Two Houses: Part Five

Sounds Like They’ll Be Home Any Minute

“Claudia.”

Someone lightly smacked her face. 

“Claudia. Hello, are you alive?”

An actual slap followed this and the pain allowed her to finally open her eyes. She was not dead, not swallowed up into the floorboards of the old house, but she was also not in the correct room either. 

Claudia stared up at the Y-shaped crack of the bedroom ceiling. The bedroom that was located up the stairs at the end of the landing. The very same bedroom she usually tried to avoid considering every time she was near it she pictured her mother in strange positions with even stranger expressions, thoughts she could no longer place where they’d been born from. Like she was trying to remember something that had either happened or was only an intensely realistic dream. 

Evie was crouched over Claudia’s legs where she lay slumped on the floor, right up against the corner where two far walls met. 

She glared at her little sister but before she could speak Evie asked, “Did you fall and hit your head? I thought you were using the bathroom at home.”

“I-”

“Evie, bring that broom from upstairs when you come. The one with the long handle,” their mother ordered from somewhere nearby on the lower floor. 

“Come on.” Evie grabbed Claudia’s hands and helped her rise to her feet. 

Not a moment was given to her to process what had just happened or ask questions before her sister had already left the room on her appointed mission. She felt weak, drained of all energy for the day and when she raised her hands she saw how badly they were shaking, little crescents cut into the skin of her palms where she’d dug her nails in before losing consciousness. Claudia felt very close to throwing up and tried to leave that particularly unnerving room in order to exit the entire horrid house at least for the rest of the day. She got as far as the stairs before her sister was dragging her down and through the kitchen toward the back door.  

“We went to throw some stuff in that pile by the field and I saw it when I turned around to go back inside. Mom wants to take it down.”

“Take what down?” Claudia passed through the open doorway, eyeing the broken glass on the floor as she walked and the jagged sections still hanging in the hole of the frame. “How did that happen?”

Evie glanced over her shoulder to where her sister pointed and scrunched her face confused. “Hasn’t it always been shattered like that?”

“No.” 

“Aida, you’re taller. Try to knock that down.” 

Claudia turned from her mother and sister as she stepped out the door and looked up at the side of the house where they were both staring. It had gotten hotter outside with the sun right overhead, beaming down into her eyes. She lifted her hand to her forehead and squinted at the odd shape she couldn’t quite make out while being blinded. Almost immediately her hand fell limp to her side and she took a step away. The only one who seemed to notice her reaction was Evie. 

“What? What is it?” The younger girl glanced from her sister’s face to the small dress nailed to the grey siding on the back of their house. The one with the peter pan collar and the tiny flowers, Claudia thought. Just like before.

“Claudia you’re freaking me out, what is it?”

She grabbed Evie and pulled her closer, away from the house. “You don’t recognize that?”

“Recognize what?” Evie didn’t protest when her sister grabbed her but she also appeared not to know what was going on. 

Claudia looked away from the dress for a second to gauge their mother’s reaction. She was simply standing still not looking at anything in particular but off to the left where the field was, unflinching and breathing very steadily.

“Mom.”

“Hmm,” she made the noise like a question, as if she’d been in the middle of dinner and Claudia had walked into the room trying to get her attention. 

“Mom.”

“What?” She sounded annoyed, turning around with a slight scowl on her face.

Claudia could only stare at her mother, amazed at how she looked just how she always had but couldn’t possibly be the same person. Someone else was inside but only she had noticed. 

She ripped the broom from Evie’s hands and practically threw it at their mother. 

“We’re done for today. I suggest you get that down.”

“How the hell am I supposed to reach that?” Her mother called toward their backs as Claudia pulled Evie around the side of the house. She refused to go through, to be inside the building for a day or two at least. A week would be even better…or forever, if that were achievable.  

“The ladder is in the dining room.” 

No sooner had they gone around the second corner in view of the front porch before Claudia stopped up short and Evie, being hauled along like a ragdoll, rammed into her back with a grunt of protest. 

