The Birth of Bane

by Richard Heredia

  He must’ve noticed our shock, because he said with an errant chuckle. “Once the house fell under my purview, I hired a caretaker of sorts. Only, he’s a little eccentric.” He said the last sentence behind the back of his hand as if he were telling a secret. “The last time I brought a potential buyer over; we walked in on him and his girlfriend -.”

  “Jess! There are children here!” cautioned my mother. It was more for Valerie’s sake than mine. She was deathly afraid of her only daughter losing her innocence before the proper time, which probably meant sometime during her 40’s.

  My mother’s friend caught himself, straightening his tie as he cleared his throat. “…Um, sorry, about that. It’s just we didn’t expect to see anything in happening in the living room, you know -.”

  “Jess, we get it.” It was a warning. Shut the hell up or I’m gonna box the shit out of your ears.

  “Ok, sure. Yeah,” he mumbled, straightening himself for a second time in as many moments.

  He was about to ring the doorbell when a tall, skinny (nearly emaciated) young man answered the door. He was disheveled to the point of being slovenly. Though it was early afternoon, it appeared as though Jessie’s knock had aroused him from bed. His hair was long, matted, pasted against the sides of his skull. There were dark circles under his eyes and three days’ worth of stubble on his face. He was wearing a worn flannel shirt and torn-up jeans. His feet were bear, dirt-stained as if he’d walked around in that manner for some time without showering. I can’t say he reeked, but there was a pervasive oily smell about him, not quite full-blown body odor, but something close to it. It smacked of something sweet.

  Back then, I didn’t know the smell of an addict.

  “Oh hey, Freddie… How are you doing this fine afternoon?” said Jessie as if it were a joyous occasion.

  Freddie grimace. My mother’s friend was like a bazooka in his sensitive ears. He ran a not-so-clean hand through his hair. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing over buyers,” he demanded testily.

  It was Jessie’s turn to reciprocate. “I did tell you, Freddie. Two days ago, I called you and told you I would be bringing a good friend of mine over to see the house on Saturday. Today is Saturday.”

  Freddie teetered on unsteady feet, running his other hand through his tangled hair. “Really?”

  “Yup. I wouldn’t lie to you, would I?”

  “Naw, I guess not,” replied the musty man before us. “Well, shit man, I wish I’d’ve remembered. I’d’ve cleaned up the place a bit.”

  I could see a formal dining room behind him. The large table was strewn with pizza boxes, Chinese food containers, various wrappers and cups from a myriad of fast food joints. There were as many on the floor.

  And, there were no chairs in sight, which was sort of weird.

  “Don’t worry, Fred, the house is going to need a lot more than a little Spic-n-Span,” cajoled Jessie. Then he recalled we were there and smiled awkwardly. I think he felt he’d said too much.

  Freddie nodded, stepping back, the door opening wider with his retreat.

  My mother laid eyes upon the room beyond, her breath catching in her throat.

  Before us, across the broad expanse of the chamber was the largest, stone and mortar fireplace right out of a British cottage, deep in the country. The thick mahogany mantle, still lustrous despite a heavy coating of grime, added to the overall picture perfectly. Even with my lustful thoughts of my newfound girlfriend swirling in my head, I couldn’t help but appreciate the workmanship, the sheer beauty of it. It was magnificent.

  “Oh my,” whispered my mother as she peered about the large front room to our left, gazing through the windows on that side of the house. The deck and a jumble of trees and other flora was visible beyond.

  Jessie hung back and let us explore a bit, though Valerie stayed by the door, still wary.

  Eli let go of my mother’s hand and began to walk around, a serious expression on his face. He was so cute. To me, he looked like midget appraiser there to assess the value of the property.

  Freddie merely spun in place, his bleary vision barely able to keep up with our languorous movements throughout the room. “You from around here?” I heard him ask my sister, his voice suddenly husky. Maybe his lack of focus had blinded him to the fact she was only fifteen. Or maybe, it hadn’t mattered to him in the least. Maybe fifteen-years-olds were right up his alley. Valerie was a looker, and the slob was definitely looking.

