The Old House

by Alexie Aaron

  Mia nodded and flipped the lock on the door. She walked over and sat down to compose herself. She heard Burt leave.

  The setting sun caught the stained-glass window, and the glare momentarily blinded her. She felt the warmth of what she thought was the sun upon her face. She opened her eyes and saw the light. She looked around frantically, thinking that Mike had died and was moving on. Instead, two little boys walked out and said, “Mee ah.”

  She looked behind them and saw their parents standing, looking over at her.

  “Thank you, Mee ah,” Timmy said and turned around, stopping only because Jimmy was still staring at Mia.

  Jimmy said, “We won,” and turned heel and skipped over to his parents. The light disappeared.

  “Now that’s something you don’t see every day,” Glenda said from behind Mia.

  Mia turned around and wondered just how much Glenda saw.

  “That is a Ghost Orchid, kiddo,” she said, pointing to the arrangement on the table. She walked over and touched it. “Damn, it’s fake.”

  “How’s Mike?” Mia asked.

  “He’ll live. He remembers being on your back. Now was this a sexual position?”

  Mia almost let loose a string of cuss words, but she remembered where she was. She walked over and informed Glenda, “I had to carry him out of the cellar. I had him on my back.”

  “You saved him. That house imploded, exploded, screwed itself into the ground. There aint nothing left that you and bean pole didn’t carry out of there. What are you doing in here?”

  “It was so nice and peaceful. I was just catching my breath. Reflecting on my life so far.”

  “Mia, we women have a great ability to love, and with this ability comes a wagon full of hurt. But I assure you, it’s worth it. In time, you’ll know.”

  “Thank you, Glenda.”

  “Aham Braham Asmi,” Brian chanted as Ted walked him into the chapel. Brian held his hands out to Mia, and she took him from Ted.

  She walked him over to the flower arrangement and told him, “This is what a Ghost Orchid looks like. One day, we’ll have to find a real one.”

  “Ooh ooh,” Brian said, clapping his hands.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  They squeezed into the cottage’s living room. Mark was there with his grandparents, and the PEEPs were there in force. Orion and Glenda were busy reminiscing about the good old days, and Audrey sat and listened to them, fascinated. Mia walked in after putting Brian down for the night. She walked over to the couch where Ted and Mike had saved her a spot between them. Burt got up and looked around.

  “He’s sitting at the kitchen counter next to Cid,” Mia said.

  Burt nodded his thanks. “I’d like to start this wrap-up meeting of the Old House investigation. I’d like to say that I appreciate how each of you rose to the occasion. It was a tricky investigation in that we couldn’t trust our senses. Was this a good house or a bad one? Did Wyatt kill his family over gold? Let’s hear all the evidence, and hopefully, we will come to a decision. Audrey?”

  Audrey got up and walked over to Mark who handed her his notes. “Mark and I started our research at the library. The librarian found a memoir by a parson. His name, and I’m not joking, is Adolphus Tayberry.”

  “German and Irish?” Ted asked Cid.

  Cid raised his hands.

  “Anyway, Reverend Tayberry liked his position as pastor for the community of farmers here in northwestern Illinois. Here, Earl Wayne had shared his farming methods, and soon the other farmers were supplying Chicago with fruits and vegetables. The pastor lauds Earl as a progressive thinker and Earl’s second wife as a great homemaker.”

  “Second wife?” Orion asked.

  “Yes, the first wife died at childbirth. Wyatt and William had different mothers.”

  Orion looked over at Mia. Mia nodded.

  “The pastor went on to say that the boys were a rambunctious duo together. William was the studious one while Wyatt was the hard worker, toiling with his father until late in the evening on the farm.”

  “That’s a different picture than I got,” Sam admitted.

  “This is just one man’s tale,” Audrey said. “This is his perception of the facts. There was little else of note, according to Mark.”

  Mark smiled.

