Who had lived in the house I was fixing up, and what had they been like?
Having gotten my fill of the scenery, and of moody introspection, I drove back to the house. As I left the graveyard, the day's work seemed a good deal more appealing than only moments before. Everywhere I looked, there was ruin. This place had forgotten beauty, traded it for rot and disorder. By renovating the house, I realized I had the opportunity to set something right, to reintroduce species such as beauty and stability to an ecosystem where, for too long now, they'd been considered extinct. I fancied myself a prospector panning for gold, wondering if I'd unearth something interesting in this restoration that had, like the names on those headstones, long been hidden.
I grinned into the camera and held out a handful of drywall screws like a drug dealer offering a fix. “So,” I said, “these are the supplies we'll be using for the job today. Working with drywall can be a bit intimidating when you're first getting started, but I promise it's actually pretty simple. It helps to have a friend present, but as I'm about to show you, this is entirely doable as a one-man job.”
After unpacking the van and putting away my air mattress, I'd piled the new drywall and my other supplies around the living room in an aesthetic formation and set up the camera about ten feet from the wall I was set to replace. I'd also moved my laptop and other belongings into the dining room to keep them from getting showered in dust. Finally, before starting, I'd shut off all power from the room and removed the covers from all of the wall boxes.
“As you can see here,” I said, pointing to the bubbles and fissures in the drywall, “this poor wall has had it. I'm hoping there won't be any water damage back here, but you never can tell. I could probably cut away the damaged portions and just patch it up with new drywall, but I want to get a good look at what we're dealing with. I also want to have good access to the wiring. So, you get to watch me replace the whole wall. How's that sound?”
Having introduced the tools for the job and covered the problem areas, I was now set to do a bit of demolition. I walked over to the camera and adjusted the tripod to better capture my movements in frame. The light coming in from the window in the dining room was good, but I had a studio light positioned off-camera that I could use in case the day became overcast.
“This is my favorite part,” I said, picking up a hammer. “The teardown is actually a lot of fun, and I've found it's a great way to relieve stress. You just want to make sure that you only break the drywall and don't damage the studs behind it. Go hard, but not too hard.” I feigned deep thought, arching a brow and pursing my lips, while considering where to land the first blow. Lifting the hammer to just above eye level, I took a step back and made a slow practice strike, like I was sizing up my golf swing. “How about right here?”
On went a dust mask and a pair of safety glasses.
Then came the wind up.
And the release.
With a measured swing, I sent the hammer through the drywall. It sank in without much effort and left a small divot. I then focused on increasing the size of that first opening length-wise, until I'd knocked a straight line of material out. I turned to the camera and got a little closer so that my voice would still be audible despite the mask. “So, what I've done here is create a little line of holes in the wall. These are handholds—I'll be able to grip the drywall from here and tear it down. See?” Returning to the wall, I made more holes, more handholds, and when I'd managed to leave the wall pockmarked from one end to the other, I tossed away the hammer. “All right! Here comes my favorite part. Time to get my hands dirty.”
I put on a pair of cowhide work gloves and playfully flexed my bicep for the camera.
It felt lame as hell, but I knew it would come together in the edit. At least, I told myself as much. Joking around in front of the camera—talking to myself—was awkward no matter how I sliced it.
I reached up and slipped my gloved fingers into the handholds. With a grunt, I began pulling the drywall apart. A large piece cracked off in my grip, and I waved it around for the camera. “It's easy as that!” I reached up and took another chunk down, making a pile of the broken stuff at my feet. Peering at the studs behind, the inside of the wall appeared in decent order. Ancient dust circulated, clinging to my forearms, as I yanked another piece free, and another.
Not wanting to spend all day in front of the camera, I started hurrying through the teardown process. Just a few minutes into my wrenching away the drywall, the pile on the floor began to grow rather tall. I'd intended to rent a dumpster for all of the refuse involved in this renovation, but had forgotten to, and would have to store it on the lawn, or in garbage bags, for the time being.
I was half-way through breaking down the extant drywall and hadn't found anything serious behind it. No leaks, no mold. I was chuffed. “I'm not done just yet,” I told the camera, “but it's looking like there are no major issues behind this wall—just some damaged drywall. Thank goodness.”
I moved to my right, began prying at a new length of material.
I was rambling on, half to myself and half to the camera.
But as I let that next piece drop, I suddenly shut up. There was something tangled and white on one of the newly-exposed studs. It looked like a dense tangle of cobwebs, and I grimaced beneath my mask. “Uh-oh,” I said, “might have some creepy crawlies to deal with.”
Ready to stomp on any monster spider that might emerge from the gap, I ripped away another chunk of drywall, revealing the gap between the web-encrusted stud and the next.
And then I got a really good look at the bunch of silk.
Except, it didn't really look like silk anymore. It seemed too coarse, wiry, to be cobwebs.
I glanced back at the camera as though I expected the damn thing to comment.
“Not sure what this is,” I mumbled.
With trepidation, I reached into the wall and teased the white strands, tugged them a bit. A frayed wire? I wondered. A tangle of fur? The strands seemed fastened to something lower down, and the rasping sound they made as they passed tautly over the fingers of my leather gloves reminded me of hair.