“Claudia, what-”

A man stood at the front of the older house. Not on the porch but just before the steps, staring upward at the second level. Claudia examined the stranger and his odd expression. He looked like someone lost in thought, as if there was too much going on in his mind for him to sort it all out. His arms hung limp at his sides and a bag of tools sat on the ground beside him. A label on his shirt read Richards Plumbing Services LLC. 

She thought back to before she’d heard the screams and before she’d been unconscious. The moment she’d gathered their plates and stood up to walk the distance between the buildings. She was almost certain her mother had said they were coming to look at the pipes the next day.

Claudia cleared her throat, hoping the man would notice them but to no avail. He seemed very focused at the dead center of the house. She let go of Evie’s hand and walked a bit closer. 

“Excuse me.”

He jumped back, tripping over his tool bag and falling to the ground on his rear with a thud. 

Claudia, just as startled, stepped back for a second before apologizing and helping him up out of the dirt. 

He brushed himself off and took one last peek up at the house once more. “No, you’re fine. I just didn’t realize you were standing there.” He seemed to glance about himself, abruptly confused.

“Am I…”

Claudia waited, trying to pinpoint what he was looking for in the yard and field around them. 

“I’m in New Martinsville.”

“No, this is Harrisburg. She raised her brows at him in concern, wondering how in any way he’d gone so far South. 

“Harrisburg…,” he echoed, frowning deeply before glancing sideways at the house again. 

He made no movement to step up on the porch, go inside, and do the job he was hired to do so Claudia released her sister and marched to the door before calling loudly for her mother.

“She should be out in a second to show you where the issue is. You can stay here or just go ahead inside to wait.”

Neither her mother nor the plumber acknowledged her further but Claudia continued on with Evie just the same, heading for the relative safety of the younger house. 

*

*

*

Evie and Claudia spent the rest of the afternoon at the younger house focusing on the laundry that needed done and what they would cook for dinner instead of letting their minds settle on the earlier events of the day. By the time the meal was simmering on the stove their mother rolled in. Over every other feeling of concern Claudia had shooting through her body as she watched her mother silently walk past them to the bathroom – not even a glance given in their direction – was the quiet way she now noticed her little sister doing the same. As if it had finally occurred to her how strange their situation had become and her instinct was also guided toward their parent, just as Claudia’s had been. She watched as Evie paused pulling out some forks for the dinner table and how her eyes stayed glued to their mother’s back. Claudia studied them wordlessly and then turned back to the pot of chili she was stirring to see if it was about ready. 

The bathroom door was pulled shut with a soft click just before she heard Evie’s sock clad feet shuffle to her side as if there were a secret to share.

“Claudia, I think I should tell you something.”

Her ears perked up. She had just about vowed to have a normal dinner that night come hell or highwater, but this sentence washed over her like an icy shower making her heart squeeze with sudden anxiety. She lost all focus for the meal on the stove. 

Claudia turned to her sister but said nothing, assuming the expression on her face was enough for Evie to know she should continue. 

“Before you woke up-I mean before I woke you up earlier, something happened. Mom told me not to tell you, but…”

“Told you not to tell me what?”

They were whispering, heads bent close enough that Claudia had to somewhat crouch just to hear the words coming from her little sister’s mouth. 

Evie seemed at war with herself in the next moment like she’d decided to clam up as she’d been told, chewing on the corner of her lip. 

“The dress? Is that what you’re talking about?”

Evie shook her head. Claudia thought any second she might cry again and reached over to gently hold her arm. 

“You can tell me later if you want. When we go to bed.”

“But, I’m worried.”

“Worried about what happened?”

“No,” Evie did start to tear up then and in a small cracking voice added. “Worried I might forget again.”

Claudia’s heart sank, not for the first time that day. Before she could hold her sister or let her confide in her further, their mother was there, appearing like a ghost just behind them. She wasn’t sure she would have even noticed if Evie’s eyes hadn’t flicked over her shoulder, her expression freezing in place. Claudia looked back and saw her mother peeking at them from behind the corner. A sight unsettling, child-like, and for some reason, familiar. As soon as their gazes met, her mother stepped out and into the kitchen. To any other person she would have seemed to have snapped out of it, to have come back to her normal self. 

