When David first saw the house, he felt no fear. Others might look at a neglected Victorian house as possibly haunted, or at the very least a potential money pit, but that thought never entered David’s mind.
The house beckoned him to approach. It had a large, open front porch, begging for a pair of wicker chairs and a small table, where its owners could sit with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and wave to their neighbors. The two ornate second-story windows were a pair of friendly eyes watching over the urban neighborhood.
It was smaller than the other houses on the street. At one time, the neighborhood had been upscale, and the street lined with mansions. Now, most of those stately homes were divided into multifamily units or abandoned entirely, boarded up with graffiti-tagged plywood.
This house stood out as a jewel of stained glass and solid construction, ready for the urban renewal and gentrification poised to come.
The house to the right looked well-maintained and freshly painted. The lush garden in front and solar panels on the roof told David that the neighbor at least cared about the environment.
The house on the left was another story. Boarded-up windows shut it off from the world. Its sagging roof looked as if it were about to collapse under its own weight. Having this dilapidation next door was a concern to him, but he knew the struggling neighborhood was why this house might be within his budget. Houses rarely came up for auction in the Bay Area unless they were having trouble being sold the traditional way.
David stood on the sidewalk, admiring the house, then joined a group of people milling around on the porch.
There were two couples and a single man also taking the tour, which didn’t bode well for David’s chances.
“Seems like a lot of work,” one woman said to her husband, as she poked at a broken floorboard on the porch with her foot. She had leaned against the porch railing and was unaware that it left a brown smudge on her yellow dress.
“It’s a fixer-upper,” her husband said. “But I’m good at that stuff.”
David hadn’t noticed the broken floorboard, and once pointed out, all the other flaws of the house jumped out at him: peeling paint, a crumbling sidewalk, a cracked window.
“Needs a new roof,” the single, older man said, looking up. “Yep. That’s ten thousand right there.” His plaid shirt, work boots, and tape measure made David think he knew what he was talking about. The guy looked like a host of one of those house-flipping shows. Although David knew the roof comment might be a ploy to discourage the other bidders, it did give him pause.
“I love it!” another woman said to her husband. Both were dressed more like they were at a gallery opening than a house auction. David had seen them getting out of a Mercedes earlier.
“If the neighborhood were better, it would make a great B and B,” her husband replied. “But we could divide it into two apartments, I think.” David swallowed his irritation. Typical rich folks, looking for an investment opportunity where others just wanted a home.
A woman in a gold blazer approached and smiled at him. “Are you here for the auction?”
David smiled back at her. “I am.” He held out his hand. “David Dusek.”
She shook his hand. “Tammy Barnes. Come on. We’re about to start a tour.”
Tammy led David and the rest of the group into the house, joyfully pointing out its assets.
“The house was built in the Victorian style by a bookstore owner in 1900. It survived the 1909 earthquake and every earthquake after that, so you know it is well constructed,” she said.
As she pointed out the elaborate crown molding in the large living room, David ran his fingers over the blue velvet couch. He imagined himself welcoming party guests, or curling up on the couch to watch a movie with his wife.
He pushed away the thoughts that threatened to bring him back to reality. The truth was, David didn’t know what friends he would invite to a party if he had one. He’d lost touch with most of them once they married and started having children. The exception was Gary, and even he was moving away soon.
As for that wife, he didn’t even have a girlfriend at the moment.
It had been Gary’s idea for David to go to the auction. “If you can get a property for three hundred thousand or less, the house payment will be less than your rent. It’s about time you started making an investment in your life.”
He was right. As a software developer, David was making good money. He shouldn’t be throwing it away on rent when he could build equity.
Gary was now making Las Vegas money and was investing it like a responsible adult. The only investing David had done was in collectible Star Wars figures and a 401(k) from his company.
This could be my thing, he thought. “Oh, you know David. He’s that guy with the Victorian house he’s fixing up.”
Tammy rattled on. “Original oak beams, hardwood floors, and that large brick fireplace is in working condition. A new chimney was put in just two years ago. The gravity furnace has been red-tagged by the inspectors and will have to be replaced, but a prior owner installed all the ductwork for a forced-air gas furnace in 2001. And I have names of some reliable heating contractors if you need them.”
“That’s another six to eight grand,” the house flipper muttered.
The group of bidders followed Tammy into the formal dining room, taking notes. David felt stupid. He hadn’t brought a notebook, and made a mental note to get one for the next auction.
“All the furniture is included in the auction. Some are antiques, I would imagine,” Tammy said. “So, you’ll save money on furnishings.” The mahogany dining room table was big enough to seat eight comfortably. David imagined Thanksgiving dinner laid out along its length, and every chair filled with guests laughing and passing around the potatoes.
Tammy moved them briskly along into the kitchen. “Yes, the kitchen is small by today’s standards, but it has newish appliances.”
“So outdated,” the woman in the yellow dress whispered to her husband.
David thought the kitchen was cozy and charming, with green-tiled walls that looked like jade, and a hardwood floor painted yellow. True, it was small, but there was a bistro table and two chairs under a window. A great place to drink coffee and read the news in the morning.
“Shall we take a look at the backyard?” the real estate agent said, opening the creaky door and stepping out into the sunlight.
It was overgrown with weeds and there was a large walnut tree in the center that needed a good pruning. David imagined having friends over for a barbecue or to hang out around a fire pit and drink beers.
“Nice and private,” Tammy said, pointing to the large wooden fence that enclosed it. There was a board or two missing here and there, but it still looked in good shape to David.
