I held my breath, looked for the person or animal who'd triggered the light.
I searched as far and long as I could, but came no closer to discerning what'd set it off. The potholed street sat empty, and what I could make out of the vacant lot across the way appeared perfectly desolate. In some places where the grass was especially tall, I wondered if something didn't lurk; if something hadn't dipped down into the overgrowth for cover at sensing my gaze. I stared at the pockets of shadow where the light didn't quite reach, and though I fancied I could feel a thousand eyes staring back at me from those shadowed spaces, nothing emerged to give that feeling any weight. The yard was empty, and whatever had set off my porch light was now out of view. Perhaps it had been an animal, and it had run off, spooked, when the light came on. If it had been a person, then it was possible they'd lost their nerve in a similar way and bolted.
The light went off and the yard exploded in darkness. Shadows that had been held at bay by the light only moments ago crashed over the property like a tsunami now, leaving only a sea of shifting pitch. The white flowers continued to glow eerily, as though they'd absorbed the light, but most every other feature—the swaying fronds, the cracks in the road—had been masked in a blackness more brilliant than the flash of 1600 lumens that had reigned only seconds prior.
It was nothing. You should have stayed in bed.
I turned away from the window, only to pause mid-turn with a jerk.
The light came on again. I heard the device click, as if it had a tongue and were saying, Now, don't go anywhere!
It was malfunctioning. That had to be it. It hadn't gone off the night before as far as I could remember. Now, it was flashing on for seemingly no reason. I glanced through the window, looking for an owl or squirrel I could blame this on, but came up empty-handed.
I grabbed up a box cutter and shuffled towards the door. Another look through the peephole revealed nothing. Sucking in a deep breath, I placed my hand on the deadbolt and prepared to step into the night.
If someone had come to visit me this late at night, unannounced, then they sure as hell weren't up to any good. Thus the box cutter. I wanted to step out onto the porch to take a closer look—and to scare off anyone who might be lurking. If I found someone on my property, I'd warn them off and call the cops. Or, if it turned out to be an animal of some kind, I could have a good laugh about it and go to bed. Either way, I wasn't able to see the whole property through the dining room window and needed to get outside to make sure there was no one hanging around.
With a quick movement, I unlocked the deadbolt and threw open the door. The light rushed into my eyes as I did so, and I saw stars as I stepped out onto the porch. “All right,” I demanded. “Who's there?”
I canvassed the whole front of the property and waited for an answer.
I saw no one, and if they were hiding out of sight, they weren't feeling too talkative, because they didn't reply. No stray cats I could use as scapegoats emerged, either. In the space between breaths, the outdoors became terribly still, and the silence convinced me that I was, in fact, alone.
Without warning, the light to my right went off, and I found myself suddenly buried in that dense inkiness I'd marveled at through the window. I flinched as the world around me went black, and it took me only a few seconds of standing there, startled, to realize I didn't much like it on that porch. I felt vulnerable and fled into the house like a coward, slamming the door shut and throwing the deadbolt.
“The light's not working,” I said, massaging my jaw. I threw the box cutter into an open toolbox and paced between the dining room and living room. In the corner of my eye, I kept watch on the window, waiting to see if the light would go off again.
It didn't. The rest of the night, in fact, it remained off.
I put on a lamp in the living room and sat down on the air mattress, easing my nerves back into shape. After the exhausting day I'd had, some stress and edginess were to be expected. The house—hell, the entire neighborhood—wasn't remotely inviting. This was only my second night roughing it in the house, too; it was far too soon to feel comfortable in the place. Even then I knew I'd never feel especially secure in this shithole, but over time I hoped I'd get used to its quirks. Maybe by the end of this challenge I'd even get to the point where I didn't jump at every shadow, or startle at every creak.
I opted to leave the light on, at least until I was tired enough to sleep. Minutes ago I'd been on the verge of drifting off; now I felt a bit wired.