“That smells good. What made you think to make Chili?”

But Claudia kept her eye on the edge of their mother’s mask. 

Claudia preferred working Tuesdays. Honestly, she liked to work any day of the week as long as she was able to get away from the property that seemed to be turning her mind to mush, but Tuesdays were good. Most of the people she saw at the gas station never even came inside and paid with their card at the pump and those that didn’t barely said a word to her besides something small like, “$20 on pump three, please.” The silence was golden. The good kind of completely quiet. Empty, because it was a generic place where the only thing that happened was the day to day bustle and at night, racoons digging in the dumpsters out back. Nothing truly dark had happened in a place like this, so situated in the busy part of the middle of nowhere. Nothing to make the silence weighted with anticipation. If she didn’t have this job, Claudia thought, she would definitely have completely lost her mind. 

She leaned back on the counter, facing away from the register toward the opposite wall where a small window showed a view of the paved parking out back. A line of chainlink went around the perimeter, dumpsters on the left and more fields behind before yet another forest threatened to slowly regrow and take back the soil that was stolen from them. 

It’s probably connected to ours, somehow. Everything here seems to be connected. 

She began to zone out, absentmindedly trying to plot and make sense of all the weird occurrences she could recall since they’d bought the property but for some reason it seemed always that she was forgetting what had actually happened, how it happened. Chunks from her memory were missing or blurry. To her, it was a feeling like wading through water only to blink and see you’re abruptly on dry land. To stare at a person you know you love and not be able to recognize their face. 

The little bell over the door went off signaling a customer’s entrance and Claudia shook herself free of those thoughts as a man made a circuit about the shelves, swung back around to her, then handed over a pack of tums and a wrinkled ten dollar bill without a word. He was a middle-aged gentleman in overalls and a ballcap. Claudia thought that he smelled like kerosene and handed him his change, ready for him and the smell to make their exit. They finally glanced up at each other as he pocketed what was left of his money and, surprisingly, he gave her a small smile before shuffling back out the door. It made her think of Evie.

There was obviously no resemblance between this early morning customer and her sister but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Evie smile. Granted, she was often at school or Claudia at work but they’d been living in this new town for over a week and in that time she suddenly noticed the gradual surrendering of her sister’s usual cheerful disposition under the weight of a dream that had so far gone wrong. Their mother’s dream, to be specific. 

There were four rows of merchandise in the little building of the gas station. Claudia stared at them as she got lost in her own mind once again, letting her eyes drift from row one to row two and so on and back again. She felt something rising in her. It was an unfamiliar sensation, or at least she couldn’t recall ever succumbing to it long enough for it to leave an impression. Perhaps it was courage or straight, immovable anger, but Claudia had come to a decision and would not be budged.

The locusts, gathered en masse in the woodland behind the old house, sounded to Claudia as if they were roaring at her for even thinking of joining them. She actually couldn’t recall having ever heard them so loud. 

Perhaps it has something to do with the end of the season, she absentmindedly thought. 

Her eyes shifted to a chipping sycamore – taller and much grander than the house behind her – that had grown many yards away from the line where the property had been cut. Then they flitted over to a withering rhododendron bush and she wondered if those were supposed to grow in the wild or if someone had purposefully planted it there. I suppose most things come from the wild when you really think about it. 

Claudia had not planned any further ahead than this. In one hand, a hammer was gripped. It was the first weapon she saw or could think of to take with her. In the other, a heavy flashlight, something she’d used many times when the power went out in Baltimore. She was just then realizing that there was no path for her to take, no way of finding her way back out if she were to trudge on through. It was daylight at least, though so early that the shadows still lingered in the dense growth. She had waited for the next day after the idea had sparked. Had waited for her mother to have to go into town, for a day off of work, and for Evie to be at school. It seemed, in her mind, that her mother had been trying to stop her from seeing. Each time something strange had occured, she either distracted Claudia from it or acted as though there was nothing going on at all. 

Then again, she thought. Why does she always happen to be around in the first place? 

