by Maynard Sims
***
I’d been at work. Loans officer at the time. What it meant was I sat at the front of the office and talked to people who wanted to borrow money for so many different reasons. Some I could help, but many were hopeless cases who couldn’t help themselves. Ruth came in one lunchtime, and she caught me glancing at my watch.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Were you just off to lunch?’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘Did you want to ask about a loan?’
She looked at the chair on the customer side of the desk, and I indicated that she should sit, please.
I pulled out my pen and positioned the notepad I used mid-center in front of me.
‘What was it I can help you with?’
‘A loan.’
‘Well, yes, I… oh, I see, you’re being funny.’
‘Trying to, but I’m nervous. Sorry.’
I chuckled inside; she was nice.
‘No, it’s fine. The sign says ‘Loans Officer’, so of course you want to talk about a loan.’
‘It’s for my mother’s business…’
‘Oh, right, well in that case, perhaps she should be here?’
‘She can’t be.’ Then she started to cry.
I hesitated for too long, but I had never known what to do when a woman cries. Comfort them was the obvious response, but I’d never been very good at that. This time, and I still don’t know why, I found myself knowing just what to do.
I stood and went around to her side of the desk and dropped to my haunches. Her hands were placed neatly on the top of the desk and I noticed her fingernails were short but painted a rich scarlet. I leaned into her, placed my arms around her shoulders, and hugged her. I saw colleagues watching me, and I knew office gossip would be about Steve Kearney acting so out of character. I didn’t care. At that moment, the only people that mattered were me and this crying woman. I realized later that the positions should have been reversed, and I should have placed her first in my thoughts, but I would always find that hard to do, with anyone.
She smelled good, a faint perfume that didn’t assault the senses. She felt good too, with her slim body molded to mine, and vibrated tenderly as her tears flowed. I pulled a tissue from my pocket, and when I estimated that I had probably better stop holding her, I offered it to her.
She took it and dabbed at her eyes. ‘Thanks. I don’t know what you’ll think of me.’
I thought she was lovely.
‘Not at all. Though I don’t usually reduce my clients to tears until I turn them down.’
It was a weak joke, but it broke the ice, and she smiled, wan but real. ‘My mother died last week. She ran a gift shop near the harbor. I want the loan to keep it open. The lease is due; I can’t let it close, she loved that shop.’
My legs were starting to cramp, and so I stood. She did, as well.
‘Perhaps I’d better come back another time? When I can compose myself.’
I shook my head. ‘No. Now is as good a time as any. I’m really sorry to hear about your mother. I lied to you earlier. It is my lunch break. Come on.’ I took her elbow. ‘Let’s talk about it over something to eat.’
I took her to lunch, and out of nowhere I became good company. The effect she had on me was startling. We talked about the possibility of a loan, although I had already decided I would lend her the money. We stayed far longer than my allotted hour, and I got a dressing-down when I got back, but I didn’t care. When we were in the café there was no one else there, so far as I was concerned. My whole world was wrapped up in her. I had never believed in love at first sight, or in love much at all, to be frank, but as I sat in my apartment that night I knew I had to see her again.
We became closer as the weeks went by, and within three months we had moved in together. We talked about everything. I told her about my ‘condition’; even now it sounds strange to label it. She understood, and made allowances as my initial emotions at meeting her faded back into some semblance of obsessive behavior.
I knew she was the one for me when I told her about the house. I told her it all – well, as much as I thought she could handle, and she listened and she comforted. Which was why it seemed so odd to me that she might suggest we visit it on the trip. Maybe she was merely curious about seeing a place that had affected me so much, maybe she wanted to share that experience to be closer to me. She might have thought it would be cathartic in some way, for me to go back. I don’t know; I didn’t ask her then, and of course I can’t now.
We walked up Main Street and along Seaview Street until we came to the sandy beach. We took off our shoes, weren’t wearing socks, and stood in the sea. The day was warm, windy, but great weather for walking, even sitting, on the beach.
‘Look,’ Ruth said. ‘Seals.’
And sure enough, there were about a dozen grey seals swimming up and down just off the shoreline. There was a sandy bank a little way out and some of them sneaked up on there to enjoy the sun.
‘There’s a lighthouse over there,’ I said.
‘Looks a bit far. Why don’t we walk back and have a drink at that bar?’
So that’s what we did. We sat by the open window and watched the world of Chatham go by. Not a care in the world, people would have thought, if they had taken the trouble to notice us.
I sipped my Sam Adams and had just put the glass down when Ruth said, ‘I looked it up on the map. It would only take about half an hour.’
‘What would?’ As if I didn’t know.
‘It might make things easier for you,’ she said. ‘Seeing it now, now you’re a grown man. See that it’s just a house. That it can’t hurt you.’
Just a house. She didn’t understand me after all.
‘I suppose so.’
‘I’ll be with you. You won’t be alone. If it’s too much once we’re there, we’ll leave. I just think you’ll benefit from it.’
We walked back to the inn and got in the car. I didn’t need a map or GPS; I knew where to go.
