Before and Afterlives, Page 2

  The first to disappear was one of the boys. Let’s call him Ephraim. He was the ruddier of the two, and often on his own, even though his parents taught him not to wander. One afternoon he and his brother went into the orchard to pick apples, but in the evening, when the sun began to set, only Ephraim’s brother returned to — House, tears streaming down his face.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Mrs. Blank. “Where’s your brother?”

  But the boy (William, we’ll call him) could only shake his head. Finally he was able to choke out this one sentence:

  “The orchard took him.”

  Then he burst into tears again.

  This, of course, sparked a heated debate around town. We who live here have always been a spirited group of people, ready to speculate about anything that might affect us. The general consensus arrived at was that the boy had been taken. Someone must have stolen him, like the fairies did in the old country. A stranger passing through, who perhaps saw the perfect round ruddy globes of Ephraim’s cheeks and mistook them for apples. It is a dark thought, this possible narrative. But dark thoughts move through this world whether we like it or not.

  Mr. Blank died soon after his son’s disappearance. He died, as they say, of a broken heart. Mrs. Blank found him in the kitchen, slumped over in his chair, his head on the table. She thought he was crying again, as he often did after his son’s vanishing. But when she stroked his hair and then his cheek, she found him cold, his heart stopped up with sorrow.

  They buried Mr. Blank in the orchard, beneath the tree where William last saw Ephraim. And only two years later Mrs. Blank woke one night to find that she was alone in — House. She searched every room twice, but could not find her last remaining family member, her young William.

  It was the middle of winter, in the middle of the night, and when Mrs. Blank stepped outside onto the front porch, she found a set of footprints in the snow that gathered on the steps. She followed them down and out the front gate, around back of the house and through the orchard, where they came to a stop at her husband’s grave, at the tree where William last saw Ephraim. Mrs. Blank called out for William, but she only got her own voice back. That and the screech of an owl crossing the face of the moon above her.

  Suddenly a rumbling came from inside — House. Mrs. Blank looked at the dark backside of the house, at its gingerbread eaves and its square roof, at its dark windows tinseled with starlight, and shuddered at the thought of going back in without anyone waiting for her, without her son beside her. The house rumbled again, though, louder this time, and she went without further hesitation. Some women marry a house, and this bond neither man nor God can break.

  William’s body was never found, poor child. Like his brother, he vanished into nothing.

  But we say the orchard took him.

  Everything you need

  It took Rose and Jonas Addleson less than a year to make their doomed daughter. Full of passion for one another, they made love as often as possible, trying to bring her into this world, trying to make life worth living. This was perhaps not what Rose felt she needed, but Jonas wanted children, and what Jonas wanted, Rose wanted too. That’s the thing about marriage. Suddenly you want together. You no longer live in desire alone.

  What Rose wanted was for Jonas to be happy. She would marry him within a day of meeting him on the front porch of — House during that fateful blizzard, knowing this was to be her home. The house had told her. And soon it had become apparent that Jonas didn’t want her to leave either. When she went to call her mother, he had interrupted to say, “Would you like more tea?” When she had moved toward the front door, he’d stood up and said, “Would you like to lie down and rest?”

  They shared more whiskey-laced tea, and before the night was over Rose found herself sitting next to Jonas on the sofa, holding his hand while he told her his family’s story. How his grandfather had owned the button factory during the war, how his father had killed himself twenty years ago by placing a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. How his mother had worked her fingers to the bones taking care of everything: the house, Jonas, his father’s bloody mess in the bathroom. “I found him,” Jonas said. “I was ten. On the mirror in the bathroom. There was blood all over it. He was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. Mama scrubbed and scrubbed, but it wouldn’t come out. Not until she asked the house to help her.”

  He paused, gulping the story down again. Rose watched the way the column of his throat moved as he swallowed. She wanted to kiss him right there, where the Adam’s apple wriggled under the skin. Instead she asked, “What did the house do?”

