Flash Fiction Spooktacular

Stay Away from Pretty Men: Chapter One - Emily Conover

Stay Away from Pretty Men: Chapter One

We moved to the house in the beginning of July of 1985. I was twelve. It was in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere. Located at the end of a street, surrounded by cow pastures with woods beyond those. The nearest neighbor was an old man who lived in a dilapidated mobile home that was roughly a mile away. After that, you had to drive for almost ten minutes to get to the next house.

Apparently this had once been a thriving farm, but that had to have been when my dad was a kid at the latest, if the state of the barn was anything to go by. I wasn’t sure how it was still standing. The house, which was a two story Victorian, had been pretty once, but by the time we showed up it just looked tired.

A hardy Wisteria vine, easily four inches in diameter, had wound its way around one end of the front porch. Rampant honeysuckle was attacking the detached single car garage, and a plant of an unidentified variety was trying to find its way in the upstairs windows. All the windows I could see were filthy, the metal roof was visibly rusted in places, and the yellow and white paint was peeling.

“It doesn’t look like much, I know, but it’s only temporary.” My mom tried to put a positive spin on it, as if we weren’t in a strange state of limbo. “Just until September, when our house on base opens up.”

Base housing. That was what led us to this. Some fool who handled that stuff for Seymour Johnson Air Force base had screwed up the paperwork, leaving dad to bunk with a buddy and us here.

I must have still looked skeptical because my mother hastened to continue. “Buck up, Lou-Lou. With a little elbow grease I bet it will be charming. Besides, it was extremely generous of Aunt Dolores to let us stay here.”

“Well, it’s not like Aunt Dolores needs it,” I grumbled. Aunt Dolores was my father’s great aunt, and she was ancient. Daddy couldn’t even remember how old she was when I asked. She lived in a nursing home in the closest town to the house, which was a thirty minute drive away.

My mother groaned. “Louise. Please don’t be difficult. We’ve got a furnished house rent free for the next two months. It would have been next to impossible to find any decent accommodations for that short of a period of time and you know it.”

Don’t be difficult. I heard that phrase over and over again. I wasn’t deliberately contrary, but my parents and teachers never seemed to believe me. It was irritating to be told over and over that any displeasure I expressed was me being difficult, especially when no one seemed to consider if I found things difficult. I took a deep breath and choked down my resentment.

“It’s fine. Maybe it will even be fun.” I used one of my mom’s favorite phrases in an effort to placate her, carefully using the peppy tone I’d practiced so that I couldn’t be accused of being sarcastic. Then I opened the station wagon door and climbed out. I gasped at the strength of the heat outside. I leaned against the car door for support and instantly regretted it. I slammed it shut and shook my hand to try and cool it down from being almost singed by the heated metal.

My mom didn’t notice my discomfort, nor was she fooled by my false cheer. She climbed out of the car, still trying to convince me of the virtues of the house. “It has a swing in the backyard and-” Whatever else Mom was going to say got lost to time as the first wave of heat hit her and she choked on her words.

“Judas Priest!” She turned to look at me in shock. “It’s not even noon!”

I plastered a smile on my face. “Let’s just hope the AC works.”

The AC worked, which was a miracle, since the heat was like a living thing; one that wasn’t particularly friendly. It clung to us as we hurried up the steps to the porch. Mom fumbled with the locks for a bit and then we were in. I sneezed upon entering. The lawyer who’d given Mom the keys, Mr. Morgenstern, had told us he’d made sure the utilities were on, but that the garage would need to be unlocked from the inside.

I had taken an instant dislike to the man. He was handsome, I guess, for a grownup. But his smile was too wide, and showed too many teeth, and he stood too close to everyone. We’d spent an uncomfortable two hours with him this morning because he took us to brunch at the local cafeteria. It was pretty fancy, as cafeterias went, and the food was tasty, but being near him sapped my appetite. It’s hard to eat when a grown man is watching you as closely as my mom watched Dallas.

As Mom and I strolled through the house I mentally said a prayer of thanks that he hadn’t accompanied us. The inside was as sad as the outside. There was faded and peeling wallpaper, uncomfortable Victorian era furniture in the living room, dated kitchen appliances and cabinets, and stairs that looked questionable in terms of safety. The dining room furniture appeared to be a later vintage than the living room furniture, but it was also dark and heavy.

Each room had dingy drapes, threadbare rugs that must have been expensive once upon a time, and a thick layer of dust on everything. The lone exception was the small table in the kitchen. The garage door opener laid on that table with an envelope that had information on the property.I sneezed again and my mom laughed.

“I guess we know the first order of business. Dusting!” She said it like it was a reward, and maybe to her it was. Dusting, like most household chores, aggravated me because of how often you had to perform them. It was as if Zeus had cursed us all to our own version of pushing a rock uphill for eternity.

We spent the next two days cleaning and moving ourselves in. Mom took the bigger of the two furnished bedrooms that was next to the single bathroom. Mine was on the front of the house and was smaller than the empty one across the hall. I briefly considered moving what little furniture was in my room into it, but after I discovered the large, dark stain on the floorboards in there I changed my mind.

The smaller room wasn’t so bad, even if the wallpaper was a flocked mint green pattern on a shiny white stripe. There was a small closet and a single dresser with an attached mirror opposite the bed. The white cast iron bed frame was pretty, but I had to sleep with my mom the first two nights because there was a hole dead center in the mattress.

Our third morning there we got up early and dressed like we were headed to church. In a way we were, as we were making a pilgrimage of sorts. One of the stipulations of the offer had been that we’d visit Aunt Dolores at least once a week. Mom had made a plate of cookies the night before and I was tasked with keeping it balanced in my lap on the trip to the nursing home.

