by Jac Jemc
“So let’s sell it,” I say, as if it were an easy thing to do. “Let’s rent an apartment and get out of there until someone wants to take it off our hands.”
“Don’t you think we got such a good deal on it because it’s a hard house to sell? The bank owned it for years.”
“So, let’s make it our project. We’ll fix it up. Install new plaster in the basement to get rid of that stain. Replace all those old windows. We could put new cabinets in the kitchen. We probably need to stay in the house while we do it, but it’ll be over quickly. We’ll be free.”
“You make it sound so simple, James, but I really don’t think it is.”
“Maybe we can make it easy. Maybe we’re part of the problem. Maybe we’re letting ourselves believe it’s out of our control.”
“If that’s the case, then we should stay and stop being so paranoid.” Julie is always reading into what I say.
“No, we know we want to get rid of the house. Let’s do it. Maybe we can try to think more rationally if the situation is temporary, though. We don’t have to let it get to us.”
Julie looks skeptical and then notices I am still in my T-shirt and shorts. “Aren’t you changing?”
“Yes.” I jump up. I pull my shirt out of my bag.
“Ready, ladies?” Connie calls from outside the door.
“Uno momento por favor!” I shout.
Julie grabs her purse. She squeezes out. “What’s this place called?” I hear her ask Connie.
“Mataviejitas. That’s what they call their margarita.”
Julie laughs.
I emerge. “Mataviejitas? Accessing my high school Spanish … beep boop bop … Old Lady Killer? Is that right?”
I catch the grimace on Connie’s face as I start down the stairs.
“I think so. Too grim? At least it’s not Old Man Killer.”
Julie winces.
Connie asks, “Do you want to go somewhere else? There’s a bar in the other direction that serves tapas.”
“Don’t be silly. I’d like to take my old ladies to meet their maker. How do I look?” At the bottom of the stairs, I do a sloppy spin. I catch myself on the banister.
Connie’s eyes go wide. “Very smooth. Maybe you skip the next round, pal.”
I bow deeply.
Julie rubs my back. “You look very handsome, James. You could have given your hair a comb, but this is definitely an improvement.”
“I can brush my hair! I’ll be back down in two shakes. Why don’t you ladies get a head start? I’ll catch up.”
Julie shoots me a look. She feels guilty for having made this request. She’s not stopping me, though.
When I appear at the front door a minute later, they’ve only made it to the sidewalk. Connie says, “Let’s skedaddle. I don’t want to have to wait for a table.”
“Connie, don’t I need to lock this?” I ask.
“Nah, I don’t usually.”
“Live dangerously,” I say. Connie’s Christmas tree lies on the parkway waiting to be picked up. “Trash service is no good over here, huh?”
“Friends, that had clearly been in my house for over five months, and I would like to thank you both for staying here because otherwise it would have stuck around until next Christmas.”
We walk along a park dense with trees. We can see through to a clearing with a huge playground. No children play on the slides, swings, monkey bars. A couple of mothers with strollers are planted beneath a huge tree. They stare up. “Come down now,” one calls. Whatever is in that tree doesn’t respond.
“Wait up, ladies!” I shout. I jog ahead. I squeeze both their shoulders.
“Ah!” Julie grunts. Her hand goes to her neck.
“Come on, I didn’t grab it that hard!”
She pulls back the corner of her sweater. The edge of another bruise is already feathering into view.
63
AT THE END of the meal, Connie insists on examining the new bruise, asks me to summarize the latest results from the doctors, which amount to not much insight at all, and then counters, “I think you should get a second opinion.”
“I know and I will.” I reach over to clasp James’s hand for a moment before excusing myself to go to the bathroom.
I still feel followed, as if instead of the house’s being haunted, the haunting has crawled into me, and I want to turn the tale as James had said, so that I believe both that we are lucky and that nothing matters, but it’s so hard not to believe myself. I wash my hands and I try to stare behind my eyes into the mirror, and I check all the other stalls, sure I’m not alone, but it’s just me in there.