Hanging drywall. Tearing up linoleum. Replacing cabinets. Inspecting the pipes... Without realizing it, I began going through a mental check-list of all the jobs I was soon to tackle. I would have kept along that track if not for the intermittent scratching behind the walls. It started quietly enough; the tentative nibbles of an unseen rodent, the sound of bristly fur brushing against the inside of the baseboards. I flopped onto my side, irritated, and wished I'd set traps.
But then the noises of the mice got me thinking about other things.
My mind was filled with dread visions of a bony hand scratching at the inside of the wall; of that coarse, white hair rasping against the studs; of staring, empty sockets. What if there were others in the house, other bodies, just waiting to be found? The fact that I'd started my work on that very wall was enough to stir up new unease. Why that wall? Had I been drawn to it in some way, subconsciously? Had the scratching of the night before been a plea on the part of the corpse—a wish to be discovered?
Eventually, I fell asleep. All night, my dreams were occupied with themes of home invasion, of things reaching out to me from the walls, or from around dark corners.
In one such dream, I found myself wandering through a dark house. Alerted to an ominous glow outside a nearby window, I leaned towards what looked to be a peephole in a cartoonishly large door. Staring hard into that peephole, I could see nothing. There was only darkness; darkness and a stale, warm breeze, as if the seal around it wasn't very good.
The dream ended when I suddenly realized I wasn't staring into a peephole at all, but rather, into an open mouth. A long, hot tongue lashed against my staring eye, and I awoke with my heart trying to break out of my chest.
When I finally got up for the day, the lamp on the table was still on. I hadn't been able to find the courage to shut it off.
Twelve
After ignoring the bleating of my alarm, I finally crawled out of bed around nine in the morning. When I say I “crawled”, I mean it literally. I felt drained.
I changed into my work clothes—a pair of tattered overalls—and opted for a baseball cap, rather than taking the time to wrestle my unruly hair into shape. Only then did I allow myself to sit down at the computer and check the reception to my newest video.
Thankfully, the views were huge and the comments were almost unanimously positive. The only sour notes in the chorus dealt with my supposed helper from the last video—that is, the figure that had appeared in the upstairs window. There were still murmurs of my being a hack, of the entire challenge being staged, but if I ignored them long enough I knew the haters would eventually get bored and mosey on. I felt a pang of discomfort at remembering that strange figure in the window, but shook it off and focused on the positive feedback that had rolled in overnight.
Though I hadn't gotten much rest, the interest in my recent uploads buoyed my mood so that I could—almost—ignore the creakiness in my joints and the ache behind my eyes. Before logging off, I did something else at the computer. Hooking up my printer, I printed off the email I'd gotten from Mona Neeb at HIN the day before and taped it up to the wall. As the going got tough, revisiting that email would keep my spirits up; remind me of why I was doing this all to begin with.
I was set to begin my day.
Though I'd promised myself a hefty breakfast, I decided to forego it for something simpler. Having slept poorly, my stomach felt at odds with the thought of a big meal and I nibbled half-heartedly on a granola bar while pacing around the front lawn
. It was a nice day out, sunny and mild, though the clouds in the distance were tinged with grey and I wondered if there wouldn't be rain before too long. The grass was weighed down with dew, and as I trudged through it, some of the blades reaching nearly to my knees, I tried thinking of places in town where I could rent a lawnmower.
I recalled, with a guilty laugh, how spooked I'd been the night before when I'd thought I'd seen someone in the yard. If anyone did come around at night, trimming things up would give such prowlers fewer places to hide. I turned to the Callery pear, tapping the trunk with the heel of my boot and knocking away a patch of bark. Crunching the granola bar wrapper in my fist, I gave the tree another kick, having gotten about as much of its stench as I could stand in one go. “I'm gonna get to you soon,” I said.
Having left the living room wall unfinished, the first task of the day was clear enough. I set up my camera, tugged on my suspenders and got the drywall hung in just over an hour, jabbering on about each step of the process. When that job was done, I did a slow, proud pan of the finished wall. “And that is how you hang drywall, folks. I know I make it look easy—and maybe a little sexy—but with some patience and practice you'll master this in no time.”
