My House Gathers Desires

by Adam McOmber

  Copyright © 2017 by Adam McOmber

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  171819207654321

  For information about permission to reuse any material from this book, please contact The Permissions Company at www.permissionscompany.com or e-mail permdude@gmail.com.

  Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the County of Monroe, NY. Private funding sources include the Lannan Foundation for support of the Lannan Translations Selection Series; the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Steeple-Jack Fund; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak, and Dan Amzalak; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon on page 160 for special individual acknowledgments.

  Cover Art: Sandy Knight/Josh Hoffman

  Cover Design: Sandy Knight

  Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster

  Manufacturing: McNaughton & Gunn

  BOA Logo: Mirko

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: McOmber, Adam, author.

  Title: My house gathers desires / Adam McOmber.

  Description: First edition. | Rochester, NY : BOA Editions Ltd., 2017. | Series: American readers series ; no. 28

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017010672 (print) | LCCN 2017013313 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942683421 (eBook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Short Stories (single author). | FICTION / Fantasy / Historical. | FICTION / Literary.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.C58645 (ebook) | LCC PS3613.C58645 A6 2017

  (print)

  | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010672

  BOA Editions, Ltd.

  250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306

  Rochester, NY 14607

  www.boaeditions.org

  A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (1938–1996)

  Contents

  Hydrophobia

  Petit Trianon

  Sodom and Gomorrah

  Poet and Underworld

  Swaingrove

  Versailles, 1623

  The Rite of Spring

  Homunculus

  The Coil

  Sleep and Death

  Night Is Nearly Done

  The Re’em

  Metempsychosis

  History of a Saint

  Notes on Inversion

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Colophon

  Hydrophobia

  The lake was a dark spill among the trees. Forked branches broke the surface of the water, carving ripples in the shallows. Shingles curled in the edge weeds along the ribbed and sandy shore. Going to the lake became part of Jane’s routine while Scott was at clinic. She put on a sundress and made her way down the rocky path behind the rental house, listening to the ratcheting sound of birdsong and the churn of the distant refinery. It wasn’t until the boy appeared on the other side of the lake that Jane realized just how restless she’d become. She watched him pick his way, barefoot, down the path. He wore a white cotton shirt and a pair of old-fashioned woolen pants rolled to a place above his ankles. With him, he carried a sheaf of paper and a leather roll that Jane soon discovered contained paintbrushes and a set of watercolors. The boy propped his paper against a rock and took a tin cup to the edge of the lake. His black hair fell across his forehead as he bent to dip the cup into the water, and when he rose, he looked at Jane. She lifted her hand. He lifted his hand in return. Then the boy began his work.

  Jane thought it was charming for a child so young—no more than ten or eleven—to be so intent on making art. This boy was a picture of silence, nothing like the sons and daughters of her friends in the city. She returned to her reading and stopped only when she felt the boy watching her. Jane looked up. The boy didn’t smile. “Are you always going to be here now?” he called. She realized the lake had probably been his place for making art long before she’d come along and ruined his solitude.

  “Am I—” Jane searched for the right word, “trespassing?”

  “I’m just wondering,” he said.

  “I like it here,” Jane said.

  He glanced at the plastic soda bottle that leaned against her hip. “Do you think you could bring me one of those drinks tomorrow?”

  She laughed. His tone was so serious. “I can go back to the house and get one now if you’d like.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  “Tomorrow then,” Jane replied.

  That evening Scott barely spoke when he returned from clinic. He turned on the television. They watched the only station available, a Christian network, washed in static. A blond woman in a gaudy silk dress talked about a personal experience she’d had with Satan.

  “Do you want to watch a movie?” Jane asked.

  “That’s okay,” her husband replied, yawning. “I’m exhausted.”

  They continued to watch as the woman described a visitation in her bedroom several years before. Satan had come to stand at the foot of the woman’s bed. In his presence, she could not move her limbs. She could not use her voice. He leered at her with strange bright eyes. She said the eyes seemed to echo with a terrible sound.

  The next day, Jane brought two diet cherry sodas to the lake along with a bag of pretzels. After placing them on her picnic blanket, she waited. An hour went by. Jane kept the book open in her lap but didn’t read. She glanced frequently at the path across the lake. The boy didn’t appear. As the day wore on and the heat and insects intensified, Jane understood he likely wasn’t coming. She killed a fly on her calf and decided to go home.

  When Jane returned to the rental house, she realized how long she’d stayed at the lake. Scott’s car was already in the drive. He sat at the kitchen table looking over some work, barely glancing at her when she came through the mudroom door. “Thirsty?” he said, taking brief notice of the two soda bottles.

  Jane almost told him about the boy, but decided against it. “It gets hot out there,” she said, returning the unopened soda to the refrigerator and tossing the other into the recycling bin.

  “Did you take your mace?” Scott asked.

