Life in a Haunted House Read online

  Then I realize it’s a stand-up air freshener I’m smelling: one of those twist-up plastic cones with weird fragrant jelly inside.

  “Hey, who am I?” Melissa’s played the magician again, pulling out that Lake Monster eye before I realized it, and she holds it over her own. “No, wait. One more thing.” She pulls a strand of her hair close to the eye, as if to cover it.

  “Geoff. Now stop. I feel bad enough.”

  “That’s how they want you to feel,” Melissa says. But she moves the Monster eye away from her face.

  Tosses it to me.

  Usually I drop things, and I’m worried about grabbing too tightly—closing my fingers around an eggshell and popping it, yolk dripping through my fingers. I’m lucky this time, and the eye lands in the center of my upturned palm. It’s heavier than I expect—shaped like a ping pong ball, but filled with sand that rattles when I give it a gentle shake. A hole’s been punched in the back where it would have attached to the eye-stalk on the actor’s mask.

  “That’s all I could salvage from the head,” Melissa says. She reaches under the bed ruffle and pulls out a flat envelope with a crude image of the Lake Monster’s face painted on the outside. I find a groove on her desk where the eye won’t roll away, set it down and take the envelope.

  The bottom of the envelope is squishy, and I can see through it. It’s a clear plastic bag, actually, and what I thought was painted on the bag had melted there from the inside. The rubber mask had stuck to the plastic, stamped its image then melted or liquefied over the years, settling in a seaweed sludge at the bottom of the bag.

  “Kind of like the Shroud of Turin,” I say, then laugh at how silly and sacrilegious that sounds.

  “The other eye’s in there too.” Melissa points at some broken white chips in the slosh. “A lot of this old stuff just falls apart.”

  The thought makes me sad. Items tossed in drawers or boxes or bags, and somebody like me years later might think of them as treasures, but decay sets in, air and mold and heat do their work. I would have given anything to own an original mask from a favorite movie—even try it on, look at myself in the mirror and test out the monster’s growl. As it turns out, this baggie of slush was pretty gross. Like some foul smelling mystery-pudding the previous tenant leaves at the back of the refrigerator.

  She’s right. Whatever movie props had been saved, they’d have mostly disintegrated by now.

  It should be consolation enough that these items are preserved on film. The Lake Monster can walk and breathe and growl on television or movie screens, two intact eyes dangling from his ghastly face.

  Then Melissa reaches beneath her bed again. “Funny how some of it’s still in decent shape.” She slides out a faded shoebox and hands it to me.

  #

  A cardboard tube sticks out of the box, so the lid cants up on one side. As I examine the shoebox, I imagine myself as an archaeologist who’s been handed a small coffin from a newly excavated tomb. The Pharaoh’s linen-wrapped body lies in a large, richly ornamented sarcophagus. This modest container likely holds little of importance—trinkets, small ceramic vials, a few scraps of rolled parchment marked with hieroglyphs—but there’s a slim chance it preserves the bones of a favorite pet, or the mummified remains of a stillborn child.

  The Egyptologist would sweep sand off the coffin’s surface with a fine-haired brush, blow at the dust of ages with a gentle breath. He would remove the lid gently, to prevent further deterioration of the contents.

  “Go ahead. Open it.”

  From Melissa’s tone, I’m not an archaeologist after all. I’m the ridiculous grandparent who won’t open a present because the wrapping’s too pretty.

  I pull off the lid and set it behind me on the desk. I’m braced for disappointment—whatever’s inside could instantly disintegrate upon exposure to light and air.

  At first I think I’m staring into a tangled mess of wire and metal cables, wrapped around a discarded black wig. The cables resolve into intertwined sections of several gooseneck lamps, forming a skeleton beneath patches of short, bristled fur. The item is turtled on its back, or I would have recognized it instantly.

