Before and Afterlives (2 page)

“All these years?” Jonas told her. It was not Rose Addleson who grew up in the house after all, who experienced the years of closeness to these events, these fits that her husband had suffered since childhood. “If it’s trying to communicate,” he said, “it has a sad idea of conversation.”

Rose and Jonas have no children. Well, to be precise, no living children. Once there had been a beautiful little girl, with cheeks that blushed a red to match her mother’s, but she did not take to this world. She died when she was only a year old. On a cold winter’s night she stopped breathing, when the house was frosted with ice. It wasn’t until the next morning that they found her, already off and soaring to the afterlife. “A hole in her heart,” the doctor said, pinching his forefinger and thumb together. “A tiny hole.” They had never known it was there.

After their first few months of marriage, Rose and Jonas had become a bit reclusive. Out of shame? Out of guilt? Fear? Del
usion? No one is able to supply a satisfactory reason for their self-imposed isolation. After all, we don’t live in that house. If walls could talk, though, and some believe the walls of — House do talk, perhaps we’d understand that Jonas and Rose Addleson have good reason not to go out or talk to neighbors. Why even Rose’s mother Mary Kay Billings didn’t hear from her daughter but when she called on the phone herself, or showed up on the front porch of — House, which was something she rarely did. “That house gives me the creeps,” she told us. “All those stories, I believe them. Why Rose ever wanted to marry into that family is beyond me.”

Mary Kay has told us this in her own home, in her own kitchen. She sat on a chair by the telephone, and we sat across the table from her. She said, “Just you see,” and dialed her daughter’s number. A few rings later and they were talking. “Yes, well, I u
nderstand, Rose. Yes, you’re busy, of course. Well, I wanted to ask how you and Jonas are getting along. Good. Mm-hmm. Good. All right, then. I’ll talk to you later. Bye now.”

She put the phone down on the cradle and smirked. “As predicted,” she told us. “Rose has no time to talk. ‘The house, Mot
her, I’m so busy. Can you call back later?’ Of course I’ll call back later, but it’ll be the same conversation, let me tell you. I know my daughter, and Rose can’t be pried away from that house.”

We all feel a bit sad for Mary Kay Billings. She did not gain a son through marriage, but lost a daughter. This is not the way it’s supposed to happen. Marriage should bring pe
ople together. We all believe this to be true.

Rose heard a voice calling

She has heard voices since she was a little girl. Rose Addl
eson, formerly Rose Billings, was always a dear girl in our hearts, but touched with something otherworldly. If her mother doesn’t understand her daughter’s gravitation to — House, the rest of us see it all too clear. Our Rose was the first child to speak in tongues at church. Once, Jesus spoke through her. The voice that came through her mouth never named itself, but it did sound an awful lot like Jesus. It was definitely a male voice, and he kept saying how much he loved us and how we needed to love each other better. It was Jesus all over, and from our own sweet Rose.

We do not understand why, at the age of twelve, she stopped attending services.

But Rose also heard voices other than the Lord’s. Several of us have overheard her speaking to nothing, or nothing any of us could see. She’s hung her head, chin tucked into breastbone, at the grocery store, near the ketchup and mustard and pickles, murmuring, “Yes. Of course. Yes, I understand. Please don’t be angry.”

Rose heard the voices in — House, too. This is why she married Jonas: The house called for her to come to it.

It was winter when it happened. Rose was eighteen then, just half a year out of high school. She worked in Hettie’s Flower Shop. She could arrange flowers better than anyone in town. We all always requested Rose to make our bouquets instead of Hettie, but Hettie never minded. She owned the place, after all.

On her way home from work one evening, Rose’s car stalled a half mile from — House. She walked there to get out of the cold, and to call her mother. At the front door she rapped the lion-headed knocker three times. Then the door opened and wind rushed past her like a sigh. She smelled dust and medicine and old people. Something musty and sweet and earthy. Jonas stood in front of her, a frown on his sad young face. He was already an orphan at the age of thirty. “Yes?” he asked in a tone of voice that implied that he couldn’t possibly be interested in any reason why our Rose was appearing before him. “Can I help you?”

Rose was about to ask if she could use his phone when she heard a voice calling from inside. “Rose,” it whispered. Its voice rustled like leaves in a breeze. “Please help us,” the house pleaded. And then she thought she heard it say, “Need, need, need.” Or perhaps it had said something altogether different. The walls swelled behind Jonas’s shoulder, inhaling, exhaling, and the sound of a heartbeat suddenly could be heard.

“Are you all right?” Jonas asked, cocking his head to the side. “Rose Billings, right? I haven’t seen you since you were a little girl.”

“Yes,” said Rose, but she didn’t know if she was saying yes to his question or to the house’s question. She shook her head, winced, then looked up at Jonas again. Light cocooned his body, silvery and stringy as webs.

“Come in,” he offered, moving aside for her to enter, and Rose went in, looking around for the source of the voice as she ca
utiously moved forward.