  “Now, as some of you know, Mia found a few things wrapped in an oilcloth under the floorboards of the attic. Inside, Mark and I found these drawings.” Audrey handed several pictures of the drawings for the group to pass around. “They were crayon and pencil drawings of the house. Notice how the windows appear to be eyes and the door a mouth? It isn’t unusual for children to see houses and cars as living things, but Mark and I thought it strange that every picture was of the house, and it always appeared to be hungry.”

  “Chills,” Mia said. Ted rubbed her arms. Mike handed her the afghan to cover up with.

  “The journal wasn’t William’s or Marilee’s. It was Earl’s.”

  “Whoa,” Mia said. “Why would the journal be hidden with the drawings?”

  “It’s because it tells where the gold ended up.”

  Everyone sat at the edge of their seats.

  “Earl wrote about building the house. He wasn’t a descriptive writer. For example…” Audrey read:

  Bought 100 acres squeezed between four lakes. Won’t have to worry about water.

  May having trouble with baby. May died. Wyatt with wet nurse.

  House raising going well.

  Good crop.

  Married Mary, she already with child. Child not mine.

  “Cuckhold?” Mike asked.

  “He could have known and married her anyway. He needed a mother for Wyatt,” Mia said.

  “He doesn’t say, and throughout the journal, he refers to William and Wyatt as brothers,” Audrey told them.

  “Gold?” Mike prodded.

  “The week before Earl died, he penned:”

  Mary died. Think house killed her.

  Found exorcist. Paid him in coin.

  Exorcist found in well. Fear for William.

  “And that’s all he wrote,” Audrey said.

  “We think that the house tricked the priest,” Mark said.

  “Like me,” Murphy voiced.

  “So at this point, the two of you are thinking…”

  “The house is evil,” Mark said. “But why?”

  Audrey picked up a plastic bin and lifted the lid. “This is the missing manuscript. It is called Strawberry Wine because it’s all about…”

  “Making wine,” Mark filled in. “It’s a fiction story about a group of Italian immigrants who bring with them Grandma’s recipe on making wine out of wild strawberries.”

  “Strawberries grew wild in Italy. They have found references that go back to 234 BC,” Cid told them.

  “Good to know,” Audrey said indulgently. “In this story, they talk more about the difficulties in growing them en masse. This would be the crossed species developed from the white and the red,” she explained. “William is very clever and winds his tale around what we suspect are truths. The immigrant’s son wants so much to succeed that he takes inside him a wizard. Because of this wizard, the man’s wife dies giving birth to his son. The wizard helps to build the winery, and soon, the man takes another wife and raises her son as his own, fearing that any more sons coming from him will endanger the woman he has fallen in love with.”

  Orion and Mia locked eyes. She nodded.

  “In the demon world, one cannot have children with a human woman,” Orion told them. “The woman will not survive the birth. I suspect the wizard was in fact a demon, and Wyatt’s mother paid the price.”

  “Scary,” Mark said.

  “Sam and Edie, if you think this subject is too mature for Mark, we can discuss it another time?” Mia asked.

  “No, he is a smart child. I’m not sure his mother would approve, but we have always been honest with him about reproduction,” Sam said.

  “It’s interesting that Wi
lliam knew about the family secret. Maybe his father told him or his mother…” Audrey trailed off.

  “Wyatt is under the impression that his father sacrificed William and that the house killed the family,” Mia said.

  “Wyatt’s alive?” Sam questioned.

  “Very much so.”

  “Is he a demon?” Mark asked, wide-eyed.

  “He has some things in common with demons,” Mia hedged. “He loved his brother and felt the loss of the family strongly. He tore the house apart in vengeance, not looking for gold,” Mia explained.

  “In Strawberry Wine, the winemaker sets aside a gold coin to insure a good harvest. After thirty years, the payment is due. In the book, the wizard walks away with the money. The family lives happily ever after. Or, that is the assumption the writer wants us to make,” Audrey explained.