It had gotten to the point that now Evie couldn’t ignore it either. There were secrets being kept amongst their three-member family. It was affecting her sister and Claudia felt because of this, that it was high time for answers. 

She lifted her sneakered right foot and let it fall into the bracken of the woods. The crunch echoed through the limbs and then bounced back at her. 

If I feel lost, I will turn around and just keep walking straight.

She was immediately sure that that was a bad idea considering straight could mean deeper and deeper into the growth depending on how you got turned around. Their new hometown was more wooded than not. Nevertheless, Claudia continued taking small steps forward, slowly and deliberately, almost as if she were waiting for those locusts to swarm her and push her out or some other threat to come running at her. The further she walked though, the only thing barring her path became briars, weeds, and juvenile trees. After what seemed like forever trying to crawl over or walk through it all, she halted in place and looked behind. 

Claudia had only made it about thirty feet. She could still see the shadow of the house looming into the branches. The morning sun behind its roof had it seeming like it was reaching for her, had her feeling like prey that had left one predator to crawl into the jaws of another. 

In the silence, she listened. She waited for any sign of where to go next and this waiting stretched on for many minutes. 

Aren’t I supposed to hear birds? Aren’t they usually noisy this early in the day, Claudia wondered. But instead of chirping, the soft sound of water traveled up to her from down below. Several yards ahead was a drop off she’d never noticed before. A ledge that was so abrupt you would never see it unless you were taking your time or, more unfortunately, tumbled down it. Something about the way everything grew around the space at equal lengths and sizes to each other made it seem like an optical illusion. It reminded Claudia of a time she’d tried on a pair of bifocals at the eye doctor. Each step felt as though you were dropping off, though the ground below you was perfectly level. 

Claudia wondered why she’d never heard the sound of running water before as she stepped carefully closer to the edge of the precipice. Below there was a wide but shallow stream running off to her right and disappearing around a bend where trunks grew curved at the edges of the muddy walls. She could see where the hill she stood upon dipped down on that side, see a place where someone could easily crawl down to the water. Down here it looked as though fall had already begun. Yellow leaves mingled the green on the forest floor and floated like little abandoned boats in the current. In another place, this would have been a peaceful scene, but the sense of not catching on to something came too strongly toward Claudia’s middle. A tugging at her guts told her she should be looking closer at her surroundings. She felt as though she could see herself from the outside, the look of a deer sensing a hunter twisting the expression of concern on her face. She wondered who else could see her standing there and wanted to hunker back, to hide behind something bigger in the vicinity until the sensation went away. 

But it won’t go away, a voice in her head whispered.

It won’t go away so hurry up and look.

Claudia had almost forgotten the objects in her hands until her sweaty palms had them slipping from her grip. She thought of setting her protection down to wipe them on her jeans but to release them seemed practically idiotic at that moment. The danger was growing. Her time was running slim. Soon her mother would have the car crawling up their driveway. 

She let her eyes scan the creek where the silty beaches ran along the edge of the flow. She peered to the left where the ledge was its highest and cut off her field of view as to where the water began but where she could see a large boulder embedded on the other side, caged by the roots of a couple of thin pines. They looked like two skinny wrists jutting down from the sky, their wiry fingers gripping onto the rock from either side trying and failing to pull it from the earth. She thought it was a spooky sight but nothing to be so unnerved about. So why this sense of dread, she wondered, already backing away. Claudia didn’t want to turn away and run back home like a coward but at the same time she wasn’t exactly sure what she’d been thinking of, venturing into the forest alone. What exactly would one find in the middle of all this besides ticks and some acorns? What a stupid idea.

She had decided to turn back while she could still see the property line behind her, wondering how much it would cost just to install a few security cameras here and there instead, when something in her peripheral gave her pause. Something that looked to be imploding in on itself as nature tried to swallow it up. Claudia was sure if it had been any further into autumn that she would have overlooked the thing entirely, with even more leaves falling to camouflage it.

