BRICKS
The house was immense and crawled towards the night sky with the ease of a cat unfurling itself and stretching its back up into an arch. The porch lights had been left on, giving the house a subtle glow as though from beneath. It was a century farmhouse, and it was obvious that the first owners had been well-off. I knew that both floors had ten to twelve-foot ceilings and that the attic above was large enough for a grown man to have walked through with ease.
When I pulled off of the road and made my way up the long, curved driveway, the first thing I noticed was the colour of the bricks. It was strange. The thin glow of the streetlights dulled the rusted colour of the ancient clay, and most of the hue was lost to dark, but the red of the bricks was still the first and most prominent source of colour. I don’t mean to say that the red itself was particularly bright or vivacious. There was just so much of it, an avalanche of crumbling crimson.
The black roof shingles looked new enough, and the white paint that adorned the decorative trim that flowed along the eaves was chipping but by no means dilapidated. As I sat there looking up at it, the house didn’t strike me as looking particularly haunted. Old? Yes. Creepy? Possibly, depending on personal preferences. Big? This alone seemed irrefutable to me.
I let my eyes wander the property and took in what little I could in the dim light from the streetlamps. The neighbourhood had been developed in the early seventies when the estate on which the red house stood had been parcelled and sold. The sprawling property had been cut into smaller, more modest lots, and builders had wasted little time in erecting various side splits and raised ranches at the feet of the original manor house. It wasn’t that uncommon a phenomenon: most modern homeowners weren’t equipped to deal with a hundred acres of farmland on top of their turn of the century houses. However, the lot that interested me was still easily the largest, and the red-brick house sat amongst these humble homes like a brooding vulture contemplating a bit of carrion.
Most of the houses in the surrounding area were dark, their occupants likely asleep. I had turned off my car’s lights as I pulled into the driveway. This is still private property, and a family is living here now. Either they didn’t know about the supposed haunting, or they didn’t care about the events that were documented. Worse, maybe they had bought the house because of its history. Then again, I guess I can’t come down on people who get into stories of haunted houses or dark real estate. I am writing a book on the subject after all.
Nina had spoken a lot about the porch and about how her mom had taken to sitting out there, reading at first, and then eventually just staring off into the then unkept yard. I couldn’t see the state of the yard now. The old wooden fence still ran along the perimeter, but the friendly geranium planters by the side door gave the impression that these homeowners were trying to brighten the place up.
I had to leave. I’d already been here long enough, and I was running the risk of a neighbour noticing my idling car and calling the police. There had been enough traffic through this quiet neighbourhood in the years since the Pall family, and I was sure that the people living here had little tolerance for tourists.
But that brick.
There was just so much of it—a giant of a house.
And its dark eyes were sleeping.
***
Then - Monday, September 1st, 2003
It was Samantha Pall’s honest opinion that this was the best house ever.
Like, ever ever.
As her mother pulled up to it earlier this afternoon and she had seen it for the first time, Sam had to pause and give serious consideration to the prospect of having to scream in order to release some of the excitement that was currently bulldozing its way through her body. Her every nerve hummed, and she had pulsed in her seat as their old Corolla had puttered up the drive, sending the delicious sound of crunching gravel to Sam’s ears.
Sam felt Nina’s stare before noticing her sister watching her, and even the slow and exaggerated roll of the older girl’s eyes couldn’t damper Sam’s childlike excitement. Nina was an impressive eye-roller, sending her dark pupils back until the colour was lost behind her dark bangs.
Their mother had often expressed her frustration regarding Nina’s championship eye-rolls, calling the passive-aggressive action nothing more than laziness. It had been made clear to both girls that even mouthing off would be preferable to simply rolling one’s eyes back into the back of the brain in order to look at the words that she lacked the courage to say.
Every time Nina heard this sermon, she simply rolled her eyes all the harder.
But this morning, even Nina’s sarcastic eyes could do little to damper the current that was sweeping her younger sister along. Sam tried to widen her glance in order to take it all in. She swept her eyes along the sprawling porch, taking in the dead vines that clung there, their dried stalks nevertheless holding the promise of more blossoms to come. Sam had a sore need for blossoms at the moment. She yearned without realizing the strength of her desire, the craving for some sign that life could and, indeed, would go on in the midst of these changes and full stops.
