Home Improvement: Undead Edition (13 page)

One morning, the nightmare fresh in her mind, Eve realized she’d underestimated Joe.

“You can’t imagine the hell I’ve been through, Eve was so crazy.”

“No one blames you, Joey, everyone knows she was suicidal.”

Joe wanted her dead.

He would inherit the house they’d fallen in love with and bought with Eve’s money. Oh, he would pretend to be heartbroken, and after a decent period of mourning he would remarry—“He was so lonely, poor Joe, he deserves happiness after what he’s gone through.”

Joe’s wife—the brown-haired woman or someone else, who knew how many women he had in his life?—would live in Eve’s house and sleep in Eve’s bed. She would luxuriate under water streaming from the rainforest showerhead in Eve’s marble-tiled shower and relax in the tub, letting the Jacuzzi jets massage her body. She would see the backyard bloom with flowers Eve would never have picked. She would lie in a hammock and rock a baby that wasn’t Eve’s.

Eve cried.

JOE AND HER
mother drove Eve to her internist in the Third Street Towers in the city.

“Her vitals are fine, except for her blood pressure, which is a little high,” Dr. Geller said, addressing only her mother and Joe, as if Eve weren’t in the room or couldn’t hear. “She’s lost over ten pounds and she’s withdrawn, almost nonverbal. I suggest you consult with a psychiatrist.”

Eve had lost weight because she couldn’t be sure if Joe had tampered with the food he coaxed down her throat. Eve thought, wasn’t it ironic that she was thinner than she’d ever been in her life, her hips slimmer than slim?

Her mother said, “Evie, why don’t you stay with us for a few days? I can take care of you until you feel better.”

Eve wanted to say,
Yes, please, yes, God, yes
. She longed to lie in the safety of her bed in her old room, where she could sleep without fear of the nightmare or noises, or Joe.

But Eve couldn’t leave the house, and she couldn’t see a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist would listen while Eve talked about the voices she heard and the thing she felt pressing against her. A psychiatrist would nod while Eve told him that Joe was behind the voices, behind everything: strange marks on the mortar, popping nails, scratches on the floors, light switches that were no longer working, cracks that were spreading like vines on the Kennebunkport Green walls.

Eve would be committed.

Joe would have the house.

EVE KNEW HER
parents were desperate when they brought a rabbi to the house late one Sunday morning. His name, Ruth told Eve, was Rabbi Ben-Amichai. The rabbi was a
mekubal
—a holy man, a master of Jewish mysticism—who lived in Jerusalem and was visiting Los Angeles. Eve’s father, Frank, had met the rabbi that morning at
shul
and had asked for his help.

“First the rabbi wants to check the
mezuzahs
,” Ruth said.

“But they’re all new.”

A week before they’d moved into the house, Eve and Joe, following Orthodox tradition, had bought eight rolled parchments, inscribed by hand with verses from the Torah in Hebrew. One
mezuzah
for every doorway in the house.

“Rabbi Ben-Amichai says even if they’re new, a letter may be missing, or part of a letter, or there may be some other imperfection. If something’s wrong with a
mezuzah
, Eve, it won’t protect you.”

Eve stayed in bed. She pictured the rabbi hunched over the small table in the breakfast nook where the lighting was best, inspecting the
mezuzahs
Joe and her father were removing, one by one, from the doorposts.

An hour later her mother returned. The rabbi had pronounced the
mezuzahs
fine.

Eve had known they were fine. The problem wasn’t
mezuzahs
. The problem was Joe.

“The rabbi wants to talk to you,” Ruth said.

“Why?”

“He’s a wise man, Evie. Maybe he can help.”

“Can he stop my dreams, Mom? Can he stop the voices?”
Can he stop Joe?

“Eve, get up.
Now.
Get up, put on a robe.”

Ruth’s tone, knife sharp, sliced through Eve’s lethargy. Eve struggled out of bed. Her mother helped her into her robe and slippers. She found a scarf and tied it around Eve’s matted hair, unwashed for days.

“Perfect,” Ruth said with hollow cheer.

With her hand under Eve’s elbow, she escorted a wobbly Eve into the breakfast nook. Her father was there, and Joe.

