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The Funeral Home:
“It used to be a funeral home…”
“Whoa, it is… gothic… and that burgundy color… looks a bit
like an old church. It’s definitely big enough for all three of the kids,” says
Susan, who’s stirring nervously in her seat and repeatedly sweeping back a
wayward strand of wavy golden hair behind her right ear.
Jim, her husband, seemingly pays little attention, and mumbles
“kids” sarcastically. Sitting behind the wheel of his black Porsche SUV, his
eyes are empty as open graves. He snarls and turns the steering wheel, nosing
the vehicle smoothly into the property’s long, straight, almost endless driveway
that reminds Susan of a tarmac.
“How long will the project last?” she inquires. Her voice
slightly raises. Anger and annoyance are coursing through her.
Jim relapses into silence, then shrugs his shoulders, parks
the car. Susan sighs and shakes her head.
“Typical Jim,” she thinks, “malignant in his reserve and stoic
in his void.”
The two exit the vehicle. Susan’s high heels clicking rhythmically
on the black pavement of the driveway as they walk towards the verandah, step
up the curiously steep stairs and approach the high, pitched, thick black metal
gothic double doors. The entranceway is cut from granite stone and has ornate
carvings of Biblical themes and 3-foot statues of Peter, Paul, Jesus and Mary
built into the lower left and right sides of the archway.
The door opens inwardly, as if by itself. The pair are met
by a real estate agent, a frumpy woman who materializes, like an apparition. The
schmoozy woman smiles with her whole face and ushers the couple inside.
Susan thinks the agent just looks like an agent, just looks
like someone from a real estate sign. Like she’s more of a photograph than a
person.
The agent moves fast for a woman of her size, and makes cloying
conversation, attempting to ingratiate herself, and as she speaks, she laughs mechanically
in a way that reminds Susan of the sounds of sitcoms she’d watched as a kid, like
Married With Children and Friends. Those 90s sitcoms with laugh
tracks that’d go off in bursts at snappy one-liners.
Susan wonders if the real estate agent is a human at all, or
if she’s a bot, a cyborg, or AI hologram.
Then Susan starts to notice the agent’s perfume, how musky
it is, how it lingers in the air as the agent whisks them through the furnished
house. No robot would be programmed to smell like that, Susan thinks.
They move fast through the first floor, their heads on a
swivel. The agent’s hands glide, gracefully, as if in tai chi movements, and
she speaks of amenities, distances, and dimensions.
Inspecting the antique furniture, the drapes of crushed
velvet, the house strikes Susan as a time warp. Or perhaps a bizarre, grotesque
museum. Everything seems dusty, like a museum, and although every room has
large windows, little light enters the house. There’s such a grimness to the
place. A stuffy feeling. An ugliness to everything.
Even the hardwood floors. They look freshly polished;
however, their shine is almost unnaturally sparkly, Susan posits. She scratches
her nose and notices a strong antiseptic smell wafting in the air.
When they step onto the wide staircase, they find themselves
instantly on the second floor, unnervingly so, as if they didn’t climb the
stairs at all, or as if Susan experienced a splice in time, or a spell of
amnesia.
Then they are checking each bedroom. They move with
precision, at an almost military speed. The hallways slant and bend curiously,
disturbing Susan’s equilibrium.
The bedrooms are horrendous, each room painted a different
unsightly color- lime green, 70s neon orange, banana yellow. Yikes. Whoever
designed the place must have been color blind. Or insane. Susan ponders
redecoration schemes…
Susan is suddenly spooked by the rooms’ dim, unnatural light
that repeats in various wall mirrors and gilded picture-frames. It’s a sepia
tone that’s harsh, hideous.
Gazing at one of the picture-frames, she’s creeped out to
notice that all the picture-frames hanging about the house are empty. Every single
one of them. They are devoid of photos, paintings, anything, and Susan feels it
renders the house indescribably creepy and bleak…
Besides barren, the house just seems… chaotic, uneven and
off-balance. It’s as if the house was an experiment, a strange arrangement of
angles, geometric spaces and patterns only a mathematician could understand.