  “I’d like to read that,” Cid requested. Audrey put the lid on the box and handed it to him.

  “We have Audrey and Mark’s research, so now, let’s look at the investigation,” Burt said. “From the start, the house exhibited the ability to produce individual hallucinations. Mark seems to be the only one immune. I saw Mia and Mike as children. Mia saw the room fully furnished, and Mike relived a beach memory. Glenda enjoyed drinking tea in a fully-operational kitchen. I was filming the living area when it slowly took me back in time to when the house was whole. I was enticed into a game of hide and seek with Timmy and Jimmy. I remember going up the stairs, and then I experienced a more personal memory.”

  “All of those seem lovely,” Edie remarked. “As if the house was giving you a gift.”

  “While the house was giving, it was taking our energy. It was hungry. I believe, had we all gone in at once, we would have never exited alive,” Mia said.

  Mike took the afghan from her, feeling the chill her words brought.

  “Inside the house was also a very negative being. It was sent there to influence Mark,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Mark asked.

  “How did you feel after you walked by that house?” Mia asked.

  “I was a bit mad. Sometimes I would snap at my gran when I came home. I had horrible dreams. Until you guys came, I was very angry inside.”

  “Is this his normal behavior?” Mia asked Edie and Sam.

  “No, but we thought he was missing his mother and upset about his father.”

  “Mark, you see, this thing also made me mad when it touched me. I was bitchier than normal, and I was so angry that I couldn’t think straight. Fortunately for me, Mike remembered that I still had a safe word implanted in my mind. When he said it, the being lost its grip on me.”

  “What happened to it?” Mark asked.

  “I took it home,” Mia said. “It needed to go home. At this point, I thought that the house was protecting you from it. I’m sorry, I was wrong.”

  “Were the ghosts inside evil?” Edie asked.

  “No. They did have to play along, but they gave us clues that all wasn’t right. I missed them,” Mia said.

  “We all missed them,” Glenda said. “The man said that he was tired and needed rest. It was early in the day. No son of a farmer would be tuckered out at ten.”

  “The boys exchanging the jacks for knucklebones. They were trying to send us a message that things were not what they seemed,” Mike said.

  “Isn’t hindsight great?” Burt said. “We all can look back at times in our lives, see the clues and rue that we didn’t pay enough attention to see what was truly valuable at the time and what wasn’t.”

  “The tornado destroyed the house. What happened to the Waynes?” Sam asked.

  Burt looked over at Mia.

  “I saw them in the light. The boys taunted me, told me that ‘they won,’ which I think means that they survived the house.”

  “Why was the house evil?” Edie asked.

  “It wasn’t in the beginning,” “Mia said. “It was simply trying to survive. It was built from the wood taken from trees on the property, trees that grew along a very powerful line. Perhaps the influence of wizards didn’t help either. It became a living thing, and it wanted to survive. It enslaved the Waynes and would have done the same to you, Mark. You were already making plans to put aside your life in order to save the house.”

  “Yes, all I could think was that the house needed me. That I had to save it at all costs.”

  “It sensed your worth and saw an ally,” Mike said.

  “So, let’s go back to our original questions. Was this a good house or a bad one? And did Wyatt kill his family over gold?” Burt asked.

  “Bad one,” Mark said and looked around the room at the people agreeing with him.

  “Wyatt did not kill his family,” Mia said. “The gold is at the bottom of that well.”

  “Where it can stay,” Mark declared.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Mia moved over to Glen Leighton’s bedside and introduced herself. “I’m Mia Martin. Your son Mark has asked me to visit you. He means a lot to us, and we would like to establish a way of communicating between the two of you. Right now, I’m going to try to establish a direct link with you. If you are afraid or wish me to leave, close your eyes now.”

  Mia waited. The man blinked but maintained his gaze on Mia. She took off both of her gloves, grasped his hand with her right hand, and closed her eyes.