The rabbi was old and stooped, with a long silky white beard and white hair covered by a black velvet yarmulke. His face had a thousand wrinkles.

“Sit, sit.” In a deep, unwavering voice the rabbi ordered everyone else from the room.

Eve sat opposite him and tried to place his accent. Yemenite? Definitely Sephardic. His eyes were the eyes of a young man, the dark brown of molten chocolate.

“Your husband tells me you have been hearing voices,” the rabbi said. “When did they start?”

Eve had expected skepticism or pity, but the rabbi sounded genuinely interested. “The first night we moved into the house, I heard scratching sounds. I think an animal made them. Then I started hearing the voices.”

“What do the voices sound like?”

Eve described the whooshing sound. “They tell me to leave. I’m not crazy,” she said with some defiance. “Did my husband tell you I’m crazy?”

The rabbi shook his head. “Your husband loves you very much. He is worried about you.”

Eve’s smile was thin. “He told you that, too?”

The rabbi studied her. “You don’t believe your husband loves you?”

Eve lowered her eyes under the intensity of his piercing gaze. “I don’t know what to believe.”

The rabbi nodded. “These voices that you hear in your bedroom, Mrs. Stollman. Do you hear them anywhere else?”

She shook her head.

“You also have bad dreams, yes?”

“Every night.”

“Tell me about the dreams.”

Eve started talking. The rabbi closed his eyes, and she thought,
Great, the old man fell asleep
, but the moment she stopped, he said, “Please, continue.”

When she had finished, the rabbi was silent for a while. Then he said, “I can see why you are so troubled. But something else is bothering you.”

“My husband didn’t tell you?” The sarcasm had slipped out. Eve flushed with embarrassment, but she wasn’t really sorry.

The rabbi’s smile was a gentle reproof. “I would very much like to hear this from you.”

So Eve told him about the cracks in the walls, the broken light switches, the scratches on the floors, the recurring strange markings in the shower.

“Who do you think is doing this?” the rabbi asked.

Did she dare? “My husband,” Eve whispered. “He wants to make me think I’m crazy. He wants—he wants the house. He doesn’t love me.” She hadn’t meant to cry, but tears streamed down her face.

“And you know this from your dreams?”

Eve felt silly.

The rabbi said, “Your husband loves you deeply. This I know to be true.”

“How? How can you know?”

“I know.”

“You
do
think I’m crazy,” Eve said. Maybe she was.

The rabbi pushed himself up from the chair with a sudden movement that startled her. “Come.”

Eve followed him to her bedroom. How odd, she thought, that the rabbi seemed to know the way, as though he’d been here before. He stopped in the doorway of the master bedroom, as her mother had.

“They are very angry,” he said quietly. “I feel them.”

Eve shivered. “Who?”

Squaring his shoulders, the rabbi stepped into the room and stood motionless for several long minutes. He took his time examining the wall behind the beds, then the other walls and the floors. In the bathroom he looked first at the protruding nails. Stooping down, he peered at the markings on the bottom of the shower. He returned to the bedroom, Eve following.

“Show me where you hear the voices,” the rabbi said.

Eve walked to her bed and pointed to an area above the headboard. “There.”

“Do you hear them now?”

Was he testing her? She shook her head. “Can you—do you hear anything?”

“Mrs. Stollman, they have no quarrel with me.”

The rabbi sprinted out of the room and down the hallway as though he were fleeing. Eve, out of shape and out of breath, had difficulty keeping up. Her parents and Joe were seated at the dining room table. They stood as the rabbi and Eve passed through the room and looked at the rabbi expectantly. He motioned to them to remain where they were and continued to the breakfast room, Eve at his heels.

The rabbi sat at the table. Eve did the same.

“Mrs. Stollman, did you close up any windows in your bedroom? Any doors?”

“No. Rabbi Ben-Amichai—”

“The people who lived in this house before you—your husband told me about the tragedy. Two deaths,
Hashem yerachem
.” God have mercy. “Did they seal a door? A window?”

“I don’t know,” Eve said, stifling her impatience. “Rabbi Ben-Amichai, when we were in my bedroom, you said you felt them. Who is ‘they’?”

“Shedim,”
the rabbi said, his voice low. “Some feel that even to say the word is not advisable.”