Every room seems like a wrong turn, a dead end in a maze. Every room she sees
is confusing and ultimately unsettling.
In addition to her aesthetic repulsion and discombobulation,
viewing the house just feels joyless. It’s a mechanical, cold task. It’s
automatic. It’s forced. There’s no happiness here. The place feels suffocating.
Susan loses her breath and wheezes once or twice, like she’s at a high
altitude.
After inspecting the fully furnished bedrooms, which, to
Susan, are all morbid, they’re at once in the basement; and again, Susan only
recalls beginning down the stairs from the second floor, right as she was thinking
of how the stairs remind her of an Escher print...
The basement is a tall, windowless space. It is bright
white. White everything. Shiny white linoleum floor, white paneling, white walls
with Grecian cornices, but in the background, the basement’s space is vast and dark,
and Susan sees stars, moons, and planets, cosmic debris and what looks to be an
asteroid, the space rock barreling forth, in their direction, like a wrecking
ball.
Susan presses her eyes shut, grinds her teeth, braces
herself for impact, feeling as if she’s aboard a passenger plane, about to
crash.
But she opens her eyes to find herself in a forward motion,
from the living room toward the kitchen, and Susan has a sensation that their
feet aren’t moving, that the floor is moving, instead of them, like the floor is
an electronic machine, a people mover, like in the airport. She feels a hard
stop and gets slightly dizzy crossing into the kitchen.
She shudders, gulps instinctively, then pans her gaze around
the spacious, fully equipped kitchen, with its silver refrigerator, and modern
appliances. It’s a stark contrast to the rest of the house. It’s so… modern… It’s
light and there’s not a single antique… It could be in one of those “Modern
Homes” magazines she sees at the supermarket.
Surprised by the commodious kitchen’s immense size, she also
thinks the house appears far larger, almost infinite inside; the house far
bigger than it seemed from the outside.
Jim, as usual, doesn’t speak much to the agent or Susan,
just grunts and snorts, here and there, but he stops to take a business call, rages
at his phone, drowning out the tinny voice in his headset. Hoarsely, he bellows
out something unpleasant regarding a projected target date.
Susan does most of the talking with the agent, asking the
usual, perfunctory house-related questions, inquiring about the neighborhood
too.
However, in truth, she’s confused and scared. She already hates
the house, its design. Its effect on her. The psychic visions and unnatural
movements. How she’s losing her grip. It’s as if the place was meant to be
intimidating, disorienting, and ugly.
It could have been nice, warm, a real home, perhaps, Susan
thinks to herself, pensively. It has huge panoramic windows in the living room,
a wide staircase in the anteroom, and its chestnut brown hardwood flooring is
an inviting color. There’s plush antique furniture everywhere, 19th
century moldings, and recently added marble flooring and brass fixtures in the
bathrooms.
And the kitchen, even by Susan’s standards, is immaculate.
It’s sparkling, and state of the art, having just been remodeled, and has a
fancy, see-through fridge, and smart controls for the appliances.
It could have been a nice home, Susan thinks. It really
could have, if not for…
Behind the house sits a sizable spit of land, a behemoth of
a backyard. Tragically, though, it is an eyesore. The square patch of land is
filled with only shabby wildflowers and bushes and is bisected by a small
unkempt lawn.
The backyard is curiously empty, giving it a strange, eerily
vacant and lonely feeling. She’d never seen a backyard that big be so empty.
Not a patio set or a wooden table or grill or playground or pebble path or bird
bath or anything. Susan thinks it probably should have a pool, given its
tremendous size, but considering the house’s history, she understands why no
pool was installed.
The house’s history, yes, it flits through her mind, once
again. The history is probably what makes it appear uglier than it is.
