The House of Long Shadows Page 2

  Walking through the rooms again and taking stock of all the work ahead of me, my head began to spin. The house had been a bargain, it was true, but in exchange for the ludicrous savings I'd be making a considerable investment in hard labor. I began to feel a bit overwhelmed.

  My VideoTube channel had really taken off in the past year, with more than two million subscribers and counting. That put me near the top of the stack in the home improvement category, and the ad revenue from each of my videos was more than enough to keep me running. More importantly, the success of my videos had gotten the attention of certain higher ups at the Home Improvement Network, who'd expressed vague interest in giving me my own home improvement program on cable TV. They thought I was likable enough, skilled enough for such a gig, and provided that my subscriber count and popularity continued on the digital platform, there was a good chance I could be a TV star in the future—and that I'd be able to enjoy all of the wealth and other perks that came with such celebrity. That was why I was doing this.

  So, come Hell or high water, I was going to fix this damn house in a month. There could be no waffling. Taking this house from turd to treasure was a great gimmick and would likely net me more attention than any of my previous video projects. If anything was going to get TV execs knocking on my door, an audacious stunt like this was it.

  Peering occasionally into the camera, I gave little quips about the state of the house, the rooms. Cracking jokes and always appearing “on” and motivated is essential to finding success in this business. People don't merely watch my videos to learn about home improvement—they want to be entertained. Sometimes, you get to feeling like a dancing monkey, constantly churning out content for more views, more subscribers, more ad revenue. When your biggest concern is the marketability of your content, the videos themselves sometimes take a dive in quality and it becomes too easy to put out a glut of soulless fluff. Some of my crappiest videos rank among my highest in terms of views and ad revenue.

  For instance, I'd done a video once about how to unclog toilets. You may be thinking to yourself that it's a stupid idea for a video, and you'd be half-right, but my clear and cheery delivery, coupled with my sharp video editing, resulted in its garnering more than ten million views. Don't believe me? Search VideoTube for “FlipperKevin Top Ten Toilet Hacks” and see for yourself. Go on, I'll wait. The comments on that one were so over-the-top thankful that you'd have thought I'd cured Cancer. The ad monies for that single video have since paid off my cargo van.

  Having recorded enough footage to start with, I hurriedly wrapped things up. “There you have it, folks. I've got my work cut out for me, haven't I? Stay tuned! I start work on this place tomorrow and you can expect daily videos from me all next month. I can't wait to get this house into fighting shape!”

  I shut off the camera and took a deep breath.

  The smile faded, the tool belt hit the floor.

  I wished the fridge in the kitchen worked, and that it was stocked with cold beer.

  Alas.

  It was time to haul my stuff inside. The rear compartment of my van was packed nearly to bursting with tools and materials. I'd brought along a few things to make my stay more comfortable, too. I figured that, so long as the house wasn't a complete nightmare on the inside, I'd save time and money by simply crashing on an air mattress in the living room, and so I'd packed some of the comforts of home, such as a folding table for my laptop, a portable camping shower and a hotplate. If it turned out the house was too unpleasant to sleep in, there was no shortage of cheap motels a stone's throw away.

  I dragged a number of saws into the kitchen, stacked boxes of nails and screws on the sorry-looking linoleum, and gave the living room and dining room a pretty thorough pass with my Shop-Vac. I then prepared for the herculean task of lifting my portable work bench out of the van, and was in the process of picking out a good place to set it in the kitchen when my eyes drifted to the window and I startled.

  The Callery pear tree, its noxious stink seeping into my nostrils on the draft, was squared in my sights—except, for an instant, I thought I'd seen something moving amidst its bouffant of white flowers.

  A person.

  Nearing the window and staring thoughtfully at the tree, I saw that I'd been mistaken. Though, for that brief moment, I'd have sworn that I'd seen a pale arm near its nutty trunk, and a slim body half-masked by its width besides.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked again. There wasn't anyone there.

  Of course there wasn't. Mine was the only inhabited house on the entire block.