  My mom hadn’t heard. She was too busy peppering her one-time boyfriend with question after question.

  In the end, Valerie hadn’t needed any assistance. She could be the bitch necessary to ward off your average, run-of-the-mill Perv. “You’re serious, right?” she had asked, incredulous.

  “Wha?” was all Freddie cold manage.

  “Whatever,” uttered my sister, spun on her heel and walked out the door to stand overlooking the jungle that was the front yard.

  I shook my head, a half-smile growing upon my face. Even at fifteen, Valerie could put a man in his place in the span of a few seconds.

  “So, Pillar, would you like to see the rest of the house?” asked Jessie.

  My mom nodded, her eyes sparkling like they did when she was enthused over something.

  “Why don’t we start with the second floor and then the attic,” he began, his arm indicating the way.

  It was obvious to me he didn’t want us seeing the any of the desolation left behind by Freddie.

  “Then,” he went on, “we can take a gander at the backyard and the back house.” He smiled. “After that we can hit the various toolsheds and the basement. Sound good?”

  “Lead away, Jess,” answered my mother, her handbag clutched at her stomach, her head like the red orb of a Cylon, forever swaying this way, then that.

  Within the hour, my mother was on the phone with my father. He had liked, more than anything else, the idea that one day the house would make him a ton of money. But, that was typical of the man. Money was something he understood thoroughly. People, his wife, his own children… well, that was something else entirely.

  An hour later, after two large pizzas and a 2-liter bottle of coke had arrived and were devoured, my mom was signing the initial paperwork in order to purchase the house and everything in it.

  I was happy my mother was happy. She deserved it. Only Valerie was completely put-off over living at 1052 Lincoln Drive, but she’d always been a little mule-headed.

  When all the “i’s” had been dotted and all the “t’s” crossed Freddie told Jessie he had to be out of the house within a week. We all sort of felt bad for him, because he had looked flabbergasted. As if he hadn’t considered what us buying the place meant for him.

