The House of Long Shadows

  The House of Long Shadows

  Ambrose Ibsen

  Copyright © 2018 by Ambrose Ibsen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by: The Cover Collection

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Thank You For Reading!

  About the Author

  One

  Have you ever, as they say, slept the sleep of the dead?

  I have.

  It's the most peaceful thing in the world—the closest thing to non-existence I've ever felt.

  By its definition, it's a dreamless sleep. It's a sleep without borders, where existence is a very tenuous thing. My life had been reduced to a burning candle left out in the rain, the flame bobbing and dodging and only narrowly avoiding the drop that might snuff it out for good. And if it had been snuffed out then, I would have passed on without even knowing it. Pain and suffering and fear don't exist, don't register, in a mind so buried in sleep as I've described.

  Between you and me, I wouldn't have minded an awful lot.

  To have died in my sleep, that is.

  But it wasn't meant to be.

  I awoke with a jerk. Possibly several jerks, but my body was too numb to count them.

  Next came a wave of confusion. Consciousness was alien to me.

  When the confusion had begun to recede and I was reacquainted with cognizance, my freshly-caught breath hitched and I was bowled over by regret. Regret that I was still alive—that I hadn't slipped into the ether.

  Movement gradually returned to my limbs and the first thing I felt, aside from the pulsing in my joints, was cold steel pressing into my forearms.

  My sense of smell came back to me and I inhaled the stale, recycled air. It was tinged with the sterile scent of bleach-based disinfectant. Crunchy linens had been bunched up around my legs. A loose-fitting gown had been left matted to my chest with cold sweat.

  It's a hospital, I thought.

  Dazed though I was, I had some understanding of what this all meant—what my survival entailed—and my revulsion at having lived through what should have been a deadly accident grew a hundred-fold, inciting me to groan.

  Reinvigorated by terror, I opened my eyes.

  By that time, an orderly and a woman in a white lab coat had stationed themselves beside my hospital bed, and were discussing my miraculous awakening in hushed tones. This woman in the coat, I puzzled out, was probably my doctor.

  “Mr. Taylor?” The doctor's voice was calm, measured. Her hands moved to the stethoscope around her neck, but she didn't do anything with it, merely fidgeted with one of the pearly eartips. “Mr. Taylor, can you hear me?”

  The doctor had a strong aroma about her—on first whiff it seemed to me a common brand of spearmint and eucalyptus hand cream that I'd smelled somewhere before. Maybe it was simply a lagging of my senses, or else there was a note in it that roused some olfactory memory, but the smell made me gag. Hot bile rose into my throat and I barely held it in check as I nodded in reply.

  I knew what it was.

  Her hand lotion smelled like the noxious flowers of a Callery pear tree.

  And with that realization, the terror came rushing back into me.

  The house.

  The accident.

  All of it.

  I began to scream, I think. And I cried, too, grabbing hold of her white coat like a blubbering child might grasp his mother's apron.

  The orderly—a young Lou Ferrigno lookalike—held me down at the shoulders while the doctor sought to comfort me. “Mr. Taylor, please try to relax. You're OK. You're safe here!”

  That was a damn lie, and I knew it.

  The Incredible Hulk pressed me down gently into the bed until I shut up.

  When she thought she could get a word in, the doctor leaned over me and smiled, combing a lock of long, brown hair behind her ear. It looked oily and unwashed, like she was in the middle of a stretch of 16-hour shifts and hadn't had the time for self-care. The bags under her eyes only drove home this impression further. Her breath smelled liked coffee—the cheap kind they offer for free in hospital waiting rooms. Tired though she looked, she put up with my bullshit like a saint and tried to comfort me. The cloying smell of lotion was coming in extra strong now. My mouth watered as my stomach threatened a mutiny. “Mr. Taylor, you're safe. You're in good hands. I'm your doctor. Do you remember what happened? Why you're here in the hospital?”

  I screamed in her face like a madman, but not because I'd lost my mind. In fact, I was completely sane, and that was the problem.

  I screamed because I remembered it all.

  I remembered that house on Morgan Road.

  I remembered the Callery pear tree out front.

  The voices.

  The long shadows.

  And most of all, I remembered...

  “Mr. Taylor! Please, try to calm down. It's OK. Everything will be fine. You were in a terrible accident, but now you're safe and sound.”

  I wasn't sure if there was anyone else in the room with us. I tried to turn my head, but a sharp pain in my neck dissuaded me. I found my lips were parched as stone, and I dragged my sandpaper tongue across them before replying, “Why?”

