from the shed that abutted the fence at the far end of the yard, stamping a muddy trail across the floor. He got a fire cracking and spitting and she began to feel cozy. She slipped off her sandals and stretched across the divan and watched him clump around, fussing with the pokers and jostling the flaming logs, adjusting the screens, until he finally sat on the couch, one ankle braced on a settee. Red and gold and orange light flickered through the grate and made a shifting, crystalline pattern on the planks, raced along the wall and shimmered and swirled in the nearest window. The light-play reminded her of magic lanterns from the eighteenth century, casting fairytale monsters and vistas of haunted forests and mountains across the walls and ceilings of peasant cottages late, late in the lonesome night.

  —Now, she said. —give on this Something Scary.

  —Funny you should mention magic lanterns. My dearly departed father was obsessed with them and there is one in that box yonder, along with a handful of color plates he collected from antiquarians around the globe. A handful were made by Eadweard Muybridge, the guy who invented motion pictures. Crazy, murderous bastard who filmed horses and buffaloes and such. He also did a series with naked people performing menial tasks. But I’ve only seen the other plates, the ones with fake monsters and demons. There are frightful things on those plates.

  —I didn’t mention magic lanterns, she said, drawing the quilt closer to her chin.

  He smiled. —You muse aloud, sugarplum. You also talk in your sleep. It’s curious that you brought up Satan. Pop’s obsession with the Prince of Darkness rivals his Bergman fetish. There’s some outlawed tomes in the library and a case of knives and ritual masks and black candles around here somewhere. Carling might’ve taken them. Big sister knows what to do with sacrificial daggers. Yeah, I just bet she had her eye on poor Elvira. Word to the wise, she shows her face on our doorstep you better send her packing.

  —But I didn’t mention Satan, either. You did.

  —You started in with the drummer business. One thing led to another. Know what Pop said to me one night when he crawled from under my bed? It was pitch black, but I recognized his breath as he crouched over me. He whispered, Lucky you can’t see me like this, kiddo. Me and your sister are out of our faces. Carling grabbed my foot. Her hand was ice cold. I pissed myself.

  —I…faces? She didn’t quite grasp this shift in her reality and the buzz from the alcohol wasn’t helping. His matter of fact revelation unnerved and confused her.

  —You’re shitting me, right? Your dad wasn’t a satanist. Carling? How could you not tell me?

  —I’m deadly serious, love. This isn’t the kind of thing one brings up on first date…

  —How about on the hundredth, the thousandth? How about before moving us to the Overlook Hotel?

  —…and then I decided I was hot for you and the urge to spill my guts sort of faded away. You’re a good thing, baby. I didn’t want to lose you.

  —The honeymoon is over. So here comes the dirty laundry.

  —I didn’t anticipate inheriting the house. I figured at best Pop would carve it to pieces and dole it out like that. We’d each g
et a check. But here we are and the lies will surely come to light. There’s power here.

  —So, let’s sell. You should hate this house. I mean, I thought you loved it before you dropped the bombshell that your family is full of psychos. My God, I thought it was plain old garden variety sibling rivalry and resentment of being the youngest heir. My god, my god.

  —Yes, I should hate it, and I do. Unfortunately, I can’t sell.

  —Why not? Far as I’m concerned, we can offload this pile of wood for below market value and lease a condo.

  —You don’t get it. I literally can’t sell. Believe me, putting this on the market was on my to-do list. Every time I dial the realtor, a spike of pain stabs me between the eyes. I vomited in the office last week. Then comes these…I’d call them nightmares, except they’re closer to prophetic visions. Somebody who resembles my dad tying me to the bed and cutting out my heart. I’m ten or eleven and he says I’m promised to the Devil, that I can never leave, and starts hacking. Baby, it’s so real I wake shrieking.

  —I haven’t heard you shrieking. You don’t even snore.

  —That’s because it doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t escape my mouth. My face is sort of paralyzed. Or I dunno what. I’m cursed. This place is mine and I can’t leave…who knows what will happen if I really, really try.

  —There’s a condition. A night terror where you feel like someone is sitting on your chest. You can’t move, can’t scream.

  —I think it’s Pop’s ghost. Turning the screws.

  She thought about this for a while, or tried to. Her mind jumped from point to point, conjuring a panoply of bloody sacrifice, murderous relatives, and Satan laughing from a bed of fire. She didn’t bother arguing that while his father might’ve been a lunatic, it would take an even bigger nut to entertain the notion of a family curse. Mind over matter. If his father had truly dominated him as a child, then that control might persist on a subconscious level. She pictured an EC Comics panel of a putrefying claw reaching for her husband from beyond the grave. She giggled, mildly embarrassed at the shrillness of her outburst.

  —Sure, laugh.

  —Forgive me. Carling should’ve inherited. She’s the eldest. Why you?