Before and Afterlives, Page 3

  They found the first body in the basement, the second in the attic, the third buried in the orchard, and the fourth stuffed in a defunct well on the property. All women. All girls from Pittsburgh, the detectives told us. All pregnant with James Addleson’s babies.

  We were disgusted. Oh, but we were disgusted. Never had the house erupted with such evil before. Never! We thought the Oliver family massacre and the decline of its surviving children to be the worst, the worst possible manipulation the house could imagine. And here we were faced with something even more despicable. While Mrs. Addleson raised her children in the quiet of our country town, James Addleson had been manipulating his women workers into sleeping with him. At first we assumed the women were a bad sort, and possibly their lust had gotten them into this trouble (as any of the great sins will surely do) but then we heard the news that seven other girls in the button factory had come forward. He had threatened to take their jobs away from them, they said, if they wouldn’t give him what he wanted. They had been lucky, they said. They hadn’t gotten pregnant. “It could have been us,” one of the girls said in an anonymous interview. “It could have been any one of us.”

  It took the police a week to find the bodies of all four girls. The one in the well was the hardest to locate. We all prayed for their poor families back in Pittsburgh, for their poor husbands at war, off fighting that devil while another devil pursued their wives at home.

  We had a notion to burn down — House then, and were going to do that. We were gathering, the old and the young and the women left behind by their husbands. We were gathering to destroy the place when word came that Mrs. Addleson would not be leaving. She was going to stay and raise her children here among us. Her husband’s factory would be closing; he’d be going to prison. She needed a place for her children. The children, we thought, oh what sacrifices we make for our children! This we understood all too well.

  So we left the house alone, and her in it. And even after her daughter grew up to be a fine, respectable woman, graduating from our very own high school, and went off to college to marry a doctor, even after Mrs. Addleson died and left her son, the heir of James Addleson, alone in — House, we allowed him to live there without any interference as well.

  He was smart enough not to court our daughters. He went to college like his sister and came back a married man, his wife already expecting. This was in the nineteen-seventies, mind you, and such things happened among our children, it seemed, without them thinking much about it. We said nothing. We scolded ourselves and told ourselves it was not our business, and to stop caring.

  But if it is not the business of one’s community, whose business is it?

  If we’d have intervened, if we’d have tried to get the Addlesons some other living arrangement, perhaps poor Jonas would not have walked into the bathroom at the age of ten to find his father’s dead body, the blood spilling out of his shattered skull.

  Why did the son of James Addleson kill himself? You are probably wondering. The answer is simple. It was those girls his daddy murdered. We have seen and heard them ourselves on occasion, wandering through the orchards, climbing out of the well, beating on the windows of the cellar and attic. We have seen and heard them, and continued on our way, ignoring them.

  James Addleson’s son was not so lucky. He lived with them. He heard them day and night, talking about his father’s evil. In the end, they convinced him to join them.

  A visit

  But not our own sweet Rose! How could this have happened? We often wondered where we went wrong. Through all the years of that house’s torments, never did our own children go near it. We taught them well, or so we thought. But that house would get what it wanted. Our own sweet Rose. How we have fretted these past three years she has been gone from us. How we pray for her and for Mary Kay Billings nightly. And how Mary Kay suffers. How she holds herself together, never mentioning her daughter unless we ask after her. Never wanting to burden us. And how we all have our crosses. Which is why we did what we have done.

  We had let the Addleson family linger under the spell of the house’s evil, and because of that Jonas’s father took his own life, and Jonas himself became the wreck he is today. We thought we were doing best by them, leaving them to their own choices, trying not to interfere with the lives of others. But we saw how wrong we were when — House took our Rose, when it took our Rose’s little girl. And then, recently, when Mary Kay Billings mentioned to one of us that Rose had been asking after her cousin, Marla Jean Simmons. “Could you send her on up here, Mother? I’m sort of lonesome. And I could use some help around the house.”