Almost telepathically, the agent’s smug robotic face shifts,
darkens, and becomes downcast, as she lowers her double chin toward the floor,
the basement.
“So, you know, this property was a business, providing
services for those who’d passed on,” the agent’s cheery voice deadens and
sounds apologetic.
“Services for those who’d passed?” scoffs Jim. The sarcastic
tone of his voice clearly mocks the agent’s euphemism, and he cocks his big
head to the side, his hazel eyes narrowing. He stares dead on at the agent and
sneers at her, menacingly, his pearly white teeth peeking out from underneath
his curled, thin upper lip, his bleached choppers gleaming in the bright
sunlight slanting in from the kitchen’s floor to ceiling windows.
“It was a funeral home, yes. But this was disclosed in the
literature. And it’s why the place is renting for a fraction of the price of
the others in this neighborhood,” the agent goes on, matter-of-factly. Her tone
returning to saccharine, her eyes brightening, she continues, “This place is a
steal. A property this size…”
“The price is hardly a steal if it’s really haunted! Your
literature didn’t mention anything about that,” Susan shoots back, her venomous
candor taking the agent off guard.
“There was… was an unfortunate…” the agent bumbles, turning
her cheek to avert the couple’s scrutinizing gaze.
Susan’s sigh interrupts the agent’s feeble attempt at an
explanation. “Unfortunate?” Susan blurts out, her face twisting into a harsh
scowl.
Susan sniggers, clucks at the agent’s callousness, and goes
on, “The kid killed his siblings, his parents, then went to his school and shot
25 people. He claimed he’d been possessed by demonic spirits and had a
paranormal expert testify on his behalf in court. Please, we heard about it on
the news, and we read about the case online just this morning,” Susan’s arms are
akimbo as she speaks; her eyes are bulging, electric in anger.
The agent rolls her eyes, flutters her long fake lashes and draws
in a deep breath. She shakes her head and brushes back the curly black bangs
hanging astray from her chignon.
Then the agent stiffens up. Perhaps expecting another
fusillade of questions or complaints to spring from the couple’s lips, the
agent decides to play hardball, and her tone suddenly shifts to one of robotic
rage and forced politeness.
“Okay, okay, you folks know the history of the place. It was
all over the news. But remember, the kid eventually pled guilty, and no such
evidence of ‘paranormal’ anything was found.” The agent flicks her fingers in
air quotes around the word “paranormal,” and continues, “The show on TLC came
up with only white noise. Because, frankly, that sort of ghost stuff doesn’t
exist.”
The agent pauses and her cyborg smile shifts back on, as if
her software has set her veneer back to sugary.
Her voice sweetens too, but she speaks, condescendingly,
like a mother who just lashed out at a petulant child, “You see, this is what
we refer to as a ‘distressed property,’ yes, but this is the only property for
rent in this neighborhood. You said you wanted a house here for 6 months. You
said you wanted to be near downtown. Well, this is it. If you aren’t
interested, I understand, and I can show you a similar property. Buuuuut,”
Susan winces at how the agent draws out that syllable, “it’s an hour farther
from the city and twice as expensive. And I already have three other clients
interested in this property, soooo, please, take a few minutes, talk amongst
yourselves, look around a bit more if you’d like. I’ll be waiting outside.”
The agent’s smile grows so big and forced Susan worries it
might explode the lady’s cheekbones. The agent turns and clicks off, her heels
talking to the floor at an incongruous clip as she plucks out her phone from
her black Fendi handbag and saunters away staring and swiping at the device.
Susan believes the device might be controlling the agent
somehow, a digital overlord…
Jim nods his head, “Susan,” he says, speaking her name for
the first time in what seems like years, not just calling her “you…”
“Susan, I can’t live in an apartment again. Even a big
condo. I hate having people living on the other side of the wall. I hate
smelling people’s food in the hallway. I can’t do it again. I can’t.”