They reentered the house, and the tour continued. “The basement is unfinished and has a dirt floor, but plenty of room for a washer and dryer.”
She led them to a padlocked door, unlocked it, and led the group into the basement’s depths. It seemed odd to David it was padlocked, but he guessed it was easy for burglars to break into the basement and gain access to the house.
“Easy enough to finish,” Tammy said as she moved to the back of the basement to make room for the group. “Pour a cement floor, put up some drywall and you could make the space quite livable.”
It was a large basement with a higher ceiling than other basements David had seen. Most of it was taken up by an enormous octopus of a gravity furnace and an old coal bin from when the house had a coal-fired boiler. David peered into the bin, amused to see there were a few lumps of coal still in it. Coal that might have been in there for over a hundred years.
There was a chute sealed with a metal hatch where the coal must have come down. How weird to have your fuel delivery once a week, David thought. We take central gas heating all for granted.
The single man was busy feeling the cinder-block walls for dampness. “Seems okay,” he told David. “No cracks that I can see.”
The woman in the yellow dress shrieked as a mouse ran over her feet and disappeared around the furnace. That was it for her. She took her husband by the hand. “Not for us,” she said.
The two of them hurried back upstairs. David smiled at their leaving. Easy enough to call an exterminator, he thought.
The only electric light in the basement was a single bulb hanging from a wire over the stairs. It flickered and went out with an audible pop, leaving the group in darkness. Four small basement windows let in very little light through their dingy lace curtains.
“These old bulbs,” Tammy complained.
David felt someone shove him forward.
“Hey, watch it,” he said, pushing back. There was no resistance.
“Watch it,” a voice whispered into his left ear, mocking David’s tone. David wheeled around just as Tammy was turning on her cell phone light.
No one was behind him. The single man was at the other end of the basement, still inspecting the foundation. The rich couple was ahead of him, already walking up the stairs and out into the kitchen.
“Shall the rest of us go upstairs?” Tammy didn’t wait for an answer and marched up the back stairs to the left of the kitchen. David followed, but the single man remained in the basement. He had taken out a flashlight of his own and was checking out the ductwork from the furnace.
As the tour continued up the back stairs to the second level, David became a little worried he wasn’t checking out the house thoroughly enough. Not that he knew what to look for. He made another mental note to bring a measuring tape and flashlight for the next tour. It would make him look like he knew what he was doing, if nothing else.
“There are three bedrooms up here and a full bathroom,” Tammy said. “You don’t see an upstairs bathroom often in these old Victorians.” She lowered her voice. “They used commodes, went right in the bedroom, carried it out in the morning.”
She swung the bathroom door open. “Just look at that marvelously deep clawfoot bathtub.”
David only had a shower in his apartment, and the tub looked inviting. He supposed the bathroom was close to how it was originally decorated. Like something out of a Dickens novel: ornate woodwork, a window trimmed with stained glass, and velvet wallpaper that somehow held up to years of humidity without peeling. It looked more like a bedroom than a bathroom to David, but he had to admit it had style.
They all shuffled into the master bedroom, which had a large, canopied feather bed at its center.
“Nice big master bedroom,” Tammy said. “And notice the fireplace. How cozy is that?”
The room smelled a little musty, but a good cleaning and airing out should fix that. David imagined himself in bed, reading a book by the light of the fire. This was his room, in his house. He suddenly wanted this house more than he had wanted anything in a long time. The thought of losing the auction made him strangely sad.
His therapist had told him, “When you feel sad about losing something, that means it is important to you.”
Tammy took them to a second, smaller room that David thought would make a great office.
He decided the third one would be a guest room. Gary and his girlfriend, Shannon, could come spend weekends. Maybe even his father would come and stay for Christmas.
They headed down the hallway toward the other set of stairs.
“Downstairs there is a room off the dining room that could be another bedroom or office, along with a quarter bath under the stairs.”
They came down the front stairs, which had an ornately carved banister and newel posts. A finial topped by a gargoyle stood guard, watching the big oak front door where fairies frolicked in the frosted-glass panel.
The man from the basement was walking toward the front door, mumbling to himself. He looked agitated.
“Find any cracks?” David asked him.
“No. Foundation is fine. Still, something about this place doesn’t feel right. You get a sixth sense about these things when you’ve been at it as long as I have.”
He left through the front door.
David was glad to see the competition go, but felt like the man had insulted his house. Sure, it needed a new roof and furnace, but that was an expense he could handle, and all old houses needed that kind of work.
Tammy gestured toward the front door with a cheery, “Shall we start the auction?”
The rich couple that remained stepped outside with him. An auctioneer was at a podium. David was discouraged when he saw there were two more couples already gathered for the auction. They must have had an earlier tour.
The gray-haired auctioneer banged his gavel on the podium.
“Before we start, we must disclose the house needs a new furnace and roof,” Tammy said at the auctioneer’s side.
With that information confirmed, one of the couples left the circle and headed back to their minivan.
The auctioneer shouted, “We will start the bidding at six hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
David did not have to wait for the others to outbid him. His own bank account did that. He almost turned to leave himself when he realized no one else was bidding either.
“No?” the auctioneer said. “Do I hear five hundred thousand?”
Still no one raised their hands.
“It’s worth at least that,” the auctioneer protested.
David seized the opportunity and shot his hand up. “Two hundred thousand!”
“Now we’ve got an auction,” the auctioneer said. “Do I hear two fifty?”
“Two fifty!” a man behind David yelled.
“Do I hear three fifty?”
