Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 08:53:15 -0600 From: Robyn Herrington Subject: HALLOWEEN SUB: The Haunting House Halloween contest: FICTION Word count 3,500 Max of two entries per person. ASCII or PLAIN TEXT please. Send to ME rmherrin@ucalgary.ca Critiques to ME rmherrin@ucalgary.ca Dates: October 1st - 15th for submissions ============================================== THE HAUNTING HOUSE Martha didn't want to admit it, but she liked it best when her husband and children had left the house. She couldn't say that to them, no, not now, not the way they had been carrying on the last couple of days. They might take it the wrong way, think she didn't love them. Of course she loved them. Why couldn't they understand that? Just because she had cleaned up the house, and gotten rid of all that junk that none of them used any more, they acted as if she didn't care about their feelings. She liked it now, when they were gone. Now she could hear the house clearly. It was happy that she had thrown out all that junk. She couldn't be sure if that had been her idea or the house's, but it was a good idea, wherever she got it. There was altogether too much stuff around here. She could hardly keep up with it all, the papers, the books, all those toys, the clothes, the pots and pans. All that junk. They were better off without it. The house was better off without it. She listened, now, in the silence, and she could hear the house praising her. The house felt much lighter now, much freer. If they could only hear the house the way she could, it would be different, she was sure. If they would just listen. They didn't want to listen. They had pretended that they were listening, when she asked them. Even her husband had pretended. But she knew they were just pretending. She could see it in their round eyes, the way they looked at her as if they had never seen her before. She could hear it in the tone of their voices, that half-joking, half-questioning tone. Of course they couldn't hear the house. If they wouldn't listen, then they couldn't hear. But that was no reason for them to doubt that the house talked, or that it talked to her. They did doubt, too. Her husband pulled away from her, as if he were afraid, when she explained about the books and papers, the toys and the clothes. He thought it was all her idea. He'd actually told her that she was under too much stress. What a ridiculous thing! Stress! She had no stress, not since they moved to this house. Stress was what she had at her old job, when everybody told her to do different things at the same time and then yelled at her if she didn't do them fast enough. That was stress. She was glad she lost the job. She was glad that she had this house. She never felt stressed when she was here. The house's voice was comforting, soothing. Sometimes she lost all track of time when she was cleaning up, and the hours would pass like minutes. That felt good, losing track of time. She could just let the house talk to her, even when she couldn't really make out the words. That was the best, when she couldn't hear any particular words, when the! house just murmured to her like music playing far away. The house hummed now, as Martha scrubbed the kitchen sink and counters. Her husband had told her to lighten up. He'd said that the kitchen was already clean. What was his word? Inhumanly clean, that was it. She could hear the house laughing now, at the very idea. It could never be too clean. Martha was surprised that her husband didn't realize that. Her skin burned from the cleansers she used, but Martha hardly noticed that anymore. The house gave her such compensations, she didn't care what her hands looked like, what her clothes looked like. The house loved what she was doing for it. The house wanted her to make it cleaner still. She scrubbed the table. Every day it was the same. Why did her husband and children make such a mess? Her daughter had protested against that. Martha couldn't remember, right now, exactly what her daughter had said, but the house thought it had been significant. Every day, every meal, more mess, more work, more things Martha had to clean. There had to be a way to eliminate that. Martha could feel the house considering the problem. She relaxed, scrubbing mindlessly, the wood of the table glowing under her touch. She knew that the house would come up with a good idea. It always had so far. Martha glanced over at the corner of the kitchen. Now that corner was spotless, but before, when the cat's food bowl and water bowl had been there, she could never keep it clean. She could stand over the cat as it ate and sweep up every bit of cat food that the cat sprinkled around the floor, but the cat was sneaky. It would come back to the food and water bowls when she was busy doing something else, and then it would knock the bowl over or spill the food or otherwise cause a mess. The house had understood right away. Clearly, the cat was a problem. The cat couldn't fit in with the standards that Martha and the house wanted to maintain. The house had told Martha what to do about the cat. She couldn't quite remember what she'd told the children about the cat. She hadn't told them the truth, of course. They couldn't hear the house, so they wouldn't understand. Martha thought she might have told them that the cat ran away. Or maybe that it just disappeared. They had made a fuss when she took away the food bowl and the water bowl and the litter box. That might have been the first time they pulled away from her, giving her that look, talking between themselves about her. If they could only hear the house, they would understand. That was the problem, with them and with her husband. Martha didn't know why she heard the house and they didn't. She wished they could hear it. Life would be so much simpler. If they knew how much it distressed the house when they left things around, when they spilled things, when they dirtied the rugs and the furniture, they wouldn't do those things. They're never going to hear me, the house said to her then. She knew it was true. They had shown no signs of any