  The question surprised her. He’d never mentioned the canister of mace that she carried on her key chain before.

  “You should take it,” he said. “And your phone. If you got a look at some of the guys I see—” Scott shook his head.

  The next day, the boy was already at the lake when Jane arrived. Copper-colored clouds crowded the sky, threatening a storm. Jane raised the two soda bottles so he could see. She was glad she’d decided to bring both of them again. The boy went back to painting for a moment, applying strokes to an unseen work. Then he stood, dusted off his pants and started to make his way around the lake. The wind pushed his black hair over his eyes. He didn’t bother to push it away. It was as if he didn’t need to see. Perhaps he used some form of echolocation, Jane mused, like a bat. When the boy was close, an idea came to her. It was as if the idea had surfaced from the murky lake itself. Jane realized the boy was the type of son she wanted. A quiet one who painted pictures. A child full of interesting thoughts. She felt a twinge of pain at this.

  The boy took the soda from her, and after a moment of studying the twist-off cap, turned it, releasing a hiss of air. He took a drink and seemed vaguely surprised. “What is this?” he asked.

  “It’s diet,” Jane said. “I’m sorry.
”

  The boy lifted the bottle to study the carbonated liquid inside. Then he returned his gaze to Jane. “What’s that you’re reading,” he asked, pointing to the book on the blanket. He had a faint accent. Though what sort of accent it was, Jane couldn’t be sure.

  “Poetry,” she said. “Old poetry.”

  After another long drink, he said, “Can I look?”

  “I doubt you’d like it. It’s not really the sort of thing I like either. I found it at the house.” Jane thought of a line from one of the poems: Joy’s recollection is no longer joy, while sorrow’s memory is sorrow still. It struck her that she’d been recollecting joy for so long, at least since she and Scott had moved to Hollansburg, she’d almost forgotten what it was to actually experience that emotion. And sorrow? She didn’t want to think about sorrow.

  The boy studied the book’s cover. It showed a haunted landscape. Black craggy hills rose from a curling mist.

  “Is that the kind of thing that you paint?” Jane asked.

  He shook his head. “I paint water.”

  “You mean you paint the lake?”

  “Just water,” he said.

  “Do you want to sit?” she asked.

  “I should go back. Ma will be looking for me.”

  “Does your family live close by?”

  The boy glanced over his shoulder. “What color would you say the water is today?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Sort of gray? Gloomy. It’s probably going to storm.”

  For a moment, the boy grew silent. “I think it looks red,” he said finally.

  She cleared her throat. “Really?” There was nothing red about the water.

  “I should go,” he said. He extended the bottle that was still almost full of soda. “Should I give this back?”

  “Oh no,” Jane said. “You can drink the rest.”

  He started away and then looked at her again. The sun came through the storm clouds and made his black hair look even darker. “You live at the house near the end of the path, don’t you?” he said, pointing in the direction of the rental house.

  “That’s right,” Jane said.

  He nodded. “That’s called the Miner’s House.”

  “No one’s ever told us that,” she said.

  “A miner and his wife used to live there. She got sick.”

  “Oh?”

  “She died,” the boy said. He paused. “I have to go.”

  That night, as Jane lay in bed, she watched a shaft of moonlight move across the ceiling. She thought about the words the boy had spoken: “She got sick. She died.” Jane almost felt as if she could hear the boy speaking still. She wondered if the miner’s wife had lain sick in this very room. Scott told her once that, for many years, people in this area had suffered at home. The closest hospital was forty miles away. “We hear stories,” Scott said. “Kitchen surgeries and—”

  “Scott,” Jane had said. “Don’t.”

  “Then there’s the cough,” he continued. “The old miners can’t catch their breath.”

  Jane pictured the big men down in the stony darkness. She pictured their wives waiting for them to come home.

  “I’m glad I’m here,” Scott said. “To help.”

  The next day, the boy brought two pieces of bread wrapped in a dirty towel and offered one to Jane. “Ma makes these,” he said.

  She took the bread that was round and flat, something like a host at church. “Tell your mother I said thank you.”

  “She doesn’t know about you,” he said. He drank his soda, and Jane wondered if he ever changed his clothes. The pants he wore were stained. It looked like he’d been crawling in the dirt. There were buttons where suspenders were meant to fasten. One of the buttons was missing.

  “What color is the lake today?” she asked.

  “It’s black,” he said, “and really hard to paint.”

  “Interesting,” Jane replied.

  “You’re just saying that,” he said, “because you don’t understand.”

  “That’s true, I suppose.”

  “If you understood, you’d want to paint the lake yourself.”

  “Maybe one day,” she said.

  “I don’t remember the miner’s name,” the boy said, as if they’d already been talking about this subject. “He was a good man though. Then his wife got sick. That turned him into a bad man. Desperate. You know how that can happen?”

  She said she did without thinking. The boy had a surprisingly adult manner of speaking.

