Authors: Geoff North
Unfinished business.
It was an effort to tear his eyes from it.
Impossible in fact.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be in such a hurry to leave
Braedon.”
Plans change.
The young couple moved to Winnipeg but
returned back to Braedon the following spring for good. Hugh never bothered
looking for work while they were away. He’d discovered a new sports lottery
game that allowed him to place bets on hockey games. There was a good deal of
cash to be won if you picked the winning team. More cash if you predicted which
teams made it to the final, how many games would be played in a series, what
the score spreads would be. Hugh loved hockey. He seemed to have an uncanny
sense of betting on which teams would go all the way. Right down to the player
who would score the winning goal.
It had been a profitable Stanley Cup final.
A winning winter that saw Hugh turn two hundred dollars into thirty-six
thousand. He bought the McFarlane house from Braedon Credit Union two days
after Christmas for fifteen grand. The bank was glad to be rid of it. The place
cost thousands to heat in the winter, and it had been sitting empty for
decades.
And it had a
reputation.
May 1983
“How’s business?”
Cathy looked up from the sink she was
scrubbing clean between clients. “If you came to visit from that study of yours
more often, you would know how slow it’s been.”
Hugh took a sip of coffee from his mug and
plopped himself into the single salon chair in front of the sink. He looked
around at the walls of the big bedroom converted to hair salon with pride. His
dad had given him most of the know-how, but he had done most of the work. “It
takes time to build a customer base. Be patient.”
“I think it’s because all the old ladies in
this town don’t like the idea of someone so young stealing business away from
the more established hair dressers.”
“The same old ladies who don’t much care
for the fact we’re living in sin.”
She read more into it. “Why doesn’t your
mom come here to get her hair done?”
He set his coffee down and poked her in the
stomach with a finger. “Oh come on, don’t start with that again. Mom’s been
going to Mrs. Mallard since before Heather was born. She’s just being loyal.”
“But we’re family… trying to make ends
meet, isn’t that more important than loyalty?”
“Family.” He grinned at her. “Maybe she’ll
start coming when we’re married.”
He tried to sit back up but she lowered the
seat and sat on top of him. “And when will that be?”
He pushed up until she finally got off him.
“As soon as we have a bit more money saved up. As soon as my book’s finished.”
“I’m no expert on the subject but I’m
pretty sure there aren’t a whole lot of nineteen year old authors out there
making a lot of money.”
He picked his coffee back up and gave her a
hurt look. “You think I’m a bad writer?”
“I think you’re a
great
writer. You
write like someone with a ton of life experience, like a guy three times your
age.”
I was forty-seven when I hit that truck,
not sixty!
She wrapped a fresh towel around the neck
rest of the chair. “I just think you’re going to have trouble finding someone
to sell the idea to.”
“I won’t tell them my age until they’re
good and interested.”
“Well, ghost stories usually aren’t usually
my thing, but you got me interested. I can see why you wanted to buy this
place. It must give you a lot of ideas, lots of inspiration, hey?”
“It isn’t a ghost story,” he said with more
hostility than intended.
“A guy gets creamed by a truck and lives
his life over? Sounds like a spooky story to me.” Someone knocked at the front
door giving Cathy a start. “See what I mean?”
“Very funny. Your next client is here.”
Hugh winked at her and slipped through the hallway towards the stairway before
she could answer the door. He looked out the second story hall window and saw a
blue compact parked along the street. Mrs. Duffy. She would weigh the salon
chair down more than Hugh and Cathy had, combined.
She should drive something bigger,
something with all-wheel drive that sits a lot higher off the ground.
He listened as the two exchanged
pleasantries, Cathy telling her how big a project the house was, her telling
Cathy how much her grandchildren would love exploring through it. Hugh left
them to it and started down the hall. He poked his head into the first bedroom
on the left. There wasn’t a stick of furniture inside it, no boxes sitting in
the corner ready to be unpacked. Absolutely nothing. He looked inside the room
across the hall. It was bigger, the window looking out to the north over the
rolling backyard of too-long grass and oak trees blocking out the neighbors to
either side. It was as empty as the other room.