  I appraised the tree in my periphery for a time, mostly as an excuse to catch my breath and put off the unenviable task of hauling in my heaviest pieces of kit, and wondered what trick of the light had been responsible for the illusion.

  I leaned towards the glass, my long nose nearly touching the pane, and glared at the tree. “I have a feeling you and I aren't going to get along, are we?”

  The stinky bastard's white flowers swayed in the breeze.

  Three

  By the time I got everything moved in the afternoon was spent.

  It took some serious mop-pushing to get the dust—deep-set and practically baked onto the boards—off the living room floors, and almost an hour of chasing cobwebs and their attendant eight-legged occupants with the hose of my Shop-Vac, before the living room was even close to habitable. All the while I kept the window open, letting the space air out.

  I'd contacted the local electric company ahead of time and had electricity in the place. Well, sort of. Only a handful of the outlets actually worked. Probably I'd have to poke around in the walls and toy with the wires to get things running properly. I was concerned that, when the time came, I wouldn't be able to draw enough electricity from the functioning outlets to get my power tools going. If push came to shove, I'd purchase a gasoline-powered portable generator—something I'd been meaning to pick up for some time anyhow—and the problem would be solved. Seeing as how the costs of renovation were piling up however, I wanted to avoid the expense if at all possible and prayed the aged wiring in the house would fit my needs.

  The water was on, too, but I'd set that up more out of curiosity than necessity. The pipes were old, and when water did finally come through the taps in a sputtering rush, it was discolored, foul-smelling. There'd be no drinking it, lest I gulp up a nice dose of lead. Still, the fact that water was coming through them at all was a good sign. The only issue—and an easy one to fix, at that—was that the pipes rattled fiercely when they first got going. I let the water run in the kitchen sink and watched it sluggishly spiral down the drain, going from rust-colored to almost clear. Thankfully, there were no leaks or major backups.

  A white folding table roughly five feet across went up against one of the living room walls where, years ago, people had scribbled their names in permanent marker or burnt them in with cigarettes. On it, I set my laptop, printer and the sacks of camera gear I'd brought with me. This would serve as a command center of sorts, a place where I could edit videos and get all of my work done on the digital front. A metal folding chair completed the ensemble. I inflated the air mattress against the wall opposite the table. I then set about replacing the locks on the front and back doors of the house with sturdy hardware before heeding the roar of my stomach and prepping a quick meal.

  Before eating, I set up my camera between the living room and dining room to capture my mealtime ritual. I struck a match theatrically, lit the single burner of my camping stove and poured a can of beef stew into a pot to simmer, monologuing about the virtues of “roughing it”.

  People love that kind of shit—the nitty-gritty details, the stuff that happens in between renovations. It makes you look more human, more relatable. Authentic.

  While waiting for the stew to bubble I took a stroll upstairs, taking measurements of the doorways and closets, and it was then that I first noticed a peculiar quirk. It had eluded me on my first few passes, but now that the light was fading and shadows were gat
hering, it stood out to me like a sore thumb. I couldn't put my finger on why this was, however some aspect of the upstairs hall made for exceptionally long shadows. Standing near the top of the stairs with just a hint of light to my back, my shadow stretched inordinately far. It was a curious effect.

  Returning to my stew and taking care to watch my shadow throughout the house, I noticed that the effect persisted elsewhere—in the dining room, the living room, the kitchen. Shadows, even those of inanimate things, seemed unnaturally long. The sun was getting low in the sky and I tried attributing the phenomenon to that, but even so I was baffled by the length of them.

  In my head, I tried working this into some kind of perk—a cool anomaly, rather than a strange flaw. Well, I told myself, the shadows travel far in this joint, so if someone breaks in and tries to sneak up on you, you'll see them long before they get close!

  Somehow, that didn't really put me at ease, and my mind was subsequently filled with visions of violent home invasions.

  I sat down to eat, feeling for the first time—but certainly not the last—appreciably vulnerable in the quiet old house.