  He looked at her, his eyes full of fear. “She told me to leave the bathroom. So I left, closing the door behind me. I waited outside with my ear against the door, but I couldn’t hear anything. After a few minutes passed, I knocked. Then a few more minutes passed. I was going to knock again, but before my knuckles hit, the door swung open, and there was Mama, wringing her hands in a damp rag. There was no blood on her, not even a speck. And when I looked behind her, the carpet was as clean as ever, as if no dead body had bled to death on it.”

  “The house loves you,” Rose said.

  Jonas looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?”

  “It loves you. Can’t you feel it? It’s trying to tell you something.”

  “If it’s trying to communicate,” said Jonas. “It has a sad idea of conversation.”

  She held those words close as soon as he said them, she pressed them to her chest like a bouquet. This was why she had been brought there, she realized. In this instant she knew she would translate for him. She would bring back all that he had lost. She’d be his mother, she’d be his father, she’d be his wife, she’d have his children. A family, she thought. With a family, he’d never be alone.

  She leaned into him, still holding his hand, and kissed him. Without moving back again, she looked up through her eyelashes and said, “I have everything you need.”

  A child bride

  The story of the Oliver family is a sad one. No, let us revise that statement: It is not sad, it is disturbing. We don’t like to talk about it around town anymore. We are all glad that — House took the Olivers, for they were a bad lot, given to drinking and gambling, as well as other unwholesome activities.

  The Olivers moved into — House just past the turn of the century, after Mrs. Blank died. Our grandparents found Mrs. Blank several weeks after her passing, due to the smell that began to spread down Buckeye Street. It was one of the only times they’d gone into — House, and we remember it to this day: the hardwood floors, the chintz furniture, the stone mantel over the fireplace, the stairs that creaked as you stepped up into the long hallway of the second floor, the second floor itself, the lower half of the hall paneled with dark polished wood. And the bathroom, of course, where all of the trouble eventually focused its energy. It was a fine house, really, with wide windows to let light in, though even with all of that light the house held too many shadows. Our grandparents did not linger. They took Mrs. Blank’s body to the county coroner’s office in Warren and left the doctor to his business.

  Less than a year later, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver came to — House with their three children: two boys, one nearly a man, one still muddling through adolescence, and a girl about to bloom. At first our grandparents didn’t think badly of the Olivers. It takes a certain amount of time for a family to reveal its secrets. So for the first few years, they welcomed the Olivers as if they had always lived among us. The Olivers began attending the Methodist church on Fisher-Corinth Road. They sent the younger boy and girl to school with our children. The oldest boy worked as a field hand for local farmers. His work was good, according to Miles Willard, who paid the boy to clear fields those first few years, before all of the madness started to happen again.

  How to tell about that madness. We suppose we might as well start with Mrs. Oliver’s murder. Two of our children found her body in Sugar Creek. They had been going to catch crayfish, but found Mrs
. Oliver’s body tangled in the roots of a tree that grew out of the bank instead. She had been severely beaten: her face covered in yellow-brown bruises, her skull cracked on the crown. Dark fingerprints lingered on her throat, so we knew she had been strangled. We still do not forgive her murderer for leaving her for us to find. People should take care of their own dirty work.

  Since they had a murder on their hands, our grandparents called on the sheriff to deal with the matter. They marched him right up to — House expecting trouble. But what they found was the front door open and, inside, Mr. Oliver’s body spread out on the dining room table, a butcher knife sticking straight up out of his throat. The sheriff asked several of our grandfathers to back him up as he explored the rest of the house. And so they did, each carrying a rifle as they descended into the basement, then up to the second floor, finding nothing suspicious. It was when the ceiling creaked above them that they knew someone was in the attic.

  They tried opening the attic door, but it had been locked from the inside. So they busted it down, only to be met with a blast from the rifle of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver’s middle child. The sheriff took the shot in his shoulder. He fell backwards, but our grandfathers caught him. Several of them returned fire at the boy. He left a smear of blood on the wall as he collapsed against it.