Being more awake now and having done some work, my stomach caught up with me and I felt the first rumblings of true hunger. That big breakfast—more of a brunch at this point—was sounding mighty fine. I ventured into the kitchen and tested the rickety tap, rinsing the dust off my hands in the cold spray. The faucet worked, albeit with a terrible rattling every time the water came on. I wasn't sure how easy a fix it would be. Perhaps, if the pipes were good, I'd be able to re-fasten them with a bit of plumber's tape, rather than replace them entirely. Though the water didn't strike me as good for drinking, I liked having a sink I could use for quick rinsing. It was a lot more convenient than loading up the camping shower every time I wanted to wash my hands. The drain still worked, and the basin, though crooked and improperly braced, didn't leak.
I decided to check out the pipes before moving onto the other jobs on my to-do list. I didn't want to risk a leak in the walls, and figured that stabilizing them might save me a lot of trouble, not to mention mopping, later on. Beneath the sink was a small wooden panel in the wall; removing it carefully, I gained access to the pipes, which ran to the left of the cabinets. Switching on the tap and listening closely, I was able to estimate the location of the rattling pipes based on the sound they made, and when I'd set up my camera on the kitchen counter, I took up a drywall saw and carefully cut a twelve-by-twelve square in the kitchen wall.
I picked up the camera and gave the viewers a look into the new opening, narrating, “So, what we're looking at are the pipes that lead directly to the kitchen sink. I've cut away a bit of the wall here to access them. It'll be an easy patch-job when we're through. The reason I did this is because these pipes make a terrible rattling noise when you turn on the faucet. There are a few things that can cause this—improper water pressure, or, in this case, the fixing bracket simply fell off, which makes the pipes kick around a little when water flows through. This, I'm happy to say, is a fix so simple a monkey could do it. Literally, all we need to do is fasten these pipes in place with a length of plumber's tape and patch up the hole in the wall.” I chuckled, inserting the camera a bit deeper into the opening and surveying more of the space behind the drywall. “I feel like I've really lucked out with this house, man. I'm telling you, the bones are solid. I haven't run into any major damage, any glaring issues...”
I paused, distracted by something in the viewfinder. The dim light on my camera illuminated something just above the topmost edge of the hole I'd made, and I reached inside to have a look. It took a bit of reach, and in the process my fingers grew tangled in cobwebs. The object of my search was not so different in substance, and I knew what it was the very moment I touched it.
I recoiled like I'd been burnt.
My initial suspicion had been confirmed. Through the viewfinder, it'd looked as though a long lock of white hair had been wrapped around one of the pipes. I'd assured myself silently that I was mistaken in thinking so, but as I brought my hand out of the opening with some of the white strands between my fingers, I realized I'd been on the mark.
Wiping my hand against my overalls and nearly tripping over my own feet, I loosed a string of curses and dropped the camera on the counter. The white hair was familiar.
The corpse.
I tried working things out in my head, but good explanations for the presence of that hair were not forthcoming. It's not the same hair. It can't be. That lady's body was in a completely different room. It's not like she lived behind the walls. Even if she'd been alive back there, she wouldn't have been able to cross from room to room. There wouldn't have been enough space to get around. It belongs to an animal. Or maybe, at some point, someone did work on these pipes and got their hair caught in 'em. That has to be it. It's nothing but a gross coincidence.
Unsettled and wanting nothing more than to leave the house, I went rifling through my supplies and hurriedly fastened the pipes in place with a strip of plumber's tape. When next I switched on the tap, the pipes were quiet.
And I was glad for it, because in the next moment I was rushing out of the house, desperate for some fresh air.
Thirteen
With a burger and fries in the tank, I felt like a new man. At least, physically.
Mentally, things were more complicated.
I didn't like the house. I don't want to make it sound like I ever had love for the place, but at the very start of the project the house had been nothing but another in a long line of boring worksites to me. Now it was shaping up to be anything but boring. The dead body notwithstanding, there were a lot of little things about the house that had me on edge. Meditating on them, I pressed my large Coke to my forehead like I was trying to beat back a fever.