“Three hundred!” the rich man shouted. His wife gave David a smug look as if to say, “We can do this all day.”
The higher bid caused the other couple to walk away.
Tammy, who had been looking over notes in a big binder, stopped the auctioneer and whispered something to him.
“Really?” he said. He gave a sigh and turned back to what was left of the crowd. “The State of California requires me to disclose that there was a murder—”
“Killing,” Tammy corrected.
“A killing in this house.”
“What kind of killing?” the rich woman in the remaining couple asked.
“Does it matter?” her husband asked her.
Tammy stepped forward, reading from her binder. “A man was shot by the police and died in the house. That is all the information I have.”
“How are we going to rent two units in a murder house?” the rich man asked his wife.
“Some people like that sort of thing. Maybe it’s haunted,” she said.
A bang rang out from down the street that might have been a car backfiring, but sounded like a gunshot.
“Neighborhood is too dangerous,” the rich guy said. “We’re out.”
“I hope no one stole our tires,” his wife said as they walked back to their Mercedes.
“The blood was professionally cleaned,” Tammy shouted. “And it was two years ago!”
The auctioneer slammed his gavel down and pointed at David. “Sold to the young man in front for two hundred thousand dollars!”
David stood, stunned, for a moment. Five minutes ago, he had been about to walk away, and now he owned a house. This house.
Tammy led him back into the house to sign the paperwork. David stepped inside, not believing it was going to be his.
Even with the additional cost for the roof and furnace, it was much less than he had budgeted for.
His amazement was punctured, however, by a buzzing in his ears and the blurred vision that foretold a migraine was coming. It hit him full on like a freight train full of bees, and Tammy noticed the sudden grimace on his face.
“Are you okay?”
“No, I’m having a migraine. I need to sit down.”
She led him over to the blue velvet sofa in the living room.
“My sister gets those. They’re terrible. Can I get you a glass of water?”
“Yes, thank you.” He fished through his pants pocket for his pills. He’d had migraines for years, but they were coming on more frequently lately, so he made sure to always have his meds with him.
She went off to the kitchen, leaving David on the sofa with his head in his hands.
He thought he heard Tammy come out of the kitchen and looked up. Even through his blurred vision, he could tell it was not Tammy. The person was man-shaped. He was talking to David, but the buzzing in his ears was so loud he couldn’t make out what the man was saying.
“What?” David said. He was doing his best to focus his eyes, but the man was still just a hazy blur. “What did you say?”
“If you are going to be living in my house, you will have to do your part,” the man said in a husky whisper.
A smaller shape came up from behind him, a little girl from what David could see through his squinted eyes. “Don’t let him in,” she said. Her voice sounded frightened.
His headache spread across his entire skull and David felt as though he might throw up, which did happen sometimes. He put his head between his legs and the sick feeling subsided.
The buzzing in his ears suddenly stopped, and his focus returned.
He returned to an upright position to see that the man and girl were gone.
Tammy bustled in from the kitchen. “Here we go,” she said, handing him a glass of brownish water. “It’s a bit rusty, but safe to drink. We had it tested.”
He thanked her but, after seeing the swill in the glass, swallowed his pill dry. “Who was that guy?”
“What guy?”
“He was just here. Had a kid with him. I think it might have been the previous owner because he told me it was his house.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I thought the bank changed the locks when they seized the property.” She looked around. “I don’t see them here now.”
The auctioneer entered, and she asked him if he’d seen anyone leave through the front door. He hadn’t.
“He didn’t go out the back. He would have had to pass me in the kitchen,” Tammy said.
“I’ll check upstairs and make sure he’s not still here,” the auctioneer said.
He came back down a minute or two later. “No one was up there either. Maybe they went down the back stairs and slipped out the back door after you’d left the kitchen.”
“I’ll have the locks changed today,” Tammy said.
David asked if he could use the restroom before they continued with the paperwork.
She smiled. “It’s your bathroom now. Use the one under the stairs. The upstairs toilet isn’t in working order at the moment.”
He knew that would be the first thing he would have to fix.
The bathroom under the stairs was just a toilet and pedestal sink. Tammy had put a small bowl of potpourri on the sink and there were clean hand towels.
With the door shut it was cramped. He was six feet tall and had to bow his head while he peed to avoid hitting the slanted ceiling. The toilet had a pull-chain flush with a ceramic handle dangling at the end, making him think it might have been original to the house.
He washed his hands, then splashed some brown water on his face. It was refreshingly cold and chased away what was left of his headache.
He dried his face and shook water out of his sandy-brown hair. The mirror had minor chips and cracks, but wasn’t in too bad shape for an antique. People at Pottery Barn pay a lot for faux finish mirrors like that, he thought. He had accidentally splashed water on the glass and wiped it off with the hand towel. It smeared a trail of soap across the surface of the glass. As he went to wipe again, markings began to appear in the soap trail. It looked like writing. David peered at it as letters took shape: Fitz and Kang. His soap-brushed artwork amused him. Wasn’t Fitz Kang an old-time director? he thought. As he wiped it away, he remembered it was Fritz Lang who was the director.
David emerged from the bathroom and went to find Tammy in the dining room. “Feeling better?” she asked.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said. “That was a bad one. They always pick the most inopportune moments.” He made a mental note to call his doctor’s office for an appointment.
They finished going through the paperwork, and David signed the purchase agreement and went home to his apartment.
Looking around, he realized it was not the home of a thirty-year-old man. Movie posters were the only art on the walls. A whiskey-barrel coffee table, left over from his college days, sat in front of his threadbare sofa. His TV and PlayStation were sitting on old milk crates.