  “One wrong thing,” the boy said, shaking his head. “They took him away. Locked him up.”

  “What kind of illness did the miner’s wife have?”

  The boy nursed his diet soda. “She was afraid of light. Got bit by an animal in the yard. Couldn’t tell anyone what kind of animal it was either. She said it came up out of the earth. She repeated that again and again. The bite swelled as big as an apple, and she couldn’t bear to go out in the sun. Pretty soon, even a low-burning fire was too much light. She craved water. Couldn’t get enough. Her skin turned a horrible color.”

  “Was the animal rabid?” Jane said.

  The boy shrugged. “They built her a second house where she could live away in the dark. Your house is the miner’s house. The wife’s house,” the boy pointed toward the woods on the other side of the lake, “is over there.”

  “Did her husband visit her?” Jane said.

  “He went once or twice a week,” the boy said, “to check if she was still alive. He hoped she wasn’t. But somehow, she always was, lying there underneath a bunch of blankets. He could see her shifting restlessly, breathing. So one day, the miner decided he was going to kill his wife. He understood she must be in a state of terrible misery. And if she wouldn’t die right, he knew he had to help her along. He got his shotgun—took it down to the wife’s house in the cave. He walked straight through the door, up to the pile of blankets that was rising and falling.”

  “Yes—” Jane said, waiting.

  “He got his gun ready. He knew he’d have to shoot her quick or he wouldn’t be able to do it at all. Even he wasn’t that bad a man. If he saw her face too long, he might remember she’d worn flowers for him at their wedding. He might remember the first time they’d kissed. He took a big handful of the blanket and yanked it back, ready to pull the trigger. But what he saw underneath was something else. His old wife was already dead, had been for months by the look of things. What had been making the blanket move up and down were animals. They’d made nests in her body—in her hollowed out chest and in her guts. Some of them even had young ones inside her.”

  Jane felt sick. “Who told you a story like that?”

  “No one,” he said. “I picked it up, bits and pieces. It’s the kind of thing that’s known around here.”

  “Well, it’s probably not true,” Jane said. “It’s—I don’t know—it sounds like something that bored, unpleasant people would think up.”

  The boy let his empty soda bottle fall to the grass. Its plastic shone in the sunlight. “I didn’t mean offense,” he said. “You wanted to hear.”

  “It was just a scary story, that’s all,” Jane said. “It’s fine.”

  “The house is still there,” he said. “In the cave.”

  “Now you are making things up.”

  “I can show you.”

  Jane looked at his pale, narrow face. “I don’t think I want to see something like that.

  The boy smoothed his black hair with one hand. “I have to go.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t get to paint the lake today,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow.” He dusted off his worn pants. “Do you care if I drink the rest of your soda? It doesn’t look like you’re going to finish.”

  She handed him her bottle, and without saying thank you, he walked toward the other side of the lake to collect his painting kit. Watching him, Jane wondered if she could ever come back to the lake after hearing such a story as the one he’d told.
<
br />   Jane and Scott watched television again that night. The image was bathed in milk-white static. The woman in the gaudy silk dress handed out dolls to sick children. She gave a sermon on demons. She said it was important never to converse with one. That was how demons gained their power. “Rebuke them,” she said. “Cast them out as soon as they reveal themselves.”

  Scott stood up and turned the television off. He led Jane to the bedroom where they had a sleepy sort of sex.

  The next morning, before Jane was finished with her bowl of cereal, she realized she would, of course, return to the lake. What else did she imagine she’d do with her day? She walked down the wooded path, grabbing at branches and watching the morning light move in the canopy of leaves. She’d put on tennis shoes when normally she would have worn sandals. When she arrived at the shore, she found the boy not painting but sitting on her side of the lake with a canvas in his lap. She realized she’d forgotten to bring a soda for him. He seemed unhappy about this, but only for a moment. He said, “I made a picture for you. To show you it’s real.”

  “A picture?” Jane said.

  The boy turned his canvas toward her and held it so she could see. Toothy faces peered up out of the charcoal black. A human figure lay at the center of a roiling cluster of animals. The figure was crudely rendered, but Jane understood it was meant to be a woman. Hairy creatures curled inside her body. The tiny head of one emerged from her open mouth.

  “She wasn’t the miner’s wife anymore, you see?” the boy said. “She was the mother of the animals by then.”

  The image made Jane’s stomach turn. It was the kind of sickness that required action. She needed to know the boy’s story wasn’t true. “I’ll go with you,” she said, “to the wife’s house in the cave.”

  The boy dropped the painting into the grass. “I knew you would.”

  Suddenly, Jane wondered if she should just take this boy away with her. She could run far from Hollansburg. They could travel south. She’d protect the boy from all the awfulness he’d clearly been subjected to in this place.

  The boy was already pulling her toward his side of the lake.

  Jane allowed herself to be led.