  “Spider House,” I say. With the box in my lap, I reach beneath the curved metal legs—six instead of eight, to make the puppet easier to animate—and I gently lift the central body of the model. The gooseneck legs had been bent in unnatural angles to fit inside the shoebox, so I have to wiggle the entire model a bit to remove it. The bristles of hair tickle and scratch the underside of my wrist, and the legs make faint scurrying noises against the sides of the box as I pull it free. When I flip the model upright, the features on the spider’s domed torso are intact: black hair all around, and with a painted red hourglass shape on top; yellow beaded eyes stare from the front end, with pipe-cleaner mandibles beneath.

  The legs aren’t as well-preserved—which makes sense, since those would be the sections the animator touched the most while manipulating the model frame-by-frame. The fur hadn’t been attached as effectively to the legs, either, so coils of the metal gooseneck shone through for long stretches.

  “This is really cool.” I bring the football-sized spider close to my face, to simulate how a close-held camera can make a small model appear gigantic. “They only used this model in one sequence. Maybe that’s why it’s so well preserved?”

  Melissa shrugs her shoulders. She’s seen the movie—she must have—but she doesn’t seem to know it as well as I do.

  “Sure,” I explain. “When they’re in the house, and there’s spiders of different sizes attacking the actors…Well, some of the little ones are rubber like those boogers you can buy at the drugstore on Halloween. The cat spider’s a marionette—you can see the strings if you look close enough, but you could just as easily say they’re strands of web. The dog spider’s actually a kid in a fur costume, and the huge one in the basement is a real-life tarantula filmed in slow-motion to give it the lumber of a larger animal.”

  Melissa seems pleased I know so much about the film, though maybe she’s just surprised I’ve become so talkative.

  “This guy’s just for the end of the movie. You remember, right? I’m not spoiling it for you?”

  She smiles and waves for me to continue.

  “So, the heroine’s the only one alive, and she’s finally found the key so she can escape. She runs out onto the porch—”

  Again, it’s this porch. The porch to this house where I stood a scant half hour earlier.

  “—and she breathes a sigh of relief, but suddenly the ground shakes and she looks around in fear, and a giant shadow falls over the moonlit sky. Because this guy”—indicating the spider model—“comes out of nowhere, scurries over the mansion, his legs like hairy tree trunks, crushing the house and crushing her while she screams.”

  “That’s how it ends?” She sounds disappointed.

  “Yeah. The monsters win, like in a bunch of your dad’s pictures.”

  “You’re right,” she says. “I just didn’t know which prop got used in which part.”

  “I’ve kind of studied the films, if that doesn’t sound weird. Found a few behind-the-scenes articles in magazines, too, and put pieces together.” I gave a careful bend to a few of the spider legs, then leaned forward and set the model on the bed next to her. The yellow eyes caught a flash from the overhead light. If I had a movie camera, and if Melissa held perfectly still, it would be cool to animate the spider crawling across the bedspread to attack her.

  “There’s another thing for you to look at,” Melissa says.

  Once I’d lifted out the spider model, the shoebox didn’t feel that heavy in my lap. I’m sure she only refers to the cardboard tube, since there’s nothing else in the box but wadded newspaper to protect the spider model. When I lift the tube, however, some of the paper scraps shift aside to reveal a glint of metal.

  Strange. I pull away more crumpled scraps of newspaper to reveal a silvered contraption with a hand grip and finger-trigger, and a small speaker
grill on the upper right.

  Despite the metallic appearance, the gun is incredibly light—which is why I hadn’t noticed it at the bottom of the box. On closer inspection, I realize the item was carved out of balsa wood, sanded smooth and coated with silver paint. I hold my mouth to the wire screen glued to the upper corner, speak an approximation of alien language into the microphone: T’ch klbar. Vr’gh taous Oiduts Tteg’dub.

  I point the gun at Melissa’s head. Pull the trigger.

  Because that’s part of the joke in The Space Visitor. The alien’s transference pistol is shaped like a laser gun. He holds it to his mouth and records what he assumes will be a calming phrase. Don’t worry. I mean you no physical harm. Then he aims the pistol and “fires” the translation close-range into a trembling Earthling’s head.

  For a second, Melissa lifts her hands in fear like a movie heroine. Please. Don’t shoot.

  Then she breaks character and slips back to normal.

