The Agony House Read online

  He squinted at the screen. “Maybe. See if you can find a better picture.”

  “This is the clearest one I can find. Everything else is just … some neighborhood pics, from some survey. Looks like the 1930s? Something about a streetcar line.” The caption was fuzzy, and hard to read. “I’d be better off with a real photo and a magnifying glass.”

  “Or a laptop screen. You need more pixels.”

  “We don’t have any Internet in the house, so it’s this or nothing. Unless you want to go down to the po’boy place.”

  “Crispy’s? I don’t have any money.”

  “Me neither.”

  Outside, the sound of tires on gravel said that the battered blue Kia had returned, bearing her mom, Mike, and extra chicken biscuits for her self-invited guest. Both of them heard it. Terry sat upright like Jesus called his name, and scrambled to his feet.

  “That’s them,” Denise said without even looking out the window. Terry was already halfway into the hallway.

  “Wait up, man. You’re not allowed to eat my parents’ food without me.” She hauled herself to her feet and followed along behind him, catching up at the top of the stairs. She could hear them outside, talking and laughing. Well, Sally was groaning—but Mike was laughing. He had no doubt shared some truly terrible joke, and Denise was blessed to have missed it.

  She grinned anyway, and took the stair rail, pushing past Terry—then tripped down the steps in a hasty, greedy fashion. Terry was hot on her heels, showing more speed than she would’ve expected from him, but hey. Biscuits.

  Up the front porch steps the food-bringers clomped, and down into the living room the kids descended. They would meet in the middle, at the dining room. There would be biscuits stuffed with fried chicken, and fast-food hash brown patties, and at least a fistful of ketchup packets, because Mike had learned the hard way that when Denise said “a fistful” she meant “preferably more than that, so use both hands when you raid the bin.”

  Except they didn’t come inside. They didn’t open the door with their elbows and knees, their arms full of bags.

  Denise heard a crash instead—on the other side of the door, out on the porch. Immediately, she thought of the comic up in her room—but that was crazy, wasn’t it?

  Through the door’s sidelights, Denise saw white paper bags go flying, and one of Mike’s arms go flailing, and she heard her mother shriek in time with the sound of shattering wood.

  Mike yelped in pain, then shouted, “It’s okay, I’m okay!”

  But when Denise whipped the front door open, her stepdad was chest-deep in splintered beams and jagged edges. He’d stepped right through the porch floor. It’d eaten him whole. He was still holding one bag, but he set it down beside himself and gasped. “I’m fine. No, no.” He waved Sally’s hand away. “I’m fine, look. I’m freaked out, that’s all.”

  “Um … Mike?” Denise gazed in horror at the front of his shirt, just inside the hole.

  He looked down and saw the streak of red oozing through the tee. He touched the wet spot and winced, but nodded. “It’s a scratch. No big deal.”

  “You’re bleeding!” Sally cried, only a little late to the party.

  “It’s just a scratch!” he repeated. “My leg’s a little scraped up too, but that’s the worst of it.” He put his hands on the edge and tried to pull himself up, but succeeded mostly in pulling down more wood. He withdrew his hands, and looked around for something more solid.

  Terry leaped into action. “Here,” he offered, picking up a couple of pieces of plywood and dragging them over. “Use this.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Mike agreed, reaching for it. “Put it down over here, and someone give me a hand, hold it steady. I don’t know what I’m standing in, but it’s squishing through my shoes.”

  “And you’re bleeding,” his wife reminded him.

  “I’m more worried about the shoes.” He might’ve been kidding, or he might’ve only been trying to make her feel better.

  If that was the idea, it didn’t work. Sally scooted to the edge of the plywood and sat on it, then urged Denise and Terry to get Mike’s arms. Between them, and with a little cooperation, they got him up and out, and onto sturdier turf. He flopped down and panted, staring up at the underside of the flaking blue porch roof while the stain on his shirt spread ominously.

  Sally yanked up the shirt and paused. “It’s … it’s not that bad, you’re not going to die.”

