Home Improvement: Undead Edition (18 page)

“Everybody gets what they want! We’re doing well by doing good. This house gets rehabbed back to nature for people to love forever.”

“I want something to love forever,” whispered Louise from her bones.

“No forever here,” said Bob. “This house is headed to the bulldozers.”

She said, “Why is it so quiet?”

“That asshole upstairs quit working,” said Bob.

Louise left him in the basement.

Walked upstairs.

Alone.

Bob swung his hammer,
Bam!

His plan was beautiful.
Bam!
Perfect.
Bam!
Nothing could stop—

Screaming!

Upstairs!

Bob ran from the basement to where Louise stood in the living room.

To where Parker sprawled on his spine in an oozing pool of blood, the back of his head impaled by nails jutting from a chunk of discarded molding.

“Holy shit!” Bob checked: no heartbeat, no breathing. Stared at the chunk of wood jutting from under Parker’s head, knew nails on the other end of the wood stuck deep into that skull.

Bob nodded to other chunks of wood scattered around the room.

“If he hadn’t been stoned, if he’d worked neat, not left trip-and-fall-on-me danger lying around . . . Easy explanation.”

Clumping feet ran down two flights of stairs.

Ali charged into the room, stopped.

Louise wondered,
Why is she looking at Bob and not the body?

Ali cried, “Tell me what happened!”

Her husband said, “An accident. Must have been.”

In ran Steve, wearing his Bruce Springsteen concert T-shirt that had been under his flannel shirt. Louise thought,
Why is Bruce on backward?

Bob pulled his cell phone from its belt pouch. “No signal.”

The blood pool oozed toward them.

Louise suddenly knew Steve would never give her morning sickness.

Ali stared outside at the raging blizzard. “What are we going to do? We can’t get to help and help can’t . . .”

“We figured to be here four days,” said Bob. “Now we got no choice. No phone. Heat, enough food, but . . . We can’t live in here with a corpse.”

Bob and Steve zipped into their ski parkas. Put on gloves.

Dragged the body through the door held open to the storm by Louise.

The chunk of wood stayed nailed to Parker’s skull.

Louise wiped clean the fogged glass of the newly framed window to watch Bob and her
just a husband
drag the corpse through shin-deep snow to Parker’s pickup.

Steve and Bob plopped the corpse in the pickup’s passenger seat. The wood chunk nailed to a skull bumped the rear window. They slammed the pickup door, then struggled through bitter cold swirling snow to the house.

“It’s over,” Bob told everyone as he and Steve shed their coats in the front hall. “Done. Tragedy, but it ain’t the being dead, it’s the dying, and we’ll get through the storm—Hell, fix the place up. The probate will work as long as we’ve got a straight story.”

Ali whispered, “What do I know?”

“Honey,” said her husband, “we all know . . .” Bob stared at his wife. “Why are your snaps done up crooked?”

Louise heard Steve say, “All this, what’s happening, it’s like . . .”

Steve shook his head. Like he couldn’t free the right words.

Ali reached out her hand to Bob. Whispered, “Please!”

He lurched toward her like a robot.

“Please get me out of here!” she told her husband.

Bob dropped to his knees before his wife. His strong hands cupped her perfect moon hips as he buried his face in the front of her jeans.

A bellow tore from Bob: “That’s not our smell!”

Bob rocketed to his feet, lifted Ali off hers. Threw her away.

Ali flew through the dining room crashed onto the table/bounced off it to the floor. Bob charged Steve, yelling, “That’s not the deal!”

Steve backpedaled as dizziness swirled Louise. She saw Bob slam into her husband, knock Steve onto the table, choke him.

Louise leaped onto Bob. He reared away from Steve to shake the wildcat off his back. Louise felt herself flung from him, flying—

Slamming into the dining room wall.

That absorbed her collision softer than wood should:
Why—

Bob’s fist hooked toward her face.

As Steve swung the hammer and cracked Bob’s skull.

Bob crumpled to the floor.

Steve swung the hammer down on him again. Again. Again.

Stopped. Turned to look at his wife.

Louise saw her legal mate splattered with blood and bits of brain.