The Toyota was still inching up towards the house when Sam’s seatbelt released, the familiar click causing Anna Pall to brake quickly. The car jerked to a stop in time for her to catch a glimpse of her daughter struggling to pull up the small lock on the car door. Her irritation had barely registered before Sam succeeded in overcoming the child lock, opening the car’s door and jumping out.
“Sam! Just wait until the car stops before you go leaping out!”
“It’s all good, Mom!” she yelled back. “You were barely moving.”
The car sputtered with slight indignation as Anna shifted into park and turned off the ignition. The sound of the car’s engine had become comfortable background noise to Sam’s afternoon. Still, it was quickly and easily replaced by the easy cascade of crickets on the wind and the song of the cicadas from their perch in the tree branches overhead. Samantha’s grin split her face, her joy and excitement apparent in the way her eyes shone and in her upturned palms that sliced the air as she spun crazily in the soft afternoon sunshine. Her happiness was so palpable that even her older sister could not mock her for it in that instant.
“Nina! Do you see this place! It’s totally dope!”
“Oh my God, Sam. Don’t say dope, you loser,” Nina replied, quickly averting her gaze from her spinning sister, that brief moment of recognition and kindness evaporating in response to her sister’s inability to be cool for longer than five minutes. Sam caught sight of her sister as she spun on her heels. Nina stood still, a focal point in a moving world. Her thin arms were crossed harshly across her chest, and she was still wearing her sunglasses. The round lenses were big, creating a look that she must have thought cool but seemed insect-like to Sam. In her mind, Nina looked like a pissed-off grasshopper.
Sam told her sister as much as she stopped spinning, bent at the waist and grasping at her knees, catching her breath and willing the world to still.
Nina was not receptive to her sister’s insights.
“Your genius knows no bounds,” she shot back. “How freakin’ clever. How completely and totally original.”
“Both of you stop. Now.”
Anna stepped out of the driver’s seat, stretching out her back as she did. Sam took in the lithe form of her mother. Her face seemed a little gaunt and a lot tired.
“I don’t want the first memory of this place to be you two bitching at each other.” Anna turned suddenly, seeming to remember her youngest daughter’s presence.
“Sorry, Sam. I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t say that word”
“Bitching?”
Anna smiled a slow smile as Sam ducked, avoiding a half-hearted swipe from Nina.
Sam used the momentum from her duck to lunge forward, propelling herself down the lane. Her sneakers slid dangerously on her gravel until the soles reached the edge of the thirsty lawn. The girl ran like only children can, with abandon and seemingly boundless energy. The front of the house loomed before her, imposing. The facade was cast in the shade of an enormous oak tree that stood guard nearby, its ancient limbs twisted and gnarled. Sam paused in her running in order to cast a cursory look at the tree, inspecting those large and strong branches, seeing which would be best suited for their tire-swing. Some of the branches seemed promising, but Sam knew as she once again quickened her pace that the real impediment to having the swing of her dreams was finding someone to hang it for her.
It wasn’t as though her father would be around to do it.
Her mother had told them about the house, excitedly showing the girls photos that their realtor had printed for them. She had marvelled at the original woodwork and gushed about the size of the bedrooms, larger than the ones at their old house. Sam was nervous and unsure about moving but her mother’s forced enthusiasm had still taken a certain hold of her, creating certain anxious anticipation for the new house. Sam had realized as they had been pulling up that the pictures would never do it justice.
The house was much larger than the photos had made it seem.
Sam ran up the wooden steps to the porch. Her mother had pointed out to her that it wrapped all the way around the front and eastern side of the house. It was covered by the roof that hung over slightly, creating a perfect shelter. Sam ran a hand gently along the bricks as she glanced up to where the roof jutted out over the exterior wall, imagining what it would be like to sit out on this porch and watch the storms that would roll through. Thunderstorms in Southern Ontario could be a thing of beauty, all intense flash and heavy atmosphere. Tornadoes did sometimes occur, although rarely, but the possibility of danger only enriched the experience of a storm in Sam’s opinion. The feeling of being a witness to something dangerous and powerful while tucked away, safe and removed on her porch was a welcome thought. Sam had been a witness to most of her life lately, an observer more than a participant, and she realized that she felt little concern at this development. She had become a character in the story of her life, a secondary or supporting character, watching her parents control the plot and conflict resolution.