  “Nope,” he agreed, still catching his breath.

  “But you need stitches.”

  He looked down, scrunching up his chin against his throat. “Oh yeah. I guess I do.” He sounded more disappointed than traumatized. He swore, then apologized for his language when he remembered he was using it in front of somebody else’s kid. Terry shrugged it off with a look on his face that said he’d heard far worse.

  “What happened?” Denise wanted to know, as she stared down into the dark, wet, dirty hole.

  Mike sat up, and used the hem of his shirt to dab at a scrape on his chest. “The floor is old. I am heavy. You do the math.”

  “We need to get you to an urgent care, and knit you back together. And maybe shoot you up for tetanus,” Sally fussed, still patting him down for any further tears, scrapes, breaks, or bruises.

  “I know, I know.” He struggled to his feet, and checked out his left leg while he was at it.

  Denise asked, “Did you cut up that one too?”

  He shook his head. “Not cut up—just bruised up. Might be a little raw, in a place or two.”

  Sally directed her attention to Denise and Terry. “You two, stay here—and stay off this porch! I’m going to get him help, at the first place I can find on my phone.”

  “I’m going to tell the doctors you beat me up, because I dropped the chicken biscuits,” Mike teased.

  “I’m going to beat you up for real if you don’t get your ass into the car.” She hoisted him up and positioned herself under his armpit, for support. He didn’t really seem to need it. He was only a little wobbly. “You kids, you heard me? Stay off this porch.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Terry assured her.

  “Good. Don’t touch anything. Don’t do anything,” she ordered. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “I’m not dying. You’re overreacting,” Mike protested, as she ushered him toward the car.

  “Our house just tried to kill you.” Sally stuffed him into the passenger’s side, and opened the driver’s door. One last time, she pointed her finger at Denise and Terry—who still stood in front of the open door. “Get inside, and stay inside. We’ll be back.” She closed herself inside the car, flung the gearshift into reverse, and peeled out of the gravel drive, back into the street.

  “Oh God,” Denise whispered.

  “That was crazy,” Terry agreed.

  He looked around, and spotted the scattered, still-sealed bags of breakfast food. Slowly, carefully, he reached for the nearest sack and collected it under his arm. He wasn’t exactly being sneaky, but you could see it from there.

  “Terry … what are you doing?”

  “The food’s getting cold.”

  “You want to eat? At a time like this?”

  He grabbed another crinkly bag and adjusted the top, rolling it up tighter. “You heard your stepdad: He’s fine. He’ll get some stitches and call it a day. We can’t let this perfectly good food go to waste.”

  She was hungry enough that she kind of agreed with him—but she agreed with her mother, more. “I think Mom’s right. This house is trying to kill us.”

  He hesitated, then collected bag number three. “I hope not. I mean, it wouldn’t be the house, but maybe the ghosts … ?”

  “Oh, knock it off,” she said grouchily. She turned to go back inside. “It’s an old building that creaks, and moans, and shakes, and falls apart—every chance it gets! It’s not a conspiracy.”

  He bobbed his head toward the hole in the floor. “That didn’t just fall apart. Look, would you? Loo
k over there, and over there …”

  At first, she didn’t know what he was talking about. She didn’t see anything except broken boards, loose nails, and the ragged edges of the plywood. They’d collected the plywood because they were going to use it to cover the floor holes inside, so the workmen could walk around without falling through the floor, like Mike had done.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  He nudged the nails with his foot. “These nails. They’re all over the place, like someone pulled them out. The mean guy really does want to kill you! Or kill somebody …”

  She tiptoed to the edge, and craned her neck over the side. He was right, but she couldn’t bring herself to agree out loud. She backed away from the edge, and returned to the doorway. It felt safer there, though maybe it shouldn’t have. She didn’t know what to say, or how to undermine the fact that yes—someone must’ve done it, no matter what she said to herself, or Terry. “They must’ve been like that already.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it. The ghost did it. I bet you anything.”