I’d never been to a nursing home before, and I haven’t been back in one since that summer. The whole place smelled faintly of urine and strongly of disinfectant, but that wasn’t the worst part. Pitiful men and women lined the halls; most in wheelchairs, others not. A few no longer seemed cognizant; their mouths slack and traces of their breakfast still on their shirts. Others had enough lucidity to speak, and that was the worst part, because they called out to us.

“Please take me home! Mommy and Daddy are probably worried.”

“Bertha! You finally came to visit! I knew you wouldn’t forget me.”

“Where’s my dog? Where’s Mr. Jangles?”

“They’re stealing from me! Robbing us all blind, I tell you! Call the police!”

“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”

“Pretty girl, pretty girl.”

That man got a look of death from my mother as she moved me onto her other side. He laughed and kicked his bare legs out from under the blanket draped over his lap as an orderly came to deal with him. He twisted in his seat to stare at me some more, continuing to mutter “pretty girl” as he was wheeled away. It was a relief to make it to Aunt Dolores’s room, but only briefly.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting Aunt Dolores to look like, but whatever it was, it wasn’t the shriveled woman in the chair by the window. Her paper thin skin was practically translucent; her joints knobby and swollen from what I was later told was a form of arthritis. Her hair was curled into a hairstyle that seemed to be favored by the other women in the home, but it did little to hide the fact it was thinning. She turned her head towards the door when we entered, her milky white eyes unseeing. Her tongue darted out, like a lizard’s, to moisten lips that had all but disappeared.

“Gloria? That you?” she asked in a reedy voice.

“No, Aunt Dolores, it’s Sonja and Louise. You remember? Ted’s wife and daughter?”

“Sonja…..” She furrowed her brow as if she was trying to think of who we were, but didn’t say anything else. Mom and I exchanged glances. Neither of us knew this woman and even my dad hadn’t seen her since he was a little boy.

Into the silence I said the only thing I could think of. “We brought you cookies,” I said as I held out the plate.

“Cookies? Why didn’t you lead with that? Bring ’em here.”

We stayed for a half an hour while Aunt Dolores demolished the cookies. I watched in horrified fascination as the chocolate smeared over her mouth and crumbs clung to her chin. Mom tried to engage her in conversation a few times, but Aunt Dolores ignored her until she mentioned doing some yard work and minor repairs to repay her kindness of allowing us to stay there.

“I suppose that’s alright. Stay out of the barn and don’t poke around in the cellar. I don’t rightly know what’s down there, understand?” She pursed what was left of her lips and then said, “bring me some watermelon when you visit again.”

She turned away and, realizing we’d been dismissed, we got up to leave. As we approached the door she called after us. “You, girl, don’t go in them woods. It probably won’t make no difference, but all the same.”

Before I could stop myself I scoffed and blurted out, “Oh don’t worry about that. I’m not dumb enough to try and cross a cow pasture, not after my cousin got chased by a bull at the family reunion two years ago.”

“Louise,” my mom hissed as she shoved me out the door.

“What? I’m just saying. Everyone told Hendrick it was a dumb thing to do,” I protested as we walked away.

We swung by the library and then the furniture store to purchase a new mattress for me. Mom even sprang for same day delivery, claiming I talked in my sleep. The delivery guys balked when they saw the address and tried to return the money, claiming that the property wasn’t safe. After much haggling, and some emotional blackmail, they agreed to drop the mattress off on the front porch.

“You do realize that the two of us have to get this up those stairs, right?” I asked her as we drove home.

She glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure they were still following us. “I do. Can’t believe grown men are scared of an old house.”

“Bet they watched Children of the Corn or something.” Our former next door neighbor had taken a group of us to see that film even though we weren’t old enough. I was the only kid to not have had nightmares. I enjoyed a good horror film or story. All the same, I was glad that none of the corn fields we passed were anywhere near the house.

“Even if they did, they’re old enough to realize that it’s just a damn house.”

I let the subject drop because I couldn’t say I blamed them. Not everyone was made of ‘sterner stuff,’ like Dad said about us. The house was, in fact, odd. The longer we were there the more obvious it became to me. Doors opened or shut by themselves, the lights in certain rooms would flicker even after replacing the lightbulbs, floorboards would creak, but never in the same place twice, and small things were constantly disappearing and reappearing close to where I had thought they were in the first place. I also kept seeing things out of the corner of my eye that weren’t there, especially in the mirror in my bedroom. My mother insisted that I was simply confused; blaming everything from jet lag to my age to my overactive imagination.

These things didn’t scare me, exactly, but they did make me uncomfortable. But, as unsettling as the house could be at times, it was infinitely preferable to be inside than out. One swing quickly loses its appeal when faced with that type of heat. I had never experienced anything like it, having spent the last five years in West Germany and my earliest life in Colorado. Even in the shade you could feel that heat closing in, coiling around you, pushing in from all sides until you couldn’t breathe. At times it felt like fingers clutching at my limbs and hair.

I can still remember how everything smelled in that heat. The scent of the grass as it baked to a crisp, mingling with the scent of cow pies in various degrees of freshness. The lingering scent of gasoline from the riding lawn mower in the garage, the sweet aroma from the long neglected cherry tree at the edge of the property. And then there was the house itself.

The dank smell of the cellar, the dry, dusty scent of my room, and the ghost of Aunt Dolores’s beauty products that hung in the bathroom and roared to life whenever we showered. There was something else too, something I couldn’t properly identify at first, and didn’t want to. Something that smelled sweet and rotten at the same time.