The porch would be an excellent place to read.
The wooden planks were old, and they creaked under Sam’s weight. As Sam heard it groaning under her feet, it took little to no effort to imagine a zombie laying underneath the planks, mouldering away and reaching up. Her foot would break through a wooden board, and the corpse would reach up with its maggot-covered hand and take hold, bringing its black zombie teeth forward to take a bite.
There was a sudden pause to her exploration as Sam dealt with the sudden queasy nausea she experienced thanks to her visceral imaginings. As she called back to her mother, she noted the quiver that coated her words.
“Mom! This porch seems super old! Is it okay for me to run on?”
“It’s fine, Sam,” Anna called back. A pause. “It should be fine. Maybe just watch out for any planks that are really worn or look like they’re rotting”.
Hearing her mother talk about rotting wood reminded Sam of the zombie under the boards, so she hurried around the side, following the porch until it ended at a side door to her left and some steps that led down to the back yard that suddenly sprawled ahead.
In Sam’s honest and immediate experience of backyards, this one was pretty boring. There was some rough-looking grass that grew out of patches of hard earth. There was a huge tree casting most of the yard in the shade, and it was clear that the lack of sunlight would make it difficult for much grass to grow. Sam stepped lightly down the few steps and peered around, looking around into the further corners of the lot.
There was a small and dilapidated garage that looked perilously close to collapse, and Sam wondered if it might fall over if the wind got too strong. It stood, or rather leaned, at the mouth of the driveway. Just beyond stood a warped wooden fence that ran along the perimeter of the yard, and Sam allowed herself to hope that she would perhaps succeed in finally convincing her mother to get a dog.
“Sam, let’s go. You can space out and be useless later. Come and grab some boxes.”
Sam spun around on her heel and saw Nina leaning out of the side door that led to the deck, her stupidly (in Sam’s opinion) big sunglasses pushed back up unto her head.
“Why do you have to be such a bitch Neen?”
“Mom told you not to say that.”
“She also told you not to be one.” Haha, Sam thought, proud of her retort. Take that!
“Whatever,” Nina sighed back, slipping back into the house. Sam watched her easy movements. She watched Nina’s thin frame slide easily back into the house, noticing that she had barely had to open the door in order to come out. Sam looked down warily at her Fallout Boy T-shirt and sighed. The slightly protruding child’s belly she still wore was making Pete round out a bit, so Sam sucked it in as hard as she could, watching with some pleasure as her stomach shrank and her ribs became more noticeable. She took a few steps forward and gasped, letting out the air she had been holding in and releasing her stomach. Pete swelled out again, and for a horrible moment, Sam felt angry towards herself, remembering how she had gorged herself on pizza the night before. She had laughed at Nina, watching her sister nibble daintily at her single slice. Now, in this sudden moment of self-doubt and criticism, Sam considered briefly if she should start being more like Nina and limiting the amount of food that she ate. Perhaps, Sam considered, if her belly were smaller, Nina would be nicer about lending Sam her clothes.
Sam didn’t entertain that particular possibility for long.
Sighing and telling herself that Nina sucked anyway, Sam opened the side door and stepped into the house.
It was brighter than she had expected and woodier. There was panelling everywhere, and upon Sam’s first impression, the honeyed glow of the wood seemed unending. Sam was surprised that her mother would have chosen a house in such an old style. Modern furnishings and stark colours had decorated their previous home. The antique and Victorian vibe of their new home didn’t mesh with what Sam thought she knew of her mother’s tastes. She supposed that her mother really was serious about her claims that she craved change and a new start.
A decorative pane had been installed over the door Sam had come in, festively constructed by pieces of coloured glass that seemed to represent foliage and a few flowers. One of the panels that made up the image had been broken, only to be replaced with a thick and tough-looking sheet of plastic.
