wouldn’t notice rotting wood if they stepped on a strip of it and termites crawled across their feet, but even my social worker hasn’t brought up the subject.
Which makes him either clueless or just so ready to get rid of me that my safety isn’t much of a concern. Or maybe both.
I set the pick ax on the ground and face Cameron.
“Carl and Tami bought the house five years ago. It was built twenty years before that, but the original owners never finished it…”
And so I launch into a story that I’ve thought about a few dozen times in the years I’ve lived here but never mentioned out loud. The words feel weird rolling off my tongue even though they’ve been rehearsed and re-rehearsed so much I could probably perform a monologue on Broadway and title it My Life In The House That No One Wanted —a clever little metaphor that also applies to me.
The story is boring. A little bland. But also unusual because who abandons a house this large—a showplace so impressive that a young Donald Trump could have moved in two decades earlier and had something brag-worthy to show his friends—and leaves it littered with heavy machinery and hand tools? It’s so odd, I’m fully expecting those people to return one day and demand our eviction from their home, blaming the absence on an extended trip abroad or a stint in rehab that lasted a few years longer than expected. It hasn’t happened yet, so I guess for now we’re safe.
I breathe my own little ironic laugh.
“What’s funny?” Cameron asks. “That story freaks me out. Have you ever thought the original owners left behind more than just tools and unpaid bills?” He moves away from the saw and picks up a hammer.
“Like what?” I don’t need another reason to be stressed.
“I don’t know. A string of dead bodies? An animal graveyard?” He picks up a rusty hatchet and swings it in a figure eight toward me. I try not to react, work to slow my breathing down. In a far corner, there’s an old wasp’s nest in view over Cameron’s right shoulder that’s hung vacant and unused for the last two summers. I stare at it, envisioning a hundred bugs climbing in and out, in and out, contemplating whether or not to leave their cozy home in search of something to sting.
I hate wasps. I hate this conversation more.
“There are no dead bodies lying around here. And as for animals, Carl and Tami hate them. They’ve never even had a pet fish—”
“That you know of. Maybe they’re all buried somewhere at the edge of the property. Along with a few small children and old people.”
“Would you stop?” I try to sound threatening, but the small twitch that turns up the corner of his mouth has me allowing a nervous laugh. “That isn’t funny, Cameron.”
It is. Sort of. But you won’t find me encouraging this type of behavior from a kid who’s only been here a few weeks. He can’t know that every creaking floorboard that groans in the middle of the night…every gust of wind that travels through my room in spite of tightly shut windows…every whispered word that floats like a menacing warning from the darkened hallways to my hand-covered ears, has me thinking this very thing.
As silly as it is, I believe in ghosts.
I know from experience that they also believe in me.
“Let’s look,” Cameron says.
He taps the hammer against the wall, jolting me out of my thoughts and back into this dusty shed where cobwebs and skittering mice are multiplying by the second. A nail is barely pressed into the wood, so he taps against it, setting it flush against the grain. I stare at his face lined with hopeful anticipation, an eagerness to have an adventure and overturn things that might reveal the long-buried secrets of this place. But I don’t look back at him with the same fervor. I can’t. Because I don’t want to look. I want to do the opposite of look. I want to hide from the mysteries buried here.
I already know too many of them lying right out in the
Which makes him either clueless or just so ready to get rid of me that my safety isn’t much of a concern. Or maybe both.
I set the pick ax on the ground and face Cameron.
“Carl and Tami bought the house five years ago. It was built twenty years before that, but the original owners never finished it…”
And so I launch into a story that I’ve thought about a few dozen times in the years I’ve lived here but never mentioned out loud. The words feel weird rolling off my tongue even though they’ve been rehearsed and re-rehearsed so much I could probably perform a monologue on Broadway and title it My Life In The House That No One Wanted —a clever little metaphor that also applies to me.
The story is boring. A little bland. But also unusual because who abandons a house this large—a showplace so impressive that a young Donald Trump could have moved in two decades earlier and had something brag-worthy to show his friends—and leaves it littered with heavy machinery and hand tools? It’s so odd, I’m fully expecting those people to return one day and demand our eviction from their home, blaming the absence on an extended trip abroad or a stint in rehab that lasted a few years longer than expected. It hasn’t happened yet, so I guess for now we’re safe.
I breathe my own little ironic laugh.
“What’s funny?” Cameron asks. “That story freaks me out. Have you ever thought the original owners left behind more than just tools and unpaid bills?” He moves away from the saw and picks up a hammer.
“Like what?” I don’t need another reason to be stressed.
“I don’t know. A string of dead bodies? An animal graveyard?” He picks up a rusty hatchet and swings it in a figure eight toward me. I try not to react, work to slow my breathing down. In a far corner, there’s an old wasp’s nest in view over Cameron’s right shoulder that’s hung vacant and unused for the last two summers. I stare at it, envisioning a hundred bugs climbing in and out, in and out, contemplating whether or not to leave their cozy home in search of something to sting.
I hate wasps. I hate this conversation more.
“There are no dead bodies lying around here. And as for animals, Carl and Tami hate them. They’ve never even had a pet fish—”
“That you know of. Maybe they’re all buried somewhere at the edge of the property. Along with a few small children and old people.”
“Would you stop?” I try to sound threatening, but the small twitch that turns up the corner of his mouth has me allowing a nervous laugh. “That isn’t funny, Cameron.”
It is. Sort of. But you won’t find me encouraging this type of behavior from a kid who’s only been here a few weeks. He can’t know that every creaking floorboard that groans in the middle of the night…every gust of wind that travels through my room in spite of tightly shut windows…every whispered word that floats like a menacing warning from the darkened hallways to my hand-covered ears, has me thinking this very thing.
As silly as it is, I believe in ghosts.
I know from experience that they also believe in me.
“Let’s look,” Cameron says.
He taps the hammer against the wall, jolting me out of my thoughts and back into this dusty shed where cobwebs and skittering mice are multiplying by the second. A nail is barely pressed into the wood, so he taps against it, setting it flush against the grain. I stare at his face lined with hopeful anticipation, an eagerness to have an adventure and overturn things that might reveal the long-buried secrets of this place. But I don’t look back at him with the same fervor. I can’t. Because I don’t want to look. I want to do the opposite of look. I want to hide from the mysteries buried here.
I already know too many of them lying right out in the
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