He couldn’t wait to leave this place behind him and really start adulting.
The cloud that had hung over him most of his life felt like it was lifting. His depression, while not gone, was at least taking a back seat and, for the first time, felt like it was something that could be managed.
* * *
David watched the moving truck drive away just as Gary texted that he and Shannon were on their way.
He felt another migraine coming on, so he popped a pill and washed it down with some room-temperature coffee he had gotten at the gas station down the street.
He returned to the living room to unpack boxes while he waited for his first visitors.
Even though Gary and Shannon had been together for over a year, David was still surprised his friend was part of a couple. Gary had never been one to tie himself down with a girlfriend. His life on the road wasn’t the best for long-term relationships and his newfound fame seemed to give him a steady supply of groupies. High school girls might not like a magician, but grown women sure did.
Gary had met Shannon at the Dublin Fringe Festival, a sixteen-day theater festival where dozens of shows were put on across the city: plays, sketch comedy, musical acts, jugglers, and the like. The ‘Gary the Gory Show’ was the hit of the festival. A mix of comedy, magic, and lots of stage blood set his magic show apart from the competition and he had sold-out crowds every night. He won an award at that year’s festival, which came with a cash prize and a chance to take his show to other Fringe Festivals around the world.
Shannon was a volunteer at the Dublin festival, doing graphic design work for signs and staging. Gary was immediately smitten with the raven-haired beauty and she ended up traveling with him that fall to his many shows.
David liked Shannon and was glad to see she wasn’t just one of Gary’s flings, but that was as much for his sake as for Gary’s.
She had been instrumental in getting David into therapy.
The three of them had joined a local softball league. The Tuesday night games had quickly become just another chore on David’s to-do list. It was important to Gary, so it became important to David.
While they were having beers one night after a game, Shannon took David aside and asked if he was all right.
“You don’t seem to like playing this game,” she said. “Why do you do it then?”
Her forthrightness had taken him by surprise. It was true he didn’t enjoy playing, but then he didn’t enjoy anything, really. For most of his life, he followed the path of least resistance, and that meant joining Gary in his activities.
David knew not getting out of the house was bad for him and he at least liked having regularly scheduled obligations that got him outside. But he wasn’t a good player and had never been a competitive person, like Gary and Shannon were. However, like most social things in his life, he’d thought he was faking it well.
“More balls hit you in the head than you catch,” she teased. “That’s not the way to get your head in the game.”
David found himself confessing all his apathy to her, and she armchair-diagnosed his depression.
“In Ireland, depression is a national pastime,” she said. She told him she, too, had suffered bouts of depression throughout her life. “You really should talk to someone, David. It can help. That, or start drinking heavily.”
He had talked to people in the past, mainly pastors who told him depression was anger turned inward. But he didn’t feel angry; he didn’t feel anything at all.
“Fight or flight, that’s the only way you kick depression to the curb,” Shannon said. “I have a friend who’s a therapist. I’ll give you her number.”
He’d started seeing Dr. Green on a regular basis and she helped him take stock of his past and think about the future he wanted.
The house was a manifestation of this. A way to engage with life. He had found himself listening to music again, as he had worked to clean the house before moving his belongings in.
He was lucky he didn’t have to buy furniture; each room had been stocked as if it had always been waiting for him to occupy it. But he quickly realized he would have to clean, paint, and decorate all the old, dusty rooms. This oddly filled him with a sense of joy. He might even be good at it.
They might want coffee, he thought, and returned to the kitchen to make some. When he turned on the faucet, the pipes groaned and spit out a torrent of muddy water. He let it run awhile and it didn’t become any clearer, so he gave up the idea of coffee and returned to the living room.
David was startled to see a black-and-white long-haired cat was cleaning itself on the back of his sofa.
“Who are you?” David asked.
The cat ignored him and continued cleaning.
David opened the front door. “I’m not in the market for a roommate. Out you go.” The cat reluctantly complied, jumping off the sofa and walking toward the open door.
In what David saw as an act of defiance, it walked very slowly.
“Out!” David commanded.
It continued its slow march out the door and onto the porch, finally disappearing into the hedges.
Gary and Shannon pulled up to the house in Gary’s newest sports car.
“Perfect timing,” David yelled from the front porch. “You can help me unpack.”
Shannon ran up the steps holding a large potted plant, and Gary followed with an enormous bottle of champagne.
“It’s beautiful!” Shannon said, giving him a hug with her free arm.
Gary clapped him on the shoulder and David ushered them both inside.
“Charming decor. Were the first owners the Addams Family?” Gary asked.
“Don’t listen to him. I think it’s grand. I can see the potential when it’s all fixed up,” Shannon said.
Gary held up his magnum of champagne. “Have you unpacked the glasses yet?”
They went into the kitchen, and David rummaged through boxes for glasses.
“Do you smoke weed?” Shannon asked. She plunked the plant down on the counter and fluffed up its leaves. It was the first time he noticed it was a marijuana plant.
“Gary said you didn’t smoke,” she continued, “but it’s the only thing that didn’t die in my garden.”
“I don’t smoke, but I could always make brownies or something with it. Thanks.”
“Makes good tea,” she said.
David continued his search and found his Burger King Star Wars collectible glasses. He pulled them out and unwrapped them from their newspaper cocoons, then, out of habit, went to the sink to give them a rinse. The faucet groaned, banged, then let out a belch of brown water. He decided it would be more sanitary to not rinse them.
“I have a plumber coming tomorrow,” he said.
