Interfictions (3 page)

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 cautiously 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 medicine 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.

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 living 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 family 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 whiskey-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."

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 family 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 apples, 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 consensus 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.

Suddenly a rumbling came from inside—House. Mrs. Blank looked at the dark backside of the house, at its gingerbread eaves and its square roof, at its dark windows tinseled with starlight, and shuddered at the thought of going back in without anyone waiting for her, without her son beside her. The house rumbled again, though, louder this time, and she went without further hesitation. Some women marry a house, and this bond neither man nor God can break.

William's body was never found, poor child. Like his brother, he vanished into nothing.

But we say the orchard took him.

It took Rose and Jonas Addleson less than a year to make their doomed daughter. Full of passion for one another, they made love as often as possible, trying to bring her into this world, trying to make life worth living. This was perhaps not what Rose felt she needed, but Jonas wanted children, and what Jonas wanted, Rose wanted too. That's the thing about marriage. Suddenly you want together. You no longer live in desire alone.

What Rose wanted was for Jonas to be happy. She would marry him within a day of meeting him on the front porch of—House during that fateful blizzard, knowing this was to be her home. The house had told her. And soon it had become apparent that Jonas didn't want her to leave either. When she went to call her mother, he had interrupted to say, “Would you like more tea?” When she had moved toward the front door, he'd stood up and said, “Would you like to lie down and rest?"

They shared more whiskey-laced tea, and before the night was over Rose found herself sitting next to Jonas on the sofa, holding his hand while he told her his family's story. How his grandfather had owned the button factory during the war, how his father had killed himself twenty years ago by placing a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. How his mother had worked her fingers to the bone taking care of everything: the house, Jonas, his father's bloody mess in the bathroom. “I found him,” Jonas said. “I was ten. On the mirror in the bathroom. There was blood all over it. He was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. Mama scrubbed and scrubbed, but it wouldn't come out. Not until she asked the house to help her."

He paused, gulping the story down again. Rose watched the way the column of his throat moved as he swallowed. She wanted to kiss him right there, where the Adam's apple wriggled under the skin. Instead she asked, “What did the house do?"

He looked at her, his eyes full of fear. “She told me to leave the bathroom. So I left, closing the door behind me. I waited outside with my ear against the door, but I couldn't hear anything. After a few minutes passed, I knocked. Then a few more minutes passed. I was going to knock again, but before my knuckles hit, the door swung open, and there was Mama, wringing her hands in a damp rag. There was no blood on her, not even a speck. And when I looked behind her, the carpet was as clean as ever, as if no dead body had bled to death on it."

"The house loves you,” Rose said.

Jonas looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?"

"It loves you. Can't you feel it? It's trying to tell you something."

"If it's trying to communicate,” said Jonas, “it has a sad idea of conversation."

She held those words close as soon as he said them, she pressed them to her chest like a bouquet. This was why she had been brought there, she realized. In this instant she knew she would translate for him. She would bring back all that he had lost. She'd be his mother, she'd be his father, she'd be his wife, she'd have his children. A family, she thought. With a family, he'd never be alone.

She leaned into him, still holding his hand, and kissed him. Without moving back again, she looked up through her eyelashes and said, “I have everything you need."

The story of the Oliver family is a sad one. No, let us revise that statement: It is not sad, it is disturbing. We don't like to talk about it around town anymore. We are all glad that—House took the Olivers, for they were a bad lot, given to drinking and gambling, as well as other unwholesome activities.

The Olivers moved into—House just past the turn of the century, after Mrs. Blank died. Our grandparents found Mrs. Blank several weeks after her passing, due to the smell that began to spread down Buckeye Street. It was one of the only times they'd gone into—House, and we remember it to this day: the hardwood floors, the chintz furniture, the stone mantel over the fireplace, the stairs that creaked as you stepped up into the long hallway of the second floor, the second floor itself, the lower half of the hall paneled with dark polished wood. And the bathroom, of course, where all of the trouble eventually focused its energy. It was a fine house, really, with wide windows to let light in, though even with all of that light the house held too many shadows. Our grandparents did not linger. They took Mrs. Blank's body to the county coroner's office in Warren and left the doctor to his business.

Less than a year later, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver came to—House with their three children: two boys, one nearly a man, one still muddling through adolescence, and a girl about to bloom. At first our grandparents didn't think badly of the Olivers. It takes a certain amount of time for a family to reveal its secrets. So for the first few years, they welcomed the Olivers as if they had always lived among us. The Olivers began attending the Methodist church on Fisher-Corinth Road. They sent the younger boy and girl to school with our children. The oldest boy worked as a field hand for local farmers. His work was good, according to Miles Willard, who paid the boy to clear fields those first few years, before all of the madness started to happen again.