by Ed
He began nodding and held up a hand to stop her. "Tell you what. There's two apartments in there, one upstairs and one down. Why don't you go upstairs and look around and when you're done, I'll give you the name and phone number of the owner. Sound good?"
Relieved and excited, she went upstairs, hoping for the best. That was what she found. The living room was spacious with lots of windows that made it appear even larger. The kitchen was roomy, too, and had a built-in trestle table with benches. There were four large bedrooms and, upstairs, two more, one with builtin captain's beds paneled in solid pine.
It was beautiful. It was perfect. And it was probably way too expensive.
She hurried downstairs, got the owner's number and called him the second she got back to her motel room.
His name was Mr. Lawson and he sounded reluctant at first. Carmen didn't let that bother her once he'd quoted the monthly rate though; it was well within their price range. She told Mr. Lawson everything: about Stephen's illness, about how far they had to travel every day for his treatments, about how hard she'd been looking for a place.
He politely extended his sympathies, wished the best for Stephen, then fell silent, apparently thinking. Finally: "I can give you the downstairs apartment."
Carmen sat heavily on the edge of the bed and pressed a hand over her eyes. She hadn't seen the downstairs apartment. Was it as nice as the upstairs?
Who are you kidding? she thought. If it's smaller, it can't be by much, and besides...we're desperate. She decided that if it was anything like the upstairs apartment, she'd be thrilled.
"That sounds fine," she said. "We'll take it."
After she hung up, Carmen fell back on the bed with a long sigh. A tremendous weight had been lifted from her.
They began to prepare for the move immediately. Al would have to stay in Hurleyville for another six weeks or so until his transfer was complete. Michael managed to escape the chaos of moving; he decided to go with Wanda Jean to her home in Alabama for the summer.
Al and Carmen and the kids packed their belongings cheerfully and without a word of complaint, which was quite an achievement considering the fact that, along with all the work and organizing, Stephen still had to be taken to Connecticut every day for his cobalt treatment. They were anxious to move into their new apartment and return some stability to their lives. Of course, things wouldn't be completely stable until Stephen had recovered, but they had faith that he would.
Carmen told them over and over about the upstairs apartment, hoping theirs would be as nice, as perfect. But she spent a lot of time thinking about what the downstairs apartment might be like...a lot of time thinking the worst.
One night before they moved to Southington, Carmen slept restlessly. In spite of her worries about Stephen, she'd been falling asleep easily, exhausted from all the work. But on this night, sleep did not come quickly and when it did come, it brought a cold and muddy dream.
Caskets...lined up neatly...naked bodies with deathly pale skin...tools...equipment that looked old and sinister...hooks...chains...a faceless man wearing a white smock with dark brown stains caked on it...walking along one of the rows of caskets...zigzagging in and out between them...approaching one of the bodies...one of the dead bodies...carrying one of those tools...one of those old and ominous tools...
Carmen sat bolt upright in bed, unable to breathe for a moment, then sucking in a lungful of air. It was morning. Sunlight was shining through the windows, bright, safe sunlight. Her heart was hammering in her chest but she couldn't remember exactly why. A nightmare, yes, but that wasn't it...not exactly. It was something else, something she suddenly knew, just knew instinctively.
"I've rented a funeral home," she said, her voice thick with sleep.
Al lifted his head from the pillow. "Huh?"
"The apartment...that house...it's a funeral home. Or maybe...well, maybe it used to be."
"Did you have a nightmare?"
"No, no. I mean, yeah, I think maybe I did, but that's not it." She turned to him. "That house is a funeral home, Al."
He propped himself up on his elbows. "What're you talking about?" Then he sat up beside her with a squinty frown and said, "You're serious, aren't you?"
"Yes, I'm serious."
She leaned forward and hugged herself, closing her eyes.
Al put an arm around her. He was at a loss, but the look on her face was not one that came from a simple dream or nightmare; there was something much more real to it.