Gary popped the cork, and it went rogue, whistling upward past Shannon’s ear and cracking the ceiling light’s glass cover.
“Watch it, wanker!” she shouted. “You nearly took me head off!” Surprise made her Irish accent extra Irish-y.
“Sorry about that, David,” Gary said. “I hope it wasn’t an antique, but I suppose everything in the house is.”
“I’ll add it to the list of things to be fixed,” David said, handing out the glasses.
Shannon examined her glass and said, “Oy, I want the Princess Leia glass. I’m not drinking out of Darth Vader.”
Gary raised his Wookie glass to give a toast. “Here’s to David’s change of venue.”
They all took a drink, and the cracked ceiling fixture took that moment to shatter completely, raining shards of glass on them.
“I will totally pay for that light,” Gary said, shaking the glass out of his hair.
David searched for a broom and noticed a tall skinny door that he took to be a broom closet. He opened it. There was an old broom in there surrounded by a web writhing with dozens of spiders. He slammed the door shut and decided to clean the glass up later when he could find his vacuum cleaner.
“Give us a tour, then,” Shannon said, setting Princess Leia carefully in the sink.
He took them upstairs and Shannon ran from room to room like she was a teenager picking out a bedroom on moving day.
“So, when does your move to Vegas happen?” David asked Gary.
“Going out next week to find a place,” he said.
“What does Shannon think about your moving?”
“She’s coming with me.”
“Oh, that’s great,” David said. “I’m happy for you.”
Shannon zoomed out of the bathroom. “The tub is huge!” She ran down the hall to the master bedroom.
“There’s a wedding chapel on every corner in Vegas,” David teased. “Isn’t that a dangerous place to take her?”
Gary and David went into the master bedroom, where Shannon was bouncing up and down on the big feather bed. “They don’t make them like this anymore,” she said, as the mattress kicked up a billowing cloud of dust. “Did you tell him yet?” she asked Gary.
Before Gary could say anything, she blurted out, “We’re getting married!”
It was a shock to David. A feeling of loneliness took him by surprise. For the first time, he realized they were not only moving away, they would have a life without him.
He felt a frown taking over his face and forced a smile, shouting, “That’s great!”
The overcompensation of happiness didn’t get by Gary, who put his hand on David’s shoulder and said, “It was a sudden decision. Her visa status had us re-evaluating our relationship, and we decided we’re ready for the next move. I would have told you sooner, but with my new job and all.”
“Yeah,” David said. “Makes sense. I’m glad someone will be with you for the big career change.”
“I want to get married by an Elvis impersonator,” she said. “Is that still a thing in Vegas?”
“We’re going out to find a temporary apartment until I start at the Rio.”
“They’re giving him a penthouse suite. Can you believe that?” Shannon said.
“It’s all happening so fast,” Gary said.
“Wait, will we have tigers as neighbors?” Shannon asked excitedly.
“Can’t make any promises,” Gary said.
David felt sad even as he tried to console himself with the fact everyone was moving on with their adult lives and that was a good thing.
David’s feeling of melancholy was interrupted by a shriek from Shannon, not a shriek of joy but of terror. A large rat came out from under the bed and ran over her feet and out the door. It was followed by the white-and-black cat emerging from under the bed in hot pursuit.
“I didn’t know you had a cat,” Gary said.
“I don’t. He keeps getting in here somehow.”
“Lucky, that,” Shannon said. “That rat could have taken off one of my toes. You need a cat in this house, apparently.”
“I have an exterminator coming tomorrow,” David said. “For the rats, not the cat. I think there’s a nest of them in the basement. I hear scratching coming from down there.”
“Let’s get you unpacked and we’ll take you out for dinner,” Gary said.
“I’m not particularly scared of rats,” Shannon explained. “It just startled me.”
“I would have screamed too,” David said.
“It was more of a shriek,” she said as they made their way downstairs. “Honestly, we had plenty of rats on the farm where I grew up. We would catch them with our bare hands.”
“I know you aren’t a scaredy-cat,” David said.
“Not at all. I’ve chopped the heads off of chickens. I’m not a girly girl.”
“You should buy a litter box and some cat food,” Gary noted.
“I’m not keeping the cat.”
“We’ll see,” Gary said.
They did a little unpacking, then went to dinner at one of his favorite restaurants in San Francisco, The Stinking Rose. The restaurant featured garlic in most of the main dishes and even in the desserts.
David had almost said he wasn’t up to going out since another headache was coming on, but the pill he had popped earlier seemed to have turned it off before it started. Getting out for some fresh air was just what he needed.
* * *
Gary pulled up in front of the house and left the engine idling. “Thanks again for dinner,” David said.
“Our pleasure. Congrats again on the new digs.” Gary reached into the back seat and he and David clasped hands in a combination handshake/high five. David hopped out of the car and Shannon blew him a kiss as he turned to wave goodbye.
He should have been exhausted from a day spent moving and unpacking, and an evening that included champagne, cocktails, and more wine with dinner. But once he was alone in his new house, David felt keyed up and restless, and decided to use that energy productively.
He decided to focus on his bedroom so it would be ready when he got sleepy. He’d left the window cracked open and the cool night air had freshened up the stale-smelling room. He vacuumed and Febrezed the feather mattress and made the bed with the clean bedding he’d brought from his apartment. He dusted every surface and cleaned under the bed, nervously checking for rats. To his relief, there was no sign of infestation; the one earlier must have been a fluke, a particularly brave rodent that had ventured out of the basement. Luckily, the cat had shown up when it did.