  It was then we decided to take action. Not one more of our children would we let that house ravage.

  We approached Mary Kay Billings with our plans, and tears, buckets full of them, were shed that day. Poor Mary Kay, always trying to be the tough woman, the one who will not be disturbed, yet when we came to her and said, “We shall make that house a visit,” she burst, she broke like a dam.

  “Thank you,” she told us. “Oh thank you, I can’t do it alone any longer. Maybe with all of us there she’ll let us talk some sense into her.”

  So we selected representatives. Mr. Adams, the town lawyer. He inspired fear in his opposition, so we chose him hoping the house would fear his authority. Mrs. Baker, the principal of our elementary school, who Rose once respected as a child. Pastor Merritt, since a man of God in cases such as this is necessary. Tom Morrissey, the undertaker, who has dealt with death long enough not to fear it. And Shell Richards, one of our school bus drivers, because she is simply a force to be reckoned with, and we all of us stay out of her way, especially when she’s been drinking.

  Together, led by Mary Kay Billings, we trudged up the road to — House on a cool spring evening when the buds were on the trees, the sap rising. At the gate, we hesitated for only a moment to look at each other and confirm our convictions by nodding. Then Mary Kay swung the gate open and up the path we went.

  As soon as our feet touched those porch steps, though, we felt the life of whatever lived there coursing beneath us. We shuddered, but continued. Since it was not a social visit, we didn’t bother knocking, just opened the door and went straight on in. “Rose!” we called loudly. “Rose!” And soon enough, she appeared on the landing above us, looking down at us with a peculiar glare, icy and distant.

  “What are you all doing here?” she asked. Her voice sounded far away, as if she were speaking through her body, as if her body were thisthing that came between her and the rest of the world. Her hand rested on the newel post of the landing, massaging it as she waited.

  “We’ve come to help you, darling,” Mary Kay said. We all thought it best that she spoke first.

  “I don’t need any help now,” said Rose. “What help would I be needing, Mother? Why didn’t you send Marla Jean like I asked?”

  We immediately saw Mary Kay’s resolve fading, so Mr. Adams spoke up. “Dear,” he said. “Come down to us. We’re taking you out of this place. We’re taking you home this very instant.”

  Rose cocked her head to the side, though, and slowly shook it. “I don’t think so,” she told us. “I’m a grown woman. I can make my own decisions. And my home is here, thank you very much.”

  “Where’s your husband?” asked Mrs. Baker. But Rose didn’t answer. She only looked at Mrs. Baker suspiciously, as if a trap were being set.

  “We’re going to help him, too, dear,” said Pastor Merritt. “But we need to get you both to safety. We must ask God to help us now.”

  “God?” said Rose, and we shivered. We’d never heard a word so full of goodness said in such a way that it sent chills up and down our spines. “God?” she said again, then started down the stairs toward us. “I haven’t heard Him in a long time,” said Rose. We nodded. We remembered. She hadn’t come to church since she was twelve.

  “He is always listening,” said Pastor Merritt. “All you have to do is ask for His help, and He will provide.”

  �
��I don’t talk,” said Rose. “I’m the one who listens.”

  We didn’t nod this time. We weren’t sure what to make of what she was saying.

  “Enough of this,” said Shell Richards suddenly, and we all, even Rose, looked at her, puzzled by her outburst. “Enough dilly dallying,” said Shell. She stepped right up to Rose, grabbed her arm and said, “You’re coming with us, little girl.”

  Mary Kay ran up the stairs to gather a few things for her daughter while Rose fought to free herself from Shell’s grip. “Stop struggling,” Shell warned, but Rose struggled. She slipped, and as she fell buttons poured out of her sweater pockets, scattering across the floor.