  Denise headed inside, and paused in the foyer to let Terry catch up. He was the one bringing the food, and like it or not, she was starving. She thought about telling him to beat it, and leave her alone with the biscuits. She didn’t want to hear his theories about ghosts, or bad mythical somebodies, or yanked-out nails. But she wasn’t quite that mean, not even when she was quivering from low blood sugar and the leftover fright from seeing Mike halfway buried in the front porch, like it’d tried to eat him.

  Terry swung inside behind her, balancing the bags with less skill than Mike had done; but everything made it to the dining room table, and Denise went to the kitchen to grab some paper towels because there were never enough napkins. She pulled the bottle of ketchup out of the fridge while she was at it, in case Mike had failed her on that front.

  She threw the ketchup onto the table so hard that the bottle fell over, and her hands fluttered as she tossed the paper towels down too. She grabbed for the nearest bag, and unrolled the top to take a big sniff. The aroma of fried batter and salted potatoes wafted up and out.

  Terry opened the next bag. He shoved his face in, and frowned. “There’s nothing in this bag but ketchup packets.”

  “Really?” Denise asked, suddenly cheerful. She swiped the bag and dumped the packets onto the table. They tumbled out, along with two sleeves of hash browns. “Naw, see. You’re a liar.”

  “It’s mostly ketchup. Who even needs that much?”

  “I do. If Mike was here, I’d give him a big hug. I never should’ve doubted him.”

  The third bag held everything else of note, and soon the table was covered with food for them, and food set aside for the adults upon their return. Mike and Sally could reheat theirs in the microwave upstairs when they got back.

  They would be back, and everything would be fine.

  Denise believed it with all her heart. But she ate her chicken biscuit with a mouth that was a little dry, and with an imagination running wild. What if Mike was hurt worse than it looked, and he didn’t want to say so in front of her? What if he had some weird internal injuries—what if he was dying and no one noticed? They had health insurance, but it was bare-minimum stuff; Sally said it was just liability coverage on their bodies. What if he wound up in the hospital and it cost thousands and thousands of dollars, and they couldn’t afford to do any more work on the house?

  What if they had to keep living in it, just like it was?

  What if they lost it, and had nowhere to live at all?

  “You okay?” Terry asked.

  Around a mouthful of food, she said, “What?”

  “You’re eating weird. You stopped chewing, like, a minute ago.”

  She swallowed, barely working the big lump down. She looked around for a soda, or a glass of water or something, and saw none. She also saw no reason to answer his question. “I need a Coke. You want one?” She shoved her chair back and went to the fridge without waiting for an answer.

  “Sure.”

  The fridge was still kind of cool, even though the breaker was off. She pulled out two sodas and returned, rolling one past the wads of discarded wrappers and into Terry’s hand. They cracked their respective cans at the same time.

  The soda barely helped anything at all, but it did wash down the lump.

  Terry took a sip and said, “Seriously, though: Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t act fine.”

  “I’m worried about my stepdad.”

  “Is that all?” he asked, honest curiosity on his face. “You’re not worried about the ghosts?”

  “Say ‘ghost’ one more time, and I will throw you headfirst out the damn door.”

  Carefully, he corrected himself. “You’re not worried about anything else?”

  “No.”

  Terry seemed to understand that he was on dangerous ground. “Do you … do you want to read some more of the comic? Might take your mind off the porch, and your stepdad.”

  “You mean the comic that’s obviously about my house, which isn’t creepy at all?”

  He took a second or two to answer. “Yeah, that one.”

  Denise sighed. They had both finished eating, and they didn’t have a TV or anything. “Fine, let’s do it.”

  Terry hopped up out of his seat. “Right on!”

  “You are way more invested in this comic than I am.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m just willing to admit that it’s hella-cool. I don’t know why you’re pretending it isn’t. Somebody famous used to live here.”

  “Joe Vaughn didn’t live here. Some lady did. I think …” She looked over her shoulder, back up the stairs. “Terry, I think Joe Vaughn died here.” It was the first time she’d said it out loud to anybody, and it felt gross. But it also felt a little good, to have it out in the open.