David was unpacking the last box in the bedroom when he found his photo album. He sunk down onto his freshly made bed and lifted the red vinyl album cover, which had cracked over the years, showing its cheap cardboard construction underneath.
All the pictures were of a happier time, yet it pained him to look at them, so he seldom did. It was mostly pictures of his mother and sister, Jenny, both of whom had died in a car crash when David was thirteen.
The confirmation that Gary and Shannon were moving away had already put him in a melancholy mood, and these pictures weren’t helping. He tried to let the old snapshots trigger happy memories, but they would not come.
The photos were mostly Polaroids, faded with the passing of time. Soon they would disappear altogether, just like the obsolete technology that produced them.
One spread of the album was dedicated to his sister’s high school years.
She was older than David, and popular at school, a good student and athlete. David struggled with most of his classes and teachers always urged him to, “Be more like your sister. She studies hard and can get into any college she wants on her grades alone. You need to think about your future, like she does.”
Of course, as it turned out, she didn’t have a future. She would never graduate high school, would never go on to college, and never have a family of her own.
He turned the page to a photo of his mother fitting him and his sister with Halloween costumes. It was the year he went as Mork from Mork & Mindy, a favorite TV show of his that was being rerun in the afternoons. His sister was dressed as a vampire, or perhaps just a Goth Girl, as he couldn’t see any fangs in the photo.
In some ways, it felt like Jenny had never left home. Her pictures and trophies were everywhere. Her room was kept just as it was the day she died.
His mother, too, always seemed like she was just out shopping and would be back at any moment. His father wouldn’t get rid of his mother’s and sister’s clothes and they continued to hang in closets, waiting for them to return.
His dad never bought new furniture or put up new pictures on the wall. David and his father shared their home with their memories permanently etched into the decor of the house. The two men just wandered around in it like squatters. It was the girls’ house; it always had been.
David had been closer to his mother than to his father. She was the one who introduced him to the nerdy things like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. She understood him and why he had trouble focusing at school.
“Your brain works like mine,” she had told him. “It’s always someplace else than the here and now. You’ll have to learn how to concentrate on one thing at a time or you won’t make it in this world.”
She was a buffer between him and his father. Both his parents had always been religious. They went to church every Sunday and to Bible study every Wednesday.
When David told his mother he might not believe in God, she told him to pretend he did until he was out of high school and college. “Your father might not pay for college if he thinks you aren’t saved.”
He and his sister fought the way siblings do, but they were family and she protected him at school. Her friends were the jocks and popular crowd and he was off-limits to their bullying. That ended when she died. It was like they resented him for being alive when she was gone.
His father got even more religious after the accident. He had to believe in God more than ever. He had to know his wife and daughter were waiting for him in heaven or he could not go on with living.
David turned the page in the photo album and found a picture of the whole family. It looked like it was posed at a family reunion or some other outside gathering. He didn’t remember being in the photo or seeing it before. It wasn’t a Polaroid and still had all its colors and contrast. His dad was smiling.
David pulled the photo from its protective sleeve and looked on the back where there was usually a note from his mother about when and where it was taken. There was none. But there was a date stamp from the photo processing that was two weeks after they had died.
His father must have gotten the photo in the mail weeks after his mother had sent in the film roll. It would have been gut-wrenching for his father, but he dutifully put it in the correct album his wife had started.
They were already ghosts when he got this, David thought. He didn’t believe in ghosts beyond the metaphor, but the thought sent a chill up his spine.
He searched his memory for happier times outdoors when the photo could have been taken. He scanned the background, looking for clues to what park or backyard it could be, and saw none.
He did notice a person out of focus behind them. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light coming through the trees, but the blob of light looked like a blond woman in a light blue summer dress. Might be Aunt Edna, he thought. So maybe that big family reunion at that park in Ashland? That one near Lake Superior.
His out-of-focus eyes caught a glimmer of something in the full-length mirror that was on the back of the bedroom door. It was the same fuzzy outline of a person with blond hair and a blue dress. It was as though the image in the photo had burned into his retina, like looking at the sun too long. But as he tried to clear his vision, the blurry figure moved deeper into the mirror to the point where it was behind his own reflection sitting on the bed.
He turned his head sharply to look behind him, painfully twisting his neck in the process, but nothing was there.
When he returned his gaze back to the mirror, his image was alone. The headlight from a passing car came through his window, danced along his wall, and sparkled in the mirror. That’s all it was, he thought. A trick of the light. And that’s all these photos are.
David shut the cover on the photo album and slid it under his bed. This is all I have of them now, he thought. Fading photos that were slipping further and further out of his view.
The door to the bedroom suddenly flung open, startling David out of his reverie. Probably a gust of wind, David thought. He shut the door and was now facing his reflection in the full-length mirror. It was dusty. One of things David had missed in his cleaning frenzy. He then noticed words traced in the dust. Words you could only see up close: ‘Fitz and Kang’. The letters were scrawled like a child’s writing, crooked and uneven. Still, the names were clearly there. David grabbed his dust cloth, gave the mirror a good polishing, then got ready for bed. The first of many nights sleeping in my new house, he thought. The first night of my new life.
* * *
“One thousand five hundred,” the exterminator said as David filled out the check. “You might experience some bad smells as the ones in the walls and crawl space decompose.”
“Wonderful,” David said, ripping the check out of the book and handing it to him.
“Ninety-day guarantee, so if you see any rats alive after today, give us a call.”
The plumber came up from the basement as the exterminator was leaving. “Flushed the sewer and clean water line,” she said. “You might hear some rattling and banging as the air works its way out.”