  Then a scream spilled down the staircase and we knew Mary Kay Billings was in trouble. We abandoned Rose on the floor and rushed up the stairs, one after the other, the steps creaking beneath us, until we came to the baby’s room with the mural of the orchard painted on the walls and the sky on the ceiling. Mary Kay stood in the center of the room, near the crib, staring apparently at nothing. We followed her stare, and in the mural we saw the Blank boy, Ephraim, sitting in an apple tree, looking out at us. You could tell it was him by the dark eyes and the ruddy cheeks.

  We took Mary Kay Billings by the arm and led her back down the stairs then, only to find that Rose had disappeared on us. “Who saw her last?” we asked each other, but no one had stayed with her. We had all gone running to Mary Kay when she called.

  We searched the house from top to bottom, shouting for either of them to come to us. “Rose!” we called. “Jonas!” But all we found were buttons, and all we heard were the screams of dead mothers, and all we smelled was the house’s evil circling us like a dark cloud.

  We were too late. Our chance had come and we had failed her. The house had taken her and Jonas before we could free them, and so we left, defeated, not bothering to close the door behind us. Let the wind have it, we thought, let the rain flood it, let it all fall down in ruin. For that was the last family that — House would take, we decided at that very moment. Never again would we allow anyone to go near it.

  If walls could talk

  And they do talk, if you know how to listen. If you know how to pay attention to the way a roof sighs, or a window slides open with relief, or a step creaks its complaints out. If you know how to hear what those walls are saying, you will hear unbearable stories, stories you would never imagine possible, stories we would rather turn away from. But we cannot turn away, for they will only follow us. They will find us, one by one, alone and frightened, and tear us apart if we try to stop our ears up.

  The Blank family is still with us. The Olivers too. And those poor dead girls from Pittsburgh still linger, howling through the night as we try to sleep. And Jonas’s father, the gun cracking his life open like a pocket watch, to let all of the time spill out of him. And now Jonas, too. Wherever he is, we hope he’s restful. And Rose. Poor Rose. We don’t hear from Rose, though. She never talked to us. She only listened.

  The Drowned Mermaid

  On the morning after the storm the body of a drowned mermaid was washed ashore. She was curled in an almost S shape, her arms thrown over her head as if to block out the glare of the sun. Her skin was pale, rubbery and white. The kind of pale that comes from living either beneath the earth or beneath the sea. Her black hair was twisted with ropes of seaweed, and a bruise, golden brown and purple, stained the skin of her right cheek.

  Helena found her. She had woken that morning from another dream of her daughter Jordan, from another night of terror and mystery in which she played the lead role. She’d been in a casino this time, after receiving instructions on how to win Jordan back: “Go to the roulette table, place your bet on black thirty-one, walk away from the wheel without collecting your winnings, and believe me,” a disembodied voice told her, “you’ll win. Walk toward the nearest restroom, but don’t go in. A man in a dark suit will meet you by the door. Take his arm. He’ll bring you to me.”

  She’d done as instructed, but as usual, never found her daughter. Never won her, never opened the locked safe without tripping the alarm. Or in another situation, she might be fooled into thinking Jordan was behind a certain door. But upon opening it, she would find nothing but a dark, empty room. As in the shell game, Helena could never pick the one under which the con man had hidden the ping-pong ball.

  So she had come down to the beach after waking, leaving Paul asleep in bed. The sun had just risen, dappling the waves with light, and gulls screed in the air, circling and diving over the water.

  From a distance the mermaid’s body looked like driftwood, smooth and round, silhouetted by the morning light. It was only when Helena came closer that she noticed the scales glinting in the light; the thickly muscled tail; and after moving one of the mermaid’s arms off of her face, the bulbous eyes, black and damp as olives.

  She knelt beside the body and rested her ear against the chilled skin. A sluggish pulse still pumped through those emerald veins: a slow, locomotive beat. Unconscious then, Helena decided. She stood again, turning her head one way, then the other, scanning the beach to see if anyone else had ventured down this way yet. There was no one around at this hour. But that would change soon enough. It was the end of summer. Within an hour the beach would be strewn with bodies laid out for the sun to take. A ritual sacrifice.