sensitivity to the house or its needs. And as a matter of fact, lately they had been acting strangely towards her. Her husband had even said something that morning, if she could just remember it correctly, something about getting her away from the house. He'd said that the house seemed to be disturbing her. He said something about how she needed help. How strange that he couldn't hear the house's response to that. She knew, right away, that the house was very upset at the thought. It was even angry. She'd never known it to be angry before, but when her husband said that, she could feel the walls rumbling and the floor quivering with rage. Why couldn't her husband see that? Why couldn't he feel it? Why did he look at her that way when she told him that the house didn't like the idea of her getting away from the house? What was the matter with him, anyway? What was the matter with all of them? She looked around at the kitchen. The hands of the clock had moved, so she assumed that time had passed during which she had washed all the surfaces in the kitchen so that they gleamed. She couldn't remember doing it. Perhaps the house had helped her. It liked to help her. Unlike her family. They were all against her these days, but the house was on her side. That was a comfort, and she basked in it. She remembered, as she moved into the living room and took out the vacuum cleaner, what her daughter had said that morning. Martha had said something about how the house hated it when people made a mess. Samantha, her daughter, had gotten angry at that. She'd said, "Mom, we're not making a mess! We're just living in the house! There's nothing wrong with that!" The idea came to Martha, clearly and plainly. She could see it. Samantha had been entirely correct. How funny that she hadn't even realized how significant her own words were. It was very simple, really. She would take care of the whole problem, and then the house would be happy, and she would be happy. The cleaning would be much easier. Much, much easier. And there would be no further talk about getting her away from the house, or making her lighten up, or any of that. What a simple, clean solution. She even had all the necessities already. * * * * * * Martha stayed up after the family had gone to bed. She didn't need as much sleep these days. She went through the downstairs first, cleaning up all the signs that the family had been there: the papers on the floor in the living room, the fingerprints on the remote control, the footprints in the carpet, the stains on the kitchen counters. She did it all methodically, the way the house liked it. When she finished with the downstairs, and the house approved of the job she did, she walked upstairs with her supplies. It had been a very peaceful evening. Her husband complimented her on her behavior at dinner. He'd said that it was a relief not to have her jumping up and cleaning up every tiny spill, every crumb that landed on the table and floor. He actually thought that maybe she was getting better. He sounded happy about that. She let him think that. She was getting better. She had felt lighter, easier in her mind, ever since she had come up with the solution. She didn't say that to him, of course. If that wrong impression of his made him happy, then she certainly wouldn't contradict him. Let him be happy. Let them all be happy. She would have her turn. They all slept so soundly tonight. She had been very careful about the meal. No one could taste the sleeping drugs that she had ground into the food. She never used the sleeping pills herself, not since they had first been prescribed. She didn't need them, but she couldn't convince the doctor of that. The doctor couldn't hear the house either, so her diagnosis had been all wrong. Still, Martha was glad that her husband had made her go to see the doctor, had made her get that prescription filled. The medications did come in useful, after all. Martha went into her son's room first. What a messy sleeper he was. He had already kicked the covers off the bed. She would have to remake the bed in the morning. And his clothes were flung in a heap. Another mess. Well, she wouldn't have to worry about that much longer, she told herself. She drew the bag out from the bucket she'd brought upstairs. A nice, strong bag. And the duct tape, she'd made sure she had plenty of that. Her son didn't even wake up when she put the bag over his head. She taped the bottom of it around his neck nice and tight, because she didn't want to have to do this more than once. Get it right the first time, the house had advised her, and she intended to do that. He did struggle for a while, but she held him down, and then he stopped struggling. It really didn't take that long. One down, she thought, two to go. Her husband was the most difficult one. He almost woke up when she put the bag over his head, and then when he found himself suffocating, he fought a great deal. But she could outlast him, and finally he stopped breathing, and was still. Martha brought the bodies downstairs. Tomorrow was trash pickup. She would leave them at the curb. There wouldn't be any problem about that. She could feel the house humming contentedly. Now there wouldn't be anything to cause a mess anymore. She and the house would be able to keep it as clean as it deserved to be. Yes, she was very pleased about that. It was a good night's work, and would make things much easier in the future. But right now, Martha left the bodies on the living room carpet, properly bagged. She had, she was afraid, made something of a mess in the bedrooms upstairs. She would definitely have to clean that up. The house approved. ================================================================ Robyn Herrington, Editor rmherrin@ucalgary.ca New Currents in Teaching and Learning InfoServe www.ucalgary.ca/~rmherrin University of Calgary Phone: 220-2561 Leadership lifts a person's vision to higher sites, raises a person's performace to higher standards and builds a personality beyond its normal limitations -- Peter Drucker =================================================================