  “This transference gun’s in amazing condition,” I say. The silver paint has faded in a way that makes the prop appear more like actual metal. I test its weight in my hand, and I can almost believe I’m on a planet with lower gravity. If I stand too quickly I will keep going, shoot up in the air until my head bumps into Melissa’s ceiling.

  “There was a broken one, too,” she tells me. “Must not have been packed away as carefully.”

  I shake my head, because I’ve got a different theory. “The device gets destroyed in the movie. When the audience sees the broken translator gun, that’s how they figure out the first alien visitor has died.” I aim the gun again. “This must be the one Troy Clement uses for most of the scenes. That other one is probably the ‘broken’ prop from the movie’s final sequence.”

  Melissa nods, but she clearly doesn’t have as much knowledge of the films as I do. She might have discarded other items, thinking them similarly broken or useless.

  “These props should be in a museum.” The words sound stupid once I’ve uttered them. On one level, sure, they’d recently put a model of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the Smithsonian. But none of the Budget Studios productions ever entered popular culture the way Star Trek has. Not even close. As much as I love Bud Preston’s films, I have to be realistic.

  “To me, they’re family stuff,” Melissa says. “Not much different from a photo album, or garage-sale merchandise like a wind-up music box or grandma’s cameo brooch. But these aren’t for sale, of course.”

  She added the last part quickly. Had I inadvertently reached for my wallet, ready to make an offer?

  “The cardboard tube, though. That’s for you. A gift.”

  “Really?” My mind races with ideas about what might be inside. Nothing as cool as the gun or the spider model, but still some kind of prop—from the scientist’s lab, perhaps, or from the Withered Hag’s shelf of occult items. I lift the tube, a postal mailer about two feet long and three inches in diameter, sealed at each end with metal caps. It’s light; nothing moves inside.

  I work my fingernails under one of the caps and pry it off. At first glance, the tube is empty. Maybe the tube itself is the prop—from an office scene I can’t recall, or a strange delivery to LeMott Manor.

  Melissa has an expectant gift-giver’s look. Which is uncannily similar to a prankster’s expression, waiting for the victim to realize he’s been tricked.

  I peer into the tube. A dark telescope, aimed at the ground.

  Random designs emerge as my vision adjusts. White scratches on black, with a gloss finish that catches a flash of overhead light.

  It’s a rolled sheet of paper, flush with the inside of the tube. I find a top corner, curl it inward to loosen the sheet and remove it.

  “A movie poster,” Melissa explains. “I hope it’s one you like.”

  In the time it takes me to unroll the poster, I squint like someone trying to solve a puzzle.

  Actually, once I understood it was a poster I recognized the image immediately. The white scratches were the cast and crew names against the black background of a tree’s deep roots. Midway up the trunk, a human face emerges, mouth open in a scream. Leafless branches intersect above to form the movie’s title: The Haunted Oak.

  “Oh,” I say. “Oh yeah, I remember this one. Family members disappear, and you can hear their whispers when you pass the tree at midnight.”

  “There’s a tear on the bottom, but you can fix that with Scotch tape.”

  “Like new.” And I remember to say: “Thank you. It’s really for me?”

  “Yeah.”

  I use both arms to hold it up, miming admiration of the image, how it might look pinned to my wall.

  And I do like it. Very thoughtful of Melissa to give it to me.

  It’s a cool souvenir I likely wouldn’t otherwise be able to own.

  But it’s not a prop, which is what I’d been hoping for. I feel ungrateful at my disappointment, but can’t help myself. A prop is a unique item that appears in the actual film—not a promotional image mass-produced after the fact and shipped to theaters around the country.

  Maybe if her father signed it…but nope: I scan the front quickly, check the back as I roll it up and return it to the tube. No signature.

  “Thanks again.” I mean it. I’d mean it a lot more if she gave me the spider model, the space gun, even the loose eye from the Lake Monster mask. But I still mean it.

  At the same time, I wonder what other treasures lie hidden in her family attic or basement. Enough to fill another box, maybe two? I’d be the best curator, since Melissa could easily overlook an item’s true value.