  Working quickly, she lifted the mermaid’s arms and shoulders from underneath and started to drag her. She pulled her away from the hissing waves that collapsed under their own weight, turning to foam as they reached the shore. She dragged, then paused to catch her breath, then picked the mermaid up once more to go a little farther. And all the while the mermaid’s head lolled on the stalk of her neck as if it had been broken.

  It was a long, exhausting journey. But in this way, they reached home soon enough.

  Home was a house perched forty feet above the beach on the edge of a cliff in southern California. Sleek and modern, it was filled with furniture that had been fashionable two decades before and had again come into style. There was a deck in back of the house, braced against the cliffside, and when high tide rolled in it would begin to resemble a pier, the pilings of the deck’s foundation partly submerged in water. The side of the cliff was buried beneath a lumpy shell of boulders, an ad hoc seawall that served to deter any further erosion that might undermine the house’s foundation. Helena and Paul had lived there for fifteen years, since he took the position teaching history at the university. Before the seawall was built, they had seen whole houses fold in on themselves.

  The only problem to emerge since moving here, to a sleepy village by the sea, was that sometimes, often in the summer, homeless people or drifters would hole up beneath their deck. They’d stay for a day or a week, making homes, fleeting as dreams, among the boulders. Then they’d vanish and never be seen again.

  Helena and Paul never instinctively disliked or feared these people. But as Helena once articulated the problem, “It’s that you canhear them down there, whispering, right below your feet.” It would have been easy to have the drifters removed, but they never called the police. As Helena once pointed out to Paul, who stood with phone in hand, ready to dial 911, “What if it was Jordan down there? What if she just needed a place to stay the night?”

  Paul had placed the phone back on its cradle, but not without saying, “If she needed a place to stay, why wouldn’t she call? Why wouldn’t she come home?”

  In the past Helena would have supplied him with reasonable answers to these questions—it had once been a specialty of hers—but most questions that had anything to do with Jordan had become unreasonable. As well as inexplicable.

  By the time Helena reached the stairs leading up to the back deck, people had started to arrive. They came with surf boards lashed to the tops of their cars, or with children, lathered in sunblock, trudging wearily across the sand.

  Helena climbed one step at a time, planting her feet securely before pulling the mermaid up to the next step. It took a long time. Sweat b
eaded on her forehead, then dribbled down into her eyes. She could hear her own breathing, sharp intakes of breath followed by exhausted sighs.

  She wished she were younger, not slowed down by midlife. If I only had more energy, she thought several times a day, I coulddo more. As it was, she spent most of her days barely able to keep up with the house. Every time she turned around, there was a loose tile in the linoleum, or a burned-out bulb that needed to be replaced. Even caring for these small tasks drained her easily. She spent all of her energy in her dreams, overnight, looking for Jordan. By morning, she would wake exhausted, as though she hadn’t slept.

  Finally she reached the deck, forty steps high, where she sat down for a few minutes to catch her breath, arranging the mermaid’s head on her lap. A few strands of hair trailed over the mermaid’s face and Helena snatched at them, brushing them out of those dark, fishy eyes. And those eyes, a person could lose themselves in them, could dive down into their cold black waters and drown.

  She slid the back door open, then pulled the mermaid into the house. Her tail bounced up and down as it rolled over the sliding door track. Helena took her into the bathroom, heaved her tail up and over the lip of the tub, and followed with the upper half. The mermaid’s skin squeaked against the porcelain. She ran cold water from the faucet until it splashed over the sides.

  It was enough. She’d done enough. She leaned against the tub and sighed, satisfied.

  Now for Paul. She would have to find a way to explain this to him as reasonably as she could. This was possible. This was reasonable. She had done something. She stroked her fingertips across the mermaid’s bruised cheek and decided that that in and of itself, this purple and gold blossom, would win any argument with Paul.