  “You do?”

  “Look, the Internet doesn’t know that much about what happened to him—just that he was found dead at the bottom of some attic stairs, in a house that didn’t belong to him. It belonged to some lady. She disappeared before he died.”

  “Maybe she’s the lady ghost! The one with moxie.”

  Denise couldn’t rule it out. “That’s my guess. Except …” She started back up the stairs.

  The stair rail rattled when Terry grabbed it too, and came along behind her. “Except what?”

  “Except, if Joe died here … why was his manuscript up in the attic of somebody else’s house? Did the lady steal it? Was she …” Denise wracked her brain. “Some kind of deranged fan? She could’ve been a stalker, maybe.”

  “Or a girlfriend.”

  “Also possible. Maybe Joe gave it to her. Maybe it was a gift, and she hid it in the attic to protect it.”

  Terry shrugged. “We can ask the ghosts, next time we try a little EVP. Hey, did you post those sample pages yet?”

  “No. Haven’t really had the time, man.”

  “Somebody will know something.”

  “But somebody might not be surfing the internet. Somebody might be dead and gone.”

  “Or just dead.”

  She stopped at the top of the stairs, and rubbed her eyes, and glanced at the attic door without meaning to. “Yeah. Probably just dead.”

  Denise sat up and smacked the book shut.

  “What?” Terry asked, trying to grab it back. “Come on, man! It’s getting good!”

  “It’s getting even creepier!” she squeaked. Exasperated, she climbed to her feet and carried the book away from Terry’s greedy little mitts. “Come on, my stepdad fell down through the porch—just like Lucida and Doug did!”

  Terry shook his head, motioning for her to give the book back. He gave her such an earnest, hopeful look that she had a hard time refusing him. Reluctantly, she passed it back. He opened it to the last page they’d seen, and pointed at the drawing. “No, it’s not the same. Lucida Might went through a trapdoor. Your stepdad went through �
� well, he made his own hole.”

  “Or somebody else did, you said it yourself!”

  “I say a lot of things.”

  Denise almost wanted to cry. “I don’t understand why the house—or anybody in it—would want to hurt us.”

  “Me, either … and it’s pretty weird that Doug, Lucida, and your stepdad got eaten up by a hole in the porch.”

  “Dammit, Terry.” Gently, she took the book back from him. She looked briefly at its blank cover, and squeezed it against her chest. “This is extremely weird and creepy, that’s all I know for sure.”

  “I am all about the weird and creepy!”

  She almost smiled at him, but just then she caught a whiff of something sweet. Not candy-sweet, but flower-sweet. Not roses, or not just roses. Some other flower, with a sharp note of alcohol on top.

  Her nostrils flared, and Terry perked up too. “I smell something. Do you?”

  It wouldn’t do any good to deny it. She said, “I think it’s perfume.”

  “More like cologne.”

  “But for ladies, not for dudes.”

  He agreed with a nod, then looked around Denise’s bedroom. “Is it yours?”

  “No, it’s not mine.” She put the book down on her bed, which still hadn’t been assembled yet—but she was totally going to get to it, one of these days. So really, she left the book on top of a mattress and box spring.

  “Then where’s it coming from?”

  Denise swallowed, and crossed her arms under her boobs. “The hallway.”

  “Is there a ghost in the hallway?”

  She gave up, and crossed her arms over her stomach. “You’re the expert. You tell me.”

  Terry scrambled out the door like a cartoon character. He got two steps away before he remembered his equipment was in his bag, and his bag was on the floor—so he skidded back, unzipped the bag, and whipped out his recorder. He tossed the bag aside and made it all the way to the hall this time, brandishing the recorder like a torch. “Are there any spirits present with us today?” he asked with ridiculous speed and gravity. He sounded like somebody making hasty legal disclaimers at the end of a drug commercial. “Would you like to communicate with the living? Is there a message you’d like to pass along?”