There was a staircase to Sam’s left. The steps turned about halfway up, creating a gentle and old-worldly curve that left the landing out of sight. The walls that crawled up along the stairs were a white plaster that looked dated, due in no small part to some crumbling and cracked sections in the corners.
A small closet stood nestled at the base of the stairs, and upon spying it, Sam squealed in her delight. She ran to it quickly, grasping the small handle and pulling. The door, however, refused to budge. The knob turned easily and willingly in her hand, but the door did not move. Refusing to be bested, Sam planted her feet solidly and pulled with greater force. There was a moment of suspended struggle before the door suddenly gave, sending Sam sprawling painfully onto her back. As she rose, rubbing consciously at her tail bone, Sam was glad that Nina hadn’t been there to witness her embarrassing fall.
Sam kept rubbing at her sore spine as she looked curiously into the closet. It seemed to her that it was just a normal space that could be used to store shoes or coats, but its size made it somewhat unusual. The ceiling was low, only slightly taller than Sam herself. What the closet lacked in height, it made up for in-depth. Sam was reminded of Harry’s famous cupboard, and the familiar image drew her in. She closed her eyes as she stepped in, pretending that her horrible sister was instead her horrible cousin and that a letter from Hogwarts was pending, due to arrive any day.
As Sam stood, lost in her imagination, the door let out an unexpected creak. She opened her eyes at the sound, watching as the door closed slightly, making a small movement back in her direction. However, the knowledge that the house was old was suddenly remembered, and Sam told herself that the front door was likely open as her mother and sister brought boxes in. A breeze had surely caught the door, sending it into a slight movement. The possibility that Nina was trying to scare her was also a credible one. Sam could just as easily imagine Nina lying in wait outside the closet, ready to laugh at her silly fears.
But knowing the likelihood of a breeze or of her sister’s penchant for teasing things didn’t keep Sam’s skin from bumping up, and it didn’t keep her heart from beating, in her opinion, just a little bit too fast. Suddenly, the closet was much too small, and the desire to play Harry Potter evaporated. Sam no longer wanted to be there. The closet’s earlier feeling of being cozy and snug was gone, replaced by a sudden and urgent feeling of tight. Sam was being squeezed, and the air in her lungs felt constricted and restrained.
Sam forced her feet to obey and move, and there was a sure if slow response. She quickly made her way from the closet, bracing herself for Nina to jump out and startle her.
There was nothing. There was no sudden jump or yell, no frightening hands grabbing at her. Sam closed the door, pushing against it with her shoulder to make sure it was all the way in. She felt dusty, and a strong distaste and repulsion for the door overwhelmed her sense. She took her hands away quickly, wiping them on her jeans to rid her fingers of a foreign, spidery feeling. She turned, making her way deeper into the house and towards the distant sound of her mom’s voice.
Sam forgot about the closet.
Delete Created with Sketch.
For the fiftieth time that day, Anna submitted to a futile attempt at convincing herself that she hadn’t made the worst mistake of her life.
It was becoming harder and harder to convince herself that she had made the right choice. It was a decision she had made in the complete and utter knowledge that it would cause her girls to hate her for reasons they wouldn’t fully understand. She knew that Nina’s anger would manifest itself in more aggressive ways than Sam’s, who was more likely to feign excitement in light of a possible adventure, if only for her mother’s sake.
Anna’s first-born daughter had made no secret of the fact that she blamed her mother for most of the decrepit demise of her parent’s marriage. For the moment, Anna was fine with that idea. She had weighed her options in the desperate way of parents and had decided that it would be easier to deal with the resentment of her emotional teenager than the fallout that too much of the truth would undoubtedly cause. Let Nina be angry, Anna thought. Let her be angry with me instead of realizing what a selfish asshole her father is. Let that illusion remain just a little while longer, just until she doesn’t have such a need for it.
The girls were both in their rooms, and these had been chosen with surprisingly little drama. Anna, thanks to ten years of watching her children’s sibling rivalry, had assumed that Sam would want whichever room Nina chose or that Nina would fight Anna for the master suite. Anna had seriously considered offering the room to her a preemptive peace offering.
