We run a small operation part-time, my partner and I. Covert investigation, bordering on light levels of exorcism, you could say. I study the paranormal and the occult; he's a sensitive and devout in his belief in Jesus.
Most of the time we're the ones they call in to evict stray raccoons.
Just as well. We do cleaning and renovation for our real job, mostly. Old places that have been boarded up and abandoned, let to rot and ruination. Places on the outskirts, between towns. They call us. We're not afraid to go in and get dirty. And if there's any strange creatures that howl in the night, well... we're usually able to handle them.
Usually.
Will's six years younger than I am. We're both in our twenties. He's ex-army, in much better shape than I could ever hope to be. While I spent most of my youth with my head in a dusty old grimoire and lurking the depths of the internet he spent his helping his father do carpentry work. It made him strong. He's bull-headed and fearless when it comes to the real world.
But the night Will couldn't take it anymore, well, I don't blame him myself.
We had been called by a young woman out near Heavener. Heavener's way out in the country, nearly on top of the Ouachita Mountains. To get there you ride nearly vertical up the highway to the top, past the Three Sticks monument. On cloudy days you drive through the clouds, that's how high it is.
It was a cloudy day when we went, at least. When you get to the other side, in Heavener proper, you can look down over the edge and see clouds beneath you. It really makes you feel isolated and alone, out there in the mists of a piss-streaking storm.
We got there around noon. The young woman, Leanne, met us there; pretty little thing, but very country-fied, so to speak. The house was her grandmother's, she explained, and it had been passed down to her when she passed away. This was very recent, Leanne said, and very sudden to her. As far as she was aware her grandparents were dead; Leanne's Mom had never said anything different.
"Every time I talked with her about her parents she always got such a pained look on her face," she said to us. "I'd never understood it, until now. Apparently I also had an Aunt... my Mom's younger sister. Something happened to her a long time ago, she went missing or something. Anyway in all the fracas my mother took off."
And she'd never spoke one word to her parents again, Leanne informed us. Of course we weren't here for an exorcism, but a renovation and cleaning. Maybe that was what set Will off kilter. I just figured she was chatty, and bored, besides.
Will grabbed my hand and squeezed it for a moment- I leaned closer to him and he whispered "I'm hungry."
Much as I love and treasure the man, there are some times he makes me question why.
"There's sandwiches out in the truck," I said.
He wrinkled his nose and nodded, then headed that-a-ways. I gave Miss Leanne a brief rundown of what services we provided, and she let us know what she needed from us. A basic clean-up and throw-out, that sort of thing. She wasn't keeping the place, she said.
"All the way out in the mountains," she said. "Nowhere near civilization. It's too isolated for me. I'm hoping to sell it and pay some of my student loans off."
So we would purge the place. Antiques and furniture stayed; she was planning on having an estate sale eventually. We were needed to clean out the kitchen, the bedrooms, the garage, the cellar, the attic, and the grounds.
It was a three day job, at least. The place hadn't seen maintenance in quite some time. Leanne said she would come back on the third day.
The house itself was massive- two stories, peaked roof for a crawlspace attic. Most of the furnishings looked like they had come from the late-fifties. Stained sunflower wallpaper, huge black and white knob television, cat clock, the whole nine yards. It was a little like stepping back into a cob-webbed time machine.
I mentioned cobwebs. I forgot to mention the dust. And the newspapers. And the junk. We weren't called there to clean up some tidy old woman's last moments, we were there to literally drag the heaps of garbage out of the place. It was certainly not the worst job we've done, but it wasn't pleasant. Amidst the towering piles of old periodicals and papers lay unpleasant surprises, like a nest of spiders or a pack of rats. Both of which we found. And a dead cat.
The job is boring. I would endlessly detail it to you, but it's bad enough having to do it for a living, let alone recount it. Let's just say it passed. We spent the nights we needed sleeping in a tangle of elbows and knees on the red velvet couch in the den.
I should mention, of course, that Will ate most of our lunch for breakfast the first morning. One of the perks of trash relocation is getting to sort through the food someone has left over in their pantry. It was always a nice surprise to get some good stuff that hadn't yet gone stale.
It was about the second day when we went pantry raiding. The old woman who owned the place had her own cannery; there were shelves upon shelves of fruits and vegetables. There was even a ladder that went from the pantry down to the root cellar, where she had even more things preserved in mason jars.
"We've hit the jackpot," Will said.
I agreed with him on this. Everything from pickled beets to pickled pickles to jams and fruit preserves were stocked like a supermarket, each one of them carefully waxed and sealed and stamped with a date.
If you've never had homemade preserved food then you're missing out. There's something so familiar and filling about it all. We gorged ourselves for lunch, with Will eating more than his normally-ravenous appetite could usually stand. He kept looking up to the pantry, though, and eventually I said something.
"Something keeps bouncing light," he said.
He climbed up the ladder and, after a moment, rustled and moved some jars around. He pulled something free and then descended the ladder again. He presented his prize to me with a flourish.
"Homemade potted chicken," he said. "I needed some protein."
He cracked open the container and then pulled some out, noshing on it. I didn't care to look. The smell was ripe. I looked at the stamp on it- even though it was all the way in the back, the date said 'Mar '13.'
"And you expect me to kiss you later," I said. "I hope you don't die from that."
"Ha-ha," he said back.
Another two days of nothing eventful. We made our way through the kitchen, disposing of the garbage, packed up most of the canned food, and then cleared the first floor and the garage. The second floor was mostly done at this point. All we had left was the attic and the master bedroom. The grounds weren't too vandalized.
We had decided to get done ASAP so we could make it back to Tulsa by light. Bills needed paying, etc. We decided to split up. He took the master bedroom, and I took the attic.