“How much do I owe you?”
“Seven hundred sixty-five,” she said, packing up the rest of her tools. “Your furnace looks like it needs replacing. We do heating and cooling work too.”
“How much would that cost?”
“Because you’re so nice, I could do it for four grand and labor.”
He told her it would have to wait until after the roof was done, since that took priority. She was an attractive redhead, and she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, so he thought about asking her out, but then realized she must get that a lot from clients and it would be awkward for her.
She left, and he grabbed a beer from the kitchen. The light in the refrigerator was blinking, and the beer was warm. Another damn thing he would have to fix.
Damn it, she was flirting with me, wasn’t she? David thought. Earlier, she asked if he was fixing up the house by himself. She wanted to know if I had a girlfriend.
He realized he would have to get better at picking up signals if he were ever to meet someone. Women did find him attractive. At least until they get to know me, he thought, then made a conscious effort to stop the negative thinking. I have a good job and now I have a house. I’m a good catch. David had practiced daily affirmations, like his therapist had told him to, even though he found it silly. “I’m good enough, smart enough and gosh darn it, people like me,” he said to his reflection in the toaster, then gave himself a mocking thumbs-up.
The clock radio on the counter was blinking: 8:30, 8:30, 8:30. It had come with the house and looked like it was something from the 1980s or 90s. He put his beer down and fiddled with controls on the back to change the time, but he couldn’t figure it out. He yanked out the plug and threw it into the trash as he headed out the door to the backyard.
He waded through the weeds and sat down at the picnic table under the walnut tree. He realized then he would have to get a mower, and sprinklers and all the other stuff you need for a backyard.
“Howdy, neighbor,” he heard a friendly voice call out. A man in the yard next door was sticking his head over the wooden fence. “I’m Gus.”
David stood up and went over to the fence. “David.” He reached up and offered his hand for a shake, which Gus accepted with vigor.
“Glad to see someone bought this house,” Gus said. “Or are you renting from the bank like the last couple?”
“No, she’s all mine. At least the mortgage is.”
“Want to come over for a beer?” Gus asked.
David went around as there was no side gate. In fact, just like David’s house, there was no way into the yard except through the house, so Gus met him at the front door.
“You can borrow my mower if you haven’t got one yet,” Gus said as he led him into the living room.
“Thanks, I just might do that.”
“Have a seat,” Gus said. He went to the kitchen and came back with two bottles of beer.
They did all the small talk new neighbors do. David told him he was a computer programmer and found out that Gus was a semi-retired professor of anthropology and African studies at Berkeley.
His house was decorated with all sorts of African art that he had collected during his travels. Paintings, statues, and face masks adorned the walls.
He was a widower whose wife had died ten years ago.
“I’m so sorry,” David said.
“It was pretty rough for a few years, but you learn to make peace with it,” Gus said. He grabbed a framed photo from an end table and handed it to David. It showed a younger Gus, without the gray peppering his black hair, and a pretty young woman standing in front of Gus’s house.
“She’s beautiful,” David said, handing the photo back.
There was a long, awkward pause that David broke by changing the subject.
“I saw the solar panels on your house,” he said. “Are they worth the investment?”
“Sure. If you’re planning on staying in the house for a few years. My electric bill is zero most months and some months the power company pays me. Any excess juice is fed back into the grid and I get a credit.”
“Wow, I might look into getting panels on my house.” Then he remembered how many expenses were already piling up and laughed. “After I pay off the plumber and the roofer and the electrician, and, well, you get it.”
Gus laughed too. “Yeah, been there. But if you can swing it, it’s worth it in the long run. I have a well too. I don’t use it, but I could and be completely off the grid for water and power, if I wanted to.”
David noticed a computer monitor on a small writing desk in the corner that had a view of Gus’s front porch on the screen.
“I’ve been thinking of getting one of those camera doorbells too,” David said.
“Worth every penny. It pays to keep an eye on who’s at your door in this neighborhood.”
“Yeah, I’ll probably do that.”
“I have a digital keypad lock too, so I don’t have to worry about forgetting my keys,” Gus said.
David then asked Gus if he knew about the killing in David’s house.
“Yeah, that was, let’s see, two years ago? That would be Danny, the youngest of the Mullins boys. They were a nice family. They moved into the neighborhood about the same time as my wife and I did, twenty years ago. When the parents moved to Florida, Danny and his older brother, Mike, got the house. Then Mike moved out, and it was just Danny. He got in with a bad crowd and started selling drugs.”
“So that’s what the police raid was about, drugs?”
“Yeah, the police showed up one night and broke down the door and there were shots fired. They took him out on a stretcher. The house was seized, and ever since then, the bank has been renting it out. No one stays for very long. Last couple were only in the house three days when they took off in the middle of the night.”
“I don’t blame them. I’d take off after three days if I hadn’t sunk so much money into it already.”
“This neighborhood used to be great. A lot of families with kids, people that took care of their yards. It’s gone downhill over the years. The house on the other side of you has been abandoned for a couple of years now. Squatters use it to shoot up in. I’ve called the city a bunch of times, but they haven’t done anything.”
David knew it was a run-down neighborhood. It was one of the reasons the house was so cheap. It hadn’t occurred to him that it also might be dangerous. A drug house next door and a drug dealer was dead on my floor, he thought. The memory of the names Fitz and Kang on his bathroom and bedroom mirrors popped into his mind.
“Any of the renters named Fitz or Kang?” David asked.
“Not that I recall, but then I didn’t get to know all the renters.”