  He had stalked off incensed, muttering under his breath something about not wanting to have to move back in with his skank of a mom. I hadn’t heard much more. By then, he was already in the master bedroom, most likely rummaging through his meager belongings.

  ~~~~~~~<<< ᴥ >>>~~~~~~~

  Chapter Two: Moving In

  Back in those days escrow wasn’t some wham-bam, cooking-up of paperwork in a matter of fifteen days as it became the norm during the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. In the 80’s, my mother was forced to wait the full ninety days, nearly three months before she was finally given the “Ok” and we were able to move into the grand (…money-pit of a…) house upon the hill.

  My father and mother had gone to walk the property a few times, once he’d returned from his business trip.

  The nature of his work took often took him from us for months at a time, which wasn’t really a bad, all things considered. Whenever he was away just about everything was better. There was no shouting, no throwing things about, no threats and, alas, no tears. When he was gone, we were almost a normal family. My mother didn’t cower, forever walking upon the egg-shells spread about the course of her life by the man who should’ve been taking care of her. She was witty, funny, played tricks on us
kids all the time. She laughed her throaty laugh, told bawdy stories that made Valerie cringe, and me and Eli cackle until our sides hurt. My mother was completely different when my father was away.

  I wish I’d been able to see more of that side of her when I was young. It would’ve been nice to have memories of her vivacity, her thirst for life, before everything happened and my father left us for good. It would’ve been pleasant to have fond recollections of her from the eyes of a much smaller me. Maybe some aspects of my life would’ve been easier. Maybe they wouldn’t. I don’t know. I just think seeing her contented when I was as little as a toddler would’ve been sublime.

  Sometimes, I grow weary of those early remembrances. I’ve come to dislike witnessing the apprehension, the disquiet upon her face, the widening of her eyes, because of the fear behind them. Why did my father have to be so full of hate? Why did he have to vet his frustration upon the rest of us? All any of us wanted was to be loved. We would’ve given anything for that. Our love in return would’ve been a foregone conclusion.

  Often, when I was younger, I’d look up at the ceiling of my bedroom, especially after a particularly good day, and ask God why it couldn’t always be this way. Why did my Dad have to come back? Why couldn’t he stay abroad and just mail home the money we needed to survive? Why return to a family he didn’t care for, a wife he could never appreciate? To me, as a child, it was simple. Why couldn’t life be simple?

  So, he’d gone to see the house at 1052 Lincoln Drive and was immediately pissed off at my mom for roping him into such a horrific ordeal. He had ranted and raved over every single detail that was wrong with the place, refusing to see any of the potential my mother could so easily imagine. After one such visit, he refused to speak to any of us for five days, including Eli, who was only first grader. It didn’t make any sense to me. I couldn’t fathom how it was mine or Val’s or Elijah’s fault we were moving into a big house requiring a great deal of maintenance. What the hell had we done? Shit, Valerie despised the place almost as much as he had. How was punishing us with his silence fair?

  But, that was him. Good ole’ Leonard G. Favor, forever misappropriate, unfailingly inconsistent. I think that shit was written in stone somewhere. It had to be. It was his precise rule-of-thumb, as though he’d read it on some ancient cave drawing in the middle of the Pyrenees and took it for the Word of God.

  It had come down to money, in the end. As I said before, it was the only thing he understood through and through. He had pulled us all into his study, six weeks before we were due to move, made us all sit down as he figured out what the cost of renovating the house. This had been an agonizing ordeal, because when it came to dollars and cents, Leonard never missed a single penny.

  He had grown up dirt poor, slightly malnourished and verbally abused by his mother’s many boyfriends. (I don’t call her my grandmother, because I never knew the woman. She died many years before I was born.) I think because he was often berated and downtrodden as a kid, he was obsessed with making something of himself in order to claw his way out of the barrio. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t particularly adept at learning and having the lesson stick. Though he tried hard, his lack of ability, and his temper, always got in the way.

  He’d never admit it, but it was my mother who corrected his papers. It was my mother who stood up late with him combing through his curriculum, again and again, until he’d retained enough to pass his mid-terms or his final exams. While she stayed home and took care of us, he got his degrees, he got his certifications and now, all the hard work was paying off. Only it was paying off for him and only him. The rest of us were suddenly beneath him, because, by God, he had a degree!

  It used to be a big deal to me until I realized just about everyone and their grandmother had a degree of some sort, so the super-smart man I envisioned turned out to be no more than a windbag, jam-packed with bullshit.

  By the time we were looking to move and he was detailing the cost down to the very last cent, he was an Onsite Corporate Controller for one of the big Hollywood studios. In a nutshell, it meant he was the guy, during the production of any given film, who wrote the checks and made sure all of the day-to-day expenses were paid. That was why he was so often away on business.