Demons. Eve flinched.

“They are made of air, fire, and water. The sages tell us that in three ways
shedim
are like angels. They have wings. They fly from one end of the earth to the other. They hear what will happen in the future.” The rabbi paused. “In three ways they are like humans. They eat and drink like humans, they reproduce like humans, they die like humans. They are here right now.”

Eve felt a prickling up and down her spine. She looked around.

“Trust me, they are here, Mrs. Stollman,” the rabbi said quietly. “The Talmudic scholar Rav Huna stated that every one of us has one thousand
shedim
on his left hand and ten thousand on his right.”

Eve squirmed.

“Sometimes we can sense them. Have you ever felt crowded even though no one is sitting next to you?” The rabbi leaned toward Eve. “These
shedim
are what you feel pressing on you every night, breathing on you.” He eyed her with sympathy and a touch of sadness. “You do not believe me.”

“It’s . . .” Eve shook her head.

“Sprinkle ashes on the floor around your bed, Mrs. Stollman. In the morning you will see their footprints, resembling those of a chicken.”

Eve flashed to the markings on the mortar. Not possible, she thought. Still, she felt a frisson of fear and revulsion.

“If you are determined to see them, take finely ground ashes of the afterbirth of a black cat and put them in your eye. You will see them.” The rabbi raised a finger. “I must warn you, this is dangerous. Rav Huna saw
shedim
and came to harm. Luckily the scholars prayed for him and he recovered.” The rabbi fixed her with his deep brown eyes. “Now it is you who are thinking, ‘This old man is crazy,’ yes?” A smile tugged at his lips.

Eve blushed and looked away. “The markings in the shower could be from a bird.” Or Joe.

The rabbi didn’t respond.

“Suppose you’re right,” Eve said, facing the rabbi. “Why would these
shedim
be tormenting me?”

“You or someone else has interfered with them. I believe that there was a window or door on the wall where you hear the voices. You say you did not seal off a window—”

“I didn’t.”

The rabbi nodded. “You do not know if the people who lived here before you sealed off a window or door.”

“They did make changes,” Eve said, remembering what the neighbor had told her. “I don’t know what kind. Why does that matter?”

“
Shedim
have established pathways, Mrs. Stollman. When you interrupt those pathways, they are resentful. They take vengeance. These
shedim
resided in your house long before you moved in. To them, you are intruders, trespassers.”

Eve wanted to say,
That’s ridiculous
. But how could she insult this bearded holy man sitting in her home? “Rabbi, why doesn’t my husband hear the voices? Why isn’t he having similar nightmares?”

The rabbi shook his head. “That I cannot answer. Your dreams trouble you more than the voices, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“They have robbed you not only of sleep, but of peace of mind, of trust in your husband. They have convinced you he means you harm.”

Eve felt as though her heart would crack. “Yes.”

“Why do you assume these dreams are true?”

“I have the same dream, over and over. Why would that be unless my unconscious is telling me something, warning me? You said
shedim
can tell the future, Rabbi. Do they share that knowledge with humans through dreams?”

The rabbi nodded. “They do.”

Well then,
Eve thought.

“But
shedim
love to confound humans, to mix truth with lies,” the rabbi said. “Remember, they are not here to protect you. Quite the opposite. At the very least, find the location of the window or door that was sealed off. Make a small hole through the wall so that the
shedim
can resume their movement unobstructed.”

“And that will stop the voices? The nightmares?”

The rabbi sighed. “This is a house of misery and bad fortune, Mrs. Stollman. Two people have died unnatural deaths. I’m afraid the
shedim
will never leave you in peace.”

“
SHEDIM?
ASHES OF
black cats?” Joe said after the rabbi had blessed Eve and Joe and left with her parents. “Sounds like
Macbeth
, or Halloween. I don’t really believe in this stuff, babe. Do you?”

“Not really,” Eve said, wishing she did.

Her parents had been less skeptical. Her father had looked somber and her mother had said, “Oh my God,” several times and shuddered.

Watching Joe tap his fingers on the wall above her headboard in expanding circles, Eve thought, wouldn’t it be something if the rabbi were right—frightening, yes, but at the same time wonderful?