I navigate back to the table. “Are we about ready?”
We pay the bill and head out. The small mass of us shifts as we walk. When lawns border the sidewalk, James walks in the grass beside Connie and me. When the buildings and fences crowd in, he falls behind. When we pass someone, we form a single-file line and then reswarm.
On Connie’s block, I say, “Have you noticed that return trips always take less time? Like didn’t the walk home feel so much shorter than the walk to the restaurant?”
“It’s all about perception,” James says. “We were hungry. You and I weren’t sure of where we were going. Now, we’re full and drunk. We know the way.”
“I know. I didn’t think that it actually took less time,” I say. “But it feels like it does. Are you guys up for watching a movie tonight?”
“Sure.” Connie pushes open the door. “Whatever you want, chickadees.”
She flips on the light and we see it right away. The wall of her front hallway is coated in a childlike scrawl. Circles and marks come together to make faces forming a column of eyes, nose, mouth, followed by another nose beneath and a set of eyes below that, then a nose, a mouth. A correctly oriented face followed by an inversion of that face, and again.
Connie’s brow furrows. She turns to James and says the obvious. “What is this?”
“What do you mean? I didn’t do that,” James says.
My breathing becomes quick, and I find the sofa to sit down. “It has to be,” I say. I feel as if I might throw up or pass out. I hear the ringing drone, but I’m not in the house so I tell myself it’s in my head.
James sits down beside me, his head in his hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“It’s like that drawing in your bedroom. Why are you doing it, James? You did this before we went to dinner? Why? You fucked up my wall,” Connie says.
James stands and snaps at Connie, “I don’t make those drawings in our house, Connie, and I didn’t make this one either. Jesus Christ!” He slams back down on the cushion beside me, and my stomach jerks.
Connie says, “I really do hope that’s true. I invited you here. I hope you’re not fucking with me, because that would be sick, James. If it’s not you, then I’m phoning the police. Last chance to own up.” She waits a moment, but James says nothing. “Okay … Shit,” she says as if she wishes it were James who did it. “Fuck, that means someone was in my house?” She lets out a frustrated cry and punches a number into her phone, heading for the kitchen.
“We’re doomed,” I say to James. “Whatever this thing is, it’s inside of us now. We can’t shake it.”
James refuses to respond. He takes out his own phone and goes to the wall to take pictures. I watch him and wish he’d say something, but his anger has stuffed him so full, the words can’t get out. Finally, the sobs pulse out of me, like an artery opened. I pull myself into a ball and hide my face in the corner of Connie’s couch, squeezing a pillow with all my might.
Connie returns to the living room. “The police said they’ll be over to take a look.” She doesn’t comfort me or wait for me to stop crying. “I’m sorry, guys. I can’t stay here tonight. I’m going to call my cousin to see if I can go there.”
“I’m so sorry,” I wrench out through uneven breaths. “We’re going.” I stop myself. “Or we can stay until the police get here if you want.”
&nbs
p; “Stay.” I look up at her. I don’t understand how she’s able to be so calm. Rather than fear or anger, I see the confusion in her face, a lack of understanding, and it’s clear that Connie hadn’t believed until now. Connie had listened to my stories, but she thought none of it could be as real as I said. “What the fuck,” she keeps exhaling on repeat. She still thinks she might find an answer.
64
CONNIE FROWNS WHILE we wait for the police to arrive. Two patrolmen show up, but one is the cop with the furrow of scar down his cheek. He catches sight of me on the couch. “You’re the neighbors of that missing guy.”
“That’s right,” I say, weary.
“What are you doing here?”
Julie senses hostility. She stands, trying to protect me. “We were staying with Connie for the night.”
“Is that right? Your husband really attracts trouble, huh?” He winks at Julie. “Maybe time for an upgrade.”
I look for a wedding ring. I don’t find one. “I think that’s enough, Officer,” I say, stepping forward.