But Sam had chosen her room first, the long and skinny blue room that ran along the eastern side of the second floor. Anna was pleased for her daughter and imagined her reading in bed or stretched out on the floor when the morning sun flooded her room with light. Nina had been perfectly content to take the beige room next to her sister’s. The bathroom location, which was nestled in next to the beige bedroom, had likely been a strong contributing factor in her decision-making.
They had both been in their rooms for about an hour, Sam sleeping in the violent sprawl that children adopted, limbs askew and her body hovering dangerously close to the side of the double bed. Her large blanket depicting running polar bears, a hand-me-down from Nina who had received it as an infant from a great aunt, was wrapped tightly around her middle, leaving her bare feet exposed.
When Anna had looked in on Sam from the hallway on her way downstairs to keep unpacking, she had been struck by the sight of her child sleeping so soundly. The door had been left open in contrast to her sister’s, which was always guaranteed to be tightly closed regardless of her living arrangement. Sam seemed so peaceful as she lay there in the dim light spilling in from the hall that Anna was almost able to make out the baby features that had long ago melted away from her face. She had been such a happy and content baby and had continued to be a relatively easy child over the next ten years. Nina had fallen into the sullenness of adolescence with ease and had been moody and temperamental since the birth of her younger sibling when she was seven.
Anna had thought (correction: hoped) that a new baby would help gap the wedge that had slowly been carving a space between her husband and herself. However, this was a space that would come to be filled by a twenty-something undergraduate he met while teaching one of his third-year biology courses six months ago. She wasn’t the first, Anna had learned recently. Just the first one that mattered.
Anna frowned as she stood there, stewing in her own miserable recollections. It was becoming too easy to get distracted lately, just when it had become more important than ever to be present, to be vigilant. She had seen the way Sam had taken to quickly inspecting her reflection and the stolen glances she shot at her oblivious sister. Anna had also noticed her daughter sucking in her tummy more than once, which had alarmed her. Girls could be difficult and on no one more than on themselves.
Letting her eyes dart quickly one more time to Nina’s closed door, Anna sighed and started to make her way past Sam’s room and down the stairs. The staircase was beautiful, the original wood strong and sturdy under a layer of neglected dust. The runner was worn down, but the delicate floral pattern was still visible. These little details were part of what had made it so easy for Anna to fall in love with the house so quickly when she had first gone through it with her realtor. The banister was part of the original staircase, constructed along with the house in 1863. It gave Anna a secret thrill when she descended the steps and let her hand glide along the wooden rail, thinking of all the inhabitants who had done the same thing.
Her realtor Jen had been a dream to work with, understanding the urgency and the crucial importance of finding the perfect house. During the first walkthrough of the house, she had mentioned to Anna that the banister wasn’t up to code in terms of height but that it could be grandfathered into any necessary renovations regarding getting the home insured. As it was, the banister stood a little shorter than Anna’s waist, a fact that would have made her nervous should her children still have been of toddling age.
Of course, it would be simple enough to replace, Jen had assured Anna. But the idea of ripping out the house’s original pieces seemed blasphemous, especially since Anna was counting on this home to become a refuge for her and her daughters. She couldn’t fathom ripping into it too much. Instead, she planned on restoring as much of it as she could, conscious of the fact that she wanted to change and would therefore avoid turning this new home into the same kind of modern and plastic dwelling she had endured before. The stern and contemporary stylings had been what John wanted and consisted of yet one more example of Anna’s efforts to bury what she wanted in favour of keeping her husband happy.
The house was quiet and still, and Anna took a deep breath as I came to the bottom of the stairs and headed towards the living room. The mahogany pocket doors had been left open, and she stepped into the space that would become the family room and which would also have to serve as a temporary office until she was to clean out one of the many cluttered rooms on the main floor.