Jim pans his gaze, toward the spacious dining room, the
place still furnished with the previous owner’s belongings. The couple’s
relative who’d inherited the property, while attempting, unsuccessfully to sell
it, had decided to rent it, and had kept it furnished with the belongings of
the slain family.
“But, Jim, it is… so… so… creepy. I mean, what happened
here. It was a funeral home, and then… Ick, it’s… I mean, what if it really is
haunted?”
Goosebumps run up Susan’s arms and she feels a chill splash
over her, like she’s had a glass of ice water thrown at her.
“Do you believe in that crap? I don’t. I want a house. I
want my space. I don’t want to drive four hours every day. It’s only 20 minutes
from here to the office. We’re renting the place and moving in.”
And with that, the matter is settled. Jim’s big round eyes
remind her of portholes on a sailing ship as he lumbers his massive frame out
of the kitchen, through the house, to the verandah, on his way to speak with
the agent and sign the lease.
Susan, her arms crossed over her chest, taps her foot impatiently,
shakes her head and grimaces. She thinks back to when she was younger, working
part-time as a cheerleader. That was when she met Jim, when he was a rookie in
the NFL.
Like she often does, she thinks back to those days, but not nostalgically.
Because sometimes, just sometimes, though increasingly often these days, she
wishes she didn’t get pregnant then…
She wishes she’d stayed in college. She liked reading and
studying, campus life… And she wishes she had started the clothing business
she’d dreamed about. She’d had an idea for something like Lululemon, athleisure
wear. But she’d never pursued it. And that haunts her… The missed window of
opportunity. It hurts her, watching the Lululemon company raking in billions.
Seeing every housewife, every lady in her neighborhood in yoga pants. And now,
here she is, having lost all her money. Money she didn’t even earn. Money she’d
married… Pathetic…
Worse yet, though it makes her ashamed, her mind sinks
further into regret, and sometimes… sometimes she wishes she’d not gotten
pregnant. At all.
She hates thinking she shouldn’t have had that kid, that
first one. But she can’t help it. And there are times she regrets the others,
too. She really can’t help thinking about what she could have been. Her son,
her daughter, even her youngest son, just their faces, remind her of that
missed time, missed opportunities, her unrealized dreams. Just their faces can be
such cruel, cruel reminders.
She loves her children and hates thinking like this. It
makes her ugly, a hideous, terrible person, she knows, but the thoughts remain,
appear in transit, like awful graffiti scrawled on a highway overpass…
All these thoughts flit through her mind as she stands
there, defeated. Her youth gone. And now their fortune was nearly gone too. They
had debts piling up after Jim’s business ventures went sour. They had to sell
their mansion, most of their possessions, most of their cars, their cute speedboat.
Like so many other NFL players, Jim had found his earnings squandered and
vanished.
She should have stepped in. She should have done more. But
she was busy, with the kids, with the charities.
She was just as guilty, too, she figures, having taken those
retail therapy shopping trips, those European vacations, booking those first-class
plane tickets, even for short flights, and those ridiculously fancy lunches and
dinners, those afternoons of facials, Dead Sea mud wraps, manicures and
pedicures, foot massages at the spa.
She knows her harsh reality. That this is what it is. That Jim
must take on this project. She knows they could, theoretically, get by without
it, get by on his healthy NFL pension, but if this project takes off, if it is
a hit, they’ll be rich again. Really rich again, Jim says.
She wants to believe it. She wants more than anything to be
rich again. To not have to worry about money. To not have to deal with jerks
like that leasing agent, the patronizing robotic bitch. That’s the best part of
having fuck you money, she remembers, being able to say “fuck you.” Not having
to take shit from anyone.
“Dammit, ugh, I guess we’ve got no choice,” she mutters to
herself. She hangs her head low, draws in a deep breath. Then she exhales,
suddenly finding herself sitting in the passenger seat of their car, the
Porsche inching in reverse, rolling out of their new home’s tarmac-like
driveway.