I gripped the exposed edge of the drywall and decided to work my way downward.
Teeth grit, I pulled away another segment. It cracked off loudly and a shower of whitish dust hit my jeans.
I then dropped the chunk of drywall—not because I was ready to tear away another, but because I'd suddenly been robbed of my ability to hold it.
Someone looked out at me from the new gap in the drywall.
A shock of thick, white hair was wrapped around the stud. I'd first seen the very edge of this tangle only moments ago, but I now saw the leathery, eyeless head it was attached to, and I spied also the beginnings of a thin, mummified body occupying the space beneath the yet-unbroken drywall.
A corpse.
A corpse had been propped up in the narrow space between the two studs.
Though I hadn't yet revealed the entirety of the body, I could fill in the blanks well enough. The edge of a soiled, off-white garment was teased. There wasn't a lot of space back there; I envisioned the limbs tucked up towards the trunk, stiff and brittle, like those of a dead insect left to bake on a hot dash.
In my haste to back away from the horror in the wall, I tripped over my pile of refuse and hit the floor. Dust stuck to my palms, to my hair, like powdered sugar as I landed on my face. I didn't feel any pain, nor any shame, however. I scrambled to my feet, hit the front door and crashed out onto the lawn.
Next thing I knew I was yanking off the dust mask and dialing 9-1-1.
Nine
Detective Sherman straddled a chair as the video started, his belly pressing into the backrest. His partner, Bateman, remained standing to my left, arms crossed.
They were both trying their hardest not to laugh.
“How can you stand talking to yourself like that?” asked Sherman, shaking his head, as I appeared on screen and explained the drywall teardown process. “It's embarra
ssing.”
I didn't respond, merely shrugged. No shit, it was embarrassing. This was unedited footage. I'd never intended anyone to see everything—not my mistakes, my stutters. With proper editing—that is, visual effects and music—my videos were entertaining, damn it. These cops didn't get it, though. To them, I seemed like a loon, monologuing in an empty house while ripping apart a wall. It made for a bizarre cinematic experience, and it was only because they'd expressed interest in seeing the footage that I was still in the interrogation room at all.
I'd been at the police station for a few hours now. Exhausted by the back and forth with cops, the hours of sitting—both in the back of a cruiser, and in the grey, stuffy interrogation room—my terror had largely been dulled and I no longer felt rocked by the horrific find in the house. That is, until the detectives handling the case had asked me to hook up my camera to one of their televisions. I'd cooperated, hesitantly, not wanting to revisit that moment when I'd discovered the corpse.
We ended up watching it three times.
The cops absolutely lost it when, some minutes into it, I flexed my bicep for the camera. They'd glance at each other, howling, as if to say, “Get a load of this corny shit!” I'll be honest, it left my ego a little bruised. But there was one part they thought even funnier than that.
Each time I unearthed the body and scrambled out of the house like a frightened Scooby-Do character, they gasped with laughter.
I don't think they were trying to be assholes. Initially, when they'd brought me in, they'd just had a few questions. They didn't suspect me of anything, as it was clear the body had been in the house a long time—maybe since before I'd even been born. But when they'd learned that I'd captured the find on tape, they'd asked to see the video and had sent someone back to the house to grab my camera.
After this third viewing, Sherman got up and shut off the TV, tugging on his belt. The gut beneath his blue dress shirt shifted like a giant boil full of cottage cheese. He reeked of sweat. “Well, we've removed the body. Don't know much, yet. Female, not sure on the age. Waiting on more details. At this point, she's a Jane Doe. And it's possible she'll stay that way.”
“Why's that?” I asked.
“It's complicated. See, there's no telling how long the old girl has been hidden away like that. We'll need the medical examiner to tell us how she died and how long ago. We did a little digging and found that no one's lived in that house since the late 80's, early 90's. In the almost thirty years since that house was last occupied, it's been used by all kinds of people, and some of 'em might have used it as a convenient place to hide a body. Unless we find some forensic evidence that helps us get an ID, or we can link it to a previous missing person's case, it's a safe bet she'll remain a mystery. Hell of a way to go.”
Bateman, the slenderer of the two, stroked his beard and grew deadly serious for a moment, brow furrowed. “I say, was there a cask of Amontillado back there?”
The two roared with laughter.
I'd set the cops up with a copy of my video and knew full well that they'd be showing all of their buddies. FlipperKevin's freakout was going to entertain the entire department for some time to come, I was sure of it.
I was too tired to care and hoped they'd hurry up and release me.
Sherman pushed in his chair and rested an arm atop the TV. “Our guys had a look back there, behind the wall, and didn't find anything else. Seems this is just a spot of bad luck for you, Mr. Taylor. I take it the realtor didn't mention that particular amenity, eh?” He smirked. “If you notice anything else, give us a call. Otherwise, unless you have some questions, you're free to go.”
“I can go back to the house?” I asked. The phrasing sounded hopeful, like I was ready to return to my work, but in the back of my mind I hoped the detectives would bar me from re-entering the premises until a lengthy investigation was complete.