The electric still worked, but most of the bulbs had blown out. The old lady who owned the place obviously didn't need to see to navigate the mountains of trash in her house. I, on the other hand, did need to see. The only way into the attic was through a spring-loaded set of rickety stairs that you pulled down from a ripcord near the second floor. I had planned on taking a floodlight attached to an extension cord from the hallway and duct-taping it to the roof; this would give me enough illumination to make my way to the attic window and open it.
From there I would have enough light to see, and a little portcullis for tossing trash out. Not the most dignified way of approaching things, but better than hauling a trash bag up and down the stairs.
Of course I don't know what I expected to find in the attic. Maybe big crates. Me and Leanne had done a walkabout to get the general lay of the land, so to speak. I didn't remember what I had seen up here before, but I know what I saw didn't fit my expectations.
In the glare of the floodlight, I saw cobwebs and a nearly empty room. Except for in the middle. There was a bed, with chains attached to every rusted iron post. The sheets were ancient and filthy; yellowed and dried-stuck to a mattress that was more spring than fluff. It smelled of stale mold and ammonia in here.
I am not easy to spook. I will admit, however, that I became a bit unsettled. The main idea I had in my head at the time was that this was a hell of a mess and that I would probably have to trudge all the way down the ladder and out to the first floor to get a pair of gloves. It was at this point that the floodlight detached from the ceiling and nearly made me piss myself.
The bulb shattered and sparked out; despite being in a wire cage to protect it the bulb inside was completely demolished. I had a tiny glare of light streaming in from the greasy window before me, and a warm, inviting square of light beckoning me to go back below.
Of course my thinking was a little hurried at this point. We were on day 3. I was ready to be done. This was our only floodlight, and I doubted I could find another one without travelling upwards of seventy miles. I made an executive decision and marched to the window. I tried to ratchet it open, and then when I finally succeeded I heard the most godawful wail you ever did hear.
There was a hurried thump under my feet; dust fell from the rafters. I could hear the pounding of footsteps underneath the floorboards beneath me.
"Will?" My voice was more concerned and quiet than fearful.
The floodlight's cord snapped out and down out of the attic, like a snake wriggling its way out. The spring-door snapped to. That warm and cozy square of light was no more. I was trapped here suddenly, in the attic of a house where a crazy woman used to walk. I heard thumps downstairs beneath the floorboards.
I got down on my hands and knees and tried to open the spring door, but it was stuck closed. I banged on it a few times in vain, but nothing doing. It was almost like something was keeping it held closed. I couldn't very well damage the goddamn thing, either. We were there to make money, not spend it.
I got back up, dusted my hands off, and tried not to panic.
"WILL!" I screamed, in my most 'boy you are in trouble' voice.
Nothing. Nothing, that is, but the sound of glass breaking on the sidewalk outside. I walked back to the open window and saw the back of our truck shaking violently. Clear glass jars of preserves were being tossed onto the driveway like they were being shot-putted. There was broken glass and food everywhere.
NOW it was time to panic. I ran back over to the trap door and started kicking it with my boot, really stamping on it hard. Nothing doing, until I jumped on top of it. Something gave and I fell, hard, barely catching myself under my armpits on the sides of the trapdoor. The floodlight extension cord was tangled around the mechanisms; the unplugged end was wound around the banister that seperated the second floor from the open air of the first.
I dropped to the ground and tried to catch my breath, then massaged my ribs as I walked down the steps. I rounded the stairs and stepped outside to find that my partner was in the truck bed, howling his eyes out about something.
To my dismay, amidst the piles of broken glass and food, there was a pile of fresh vomit. I put the pieces of what happened together in my head- Will was right underneath me, in the Master bedroom. Obviously what had happened was he was getting sick, and then rushed out of the room. When my poor plan to duct-tape the flood light failed, the cord fell slack and he tripped over it. It tangled with the door mechanism and around the bannister, and Will was being overly dramatic like he usually was and started tossing the food that made him sick.
"You know we're going to have to clean all this up, don't you?" I asked.
"We need to leave," Will sobbed. "Now."
"I think we need to start finishing up here," I said. "Look at the mess you made."
Will turned and looked at me with baleful eyes.
"You don't get it," he cried. "Go to the Master bedroom. There's a piece of paper there, on the bedside stand." He leaned forward and whispered something else to me.
I started back to the house. I didn't want to, mind you. Will and I had known each other forever. He can be dramatic at times, but he's usually level-headed. There are times in a partnership, a true partnership, that you have to listen to your partner and do what they want you to. Even if you don't want to.
I walked back up the porch, into the house. Past the kitchen, up the roundabout stairs that led to the second floor. I walked past the orange electrical cord that had almost killed me, and into the Master bedroom.
There, on the bedside stand, was a small note. It was written in cursive, so it was a little hard to read at first. But after I read it a few times I finally understood. Fear flushed through my system like adrenaline. I felt a cold sweat break out on my head. I started to gag.
I live alone now.
8 o'clock was her bedtime, but now it's mine.
My house is filled with emptiness and despair.
Daughter, oh daughter... how I miss you.
Alive eternally, oh precious child.
God, oh God, Merciful and kind
Please kill this hurt, please slay this despair
Let me be filled with your forgiveness
Me, alone, suffocating under this crushing weight.
Die pain, die misery, die despair.
And what Will had whispered to me?
"Read the note from top to bottom, not left to right. She couldn't bring herself to write what happened normal. It was probably what drove her nuts."
I was silent when I got back into the car. I kissed Will, and hugged him. I took another look at the stamps on what few jars we had left. What I had thought was a 1 was the old woman's version of a seven.
I called Leanne to explain what we found, but we never did finish that job. There were too many questions we wanted to keep unanswered.