  They found the oldest boy and the girl bound and gagged in the attic. They were wild with fear. Their brother had killed their parents and was going to kill them, too, they said. This was all over a fight the boy had had with his parents about a debt he’d run up over in Meadville, playing poker with older men who knew how to outwit him. He wanted his parents to pay his debt, but they wouldn’t. They insisted he work to pay for his debts and his drinking, just as their oldest son did. After he killed his parents, he wasn’t sure what to do with his siblings, so he tied them up, and there they still were, alive and none the worse for wear, and we thought perhaps we had salvaged something from that house’s evil.

  The oldest Oliver boy and his sister stayed on at — House. They had nowhere to go, no people. Just each other. The boy kept working as a field hand, the girl continued her schooling. But soon her attendance dropped off, and then she stopped coming altogether. She started working to help with the keeping of the house and the paying of her brother’s debts. She took in wash if people gave it to her. She mended stockings. She raised chickens, selling eggs at the general store to make extra money. Anything she could get her hands on she turned into cash.

  At first she seemed awfully hard-working and a good girl, but we soon discovered not only was she working to pay off her brother’s debts, but to prepare for the child growing inside her. When her stomach began to round out the fronts of her dresses, we knew what was going on up at — House. This was something our grandparents could not abide, so they stopped giving the girl work. They stopped buying her eggs, and the farmers released her brother from his duties. In no time at all, the brother and the child bride packed up their things and left. Without the aid of our grandparents, they could not live among us. This is the way all of the families that lived in — House should have been dealt with all these years maybe. Without mercy. But Lord knows we are a merciful lot.

  Word came several months after the siblings left that they had been seen in Cleveland, living together, posing as a married couple.

  The baby’s room

  Here it is, in the same condition as when the baby was living. The crib with the mobile of brass stars still spinning in space above it, the rocking chair near the eastern window, where sunlight falls in the morning, the walls painted to look like the apple orchard in summer, the ceiling sky blue, as if the baby girl had lived outdoors forever, never inside the confines of — House.

  We know the room is still like this because Mary Kay Billings has seen it. Twice since the baby died she has gone to visit her daughter, and both times the baby’s room was as it was during her last visit. Two years after the child’s death it begins to seem a bit odd, really. She suggested changing it into a sewing room maybe, but Rose shook her head. “No, Mother,” she said. “That’s not allowed to happen.”

  Mary Kay Billings has no patience with her daughter. We all understand this. If our daughters had married into a family that lived in — House without our permission, we’d have no patience either. Poor Mary Kay is one of the pillars of our community. She is one of our trustees, she sings in the church choir. At the elementary school, she volunteers her time three days a week, three hours each of those days, to aid in the tutoring of our children. Mary Kay Billings has raised her daughter, has lived through the death of her husband, God rest his soul (for he would roll in his grave to know what happened to his child), and yet Mary Kay still gives to others for the good of her community. This is the way a town works, not how Rose would have it. We all think Rose is a bit selfish, really, leaving her mother to struggle alone, leaving Hettie without any warning (we liked her flower arrangements better than Hettie’s and better than the replacement girl’s, so it’s even more selfish of her to have done this). Leaving the community altogether, to go live in that place.

  We must mention that not all of us think she is selfish, but only has the appearance of selfishness. Some of us (the minority) believe Rose is noble. A bit too noble, but noble nonetheless. Who else but a self-sacrificing person would take on — House and its curse? We say a crazy person, but some of us say Rose is doing us a favor. If it weren’t Rose, who would the house have brought to its front door when it needed another soul to torment?

