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The furniture rearranged itself around the room again. The
couch stood in the center of the room upright.
Perpendicular, it towered over the man. He hoped the
exertion to correct it would not strain his sore back which
pained him from correcting the room earlier. A rug sat
rolled against the wall, wrapped tight like a quality cigar.
The heavy circular oak coffee table lay against the wall
upended and skewered at an awkward angle as if kicked aside
by a giant clearing a path through the room. A fire blazed
in the fireplace where before it was cold and dark. Smoke
tendrils snaked up around the mantle trying to escape
upwards to the heavens, but were blocked by the unopened
flue. A growing pool of smoke collected in the corner where
ceiling met wall. Open books lay strewn about all around the
room, knocked down from their homes on the shelves. Dust
settled in the room from the recent unseen ruckus which
created the disarray.
He left the
room for but a moment. There had been no sound, and this was
not the first time. Not the first time since he had moved
in, not even the first time today.
He
inherited the house from his estranged father. Other than
the photograph and his surname, the house was all he knew of
his dad. The call from the executor of the family estate
surprised him when he received it months ago. At the time he
was employed with a small-time moving company, which was but
one in a long list of short-term vocations after dropping
out of high school he tried on: dishwasher, janitor,
brick-layer, waiter, and short order cook, among others. He
wore many faces and tried many different parts but had not
found his place. He felt a calling which he could not name
or determine from where it came. The moving job wore thin
and he was ready once again to try on a new skin when the
phone rang.
The house’s
life spanned over a century. The decrepit walls wore thick
nicotine stains from generations of smokers, and the smell
of pipe tobacco wafted through the house, even though he
himself did not smoke. The wallpaper peeled in places, the
ancient glue degraded to dust over the years. The sun
penetrated the windows with difficulty, the glass coated
with dust and grime from neglect and years of bad
housekeeping. The stench of mold overpowered at times, and
his mind held no doubt that the constant dripping from his
nose was the result of those allergens. The house terrified
and repulsed him, it made him physically sick, but he had
nowhere else to go. The house held him tight. Whether he
liked it or not, he knew the origination of that call he had
felt during his aimless years. He reached his destination,
and, so far, had found nothing but disappointment.
Everything
had been left behind. His job, the small economy motel room
he called home, and all of his many disposable friends.
Other than a few clothes and his shoebox of memories which
fit in a small suitcase, he deserted his other possessions
understanding their meaninglessness. This pained him little
because most of what mattered to him was stolen away. Taken
by his now ex-wife after an ugly divorce. She informed him
daily of her belief he would never amount to anything, and
he obliged her, living up to her less than lofty
expectations. She wanted him to be the white-collar guy,
freeing her to quit her job, shop, and make babies. But he
found the white collars starched too stiff and the ties
strangled him. He wore that chain once and promised himself
he would not do it again.
He worked
for a time with her father at his small start-up selling
prefabricated housing. His job consisted of sitting at a
small desk in a white room filled by the hum of fluorescent
lights overhead and making outbound phone calls to potential
leads. Their marketing strategy involved sending out mailers
with a prepaid postcard interested parties could return
requesting more information. He started his day by sorting
through the cards and collecting together all of those
including a phone number, and then he would begin dialing.
Ninety percent of the
phone calls went unanswered, either ringing until he gave up
and dialed the next number, or sending him to a messaging
system where he left an awkward scripted message with the
phone number for inbound sales. Angry voices answered nine
percent of the calls, infuriated that he dared to call their
number – this despite the fact they wrote down their number
requesting more information.
Then there was that
other one percent. They showed an interest. As he began
finalizing the sale, his tongue swelled inside his mouth.
His speech grew clumsy. All his potential sales remained
open. His awkward voice on the line created hesitation. Not
once did he close. His office job in the white-collar world
lasted under a month. He returned to the street, filling out
applications for manual labor jobs knowing that being
tongue-tied would not affect job performance.
Tucked
inside his box of memories was a sepia-toned picture of his
parents while young, the only image of his creators. This is
how he knew them, not remembering seeing them alive. Mother
died during childbirth, and his father deserted him on a
doorstep at the orphanage wrapped in nothing but a dirty
dishtowel with nothing but the picture. The picture was his
first gift, and he treasured it. The worn image bore signs
of many days and nights spent gazing at the frozen scene,
looking for clues about his past.
The couple
smiled at the forefront of the picture. The night sky
behind them illuminated with large bright glowing bulbs
adorning a Ferris wheel full of eager teenagers finding a
new place for that ever-elusive make-out session. Around
them in the background, he saw stands set up where young men
competed against rigged games attempting to win stuffed
animals for their sweethearts as collateral for their own
rides on the Ferris wheel. His father had been one of the
lucky ones: Mother smiled with a stuffed tiger tucked under
her arm.
He etched the image into
his head, storing every minute detail for safe-keeping. One
image hidden away in a darkened corner of the photograph
haunted him: the figure of the barker.
He stood in
black suit and hat, his right arm raised and pointing to the
moonless sky, his left arm pointing to something off the
picture with a black silver-pointed cane. In the direction
he pointed, where the picture cut off the scene was an
illuminated sign reading “House of Horrors.” The barker’s
mouth was open and as a boy – even now as a man – he felt
the voice calling to him from across the decades without a
sound, pitching his wares with a deep shout rising over the
festivity.