This wasn’t the house he’d raised a family
in. Not yet anyway. He shut the door slowly, trying to avoid the creak but only
making it worse. He looked in the other two rooms down the hall, planning which
kid would sleep where, knowing full well the decision would never be his to
make. All four rooms had the same basic look; blockish square dimensions, high
ceilings, narrow smoky windows that all still needed a good cleaning. Rock
solid lathe and plaster walls, hard wood floors and foot high baseboards. The
house would be worth a fortune anywhere outside of Braedon. A town not many
want to move to, a house too big to move out. So here it sits.
There hadn’t been many days to explore
their first home. Fixing up the main floor had taken the most time, and when he
wasn’t working with his hands he worked with his mind, telling the story of a fellow
who came back from death to live his life again.
Not a fucking ghost story.
There hadn’t even been time to ask around
town about the house’s history. Who had lived there last? Who were the
McFarlane’s? No one by that name lived in Braedon now. He went into the master
bedroom and set his empty mug on the night table. There wasn’t much to see in
there either. A ridiculously expensive king-sized bed he’d bought more for
Cathy before moving back from Winnipeg. Two old end tables and a single dresser
they shared, given to them from his parents. They looked out of place in such a
large room, next to the new monster bed.
He didn’t want to go back downstairs. Mrs.
Duffy would hear him, and he would be expected to visit while Cathy trimmed her
curls and colored her roots. He padded quietly back into the hall and looked up
at the attic door set in the ceiling. Hugh had only taken a look up in there
once, back in the middle of January, and even then he’d only gone halfway. The
pull down stairs had been removed decades before, and he hadn’t felt like
hoisting himself up past the last rung of the step ladder. It had been poorly
insulated, cold as hell he recalled. Cold enough to see his own breath.
Why not take another peek? Should be nice
and warm up there now.
The step ladder had been stored away in the
walk-in closet of their bedroom. He went back for it and quietly pulled the
aluminum frame out beneath the trap door. The inset wooden cover lifted away
easily enough and a light sprinkle of dust fell into his face. He scrambled up
the steps quickly and hoisted himself up in one swoop.
Hugh sat in the opening and shivered. It
was still winter cold. Now he knew why he hadn’t gone in all the way a few
months earlier. The room stunk of mold and mouse droppings, reminiscent of the
barn loft where Thomas Nelson met his maker. And then there was the window, the
stain glass circle that cast an eerie red and green light on whatever happened
to be in its path with the moving sun.
Damned thing should’ve been bust out
years ago.
He would have it replaced, or at least
boarded up. Hugh got to his feet and rubbed his arms, wishing he’d grabbed a
sweater from the closet when he got the ladder. There wasn’t much to see. An
old fake-leather couch pushed up against the angle of roof on the west side, a
pile of discarded lamps without shades, tacky gold picture frames minus their
pictures, some rusty old coffee tins rolled into the angled east side. It
seemed much darker on that side; there were more pieces of small junk crammed
into the shadows that he couldn’t quite make out. He looked back at the couch
and saw it was sitting up against a three foot high vertical wall that ran
along the entire length of the attic.
A false wall…A crawl space?
Hugh walked over to one corner of the wall
and went down on his hands and knees to explore further. He tapped on the wood
with his knuckles feeling a little foolish. How many times had he seen people
doing this in the movies? It made a hollow sound, but the material may have
been rotting away from the inside. It was a very old house. He crawled along,
tapping and listening until he reached the couch. He went to pull one end away
and was met with unmoving resistance. How had they got the thing up here in the
first place? He smacked the padded arm as he stood and was rewarded with a face
full of dust. It had more cracks than seams in its faded brown material, and
for a moment he wasn’t sure if it was brown. The red and green light made it
appear more a grayish dull purple.
With both hands gripped at the side, Hugh
pulled it away from the wall, not a clean lift but a noisy scrape along the
dusty floorboards. He crawled back behind it and continued his inspection.