Anna glanced at the laptop and day planner that had been left open on the coffee table. Tomorrow was the first day of school for all of them. After the separation, Anna had put in for a transfer to a high school about an hour and a half away from where they’d been living since Nina was a baby, a fact that Nina wasn’t about to let her mother forget anytime soon. Anna was meant to remember that it was her uprooting the family and moving them away. It was her forcing all of this change on them.
Anna had craved something more wholesome than London, with its busy streets and concerning amount of crime. Although much smaller than its English namesake, London, Ontario still felt too big for Anna, who had grown up in the kind of small-town she wanted for her girls. She wanted smaller, quieter, slower. She wanted a place where the girls could feel safe. Anna realized with a kind of poetic sarcasm that she was looking for a cocoon, a place to muffle out the world until they were ready to emerge.
So it was to this much smaller town that she had uprooted them. The local high school (student body: one hundred and fifty strong!) had taken her on as an English teacher for the senior levels after the fortuitous retirement of the previous teacher who’d held the position for over twenty years. Even though Anna enjoyed her work, even though it could be taxing to teach English to sixteen and seventeen-year-olds, kids were more interested in Madonna kissing Britney at some award show than in the Romantic Era of literature. And Nina would be one of those students, much to the girl’s chagrin. Not only was Anna forcing Nina to start over in a new school her senior year of high school, but she would be one of her daughter’s teachers. Double parental failure.
Anna sat herself down on the worn leather sofa that they had placed along the wall, facing the television set. Anna had arranged for the movers to bring the bigger furniture items a few days before their arrival, and Jen had been good enough to get her team to help set up most of the rooms once the furniture had arrived. Anna could admit that it might have been a frivolous expenditure of her limited funds, but it felt good to arrive at the house knowing that there would be minimal heavy lifting for her and the girls. It would have felt a lot better to use John’s account to pay for it all, but they had arranged to separate the accounts while she was still numb from shock.
Anna wasn’t numb anymore.
She was putting the finishing touches on the syllabus to hand out the next day when her phone buzzed. A name flashed across the Motorola’s screen. John.
Shit.
She was not equipped to deal with him at the moment.
Anna flipped open her phone.
Wish girls good day @ school. Exhaling, Anna flipped it closed again. If he couldn’t be bothered to call his kids, then she wouldn’t be bothered to pass along a lazy message. Anna gripped the phone tightly in her resolution, satisfied with the decision and enjoying the bile-like anger that seemed to be simmering in her throat. Most of the anger was towards him, of course. Still, there was also an uneasy amount of anger that she directed at herself for allowing her resentment to manifest itself so physically. She glanced at the phone again and read the time. Just about half-past nine. Had he sent me this message before going up to bed? Was he already in bed? With her?
Surprising herself, Anna suddenly threw the phone, sending it like a stone against the wall across the room. It struck the white plaster beside an old bookcase the previous owners had left behind. The phone made a satisfying thunk against the wall, and her mind allowed itself the quick and sickly pleasure of imagining such a thunk caused by the phone bouncing off John’s thick skull instead of the poor walls. This quick feeling of satisfaction fled before realizing that she had thrown her phone against a wall and that phones did not usually hold up in such confrontations.
Groaning, Anna got up from the couch and made her way over to where the phone lay. She squatted down and picked it up gingerly, turning it in her hands to inspect it for damage. The phone seemed all right. The two pieces had not come apart, and the screen hadn’t cracked. Anna flipped it open quickly, and the screen lit up normally. She sighed. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to react like that simply. She couldn’t afford another phone.
As Anna placed her hands on her knees to help push herself out of her squat, she noticed a small crack in the plaster next to the bookcase from where the phone had hit the wall. She touched it gently with the tip of one finger, feeling small pieces of dusty plaster stick to it. Picking a little at the crack, Anna sighed when some of the plaster peeled away. Great. There was enough to fix in this house without destroying the few walls that were still in decent shape. Anna stood up, looking down at the small crack that she had already managed to make worse. What a perfect symbol for her life. This small crack, this tiny imperfection, this scab, that she couldn’t keep herself from picking at, from bothering. A crack in the wall and a crack in her marriage. The peeling plaster, the layers of lies.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to herself, to the empty house. “I’m so sorry.”
Anna allowed herself to cry.