He felt the
barker in the house. He heard him in the silence.
While married, his wife
attended a college drama course. He took her to a play one
night on campus for extra credit. It was a strange Asian
drama, which mesmerized him while leaving him confounded at
the conclusion: he had no clue what it was about. He lost
himself in an abstract and otherworldly drama from the other
side of the world, enchanted by the confusion. What stood
out most were the people dressed all in black who
manipulated the stage sets while the action took place,
keeping the onstage settings fluid. There were no breaks
between acts like he expected. The black figures updated all
the sets while the play took place, and they stuck out in
his head because of the fact he hardly noticed them at all.
When thinking back on
the play, he thought the stagehands were the true stars.
Unnoticed and unseen, they were faceless shadows, but they
created the beautiful garden and temple scenes where the
story took place. They created and manipulated the
backdrops, and without them, the actors would have been lost
in the void of an empty stage. The dialogue reduced to noise
without a setting.
He wondered
who the people were in the black suits. The program for the
play made no mention of their names. He determined they were
listed anonymously under the heading for stagehands, but
thought that theirs should have been the names on the
marquee outside the theatre instead of the actor and actress
with the title roles.
A recurring
dream inspired by his parents’ photo haunted him: a
nightmare repeating and growing in detail until no longer a
dream but a memory as real as any other stored away in his
mind. His heart knew the truth in the dream, but the rest of
him was slow to catch up. He strode in his father’s shoes,
Mother on his arm smiling. The barker spoke, his mouth
moved, but there was no sound. Like moths to the moon, they
walked to where the barker pointed, drawn without
understanding why. The night was perfect, there was romance
and laughter all around, why walk away from it all to the
darkened building containing the screams? But the pull was
powerful and he consented; Mother’s face grew grave with
concern.
They sat in
a little chain-pulled car, and felt their bodies lurch as it
moved forward towards some deep scarlet curtains which slid
open revealing the blackness inside. Then he awoke screaming
and sweating. He felt frozen in place with his body unable
to move. The face of the barker laughed above him, looking
down with eyes containing no whites – tinged by pure
darkness. The doctors had diagnosed it as sleep terrors, but
he knew better.
His wife
left without a word, without any explanation: none was
needed. He sat staring out the window. He heard her
shuffling footsteps behind him. His back remained turned
towards her. He knew there was no point in looking over his
shoulder. No point of having that memory lodged in his mind.
There was no need for more pictures of failure in his mental
gallery. He turned and found the note. Clear and concise, it
told him to have his bags packed and be out by Friday or be
ready for court. The papers were written out in the
envelope, her name already signed and dated. He left that
day.
He wondered
why she had married him at all. He didn’t remember asking
her. It just happened. He blinked and was married, and the
marriage had already grown stale.
The
marriage resembled the other chapters of his life, or his
excuse for one.
The
orphanage and the foster homes were a carousel in his mind,
just a trip in a circle through different backdrops. He rode
the ride, moving vertically in his circle, feeling the highs
and lows while going nowhere.
Inside the
house he knew his father, and he knew he was his father, and
he knew his mother, and he knew he was his mother. The
mental images faded and merged until becoming a grey and
tasteless porridge. The furniture moved with the shadows and
he cried.
He looked
out the window and expected to see her there. He tried to
turn around, to tell her not to go, but his tongue swelled
and he doubted he could sell himself to her anyways.
He found a
secret room. He leaned on a bookcase one day as he picked up
an ancient volume, The Outline of History, by H.G. Wells.
The bookcase swung in and he found himself in a stone room
with a candle perched on a pedestal waiting to be lit.
Pinpoints of light streamed in through the darkness from
holes cut in the pupils of the portrait of his
great-grandfather which sat above the mantle. There was a
short stone staircase leading to the back of the picture. He
walked up noticing the recent footprints in the dust from
his own shoes. He looked through the eyeholes, saw himself
leafing through a book, and he could not remember what the
words meant.
Other
memories revealed themselves during the dreamless moments
before sleep. He laid in the large feathered bed on the
second floor, wrapped tight and weighed down with a
multitude of quilts. It labored his chest to breathe, but
kept him warm in the drafty house. He watched icicles gather
on the eaves of the house.
Scenes of his own
childhood flittered through his mind, memories of other
people. He saw himself sitting at his grandfather’s desk,
studying the books and dreaming up the enterprise which led
to the estate and the inheritance passed down the family
line until it reached him. He saw his father’s childhood and
that of his mother; full of memories of toys long rusted and
gone.
Time moved with swift
footsteps. The days scented by flower-hued summer, while the
nights wore a robe the color of winter with frost gathering
on the windowpanes. He felt spring in the dawn as it rained
outside, and he spent his dusks on the front porch watching
the burning amber colors of autumn blaze with the sunset.
He woke to
a new house every day, to another place, another time,
always himself while never knowing who he was. He forgot his
name while other memories forged their way into his mind.
Some days, he began to remember, but the orderly always
entered with another cup of colors to help him forget.
*END* |