  Truth was that I had little to fear. This was an empty neighborhood, and hardly anyone drove down the street outside. Moreover, I wasn't exactly helpless. To hear my viewers tell it—especially the sexy female ones—I was pretty lean and mean. Standing at an even six feet, with the calloused hands of a workman and a fair bit of hard-earned muscle, I looked older than my twenty-five years. I had a house full of tools, most of 'em sharp, and in the event of hostilities I'd think nothing of defending myself with a claw hammer like a psycho in a horror flick. The windows were secure, with old-fashioned but sturdy locks, and the hardware I'd installed on the front and back doors that very afternoon was solid enough to withstand a lot of abuse.

  I was safe, and I knew it.

  Even so, staring down at my shadow, which stretched nearly into the next room, incited doubt.

  There shouldn't have been anything unsettling about it. I mean, it was my own shadow, for crying out loud! I moved, it moved. I shook my head, it shook its head. I nearly dropped my pot of stew like an idiot because I was too busy staring at the floor, and it did the same.

  But it was eerie. There was no way around it.

  I burnt my mouth on a spoonful of stew and all thoughts of shadows slipped away from me.

  When the meal was finished, I gave the pot a quick wipe-down. My hunger had been satisfied, but as I paced aimlessly through the downstairs, digesting, my mind held onto a vague anxiety, and I decided that the best thing for it was to leave the house. Just for a little while. The fresh air—sans the reek of that tree out front—would fix me right up. Sure, there was a ton of work to be done, and I still had a video to put together, but maybe I could run an errand in town before dark...

  I searched for a compelling excuse to put off my work and escape the house.

  It occurred to me that if I was paranoid about the possibility of break-ins I could mount a motion-activated light outside. It would alert me to the presence of an intruder before they got to the door, and might even serve as a deterrent. The very idea brought me some relief, and I prepared to head into town at once in pursuit of this sensible—nay, imperative acquisition.

  Having given myself permission to bolt, I left my unease at the door and hopped into my van, heading to the nearest hardware store. I made sure to snag my camera before rushing out into the mounting dusk.

  Four

  I zoomed in on the sign from the driver's side window.

  It read ROOKER AND BROS. HARDWARE in big, black letters, and a poorly-drawn character—a pinkish stick figure, really, in a hardhat—leaned against the 'E' in HARDWARE in an awkward pose.

  “Ain't that quaint,” I said, peeking into the camera with a grin.

  The place was very obviously a local operation, and compared to the Home Depots I was used to haunting in other cities, it looked depressing as hell on the inside. The big glass windows near its entrance made it look like a greenhouse. Said windows were cloudy with condensation as an undoubtedly rundown air conditioner in the store struggled against the spring heatwave. There were two other cars in the parking lot, one of them double-parked, and I figured that they belonged to employees because from where I sat I couldn't pick out so much as a single customer walking about the aisles. The lights inside were an off-putting mustard yellow, and handwritten signs made of sun-faded card stock in neon colors clung for dear life from the windows nearest the door. The ink on some of them was beginning to run as the condensation wreaked havoc.

  I shut off the camera but left it hanging around my neck as I exited the car. Hopefully one of the employees would be open to a little interview, or at least to my recording inside the store. Footage of me picking out supplies, or of talking shop with knowledgable employees, was excellent filler for my videos, and I'd argue that it was good advertising for the shops involved, too.

  As I neared the door, I was blindsided by a little handwritten sticker beneath the NO SMOKING sign, which read NO PHOTOGRAPHY.

  Damn.

  Feeling more than a little self-conscious about the big ol' camera dangling from my neck, I slipped into the store and approached the registers up front, where a middle-aged guy with a green apron rubbed at the counter with a bleach wipe. Another guy, this one barely college-aged, was busy stacking cans of spray paint for a nearby display. They both looked up at me the moment I entered, and they both spared me the same dispassionate nod. But it was the older guy, the cashier, who kept his eyes on me as I got closer and who said something about the camera.