There was a round knob in the middle of the wall, painted over in the same
thick brown as the rest. He pulled hard and saw a perfectly straight hairline
crack appear down the length of it. A hidden door, he thought, or maybe not so
hidden, just forgotten beneath multiple layers of lead-based paint. He pulled
harder and had to put his knee into the wall before it screeched open a few
inches. With his back braced against the twenty ton couch, Hugh yanked with
both hands until the entire door tore away in a protest of flaking paint and
rusted hinges.
Inside was blacker than a monkey’s rear-end
pinched in ink, the kind of darkness that warns you not to stick a hand inside
if you ever want to get it back. Stuffy dry air rushed out after decades of
confinement. It smelled of old paper and cardboard. No mouse shit or dead flies
in there. No light at all trickling in from warped roofing boards or missing
shingles. It was a three-foot square hole into the past.
He considered going back downstairs for a
sweater and flashlight. No, that would force him to walk past Mrs. Duffy. He
wanted to know what was in there today. His fingers disappeared into darkness,
enveloped by stinging cold. He could see his breath rising against the black
opening.
A cardboard box.
No, too hard. A crate made of wood. He
pulled and it rubbed against the edges of the door frame. There was an
oval-shaped handle near the top of the crate. It was an old dairy bottle
container. Hugh hadn’t seen one in years, and even then they were no longer
being used for carrying fresh milk around. He dragged it all the way out and
hefted it up on the couch to get a better look at the weighty items inside.
A copy of the Braedon Weekly Times sat on
top. ‘
Farmers Brace For Summer Drought’
the headline read. No pictures
accompanied the article, just column after column of small print. The date at
the top was
May 2
nd
, 1949
. He placed it aside and read the
headline from
Jan 16
th
, 1950
.
‘Longest Cold Snap in
Braedon History’
.
Hugh had to chuckle.
Weather and farming. That’s all they talked
about back then, too.
He waved the white fog of his breath away
and dug deeper. How could it be so cold up here? It had been unusually chilly
when he climbed through the trap door, now it felt as frozen as a meat locker.
He pulled out a couple issues of
Life
from the early fifties, an
Eaton’s
general merchandise catalogue from the late forties. Beneath that was a
double stack of smaller periodicals that made him catch his breath.
This…is impossible.
The colors on the comic book covers were as
bright and glossy as anything sitting new on the shelves of Braedon Pharmacy
this very day. At first he thought Cathy must have been up here, planted replicas
under the old newspapers and magazines.
“
I got you! Didn’t I? Thought you’d
found a treasure chest full of gems?”
Hugh wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t even
blinking; in fact, he’d momentarily forgotten how to breathe. This was no joke.
No one could’ve pulled off such an elaborate prank, least of all Cathy. These
were the real thing. He pulled a dozen or so from the crate and spread them
gently out across the floor, fanning the wonderful 1940s and early 1950s books
out like a hand of cards.
Batman, Superman, Adventures into
Terror, Adventures into Weird Worlds, Crime Does Not Pay, Tales from the Crypt,
Planet Comics, Whiz Comics, Wham Comics.
He grabbed
another handful.
Space Patrol, Weird Science, Mister Mystery, Battle Action,
Classics Illustrated.
The cover banners were bold, demanding to be bought
for their explicit content and ridiculously low ten cent cover prices.
Hugh leafed through the pages of one and
marveled at its condition. Even in the creepy red and green glow of the attic
he knew the paper was creamy white, as creamy white as paper can stay in total
darkness. He smelled it. No traces of mildew there, no scent of previous
seasons with high humidity. They had been sealed away in their little black
cubby hole for decades in a perfect frozen state. Hugh looked back in the
crate. There had to be at least two hundred more to go through. He thought
buying new books off the shelf a few years ago was a treat, but this…this milk
box was his Ark--no, it was a hidden tomb, the books inside were undisturbed
riches from a not so distant age. He was Carter, and this was his Tut.