He holds a hand up. “It’s all in good fun.” He turns back to his partner. They take photos. They write down the chain of events as Connie relays them. I wait for Connie to mention the drawings in our home. She keeps silent on this front, though.
“Always best to lock your house, Ms. Abbatacola,” the officer reminds her.
“Lesson learned.” Connie bites her upper lip. She holds the door open. The cops exit. When she shuts the door, she triple-checks the lock and the dead bolt.
We exchange apologies again.
“I want to get out of here. I’m sorry to kick you out.” Our bags sit by the door. I don’t know when Connie retrieved them.
“Please don’t apologize,” Julie says. “Clearly, we’re to blame.”
We drive the short distance home. I feel the dread crowd between us.
I go inside. Julie pulls out glasses. She runs the tap. “The not knowing is paralyzing.”
She sits down at the table with me. She takes a sip. I see blossoms of algae floating in the water. A scummy layer coats the glass. Julie gags. She runs to the sink. She throws up what she’s just swallowed. “What was that?” she gasps. “What did I drink?”
I stand back. I inspect Julie’s glass. “It looked normal before you drank out of it.”
Julie freezes. I can tell she’s searching her brain for something. “Bad behavior heralds ruin,” Julie whispers. I ask her to repeat herself. “Bad behavior heralds ruin. I’ve been reading up on hauntings. If a spirit knows you’ve been doing bad things, they’ll have a harder time leaving you alone. They want your bad energy out of their space.”
“Oh my God. You’re reading a book about ghosts like it’s fact?”
“We’re going to make lists,” Julie says. “Of all the bad we’ve done and all the bad this house has done back to us. We’re going to track this thing. We’re going to hunt it down, intrigue it, and rip it out of here.”
Julie starts taping pieces of paper to the wall. She sticks a black stripe of gaff tape through the middle of the sheets. Two rows. “I’ll write all the ways I’ve screwed up above the tape. You write yours below, and in the second row, we’ll write all of the weird shit that’s happened to us or that we’ve seen or heard or felt.”
She hands me a permanent marker. She starts writing.
“I don’t think I can keep straight what’s happened to you or me. At this point, my experiences are yours.”
“Write that down.” Julie turns back to the wall. She scribbles furiously.
65
WE ARE SILENT, recording all of our sins and grievances, until I look back to see what James writes and I freeze. James is scrawling, like he thinks he’s writing something, but all I see are wavy lines of nonsensical script.
“James!” He pauses and looks at me, tucks his top lip around his teeth, pulling his face longer. I haven’t seen him do this before, and it makes his face strange, unfamiliar to me. “What are you doing?”
“Writing down what I’ve done and what I’ve seen, like you said.”
I look at his marks and then at the way the lids have pulled back around his eyes, trying to get him to see what I see, and then I realize that maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s me that’s seeing what he is doing as wrong, and I panic. “Those are words?”
James stands up straighter, caps his marker. “They are.”
“Are my words also words?”
James looks at the wall and nods. “Yep.”
“James, can you read your list to me?” I feel like I might pass out.
James looks pretty calm for what seems like another impossibility. “Let’s see. Wrongdoings: ‘I gambled away my money. Thought I slept in a cave but I woke up at home. Stendhal syndrome at art museum. Pulled house inside out.’” I watch him read. He presses a finger to the wall to follow along, but I can’t reconcile the marks with the words he’s speaking. “‘I repaired everything again. I saw a double of Julie in the guest bedroom. I interpreted children’s play as threatening. I spied on our neighbor, Rolf, and let myself into his home. I quit my job. I nearly drowned myself.’ That’s all I’ve got so far.” He looks at me expectantly, nervously.
It takes me a moment to emerge from my terror at not being able to read his words. “You quit your job?” I register surprise and loss, not anger.
He looks away. “It wasn’t the right place for me.”
“When?”
“About two weeks ago.”
“But you leave the house every day. Where do you go?”