"We can back out of it, you know," he said. "I mean, if you really don't want to move into that apartment."
She shook her head slowly. How could they?
"We can't keep making that trip every day," she whispered. "It's too hard on all of us, especially Stephen. And I sure don't want to go out looking for another apartment."
They were silent a while, pressing close to one another, then Al said, "Look, even if this...well this dream or feeling or whatever...is true, and the place really is or was a funeral home...I mean, so what? The people died somewhere else, right? It's not like they died there in the house. And besides"—he kissed the top of her head— "you don't know it's true. I bet it's not. Just a dream. We'll get there, it'll be great, we'll move in, and we'll find out it's just a nice old house converted into two apartments."
They finally left Hurleyville on June 30, a hot summer day that was even hotter on the road. Al took Stephanie with him in the moving van they'd rented—she held Willy in his cage on her lap— and the two boys went with Carmen in the car. Every few miles, Peter, who was three at the time, asked with unfailing enthusiasm, "We there yet? We there yet?"
When they got to the house in Southington, most of Al's family was already there, ready to help them move in. Carmen got out of the car and Al got out of the van and, for a moment, they stared at one another, Carmen's face tight and apprehensive, Al's smiling reassuringly. When he came to her, she whispered, "Before we do anything, can we just...go inside and look around?"
"Sure we can." He took her hand and, after greeting everyone, they headed inside.
The ground floor was not finished yet and the carpenters were making plenty of noise. Inside, they found a lot of sawdust and pieces of wood and men with hammers and saws. But there was no one downstairs in the basement.
As Al and Carmen started down the stairs, the noise faded slightly behind and above them. It was musty down there and the thick air carried the smell of age. At the foot of the stairs was a spacious room that opened up to their left and, to their right, a pair of French doors that opened onto an even bigger room.
There were five rooms altogether, all musty. They walked around cautiously for a few moments, not quite sure what they were looking for...if anything at all.
At the end of a hall, they found a room in which a number of shelves held tools. Alien, sinister tools. Frightening, unspeakable tools. Steel devices darkened with age. Tubes and hoses and blades. Across from the shelves was what appeared to be a fuel tank, old and grimy, and a small table beneath which were several sturdy boxes. Al and Carmen hunkered down to find the boxes filled with countless rectangular metal plaques. The plaques were blank, but Al and Carmen looked at one another silently, knowing full well what they were. The plaques had been waiting in the boxes for who knew how long...waiting to be put to use...waiting to be assigned names and placed over graves.
They left the room and stepped into a hall at the end of which was a ramp that sloped downward into the basement from a door on the side of the house. It resembled a handicapped entrance, or some sort of loading ramp.
Carmen reached out for Al's hand, more to steady herself emotionally than physically. The things they'd seen already were enough to tell her she'd been right...but there was more.
A heavy-looking metal cross hung over each doorway they passed through. The crosses looked like silver, but they were so tarnished with age it was difficult to tell. They looked up at one of the crosses for a moment, then turned to one another, but the silence
was too heavy to break; neither of them spoke.
They turned right and entered a large room with another shelf, more stairs and—
"Oh, my God," Carmen breathed, "what's that?”
She pointed to something that looked like it had come off the set of an old black-and-white Frankenstein movie. A rectangular bedlike platform was hooked to chains that were attached to a large hoist. Al and Carmen looked up to see a rectangular trapdoor in the ceiling directly above the platform.
Al's shoes scritched on the concrete floor as he crossed the room to a piece of plywood about four feet square on the floor below the stairs. He bent down and lifted it up a few inches, peered beneath it, then lifted it higher. Carmen stood beside him and looked down the tunneled sides to the bottom of the dark-stained concrete pit where woodchips were scattered around a circular drain.
Faint light seeped in through the two grimy windowpanes above and to their left, casting misty shadows into the pit as Al and Carmen stared silently.