  But the baby’s room is a bit too much really. We asked Mary Kay Billings what the rest of the house was like and she said, “Buttons! Buttons everywhere, I tell you! I said to Rose, ‘Rose! What’s the matter with you? Why are all these buttons lying about?’ and she says to me, ‘Mother, I can’t keep up with them. I try, but they keep coming.’ And in the baby’s room, too, I noticed. Right in the crib! I said to Rose, ‘Rose! In the crib even?’ and she says to me, can you believe this, she says tome, her own mother, ‘Mother, I think it’s best if you go.’”

  “And Jonas?” we asked, leaning in closer. Mary Kay narrowed her eyes and sucked her teeth. “Drunk,” she told us. “Drunk as usual.”

  Life during wartime

  In the nineteen-forties, most of our men had been taken overseas to fight against the devil, and our women stayed behind, keeping things about town running smoothly. All over America, women came out of their houses and went into men’s work places. We still argue about who was made for what sort of work, but in the end we know it’s all a made up sort of decision. Nothing fell apart, nothing broke while the men were off fighting. In fact, things maybe went a bit smoother (this of course being an opinion of a certain sector of our population and must be qualified). In any case, the factories were full of women, and in Pittsburgh, just across the state border, James Addleson, the grandfather of our own Jonas, had his ladies making buttons for the uniforms of soldiers.

  The Addlesons had bought — House several years before the war had broken out, but we rarely saw them. They were a Pennsylvania family and only spent part of their summers with us. Occasionally we’d see them in autumn for the apple festival. The Addlesons had money, and — House was one of their luxuries. They had passed through our town during their travels and Mrs. Addleson had seen the house and wanted it immediately. James Addleson didn’t argue with her. Why on earth she would want to buy a house in the country, no matter how stately and beautiful, was beyond him. But he had gotten used to giving the woman what she wanted. It was easier. And it soothed any guilt he might have felt for other, less attractive activities in which he participated. Especially later, after the war started.

  Now Mrs. Addleson was a beautiful woman. She had a smooth complexion, high cheekbones, and a smile that knocked men over like a high wind had hit them. She wore fire engine red lipstick, which we must say is a bit racy but something to look at. Occasionally she’d come to town without Mr. Addleson. She’d bring their children, a girl in her teens and the lit
tle boy who would later grow up to be Jonas Addleson’s father. During the war, we started seeing her and the kids more often. We’d find her shopping in the grocery store, or coming to church on Sundays, sitting in the last pew as if she didn’t want to intrude on our services. Eventually we got used to her being around, and some of the women even got to be something like friends with her.

  Mr. Addleson often stayed in Pittsburgh to look after his factory. We felt bad for the Addlesons. Even though James Addleson didn’t go to war since he had a business to manage, his family suffered like anyone’s. Whenever we asked Mrs. Addleson how her husband faired, she’d say, “Buttons! Buttons everywhere!” and throw her hands in the air. She was a strange lady, now that we think about it. Never had a straight answer for anyone.

  For a while we thought perhaps — House had settled into a restful sleep, or that even the spirit that inhabited the place had moved on to better climates. We hoped, we prayed, and during the war, it seemed our prayers had been answered. Finally a family lived in — House without murdering one another or disappearing altogether. We thought perhaps we’d been foolish all those years to think the house haunted. We shook our heads, laughing a little, thinking ourselves to be exactly what everyone who makes their homes in cities considers us: backwoods, superstitious, ignorant.

  But then our peaceful period of welcome embarrassment broke. Like a cloud that’s been gathering a storm, holding inside the rain and lightning and thunder until it bursts forth, flooding the lives of those who live below it, so — House released its evil upon our town once more.

  This time, though, we realized its hand reached further than we had previously thought possible. This time we knew something was wrong when detectives from Pittsburgh began to appear on our doorsteps, asking questions about the Addlesons. How long had they been living in our town? How often did we see them? Did they go to church? Did they send their children to school with our children? What were they like? What did we know about their doings? In the end, we realized we knew little about the Addlesons. As we have said already, it takes time for families to reveal their secrets.