There were the shadows in the house, and the tendency of things to go strange after dark. The porch light, though new and properly-installed, had a mind of its own. White hair had turned up in my most recent dive into the walls—was it just coincidence? Viewers on my previous video had pointed out the presence of a figure in one of the house's windows—a figure which, in retrospect, looked rather like the stiff I'd discovered in the living room.
Coincidence, I told myself. The similarity between the two was just a weird coincidence.
I mean, what was the alternative?
I don't know why, but after driving through town I circled back and parked outside the crumbling graveyard, staring through the passenger window at the rows of tottering headstones. However desolate and depressing, there was something peaceful about that spot. It seemed like a good place to sit and think, I guess.
And so I did. I thought about my future with the house. Would I manage to get everything squared away in thirty days? If not for the unease, for the interruptions, it probably would have been a sure thing. The work would be hard, but I was motivated by my recent correspondence with Mona Neeb. Still, I was hesitant to return. Something about the house was really rubbing me the wrong way. It was a shame that I didn't have a partner, someone to spend time with in the house. An extra set of hands would have made the work lighter, but what I really wanted was the company of another living, breathing person. Working in that abandoned neighborhood, it was easy to feel like I was the last man on Earth.
A second pair of hands... I couldn't help thinking of my dad. Things would have been a lot better with him there. He wouldn't have been fond of my chasing a TV deal, but he would have been able to keep me centered on the job, would have kept me from wigging out about the little things. I missed his calm, his air of confidence while working. It was a shame I hadn't inherited those attributes.
I'd spent the better part of my life living with him, but in the end I felt like I hadn't really known him—like we'd merely been two well-acquainted strangers. My parents had split when I was about eight years old. My mother, a self-styled “free spirit” who
never failed to remind me that she'd thrown away her youth in birthing a child, emptied the joint bank account, took the car and disappeared. I haven't spoken to her since then; I'm not even sure she's still alive. From that point on it was just me and my dad, living in my childhood home in the Florida panhandle. He'd work long hours, I'd go to school, and like busy roommates we'd sometimes interact when things got slow. It was always perfunctory, though. I didn't get pats on the head for good grades, no “attaboys” for taking a cute girl to prom. My relationship with my father throughout those adolescent years was pretty sterile.
I held a lot of resentment towards him as a teenager. He made sure I was fed and clothed, but didn't much care what I ate or wore. He expected me to stay in school, to earn decent grades, but couldn't name a single one of my friends. My hobbies were a mystery to him, except when he would find me tinkering with an action figure or model airplane and mock me for playing with “baby shit”. When I realized he'd never take anything but a superficial interest in my life, I vowed to leave him behind in that old house just like my mother had done.
I almost succeeded. I did well enough in high school to earn a good scholarship to a university up north, and I moved into the dorms at eighteen. I hadn't applied to the school because I'd wanted to earn a degree—I hadn't even considered a major before flying the coop—rather, I'd done it to get away from my father.
And it showed. My whole college experience back-fired spectacularly. After just one year, where I'd partied nightly, slept little and bottomed-out my GPA, I got kicked out and found myself with no option but to move back down to Florida. With my head down, I brought all of my things back into my childhood bedroom, all the while fielding my dad's shit talk. “Can't believe they let you graduate after just one year!” he'd mocked. “My boy's a real scholar, huh?”
My moving back home came with strings attached. After a week of sulking, my father read me the riot act, threatening to throw me out on my ass unless I picked up a job and earned my keep. Though I sent out a handful of applications to local stores and restaurants, I didn't get any calls back. Tired of seeing me laze around, he insisted I accompany him to various job sites. He'd use me to do heavy lifting, to take care of the simple things. In his mind, it was better to have another pair of hands at the workplace than to have a good-for-nothing taking up space on his sofa.
The House of Long Shadows Page 7