Mary Kay Billings didn’t hear from her daughter for three days after that. That night she called the police and spoke to Sheriff Dawson. He’d found Rose’s car stuck in the snow. They called all over town, to Hettie’s Flower Shop, to the pharmacy, because Rose was supposed to pick up cold med
icine for Mary Kay. Eventually Rose called Mary Kay and said, “I’m okay. I’m not coming home. Pack my things and send them to me.”

“Where are you?” Mary Kay demanded.

“Have someone bring my things to — House,” Rose said.

“— House?!” shouted Mary Kay Billings.

“I’m a married woman now, Mother,” Rose explained, and that was the beginning of the end of her.

Jonas in his cups

He had many of them. Cups, that is. Most of them filled with tea and whiskey. Jonas Addleson had been a drinker since the age of eight, as if he were the son of a famous movie star. They are all a sad lot, the children of movie stars and rich folk. Too often they grow up unhappy, unaccustomed to li
ving in a world in which money and fame fade as fast as they are heaped upon them.

Jonas Addleson was not famous beyond our town, but his fam
ily left him wealthy. His father’s father had made money during the Second World War in buttons. He had a button factory over in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It’s long gone by now, of course. They made all sorts of buttons, the women who worked in the factory while the men were in Europe. Throughout — House you will still find a great many buttons. In the attic, on the pantry shelves, in the old playroom for the children, littered in out-of-the-way places: under beds, in the basement, among the ashes in the fireplace (unburned, as if fire cannot touch them).

This is not to say Rose Addleson was a bad housekeeper. In fact, Rose Addleson should have got an award for keeping house. She rarely found time for anything but cleaning and keeping. It was the house that did this eternal parlor trick. No matter how many buttons Rose removed, they returned in a matter of weeks.

When Rose first arrived at — House, Jonas showed her into the living room, then disappeared into the kitchen to make tea. The living room was filled with Victorian furniture with carved armrests, covered in glossy chintz. A large mirror hung on the wall over the fireplace, framed in gold leaf. The fire in the fireplace crackled, filling the room with warmth. On the mantel over the fire, what appeared to be coins sat in neat stacks, row upon row of them. Rose went to them immediately, wondering what they were. They were the first buttons she’d find. When Jonas returned, carrying a silver tray with the tea service on it, he said, “Good, get warm. It’s awfully cold outside.”

He handed Rose a cup of tea and she sipped it. It was whi
skey-laced and her skin began to flush, but she thanked him for his hospitality and sipped at the tea until the room felt a little more like home.

“The least I can do,” he said, shrugging. Then remembering what she’d come for, he said, “The phone. One second. I’ll bring it to you.”

He turned the corner, but as soon as he was gone, the house had her ear again. “Another soul gone to ruin,” it sighed with the weight of worry behind it. “Unless you do something.”

“But what can I do?” said Rose. “It’s nothing to do with me. Is it?”

The house shivered. The stacks of buttons on the mantel toppled, the piles scattering, a few falling into the fire below. “You have what every home needs,” said the house.

“I’m no one,” said Rose. “Really.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Jonas said in the frame of the doorway. He had a portable phone in his hand, held out for her to take. “I mean, we’re all someone. A son or daughter, a wife or husband, a parent. Maybe you’re right, though,” he said a moment later. “Maybe we’re all no one in the end.”

“What do you mean?” asked Rose. She put the teacup down to take the phone.

“I’m thinking of my family. All gone now. So I guess by my own definition that makes me nothing.”

Rose batted her eyelashes instead of replying. Then she put the phone down on the mantel next to the toppled towers of buttons. She sat down in one of the chintz armchairs and said, “Tell me more.”

The first lost family

Before the Addlesons, the Oliver family lived in — House. Before the Olivers lived in — House, the family that built the house lived there. But the name of that family has been lost to the dark of history. What we know about that family is that they were from the moors of Yorkshire. That they had come with money to build the house. That the house was one of the first built in this part of Ohio. That our town hadn’t even been a town at that point. We shall call them the Blanks, as we do in town, for the sake of easiness in conversation.

The Blanks lived in — House for ten years before it took them. One by one the Blanks died or disappeared, which is the same thing as dying if you think about it, for as long as no one you love can see or hear you, you might as well be a ghost.

The Blanks consisted of Mr. Blank, Mrs. Blank, and their two children, twin boys with ruddy cheeks and dark eyes. The photos we have of them are black and white, but you can tell from the pictures that their eyes are dark and that their cheeks are ruddy by the serious looks on their faces. No smiles, no hint of happiness. They stand outside the front porch of — House, all together, the parents behind the boys, their arms straight at their sides, wearing dark suits.

The father, we know, was a farmer. The land he farmed has changed hands over the years, but it was once the Blank fam
ily apple orchard. Full of pinkish-white blossoms in the spring, full of shiny fat globes of fruit in autumn. It was a sight, let us tell you. It was a beautiful sight.

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 a
pples, 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 co
nsensus 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.