A small camper. The kind you would tow behind you on your travels as a moving bedroom. The kind that could only fit one or two people. Something straight out of the seventies, colorful stripe down the middle and all, though it had faded to a sad, paler version of its former self. 

Here the feeling was the strongest. 

Claudia felt her throat tightening. She wanted to turn and run even though her mind was yelling at her for being a coward. There was no way anyone had used it in at least a decade. She stared at the wide open door, could see through the small structure out the square window to the other side and decidedly did not like it. 

“Aida.”

Claudia jerked hard at the sudden closeness of her mother’s voice. It was as if she’d snuck up behind her daughter and whispered harshly into her ear, over her shoulder like a game. Like she’d been caught trying to hide. Claudia whirled around expecting once again that her mother had found her out and somehow knew, always, where she was or what she was doing, especially in correlation with that house and these woods. 

And then she realized, They’re trying to stop me.

She tightened her grip on the handle of the hammer, now heavy in her grasp and shoved the flashlight into the back pocket of her jeans. 

They don’t want me near it.

She thought of Evie’s face the night the dress had appeared, nailed to the side of the house. The way she only seemed to remember to be upset once they were back in the comfort of the kitchen they now called home. Away from that horrible building that was affecting them all. Even then, her sister never had mentioned the dress, only that she was upset about something else. She had seen the fear and confusion build in her little sister’s expression, something that grew the more it was able to slip out. Like flood gates leaking with the start of a little crack. But the dam had never gotten a chance break and Claudia never found out what exactly Evie wanted to tell her. She knew it had something to do with their mother, once again. 

Claudia walked defiantly toward the abandoned camper. Before she’d even poked her head in she could tell its contents were in disarray. Cushions were flipped over each other or to the floor. The small foldaway table was nearly split into two. On the storage shelf above the rear window to her left was a set of drawers, all yanked open and hanging loose from their openings. Whatever might’ve been in them was taken long ago. 

On the seat cushion below, where a large hole had been gouged out from something nesting in the yellow stuffing, was a handful of change. The innards of the seat cupped it all together like the walls of a bowl you would leave near your front door for the same sort of thing. Perhaps even for your keys or chapstick, whatever you pulled from your pockets by the end of the day. She stepped in to examine them more closely, reluctantly reaching to gather them all together in her hands. Ninety four cents lay across her clammy fingers, still cold from the night before: two quarters, four dimes, and four pennies. There was nothing remarkable about them other than the fact that they seemed to be old, much older than the change she had laying around her own home. Looking at the dates she realized she was correct. The oldest, a penny, was from 1952. The youngest, from the seventies. She thought, perhaps, that someone had simply dropped them here when they’d left the camper. But considering the age and state of it, it would be surprising that even this small amount of money hadn’t been stolen, along with the simple fact that something would have had to rip out the seat cushion before placing the coins there. 

I don’t like it.

Claudia put them back and dusted her hands – mainly to make herself feel better than actually having any residue from the loose change. She removed the hammer from where she’d been holding it between her knees and turned around to go, only to barely catch a glimpse of the shape moving between the trees outside. She pulled herself back into the camper, ducking so that her head didn’t run into the shreds of the roof that had caved into a deep hole. The sky above was a light blue she marked, surprised she could even notice such things with the panic she now felt. Someone was in the woods with her. 

She heard them rushing from tree to tree, from one spot to another in the crumpling underbrush. Claudia could even hear a voice whispering unintelligibly. She crouched, heart racing, and felt positive the person had already seen her. Even if they’d only arrived in the area after she’d entered the camper, it was so small that hiding was nearly impossible. A moment before she had been standing in the doorway in clear view. 

Claudia listened for more footsteps, for crunching of leaves or any of the whispers that had now grown quiet. Moments passed like this to the point she wondered if they had finally left, content with only startling her. She shuffled over as quietly as possible to the little window over her shoulder. Trying to keep low, she peeked over the edge of the metal sill to see the trees beyond where minutes ago she had been walking through. As soon as she did, the shape flitted from one hiding place to the other. From this new spot she heard it again, much louder but in the same secretive tone she’d heard whispered in her ear before.

“Aida.”