“You may,” replied Bateman. “The body has been removed, photographs were taken and forensics wrapped things up on their end. Collecting evidence in an indoor location—behind a single wall—isn't too complicated. If this had been a grislier case, you might have had to find a hotel for a week, but the nature of this find doesn't require that kind of cordoning. At the present time, we have no need for further access to the house. You can get back to whatever it was you were doing.” He looked to my camera and fought back a smirk. “Any other questions?”
Let me tell you, I had questions. Oodles of 'em. I wasn't sure that these sweaty pricks would be able to answer them, but I decided to try my luck anyhow. “How does something like this happen? I mean... who could have done this? And why?”
Sherman straightened his glasses. “Dunno. In the time that it was occupied, the house had no criminal history to speak of. Whatever happened, I'd wager it occurred in the house's lengthy vacancy. All sorts will take advantage of a house like that; the homeless, lowlives looking for a place to sell dope or guns... Maybe a drug dealer stuck her back there, or else she got on someone's bad side during a house party. Point is, if you poke around in abandoned old houses like those long enough, you're bound to find something a little unsavory. Which leads me to wonder why an enterprising young man like yourself would bother fixing one up. That neighborhood wouldn't be my first choice, that's for sure.”
Bateman started towards the door, adding, “Don't take this the wrong way, Mr. Taylor, but this isn't really that huge a deal. Old, unidentified remains are rather common, in fact. People find bones in their attics, in their gardens... I've seen a lot of bodies in my day, and though I'm not a betting man, I'd guesstimate this individual to have died maybe twenty or thirty years ago. After so much time, it's highly unlikely anyone's looking for her, waiting for her, so this case just isn't going to be a huge priority. Our department has got a lot of current cases going. I reckon that, while we've been in this room talking, at least one person in this city's gotten shot or raped. I wouldn't be surprised if we never got straight answers about this woman hiding behind your wall, so don't hold your breath. Cases like these have a way of going unsolved unless other evidence turns up. The 'hows' and 'whys' may never come to light.”
Finally, they let me gather my things and go. One of them offered me a ride back to the house, which I politely refused. I couldn't stomach the idea of spending more time with them. My place wasn't so far from the station, anyway. I could walk, and would welcome the solitude.
They saw me to the exit, and I thanked the two of them, though I wasn't sure why. Except for removing the body and laughing heartily at my footage, the cops hadn't really done anything. I left the building and ambled onto the sidewalk, disoriented by the darkness. It was an hour or two past sunset and the night was both too dim and too warm for my liking.
“So... what now?” I sighed.
I was a skiff left unmoored; the pier was fading from view and the choppy waters ahead didn't bode well. I'd spent so much time hoping the cops would let me go that I hadn't put much thought into what I'd do with the remainder of my day once they did. Would I go back to the house? Crash in a hotel? Hop into my van and drive until I no longer recognized my surroundings?
Walking silently, I replayed the day's events in my head: The drive through town; the discovery of the body; the long wait in the police station; the relentless barrage of questions; the mocking laughter of those two detectives as they reviewed my recording. Even as I held the camera, recalled the dreadful footage on it, the ordeal didn't feel real to me. A dead body? On my property? That kind of shit was only supposed to happen on true crime TV shows.
I quickened my pace, fell deeper into thought. The orange streetlights flickered as I strode away from the station and passed a long, abandoned lot where a pair of stray cats chased one another in the tall grass. I was making my way to the house, but wondered what the hell I was going to do when I got there.
Like it or not, there was still the 30-day renovation challenge to think about. It was a very public affair, not the kind of thing I could easily abandon. My newfou
nd unwillingness to work in the house was about to become my biggest problem, it seemed. I mean, how could I ditch this audacious project and leave my brand unscathed? What was I going to tell my viewers? Sorry, guys. Found a dead body in this house so I'm going to throw in the towel. Be sure to like and subscribe! I couldn't talk to my fans about what I'd found in the wall. To do so would detract from the point of my challenge and taint my whole channel with a kind of morbid sensationalism. Moreover, ethics aside, I couldn't post footage of the body as proof for my viewers, since VideoTube's guidelines understandably restricted content that displayed real human corpses. If I showed the corpse to the world in an effort to convince my subscribers, it was possible that VideoTube would terminate my account permanently.
The idea of working in that house, of sleeping anywhere near that open wall where a body had been stashed, made me ill. I'd slept right up against it the night before, with only an inch of material between me and the then-undiscovered dead woman. Just the memory of that, of the scratching I'd heard from behind that very wall, called to mind all kinds of twisted and unwelcome images. Maybe it wasn't mice you heard last night, but the sound of the body shifting; of skeletal fingers picking at the inside of the wall...
I wasn't going to be able to sell it off—no one in their right mind would buy such a house, especially if the local news lit up with reports of a dead body being found inside. Financially, that didn't bother me too much. I could eat the cost. What did bother me about giving up the challenge was the hit to my credibility. I had a reputation to consider, and I feared that a very public failure like this one would torpedo my career. I'd done smaller challenges in the past, and despite tight deadlines or other bumps in the road I'd never backed out of them. If I bailed on this house, though, my hopes of securing a TV deal in the near-future were toast.
The House of Long Shadows Page 5