As an only child of parents who had me relatively late in life, I had to settle for more time on my own than might have been thought healthy by psychologists. My parents had a decent house, set back from the road in the woods. There were bear to be seen occasionally, and deer, as well as rabbits, raccoons, and all manner of snakes.
Our house was well kept, my father tending to the fabric of the wooden building, and the gardens, and my mother keeping the interior neat and clean, the same as she managed with me. Dad worked in the nearby town as a chef, so his hours were what would be called unsocial these days, but then was just called working hard to feed your family. Mum looked after the house and took in washing and ironing, which she did while singing softly. It was a happy house, and as a young boy I was as free as a bird. School was a bus ride away and that was okay, as it meant seeing different people and places.
When I was home, afternoons, evenings and weekends, I had the whole woods to explore. I made the most of the freedom. There wasn’t a tree I hadn’t climbed by the time I was six, or a stream I hadn’t waded across, or lake I hadn’t swum. The fields were my playground, and if it seems a lonely existence now, looking back, I wasn’t aware of being lonely, not then. I was too wrapped up in the thrills of finding new things to do every day. Spiders’ webs the size of small cars spun in the tops of the trees, baby animals waiting for their mothers to return with food, fish waiting to be hooked.
Inevitably, my searches for adventure took me further and further into a wider arena as I grew. I was able to walk longer distances, navigate rougher terrain. I’d had plenty of spills, as young boys do. Scarred knees, bruised elbows, cuts and a one-time concussion were battle injuries that I wore with pride. The thirst for new places to explore took me eventually to the house.
The woods were dense in some places, and although there were tracks meandering through the trees, there was only the one truly passable road, and even that became hazardous when the rains came. I found the house by chance.
It was a Sunday, and I’d managed to get out of accompanying my parents to church by the simple method of hiding when they called for me. I saw them leave in the red pick-up truck and knew that when they got back I would be reprimanded, but for now the call of the sun-drenched woods was too great. I had palaces to find and dragons to slay.
The house had never been a palace, that much was obvious. It sagged, as if the heat of the sun had borne down on it and shoved its center down as far as it could get pushed. The door hung open: inviting, I thought at the time. The wood panels on the walls had once been painted a blue color, but that was long since faded, like a jaundiced eye staring out the window of an old person’s care home. Memories that could be brought to mind weren’t necessarily the ones that needed to be recalled.
There was glass in some of the windows, and one or two panes were undamaged, though they were so dirty it was hard to see where wall stopped and window began. The roof was all but caved in, and there was vegetation growing in patches on it. The front garden was overgrown with fern and thistle, vines slouching up the trees that stood sentinel at the corners of the plot.
There was a tinder path that led from the woods to the front door, and I started along it. I thought the house looked wonderful.
The nearer I got, the more aware I became of the sound. It was as if someone was whispering to me. I couldn’t hear any words, and I couldn’t have said it was a person speaking, but there was a definite susurration that slowed my advance a little. I wasn’t an imaginative child, despite living for much of my time inside my own head. I suppose I was too practical to be bothered with things that I couldn’t see or touch. I soon shook off the feeling of unquiet that had started to curdle in my stomach. There was too much to be seen and done here to be concerned about anything.
There was rustling in the undergrowth beside me as I went along the path, but the noise was small, and I supposed the animals causing them were small as well, and as such weren’t a threat. The front door creaked when I took hold of it. It resisted, but not much. As I pulled it to try and widen it further, it shouted at the hinges and fell back inside the house with an explosion of dust and creepers. I took that as an invitation.
The front hall was short and narrow, wooden flooring scratched and stained with what looked like grape juice, though long since faded and soaked into the wood. On one side was a pinched kitchen. It smelled bad in there, so I decided to explore quickly and get out as quickly as I could. There was a big generator in one corner, which must have supplied the power to the house when people lived here. Did anyone live here? I’d been in the vicinity all my life and I’d never heard about this place. Around here, everyone knew one another, their business and their failings.
As I left the kitchen and headed across the hall, I heard another sound. Not whispering this time, but a low hum. It was as if the refrigerator was working. I looked back into the dank kitchen and saw the fridge, an old Maytag model. Its green light was on. I’d checked the generator and it was as cold as the ice of January.
I hesitated. I wanted to open the fridge and see what was inside. Was I scared? Apprehensive, that’s for sure. I was nine; what did fear mean to me? I took three long steps and marched back inside the cramped room. I stood in front of the big old machine and took hold of the handle. Before I pulled it open, I looked behind me. For a moment it seemed as if the gardens outside were well-tended, not the jungle I’d seen. Then I blinked, and the mess of vine and overgrown shrubs came rushing back.
The handle was stiff, but with a yank and a tug it opened. The interior light came on and I could still hear the low hum of the motor. Inside were rows and rows of jars. In each jar was a black, shrivelled something. I couldn’t tell what they were, and some were bigger than others. Some looked as if they’d rotted, while some were fresher, retaining a semblance of shape, although I still couldn’t tell what the shapes were. I reached my hand in, and then the light inside went out. My fingers had half gripped one of the jars on the bottom shelf, but it slipped out of my grasp, my fumbling fingers surprised by the sudden darkness inside the fridge. The jar toppled, and even though I saw it, I was too late. It fell off the shelf and crashed to the floor.