“I go to the library to look for new jobs. I wanted to have another lined up by the time I told you. I knew you’d be mad.”
“Yes! Yes, I am! First the gambling, and now this? Are we in this together or not? Do I know you?” My lips smile, a forced consolation. I refocus. “James, why are all of those things listed under Sins? You’re not responsible for all of that.”
“I don’t want to believe that I’m not in control, Julie. I want to believe that I can resist it. I have the power to stop it or at least not help it along. Maybe that’s why I quit the job. I want to take charge again.” His eyes well up and he looks away.
“But do you have control now? Or are you just taking your chances?”
He gulps and grabs hold of his reason. “If something bad is going to happen, I’d like to believe that I’m not a part of it. If I’m doing something wrong, I think I’m culpable for everything else that goes off the rails.”
“James, we are not responsible for this.”
“You just said we were. That our bad behavior was causing spirits to act out.”
“Right, but not all of it is us,” I say, bereft.
“I think it is, Jules. I think we’re haunting ourselves. We’re pulling ourselves apart. We’re noticing gaps and stepping into them instead of avoiding them.”
I shake my head violently, landing my face in my hands. “What what what what what what what what are you saying? What the hell are you saying? What the fuck, James? I thought we were on the same page. Because I can’t control what’s going on. Maybe you can, but I can’t. Maybe this is all you then, James. Maybe you’re the one I need to leave behind. Is that it?”
I am not accustomed to seeing hurt register on James’s face. “Julie, it’s both of us. We’re doing it together. It’s like a closed circuit. We’re destroying ourselves.”
“No.” I tear the pages down and ball them up, and the ends of the black tape stick to my palms, but I free myself and whip the balls of paper at the wall. “No, that is not it.”
66
JULIE AND I sleep in different corners of the house. We form an anagram of our regular nights. I curl myself on our bed. Julie sprawls her body across the sofa. In the middle of the night, I go down to the living room. I sit on the arm of the couch.
Julie rouses. “How long have you been there?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I believe you and trust you, but so much of this situation is unbelievable
. If I can’t imagine I’m in control of at least myself, where do we end up?”
She sighs. She asks me to get her a drink of water.
“I think you should probably get it yourself. By the time I bring a glass to you it’ll be full of mold.”
She walks to the kitchen. She skips the glass entirely. She turns on the faucet and holds her lips to the stream of water. I flip the light on. Julie spits. I go to the sink. I see the greenish slime still sticking to the steel basin. The water coming out of the faucet looks clear. I wonder if a moldy clump loosened in the pipe. Is the water reacting to some catalyst in Julie’s mouth? I ask if the mold might be growing inside us.
“Everything feels wrong,” Julie says. “I can’t even recognize a mistake anymore, you know? When everything feels so out of sorts, I can’t recognize what it is that’s tipping the balance. Everywhere I look, I’m trying to figure out how I’m being fooled. I’m suspicious of everything. It’s exhausting.”
“I know.” She wraps her arms around my waist and presses her cheek to my chest, and I stroke her hair and lean my lips down to her hairline. “If we believe it’s us, I know how to change myself, you know? If it’s something else, I don’t see a way out. Even if we leave, it’s following us.”
“I hear you.” Julie squeezes tighter.
67
“AND THEN SOMETIMES I think, ‘What if it’s all a prank?’” James says.
I release my grip. “What?”
“It’s hard not to consider: What if you’re messing with me? Or it’s like a Scooby-Doo episode where the angry villain who lives next door is trying to force us out and he’s rigged these elaborate illusions?”
I feel near tears. “James, are you saying this has all been a hoax?”
“I’m sorry, no,” he says. “But I guess I wish it was. Imagine.”
Something shifts in my mind, and James looks unusual, like my husband is being played by another actor, like swapped-out kids in a sitcom series. “You’re in on it,” I say, and he looks at me with concern in his eyes. “Whatever is going on here, it’s talking you into believing it and spreading its doctrine.”