Al said, "I wonder what this—"
"I don't think I want to know," Carmen whispered, turning away and walking toward a doorway that opened onto another smaller room. She stood in the doorway and stared.
There was a sturdy rectangular table directly across from her, the kind one might find in a laboratory or hospital...or in a morgue. The wall to her left was stained reddish-brown. To the right, a large deep sink bore the same rusty stains.
A loud bang behind her made her gasp and spin around to see Al brushing his hands together as he walked toward her and away from the pit. The bang had been the plank crashing back into place when he let go of it.
"What's in here?" Al asked.
Carmen started to speak, started to say something about there being a big mess to clean up, that was what was in there, but her throat was too dry and when she realized her voice wouldn't work, she closed her mouth and just stared at the stains. Al did the same.
There was a different smell in that room, darker and more cloying than the odor permeating the rest of the basement. It was a thick, almost greasy smell, the kind that remains in the nostrils for a while after the source of the smell has been left behind.
Al walked over to the wall, pressed his fingertips to it tentatively, then turned to Carmen. His brow was creased; his upper lip was curled slightly. He opened his mouth to speak but, as Carmen had earlier, simply closed it again. It wasn't necessary to speak.
They both knew what the stains were.
"I'll just paint over it," Al said as they headed back upstairs. "Right away, I'll just paint over all of it."
"And we won't tell the kids," Carmen added.
"'Course not. And we can...well, just get rid of all that stuff. Get it out of here. When we're through, it'll just be a big basement, is all."
At the top of the stairs, Carmen turned to him and said, "I can't bear the thought of looking for another place. I want us to settle down. We need to settle down so Stephen can get better."
"And we're going to. Don't worry, hon." He gave her a quick kiss and smiled, then put an arm around her shoulders as they went back upstairs.
They found that, even up there, crosses hung over every door leading down to the basement.
Outside, Mr. Lawson arrived and met them in front of the house. He was a paunchy fellow in unfaded jeans and a plaid shirt. While Al talked with his family, Carmen took Mr. Lawson aside.
"I'd like to ask you something,” she said cautiously. “This house...in the past, was it...by any chance...a funeral home?" It still seemed so ridiculous to her—even in spite of what they'd found in the basement—that her vague feeling could actually be correct that she winced when she said the words funeral home.
One comer of Mr. Lawson's mouth twitched into a smirk. "How did you find out?" he asked.
She was annoyed by his smirk and her voice held the slightest hint of anger. "Well, I think there's plenty of evidence in the basement. Have you been down there?"
He closed his eyes and nodded, smiling. "Yes, I've seen the stuff that's down there. If you don't mind, I'd just like to leave it there. I don't want any of it destroyed, or anything. They make great conversation pieces, don't you think?"
She blinked several times. This was ridiculous, but she was in no position to argue.
He said, "Yeah, the original owner's in his nineties now. He's gone off to live with his son. When I bought the place, I intended to convert it into an office building, but"—he shrugged—"zoning problems. Couldn't do it. So, I figured it'd make valuable real estate, what with the hospital expanding. Plenty of people need a place nearby. People like yourself." He gave her a big close-lipped smile and joined his hands behind his back. When Carmen didn't return his smile, he said, "Oh, don't worry, Mrs. Snedeker. The place hasn't been in use full-time for...oh, two years or so. Since then, it's only been used a couple of times. Just for special occasions."
Carmen frowned. "What kind of special occasion?"
"I mean, for members of the previous owner's family, that sort of thing." He turned toward the house and put his hands on his hips. "Yeah, the funeral-home business is in the past for this old place. You've probably figured out by now that the downstairs apartment isn't finished yet. You might want to store your things in the garage and stay in a motel or with friends, or something like that."
Carmen was facing the house, too. She nodded and said, "Yeah, okay." But her voice was flat and expressionless; she wasn't sure if she was disappointed that they couldn't move in right away...or relieved.