I ran out of the room. When I looked back inside, from the safety of the dust-covered hall, the glass was spread out like tears on the grimy floor. The black thing that had been inside the jar was wriggling as if it was alive. It squeezed beneath the refrigerator, which wasn’t humming now.
The next room was what seemed to be the living room. There was a broken couch pulled away from one wall, a table near the window, and two wooden high-backed chairs around it, as if waiting for a meal to be served. The room was filthy: stains rampaged across the bleached walls; cracks echoed out over the wooden floor. There was a book on the floor, the spine facing up, with the pages splayed out in a vee. I picked it up.
The pages were blank. There was no title or any writing at all on the cover. Perhaps it was a notebook. I became aware of the breathing before I saw anyone. It was behind me. At first I used the tactic I employed when I got the night-terrors – I ignored them, and hoped they’d go away; when that failed, I covered my head with the blankets and whistled. I couldn’t cover my head now, but I could whistle. Why I chose “All Things Bright And Beautiful”, I can’t say, though perhaps it was a nod to where my parents were, and I wished they were here with me.
The breathing was almost a wheeze, like the sound an old person with a bad chest makes when they struggle to move. It wasn’t getting louder, or closer, but it was in the room with me. I had to do something. I glanced at the window, but it was still half closed with glass, and I wasn’t going to try and jump through that. The only other way out was back through the doorway. That meant turning around.
I did it quickly, although it seemed as if I was in slow motion. There was a shadow on the couch that I was sure hadn’t been there before. It looked like a bucket of black liquid had been tossed onto the material, staining it into a vague, man-like shape. That was where the breathing was coming from. I stared at the figure, because the more I looked at it the more it seemed to be the figure of a fat old man, and I was certain that a mouth opened, and it was from the slack jaws that the breathing was coming out. It sounded like a death rattle to me, though I’d only ever seen one living creature die, and that was a deer hit by a truck, and it had made more of a mewing noise.
As I stared, so it seemed to me that the shape was getting fuller. It looked as if the chest was rising and falling. Then I heard footsteps on the wooden boards above me. I was reluctant to tear my eyes away from the couch-creature, but I instinctively glanced upwards and saw dust dropping like snowflakes from the ceiling. Whoever was up there had a heavy tread.
When I looked back at the couch, there was nothing there. Except the couch was brand new, clean, flowery-patterned material. My eyes roamed about the room. The walls were fresh wood; pictures encased in frames hung from nails. There were curtains at the gleaming windows, and on the pristine tables was laid out a meal for two people, with steam rising from meat on the plates, and a glass of water at each setting.
I ran to the doorway. I could hear voices upstairs, a man and a woman; they were arguing, but they seemed tired, with little appetite for a fight. In the kitchen, the door to the refrigerator was wide open, and black, crawling things were slithering over the edges of the shelves and plopping onto the floor. There was a sound rising up from them that I can’t describe even now.
I pushed open the front door, and it swung easily on well-oiled hinges. The gardens were a riot of well-planted color, but I was blind to their beauty as I plunged through the grasping branches of the trees and ran for home as fast as I could.
By the time I got there my parents were back, and I could see the anger on my dad’s face about me missing church, but when he saw me, his words held. My mum gathered me up in her arms and squeezed her love into me.
‘What is it, son?’ Dad said.
I couldn’t talk, not then, and not for a while. Mum cradled me as long as I needed her to, and I breathed in her comfort. She patted my head and smoothed my sweat-soaked hair. I felt my dad stroking my back.
I tried to take my dad to find the house, but we never did, and I can’t say I was sorry. Dad asked around, and had long talks with the man in town who ran the historical society, who kept all kinds of old records about people around here from years ago. He scratched his head and searched his pages for mention of an isolated house in the woods, but he couldn’t come up with any references.
‘Of course, I only go back so far. Since the town was established, really. So any early settlers, travelling people, anyone before it got civilized out here, well, they just won’t be here. They might as well not have existed.’
***
I took Ruth back to my hometown first, and as we drove through the downbeat main street, I pointed out places where I’d gone when I lived here. There was an ice cream parlor where that car rental place is now, that beauty salon used to be a deli, memories and changes. The ever-shifting tides of past lives.
‘Shall we stop over at your old house?’ she said.
My parents were buried in the town cemetery, so we stopped there first and laid flowers we’d bought at a gas station. It wasn’t much, but it was the first time I’d been back for a long time, and so I hoped they’d be grateful.
From there we went to the old house. It had been given a new lease of life by the present owners, and the two large cars in the driveway were testament to the prosperity that some people enjoyed in these parts. The house was well cared for, and I was pleased about that.
‘We don’t have to look for the other house,’ I said.
‘We’ve come this far,’ she said.
‘We’d have to park the car and walk through the woods. I’m not even sure I’d be able to find it.’
I was lying, because I knew exactly where it was. Just as I’d known when I led Dad astray in the woods when we went out looking. He was determined to find it, and I was equally adamant that we wouldn’t, except I never told him that.