  Anyhow, I digress.

  We sat in his study, all four us, fidgeting and hungry until he realized he could make a sizable profit off the house on the hill and then, and only then, did he stand and say, “Ok, we’ll move.”

  Of course, he couldn’t say just it and still be the Leonard Favor we all knew. There was always one more stipulation to be mandated and on that day there was no exception to that unsaid rule.

  “But,” he began, “no one gets attached to the house. We’re only going to stay there until the remodeling is completed. When it is done, were going to put it up for sale. We’ll be out of there faster than any of you can blink. Do you understand?” He looked directly at my mom. “Pillar?”

  Silence.

  We kids shared uncaring glances, shrugging our shoulders. We could’ve cared less. We were hungry. That was all that mattered to us.

  My mother though had a gleam in the corner of her eye, but stayed otherwise silent. I would’ve missed it, if she hadn’t let it slip into a squint, a slight pinching about the eyes. It could’ve been construed as innocuous, but coupled with that gleam, it was anything but. She had glared at him. It was the first time I had ever seen her do anything like it when the subject of her ire was my father. This wasn’t her. She was always so subdued and soft-spoken. Where had this newfound wellspring of backbone come from?

  He had stayed quiet for a bit as well. Then seemed to realize we were all staring back at him. He waved his hands at us. “Get the hell out of here! You’re crowding me!”

  Well, what the fuck, you were the one that held us hostage in the first place! Shit, make up your freakin’ mind, I thought as I rushed out of the room, feeling like I’d just been released from prison.

  That was how things were with my dad – weird.

  *****

  They were about to get even weirder.

  *****

  About a week before the big move, my father got called to cover a movie being filmed in Central America and left my mother in charge with no more than a rising of a single eyebrow. I’m pretty sure he volunteered to go, because, if there was one thing Leonard Favor abhorred, it was manual labor. He’d run from it like a drunk girl from a gang of horny football players.

  In all honesty, though, I don’t think my mom gave a damn. She was walking on air, flittering from one stack of boxes to the next, singing and chirping like some gigantic cockatiel. We all watched her with bemused expressions. We had never seen such optimism and happiness in her. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world, though the move was going to prove difficult. Not only did we have to scrub the rental house we were leaving spotless, we were going to have to do the same thing for our new home as well.

  True to his nature, Freddie had left us a little house-warming gift that needed immediate attention or we were going to have a rat infestation within a few weeks. Three months’ worth of trash, used condoms and various disposable drug paraphernalia would probably attract vampires for all we knew. At least, he hadn’t peed on the walls or stuck boogers in the door locks. A thing we’d seen at one of my aunt’s rentals years before. So there was some solace to be had. Or maybe we were just lucky he wasn’t a very imaginative sort of guy.

  By the second to last day at our old house, we had finished cleaning and packing, and were ready.

  We had started early the following morning, taking a decent-sized load in my mother’s Chrysler LaBaron, consisting mostly of our personal belongings. They were the items we’d be using over the course of next week, which my mother had budgeted as our “move-in” time - clothes, underwear, socks, toiletries and towels – all the necessities to survive seven straight days of work. A solid week of slavery with only one day’s rest before us kids all went back to school. Yeah, we were
cutting it close.

  The rest of our “stuff” was coming with the movers who weren’t expected to arrive on Lincoln Drive until the early afternoon. This gave us around five hours to get the house on the hill in some semblance of order. And boy, did we ever need it.

  As Jessie had told us, months before, the house was large.

  On the ground floor was the formal dining room upon entry with the living room off to the left within which was the great hearth. To the right of the front door, opposite the living room, was the kitchen and beyond that was the enclosed back porch. The porch itself had doors leading to both the front and back yards, so it was technically on the side of the house, but my mother had termed it such and the name had stuck. The stairs to the second floor began there as well. They were a narrow and somewhat curved halfway up, because the passage had to circumvent a crawlspace that had been in place prior to the building of the second floor.

  Further back into the first floor, relative to the front door from left to right, was the sunroom, which was the only way to reach the deck on the north side of the house. This was attained by going through a set of sliding glass doors leading outside. In the front room, there were only windows. The very ones we had gazed out when we’d first seen the property. Attached to the sunroom was the Master Bedroom, a small, squarish hallway leading to the bathroom and another bedroom, nestled in the far southeastern corner of the edifice.

  The second floor was nearly as roomy as the one below it. It had a library/study, a rumpus room complete with game-board carpeting, a bathroom, a linen closet and two more bedrooms. There was also a mini- or secondary master suite with its’ own three-quarter bath and walk-in closet attached. All of it was accessed by an east/west hall branching from the top of the stairs, which turned due north at its’ eastern terminus. From there the hall led to another flight of stairs up to the attic.