He dropped the hammer beside dead Bob, said, “You okay?”

“What’s happening?” she whispered.

“We had to do it!” yelled her husband. “Bob, he . . . he went crazy!”

Ali moaned on the floor across the room.

Louise helped her sit up and lean against the wall. Saw the bend in Ali’s arm that meant
broken
.

Steve loomed beside them. Said, “Is she . . . What happened upstairs . . . We . . . It’s like it’s all gone crazy in here! If you think about it—”

Louise whispered, “Parker said
not thinking
was the way to be here.”

“Parker’s dead,” said Steve.

“So is Bob.” She looked at her husband.

Steve pressed both hands to his temples.

“Story,” muttered Steve. “We just need . . . a story. Bob went crazy, killed . . . killed them, and we, we’re okay, we—
Don’t want hate this place!
”

Louise grabbed her husband’s blood-flecked arms. “If we know it’s here, we can hear what it knows.”

“What are you talking about? Ghosts? No such thing as ghosts. When you’re dead you’re dead, don’t want to die don’t . . .
Wait.
”

“Yes,
wait
: not ghosts. Not . . . people.
The house!
The house itself!”

Ali moaned.

The wind howled.

Steve staggered from the dining room where he’d killed a man to the living room where another man had been killed.

Louise ran after him.

Found him standing staring down at the floor.

“Blood,” he whispered to her. “We could clean it up. Make this place look great, be great, fix it solid again and . . . and . . .”

Sorrow twisted Steve’s face: “I didn’t want to fuck her!”

“Yes you did!” Louise grabbed his forearm. Dug her nails into his flesh. Felt the exertion push away wind in her skull. “Of course you wanted to fuck her! Everybody wants to fuck Ali! But you wouldn’t have because you want other things more even if—”

Doesn’t matter what I’m thinking if it was true before!

Louise blurted, “Even if you don’t want our baby to love forever! You care about other stuff enough to not fuck her except we came here!”

Match what makes sense with who you are,
thought Louise.
Use it like . . . like in that aikido demonstration on YouTube.

She yelled, “Parker realized it when he had a child’s mind! He stood outside and felt or thought something and knew enough to stay away and . . .

“His dad: maybe he pushed Parker’s mom away to save her!”

Words blurted from her:
“Only needed him.”

“And then he ran out of money to keep you fixed up!” Louise yelled.

Steve blinked: “You . . .
who?
”

Louise grabbed him: “
Us!
The house hijacks our thoughts!”

Steve shivered.

Then she felt it, too,
cold air
, like . . .

She ran back to the hall between the living room and the dining room. The front door gaped open to the whiteout swirl of the blizzard. “Where’s Ali?” she whispered and ran to the dining room.

Found only Bob’s bludgeoned body.

Ran back to the hall where Steve stared out the open door.

Footprints in the snow led off the porch, past the white-mantled pickup truck, past their drift-buried rental car. Vanished in the blizzard.

“She chose,” said Louise. “Ali was
that
strong. Never realized—”

The door slammed shut in their faces.

Blessed heat circled them.

Steve said, “She broke the first imperative: self-preservation.”

Louise shook him. “Focus on what you knew before! Self-preservation isn’t the first imperative! Remember? Sophomore biology and the first imperative,
the first imperative
is preservation of the species!”

“You’re just saying that because you want to have a baby.”

Steve stepped toward her.

Louise took a step back.

Like we’re dancing.

“We don’t need a baby,” said Steve.

He took a step toward her. She took a step away.

His voice came out flat. Hammered. Fixed.

As he said: “We need a story for outsiders. To make them let us stay.”

“You want to leave me!” Louise backed into the living room and he danced with her. “Please remember you want to fuck Ali and leave me!”

Blood on the floor tried to stick her shoes to the wood.

“Just need our story,” he whispered. “Could say . . . Bob, Bob went crazy when we found out his plan.”

Louise stepped farther into the blood. “How do you know his plan?”