  “No photography,” said the man, dropping the spent wipe into a trash bin and brushing his hands off on his apron. He was lanky, with thinning reddish-blonde hair and a dense, manicured mustache grown to compensate for his lack up top. He looked straight into my eyes, then down at the camera around my neck with so much annoyance it may as well have been a suicide bomb vest.

  I didn't reply at once—and when I did, I actually started to stammer like an idiot. Something about this guy had caught me off guard. “Y-Yeah, sorry. I, uh... I'm not gonna use it. Just forgot to take it off.”

  The guy, whose name tag read “Chip”, looked just like my dad.

  Chip scratched at his ear and quirked his lip in something close to a smile. “If you do, I'll throw you out. It's there on the door,” he said, pointing to the sticker I'd only just discovered.

  For a minute there I was in a trance, marveling at the resemblance between this guy and my father.

  My dead father.

  Chip's hair was a different color. My dad's had been dark brown, like mine. And dad's mustache had been more of a handlebar. But other than that, this cashier could have been my father's twin. Even his mannerisms, his tone of voice, were eerily similar.

  He glared at me like I was stupid, and I know that I certainly looked it. After my awkward pause, I forced a laugh and glanced dazedly around the store. “I'm just looking for, uh... lights.”

  He arched a brow, waited for me to go on with his lips pursed. Just like my dad would have done to someone he felt was wasting his time.

  “Motion-activated lights. Like, for outside,” I clarified.

  He nodded and stepped out from behind the counter, leading me away from the checkout area, through the aisles dedicated to paints and power tools, before finally pausing in a section crammed with light fixtures and bulbs. “Got a few of 'em here,” he said, pointing to a couple of boxes on the lower shelf.

  “Thanks.” My voice was distant, though; my attention was on him, rather than the merchandise. I couldn't stop staring at the guy. He probably thought I was coming onto him or something, with how intently I looked him over. The resemblance had me a little spooked.

  He looked to the camera again, donning a smile that revealed small, crooked teeth.

  Just like that, the illusion was broken. His teeth looked nothing like my dad's, and I almost breathed a sigh of relief. I found I could focus on my surrou
ndings again as he asked, “What's the camera for, anyhow?”

  “Oh.” I tugged on the strap. “I'm actually shooting videos for my VideoTube channel. See, I renovate houses and make videos detailing the process. I bought a house in town and have been trying to gather footage. I was hoping I'd be able to interview someone at the store, or document my shopping trip.”

  “No recording,” said Chip, like a doll with a pull string. Then, looking me up and down afresh, he grinned incredulously. “Now... what channel you on? I ain't ever seen you on TV.”

  I laughed. “No, I'm not on TV. Not yet, anyhow. These videos are online. On VideoTube. I've got lots of subscribers, though. I'm not super famous or anything, but I've been recognized on the street by viewers a couple times...”

  Chip wasn't impressed. A single “Hm,” and he was on his way back to the register.

  Left to my own devices, I sighed and looked back at the goods on the shelves, trying to recall what I'd come for.

  The motion-activated light, dummy.

  Beneath a stack of boxes containing floor lamps, I found Rooker and Bros' stock of outdoor, motion-activated lights, and to say that I was unimpressed would be an understatement. There was one box, its edges frayed, that seemed to contain a pair of solar-powered lawn spotlights. Spruce up your lawn with our premium LED landscape lighting! read the sales copy on the side.

  I gave the box a little shake and heard bits of loose glass rattling around.

  I was going to have to give those a hard pass.

  More in line with my needs was a second product. This one sat beside it in a cube-shaped box caked in dust. I had to get down on one knee just to free it from the shelf. Inside was a motion-activated LED floodlight. A bulleted list of benefits, all of them pertaining to home security, were printed on the lid of the box. This one fit the bill, though as I gave it a careful shake I discovered the handwritten price sticker on it and very nearly put it back in protest. It was easily thirty or forty bucks more expensive than a similar unit at a big box store, and it looked like it'd been sitting on the shelf since the Great Depression, to boot.