  If we become good friends, she might let me search parts of the house with her. We’d make some amazing discoveries. Out of gratitude, she’d give me another gift—this time, an actual movie prop.

  I realize this isn’t the most admirable reason to befriend someone. But I’m fifteen years old. A little insensitive, a little self-centered—like a lot of teenagers.

  #

  For the rest of my visit, I shift us away from film talk. We decide which classes we hate—most of them, with Camen’s English high on the list. Only Mrs. Brinkton’s Art class emerges unscathed, mostly because she leaves us alone.

  We tear into students, too, mocking different cliques—athletes, drama group, A/V and chess club geeks. The math nerds, the kiss-ups. Melissa’s opinions are pretty fixed, since she’s lived among the same kids at three different schools, nine years total. “They never change,” she says. “If anything, they get worse.”

  That explains why she’s singled me out. She can predict everybody else, but I’m new. Maybe I’ll do something to surprise her.

  To change the subject, we talk about music. I flip through the collection of LPs on the stand beneath her small record player, say which albums I like best—though we don’t actually play any. Next I make a comment about the posters tacked to her wall. Not movie posters like the one she’s given me, but outdoor landscapes. I wonder why she’s chosen them. A mountain. A field. “Are you interested in photography?”

  “Not really. Those are my windows.”

  An interesting idea, and I guess I understand her. Landscape photographs can take you out of the everyday world. A painting of a bowl of fruit doesn’t quite do that. I never much cared for those impressionistic daubs, either, sidewalks cafes or cobblestone streets in the rain. Impossible to forget they’re art, all mixed paint and brushstrokes and some fancy frame to convince you you’re seeing something special. A photograph seems more matter-of-fact to me. I can stare at it, get lost in it; imagine I’m at the location, same as the photographer, the grass beneath my feet or the mountain air crisp and cold.

  Movies often work the same way. Turn down the lights, stare at the screen, and you’re in another world.

  Then it hits me. The way Melissa tacked the posters to her wall. She’s placed them at the same height on the back wall, spaced exactly apart the way two windows would be, if the room had them.

  I understand now what ha
d bothered me slightly about the downstairs kitchen. Anyplace I’ve lived with my mom, even the cheap apartment back in St. Louis, there was a window in our kitchen: pretty handy for when you burnt a slice of toast, since you could let in some air while you frantically waved the smoke outside. The kitchen in Melissa’s home must have had some kind of vent over the stove, but there was no window or door that opened onto their back yard. The entry hallway and the den enjoyed natural light from front-facing windows, but the kitchen, like Melissa’s room, needed bright overhead lights. Instead of fresh air, the Preston household settles for stand-up fragrance cones with floral scents.

  #

  Melissa announces it’s time for me to go, since her mother will be home soon. She’s keeping me a secret for now, I guess, the same as I’m doing with my own mom. With a reluctant parting from the spider model and alien gun prop, I take the poster with me and head downstairs. Melissa follows, and she accompanies me out the front door and onto that strange and magical porch—ushering me through without giving me time to linger. I barely have a chance to glance back, struck anew at how odd the porch looks attached to the front of an otherwise conventional house. She walks with me around the curve of the car path, towards the Dead End sign at the end of the long road from her bus stop.

  “No detours,” Melissa says. “You know where you’re headed, right?”

  “Yeah.” Her bus stop is two ahead of mine, so I’ve got a ways to go, but it’s hard to get lost in a small town.

  I touch one end of the cardboard tube against my forehead as we part, an improvised salute.

  Walking home, I wonder what it would be like to steal back under cover of darkness. I could stand on that porch again, wait for a rainstorm and lightning to add the proper ghostly atmosphere. In that setting, I’d gain courage, test the doorknob, search for an unlocked window. At the side of the house, the lower quadrant of a basement window pane is already cracked. I wrap my fist in my jacket to finish the job, scrape the shards away then reach through to unfasten the latch. I slide feet-first through the small opening then get stuck at my armpits, legs dangling inside until I shift my torso, work through one arm at a time then drop to a dark floor.