“And then he . . . he killed Parker and . . . and hurt Ali, that’s the truth! Tried to kill me and that’s the truth! But we fought him off and they’re all gone now and it’s just us and we have to, we’ll say we won’t let Bob steal our dream to fix this place up—we’ll say it’s in honor of Ali. And Parker!”

“No!” Louise stepped backward out of the blood pool.

Steve cocked his head. “Fixing all this could be a one-person job.”

He smiled. Held out his hand to her as he had for their wedding dance. Stood in sticky the color of raspberry swirls in their chocolate wedding cake.

Louise slapped his hand away. His boots slipped and his legs flipped out from under him. His crash shook the house.

The hammer Parker’d used. Lying on the floor by the newly framed window—
No
: not lying,
moving
, as like a wave, floorboards rippled to surf the hammer toward the blood pool and Steve’s waiting hand.

Louise ran up the stairs.

“Wait!” she heard Steve yell. “We can fix this!”

His footsteps charged up the stairs behind her.

She made it to the second floor. Raced up to the third, past bedrooms where visions of her husband fucking Ali fueled her fear with rage. She ran beside the hallway railing around the open space drop to the first floor.

Looked across that gap and saw Steve running after her, his face twisted and his fist full of hammer.

Stopped
, as if on command, both of them crouching near the rail to glare across the stairwell chasm centering the heart of this crumbling house.

Across the chasm, Steve smiled: “Easy, hon. We’re home.”

Blasts of dust blew from the corners flanking Steve. Floorboards snapped up to slap back down again with a machine-gun racket as two energy waves rippled toward him. They met with a
crack!
and the wood he stood on exploded in splinters. The railing in front of him blew apart and the hole suddenly made in the mansion dropped him into the chasm of its heart.

He fell three stories without a scream.

Louise shut her eyes. Heard him land. Opened her eyes to a mushroom cloud of dust. She peered over the railing.

Steve lay sprawled on his back on the first floor, homicide’s hammer by his limp right hand, a railing chunk driven into his chest as another crimson pool formed around his outline.

You owe me
filled her mind.

She ran down the stairs.

Okay, it’s all okay now, you’re okay.

“No!” yelled Louise as she ran down from the second floor.

You were always the one.

“Oh God oh God oh—”

Whatever created us must want us here. This must be right.

“Stop it!” yelled Louise as she reached the first floor of the house with two dead bodies. “I’ve got to stop thinking so I can see what to do!”

Flashes. Bob’s calculations of probate problems after Parker’s death
just need a good story
and protracted conveyance keeps bulldozers away and
might use who comes to clean up
—No, Louise can do it.
Say
: Steve went stir-crazy, murdered Parker, raped Ali, killed Bob, crumbling house saved her
I saved you
keep the place, live in it,
fix me up
tell rescuers it’s like getting back on the horse.
Could work.

Louise ran for the door before the house
got
what she realized.

She had the door halfway open when it snapped rigid in its frame.

But halfway was wide enough for her to fling herself out into the blizzard. Cold bit her as the door slammed shut behind her. Snow swallowed her legs up to her shins as she stumbled down the porch stairs.
Cold so cold Oh my God yes wonderful because it’s real!
Snowflakes wet her skin and tried to refreeze. Thick white afternoon light let her see Parker’s snowburied pickup. Its steel handles burned her bare hands, but the driver’s-side door swung open to her pull and slammed shut after she was in, behind the wheel. Parker’s corpse sat rigid on the seat beside her.

The dead man stared at the windshield as her shaking hands fished in his shirt pocket . . .
Yes!
Found his lighter, a half-smoked joint and a small plastic bag. Her trembling hands clicked open the metal Zippo lighter, thumbed a blue flame, lit and hoovered a deep hit.

“Staying stoned makes it harder for the thinking to get you,”
the dead man beside her had said.
Hope he was right about that.

She took another quick hit before she stubbed it out:
So little left!

I am freezing in a blizzard-trapped pickup with a dead man.

She saw a bulge in the left front pocket of the dead man’s blue jeans.

Keys!
She leaned the stiff corpse against the passenger window, wriggled her hand into those jeans. The chunk of wood jutted from Parker’s skull but she knew,
she really knew
, that out here, such wood had no power.