  The doctor gave a weak smile. “Why?”

  I closed my eyes and sank into the bed, feeling out the metal railings on the sides and gripping them for all I was worth. Why did you save me? Why didn't you just let me die? That was what I wanted to ask her.

  Two

  “Hey, thanks for tuning in! This is your main man, Kevin Taylor. I'm here to—”

  The tripod shifted a few degrees and the camera dipped towards the ground. I'd done a shitty job of tightening one of the hinges and now my shot was compromised.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  I re-centered the shot, made certain that the front of the house was completely in frame. Smoothing back my hair and composing myself, I stepped over to the spot I'd marked on the lawn with a large stone, put on a winning smile and attempted my opening monologue again.

  �
�Hey, VideoTube! This is FlipperKevin, your favorite fixer-upper. I've got a real treat today. I'm standing here in a Detroit neighborhood, in front of—”

  Overhead, a plane roared by. I knew how that was going to sound in post. My voice would be almost completely blocked out.

  “Fuck! Seriously?”

  It seemed like the plane would never pass, like it was going to circle back around and keep ruining my shots. I watched it disappear into the East and then spent a moment collecting my thoughts.

  It felt unseasonably warm for spring. Wearing my full work clothing so that I might look like a bonafide renovator didn't help. The heavy tool belt stuffed with crap I had no intention of using just then was beginning to slip down to my hips, along with the waist of my paint-stained jeans. My canvas work shirt, similarly stained with splotches of white paint, felt like a hair shirt even with the sleeves rolled up. For a few months I'd been trying to pull off a James Dean sort of thing with my hair, slicking it back into a neat pompadour, but in the direct sunlight my sweat had a way of dissolving the pomade I'd combed in and when it traveled down my brow it made my eyes sting like hell.

  When all was silent, I cleared my throat and attempted—for the third time—to record the introduction to my video.

  “Hey, VideoTube! This is your main man, FlipperKevin, coming at you with an exciting new video series!” I paused, waiting for something to go wrong—for a car to backfire, for a random gust of wind to knock the camera over. When nothing happened, I continued cautiously. “I'm here in front of this gorgeous old house in Detroit. What's that? It doesn't look all that gorgeous to you? Well, I'll have you know she's got great bones, and when I'm through with her she'll look like new. Any guesses as to how much this house ran me?” I smirked. “You aren't going to believe this, but I picked up this fixer-upper for a mere thousand bucks!” Here, I inserted a dramatic pause and incredulous eyebrow waggle. “I announced in my last video that my next challenge was going to be the renovation of a derelict house—a complete head-to-toe, one-man fix—within a single month's time. Well, guys, this is it! I'm going to make this house livable in just thirty days. And I'm going to put out daily videos detailing the entire process.”

  I looked back at the house, pointing out some of its features for the viewers. “As you can see, this place is in sorry shape. It hasn't been lived in for years—probably decades.” Stepping towards the tripod, I swiveled the camera in a gentle arc to capture a bit of the surrounding neighborhood. “All of the houses on this street—the few that are still standing, anyhow—are abandoned. This house was the only one with any hope of being refurbished, and I jumped on it. It'll be perfect for this renovation project, and since basically everything needs replaced, I'll be able to show you guys all kinds of useful skills, such as how to hang drywall, how to install new cabinetry, and more. Looking at this sorry old house, I know it seems like a tall order to get it squared away in just one month's time, but with a little love and some elbow grease, we'll get her back on her feet!”

  I glanced back at the tottering old house and couldn't help adding, “At least, I hope so,” under my breath.

  Truth was, this house was in terrible damn shape.

  Days prior, I'd purchased 889 Morgan Road for a cool thousand from the City of Detroit. The old house, built in the American Craftsman style sometime in the 70's, had been owned by the city, and they'd been shocked when I'd expressed interest in purchasing it. After inspecting the other standing houses on Morgan Road I'd been impressed enough by this one to snatch up the deed that very afternoon.

  This ramshackle two-story house was going to be the star of my newest VideoTube project—a project, I hoped, that would bring me an assload of new subscribers, ad revenue and, possibly, a network TV deal.

  For a few weeks I'd been driving around the Midwest looking for a house in need of some love. Ohio and Indiana had boasted no few candidates, but it wasn't until I'd started looking in Michigan that I'd stumbled upon the real bargains. Houses in and around Detroit, especially in the rougher areas, were listed for less than a thousand dollars. I almost hadn't believed it at first. I mean, an entire house for the price of a laptop? For the price of a root canal? It seemed too good to be true.