David thanked Gus for the beer and said he needed to get back. “I have a few more things I want to get done in the house today.”
“Why don’t you come over for supper tonight?” Gus offered. “Nothing fancy. I’ll just throw some burgers on the grill. You won’t feel like cooking if you’ve been working on the house all afternoon.”
David told him he had a couple of friends coming over.
“Invite them over too, the more the merrier.”
David didn’t want to impose, but on the other hand, he still had very little food in the house and he did want to be neighborly.
“That would be great, thanks. I’ll bring the beer.”
* * *
“So, David tells me you teach at Berkeley,” Gary said as he popped open a beer in Gus’s backyard.
“Yeah, semi-retired now, but I still teach a couple of classes a semester to keep my hand in,” Gus said. He flipped the burgers and they sizzled on the grill. “And what do you do for a living, young lady?” Gus asked Shannon.
“I draw pictures for Google,” she said. “Not very exciting, but the pay is good and I can work from anywhere.”
David was busy admiring Gus’s well-manicured lawn and raised garden beds. He didn’t think he would ever get his yard to look like that. Even more impressive, the three of them were sitting at a picnic table Gus had made himself. David found himself wishing he had paid more attention when his father tried to teach him woodworking. It would be a useful hobby.
“David didn’t tell me he was bringing a celebrity to dinner,” Gus said to Gary. “I saw your act on YouTube. That is some crazy stuff.”
“He’s got a job opening for Penn & Teller,” Shannon said proudly. “We are moving to Vegas in a few months.”
“Wow. I’ll have to come see it,” Gus said, taking burgers off the grill and setting them on buns. “I get out to Vegas a few times a year.”
“Let me know when you come. I’ll get you tickets,” Gary said.
Gus served the burgers and coleslaw and sat down to join them.
“How’d you two lovebirds meet?” Gus asked.
“Are you asking about me and Gary or Gary and David?” Shannon asked. “Because I wonder about these two sometimes.”
“I swept Shannon off her feet when I was doing my magic act at the Fringe Festival in Dublin,” Gary said. “I swept David off his feet when I transferred to his school senior year.”
“He kidnapped me from my beautiful Irish home and whisked me off to America to be his love slave,” Shannon said. “I’m sure some sort of magic spell was involved.”
“And he introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons, the AV club, and the theater kids,” David said. “He turned me into the nerd I am today. Probably some magic involved there too.”
“You bastard!” Shannon said. “Did he make you go to the Renaissance fair, David?” She reached over and took David’s hand. “You can tell us, this is a safe space.”
“If I remember right,” Gary said, “David’s father hired me to tutor him in history.”
“Why study the dead? What could they possibly teach me?” David asked. “But yes, Gary kept me from being a high school dropout. And I kept Gary from getting beat up for being the weird kid.”
“Not how I remember it,” Gary said. “I remember the whole high school being impressed with my sleight of hand.”
“He dyed his blond hair black and drew on a mustache with his mom’s mascara,” David said. “It was all I could do to keep him alive in the school hallways.”
“I was dedicated to my persona from an early age,” Gary said.
“You’re really a blond?” Shannon said. “When were you going to tell me? Carpet does not match the drapes, apparently.”
“I don’t want to hear about Gary’s carpet,” David said. “Back to my story. Magic is the only thing he was ever interested in doing for a living. He did birthday parties, performed at nursing homes and was the opening act for garage bands. I guess all that hard work paid off.” David raised his beer bottle for a toast. “All hail, Gary the Gory – Blood Magician.”
“How did two Wisconsin boys end up in California?” Gus asked.
“I got into Berkeley,” David said. “Thanks to Gary’s tutoring, I got a computer science scholarship.”
“His dad was vehemently against him going to school in California, because of all the sin and depravity, but I said I’d go too and keep an eye on him.”
“I don’t know how you had my dad fooled. You were the one who was the bad influence.”
“I dropped out after the first semester. Just wasn’t for me,” Gary said.
“Wait! Gary, you’re from Wisconsin?” Shannon said. “Just kidding, I knew that. I don’t know where Wisconsin is, but I did know that.”
David looked over at the fence between their houses. Of course, Gus’s side was nicely painted. There was an ornate design on it, a colorful eight-pointed star decorated with flowers and birds that looked to be hand-painted.
To David’s surprise, a man popped his head over the top of the fence and was staring at them. The only way he could do that was to be trespassing in David’s yard. And he would have to climb the fence to do that since there was no fence gate leading to the outside.
“Hey, who are you?” David yelled at him. The others turned to see who he was talking to.
But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, David realized his mistake and laughed out loud. He was looking into a mirrored ball hanging from a tree, one of Gus’s many garden decorations.
“Oh, he has an ugly mug, David,” Shannon said. “Best not start a fight with him.”
Gus laughed. “That there is a ‘gazing ball’,” he explained. “Wards off evil spirits. Plus, the birds like to look at themselves in it.”
He pointed to the design on the fence.
“And that’s a Pennsylvania Dutch hex symbol. You might have seen them on barns and such. It’s also to ward off evil spirits and bad luck.”
“Do you think it works?” Shannon asked.
“Probably not. But it’s a pretty design.”
David smiled at his face in the mirrored ball. To David’s confusion, his reflected face lost its smile and frowned at him. The reflection raised its hand and pointed at David. This startled him so much he had to look down at his own right hand, which was firmly clutching beer. When he returned his gaze, the reflection was under his control again.
David put his beer down on the table. Too much beer in the sun, he thought.