Al had to return to Hurleyville for work, so Carmen and the children moved into a motel room. But like most motel rooms, this one was cramped, especially with three children. After two days, Carmen decided that even an unfinished apartment would be preferable.
They returned to the house on Meridian Road and pulled some mattresses out of the garage. She and the children pushed them together in the dining room, where they decided they would sleep until the workmen were finished. But it wasn't long before the sound of Peter's unsettling wheeze began to echo off the bare walls: an asthma attack brought on, no doubt, by the sawdust in the air. They drove him to a local walk-in clinic where he was treated, then returned to the motel room. Peter was feeling much better the next day. They returned to the house and began cleaning out the sawdust to give it another try.
By that weekend, the house was in a livable state, so they began the tedious job of moving in. Al returned for the weekend and, along with his brother, moved the furniture into the apartment while Carmen began to unpack all the dishes and wash them. Stephen went downstairs to see what would be the first room of his own that he'd ever had....
Carmen stopped washing dishes and stared out the window over the sink as she thought about what her son had told her.
Yes, the house used to be a funeral home. But evil? She did not believe that a thing could be evil. It was a beautiful old house and their apartment was perfect. But...what could have made Stephen say such a thing? Why would he even think such a thing? Something had to have triggered it.
She rinsed off her hands, dried them, and caught Al on his way back out to the garage. She told him what Stephen had said.
He frowned. "I didn't say anything to him about the house," he said, a bit defensively. "Did you?"
"Of course not. We agreed."
"Then...what do you think?"
"Well"—she spread her arms—"I don't think the house is evil, if that's what you mean. How can a building be evil? Creepy, sure, I can understand that, but I don't even think it's that. At least...not very creepy. Nothing a little paint won't fix."
Al stuffed his hands in his back pockets, looking around. Stephen was nowhere in sight. "You've gotta figure," he said, "Stephen's been under a lot of strain with the treatments, and all. I don't think it's anything to worry about. He'll probably forget all about it. I wouldn't worry." Then he went out to the garage to bring in another piece of furniture.
Carmen stood in the unfinished living room and loo
ked around. The apartment had a lot of windows, which was sort of a prerequisite with her. There were no curtains on them at the moment, though. Even so, there didn't seem to be much light coming through in spite of the sunny day outside, no shafts of sunlight spilling bright pools on the floor. She walked to one of the panes and ran two fingertips over it.
"Have to wash these," she muttered. "Have to wash these first thing."
But when she rubbed her thumb in tiny circles over her fingertips, they did not feel the least bit dirty.
2
What Stephen Heard
Carmen got up earlier than usual on Monday morning to fix breakfast for Al and see him off for the week. He ate quickly and was taking his last bites as she sat down to a breakfast of her own.
"Finished already?" she asked.
"Gotta go. I want to make sure I'm not late. I mean, in case something happens. I'm not used to driving this far to work in the morning, y'know. Gonna brush my teeth." He was gone in a flash. The bathroom door opened and closed; the hiss of the sink and the wet sounds of brushing were muffled behind it.
He was feeling anxious, Carmen was sure that was it. She knew he was apprehensive about leaving them there for the week, about being able to come home only on weekends until his transfer went through. But Al would never voice his concern; he would hold it in, keep it in by doing things like gobbling up his breakfast and taking off as soon as possible so he could dive into his work and try hard not to worry about Stephen.
Carmen didn't touch her breakfast for a while; she waited until she heard the bathroom door open, then got up and met Al in the hall. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin gently on top of her head.
"You guys gonna be okay?" he asked.
"Of course we are."
"You sure you don't mind the house?" He whispered because Stephen—still refusing to stay downstairs alone—was asleep on the living-room sofa and Al didn't want him to hear them talking about the house. The boy had enough to think about already.
Carmen started to say, "Of course I don't mind the house, it's a gorgeous house," but she knew exactly what he meant and decided the response would be lame.