  But it wasn't. A trip through the city brought up a number of houses in flippable condition for less money than a high-end flatscreen TV. Of course, the materials necessary to overhaul such houses wouldn't come cheap, but after doing some digging and familiarizing myself with local vendors, I realized I could totally renovate such a house for less than fifteen grand, provided that I wasn't too picky about the countertops or other cosmetic flourishes.

  Really, this part of the city, so filled with rundown houses, was a renovator's dream. There were even government programs that gave houses in empty neighborhoods away gratis to cops or medical professionals who intended to move to the area and refurbish them. As a professional VideoTuber, I didn't qualify for any kind of government help, but the thousand bucks for this little gem in the rough hadn't exactly set me back too far, and I'd jumped on it, hopeful that the ad revenue on my upcoming videos alone would recoup my initial investment.

  I turned back to the camera, lifting it off the tripod and zooming in on the exterior. “Gonna need new siding. Probably a new roof, too, as you can see. The inside is a mess. I'll show you more of that in a moment. The windows are in surprisingly good shape, which is awesome! And look at all of this open space! There are two vacant lots next to this place where houses used to stand. No one to complain about all the noise when I get to work. What more could you ask for?” I panned across the length of the property, took in the upper story, the front entrance, the porch.

  And the tree.

  The damn tree.

  The property boasted a single ornamental, a squat little Callery pear covered in white flowers that reeked something like old piss or dead fish. It was pretty enough from a distance, but to get up close to it—or downwind, in this case—was to hate it. The stench was strongest in the front yard, though sometimes the breeze would carry the funk inside the house where it would mingle with the aroma of general decrepitude and become something truly nauseating. I made a mental note, not for the first time, to chop the thing down with extreme prejudice.

  As best I could tell the house had only been used by squatters or partying kids over the past fifteen to twenty years. There was no shortage of graffiti on its walls, and evidences of old house parties—discarded beer cans, sun-bleached articles of clothing—were easy to find. Even so, beneath the wear and tear, the house appeared to have a stable skeleton. It was a miracle, really.

  I started inside, bringing the camera with me. Shoving open the front door, I took a slow pan of the living room and adjacent dining room. “We've got original hardwood floors, mostly intact,” I said, focusing on the floor and tapping the creaky boards with my boot. “Lots of room for entertaining.” I passed through the dining room and wandered through the kitchen, taking my time in recording its various warts.

  The kitchen was done up with peeling white linoleum marked with little orange stars that must have been tacky even by the standards of 1975. The cabinets were made of good wood but were so badly cracked—some having fallen to the floor—that they hardly seemed worth saving. The dented-up sink was still in place but wobbled at the slightest provocation owing to the deterioration of its bracing. An ancient stove and a refrigerator missing its door sat in their respective nooks opposite the sink, and to the left of the cabinets was the kitchen's sole window, offering a view of the front yard and of that tree I hated so damn much.

  I rounded the corner and returned to the living room, approaching the dust-caked stairs, with their thick, hand-carved bannister. The bannister wasn't really to my liking and had the initials of countless partiers of yore etched into its length, but it looked like it weighed two hundred pounds and was probably easier to restore than it was to replace. A quick sanding and staining and it would look fine.

  Despite having been vac
ant for years, the house's most important features struck me as impressively solid. The stairs were no exception, and I climbed them to the second level, where I took some shots of the three bedrooms and bathroom and tugged repeatedly at the waist of my sagging jeans. It was cooler indoors, if only because I had some cover from the sun, and as I went I made sure to pry open the windows to get some fresh air circulating.

  Each of the rooms looked out upon the front lawn, and only the window in the master bedroom had any visible damage—a hairline crack straight across the center. The closet in that room was almost big enough to serve as a fourth bedroom, and a handful of twisted wire hangers remained on the slumping dowel mounted to the wall within. There was something else, too. The locks on two of the bedrooms seemed unnecessarily complicated. The master bedroom had a lock mounted on the outside of the door. Another room, this one nearest the top of the stairs, had a meaty hasp on the inside of the door where a padlock might have been used to keep it shut. Strange, but these unattractive fixtures could be pried away without much trouble.

  The bathroom was in hideous shape and would require more work than most anything else in the joint. To start with, in contrast to the rest of the house, the shower had been very poorly constructed and was on the verge of falling to pieces. A single, well-aimed nudge of the bulging shower tiles would have been enough to bring it crumbling down. The toilet was cracked and unusable; the sink, though functional, was stained and ugly. The floors were made of the same dirty tiles as lined the shower and would need—you guessed it—replaced.