  She moved into an echoing, empty hall. She was disappointed and turned to leave when Glen walked in. He was dressed in his National Guard uniform. Mia moved forward and waited.

  “How is my son?” he asked evenly.

  “He is worried about you. Otherwise, he is a very smart, gifted and supportive boy. Your wife is working very hard to manage all of this. Not much time for Mark, and he is lonely.”

  Glen looked over at her blandly.

  “Can you show me where the wall is?” Mia asked.

  “I’m sorry, what are you talking about?” he asked.

  “I sense a wall of fear has been built somewhere. It’s stopping you from reaching us. My husband and his friend Cid have built a device that will allow you to select a series of things that you can use to have a conversation with your son. They have taken your voice from some old videos and programmed the computer to respond in your voice. Mark can select things for you to choose, so you can speak less generically to each other. You’ll use your pupils to activate each response. You’ll control your pupils with your emotions. But we can’t seem to get it to work. The only emotion they can capture is fear and apathy. I’d like to see if I can help you to fix things on this side.”

  “It sounds feasible. How can I help you?”

  “Take me through your memories. I’m hoping I will find the blockage there.”

  “Walk with me. I’m sorry in advance. I don’t think you will like what you will see.”

  Mia nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

  Ted watched his wife. She reached a hand behind her, and Ted grasped it. He was going to be her tether to this world just in case she got lost.

  Cid was outside the room explaining the machine they had built to Sarah Leighton.

  “It’s geared exclusively to Mark. He can select topics of conversation that, hopefully, Glen can respond to. If we’re successful, we will measure you so you can communicate too.”

  “Why are you doing all of this?”

  “Mark’s a friend,” Cid said simply.

  “Thank you. I hope, for both of their sakes, it works.”

  Mia walked into Glen’s memory hall. Inside, there was one horror-filled day that repeated over and over again. Mia watched as the captain arrived at the consulate office. There were reports to file and phone calls to make. Glen got up and walked over to help his aide with a problem. He was leaning over the coworker’s desk when the blast went off. For a moment, it was very disorienting as Mia tumbled and was buried with Glen.

  Mia gripped Ted’s hand tightly, and he rubbed his thumb along the top of her hand. She lessened the hold, took a deep breath, and experienc
ed the pain and then the nothingness. “Glen!” she called, feeling her way along the polished malachite tunnel she found herself in. She felt a presence in front of her. They were moving quickly through the tunnel. As the tunnel opened up, she moved beside the man. “Why malachite?” she asked.

  “It’s part of a memory, I can grasp and hold on to,” he said, his eyes filled with fear.

  Mia and he traversed the tunnel until they found themselves back in the hall.

  “I’m sorry, but there isn’t anything else,” he explained. “I only have apathy and fear to draw from.”

  “I understand.”

  Mia shook his hand and said that she would return.

  “Tell Mark that I love him and his mother,” Glen said.

  Mia smiled and thought to herself, “Love is so near the surface, I can almost see it.”

  Mia opened her eyes and opened her hand. She turned and put her head on Ted’s shoulder a moment. “Just let me smell you.”

  “Smell me?” Ted asked, amused. “Glad I showered.”

  Mia rubbed his back a moment before pulling away. “There is only apathy and fear right now for you to work with. Before we go back in, I need to find out what malachite has to do with the captain.”

  They walked outside and over to Mark and his mother.

  “What does malachite have to do with Glen?” Mia asked Sarah.

  She smiled and almost laughed. “We were going to order some for Mark. It’s supposed to protect you from negative entities.” She looked at Mia. “You may think that we’re crazy, but we always felt that Mark was special, and a gypsy woman at a carnival told us to be on the lookout for negative influences. I thought she was just trying to sell us some crystals. I think in the last conversation I had with Glen, we were remembering the gypsy. He said he had found a place to get some malachite cheap.”

  “Why?” Mark asked Mia. “Why is this important?”