she’d have had problems with their rentals which had an abundance of both. This was different. It felt like pressure, as if the atmosphere were somehow condensed.
“I feel like we just went back in time about 40 years.” Tanner said.
“At least. Look at the kitchen. There are still plates in the sink.” An ancient bottle of dish soap, its contents long since turned to a whitish solid sat next to a sink with plates in it, the water long gone, and any food left on the plates certainly eaten by rats or mice.
A table sat near the center of the front “room”. There really weren’t rooms, at least not rooms with walls. Here and there a sheet of paneling helped to define the skeletal outline of a room made of studs, a door hanging open in ridiculous parody. You could walk through all the walls in at least one place. The nice thing about this, especially here in the semi-darkness, was that there weren’t very many places you could hide. Looking upwards, even most of the second floor was visible. Tanner was climbing the stairs.
“You sure they’re ok? I’m lighter.” Jen said.
“No way I’m letting you try this. If you fell, and I had to take you back to your dad hurt, he’d have my skin on the wall.
“What if you fall? I couldn’t carry you to the boat, and probably couldn’t drive the thing anyway.”
“I won’t fall. Promise.”
“Please be careful?” she said pleading just slightly in a just slightly girly voice. It worked. Tanner looked at her. Eye contact again, and part of his heart melted. He’d be careful.
He helped his uncle part of the summer and weekends during the year frame houses, and knew how to walk up a set of unstable steps. Put your feet near the ends of the risers, not the middle, never put your full weight on one foot, and always partially support your weight with your arms with whatever was available. And, the cardinal rule of wall framing. “Never fall. Jump.” He could hear his uncle’s words: “You fall, Sir Isaac Newton is in control of your fate. Jump and you can choose your landing area.” Jen watched attentively. Mostly his calves as he climbed, which looked like they belonged on a statue.
Tanner reached the landing, such as it was, and looked around. The upstairs was really unsafe. Missing floorboards, patchwork overlays of plywood, dangerously rotting. Not good. The only real room in the whole house was up here, though. It was a closet and it had two full walls which, wedged in a corner, made for a room with a door. It was all the way on the other side of the upstairs from the landing, and Tanner regarded it, assessing the risk involved with crossing.
“Don’t think about it.” Jen said, sternly. Then, softening, “Please?” Girly again. Her head was really starting to pound, the headache becoming a very unwelcome guest.
Tanner looked at her, at the closet, back at her and smiled.
“Probably nothing in there anyway.” He said, trying to sound confident. He spent a few more moments surveying the upstairs. The walls had never held paneling or sheetrock, and as far as he could tell, this floor had never been used. The flooring had probably been an attempt to finish out the upstairs, and the plywood probably thrown down so they could store things up there. He turned and descended the stairs, looking first to where he could jump if he had to. Jen was reaching for his hand when he got down. And she didn’t let go once he got down. They were going to explore the rest of the gloomy house hand in hand. It was as natural as breathing for them. She hated this headache, which was busily encroaching on an otherwise very pleasant experience.
The ground floor was just odd. It appeared that the house was used, but not much, and in fact, hardly even usable. There was an absolute minimum of lake house essentials – from cooking implements to furniture – but that could have been moved out long ago. The overall impression was one of someone having attempted to set up a lake house, then realizing they had no idea how to go about it, just giving up in disgrace or embarrassment. It had an overwhelming sense of failure about it. There was also an almost palpable sense of something about to happen. At first, Jen thought that it was because of that childhood notion that the owners should “come home” and catch them, but it wasn’t that. It was a sense of something about to happen here. Something already here. Jen shuddered, partly from the chill on her tanned skin, partly from something else. The house was obviously very empty – had been so for decades – and yet still had a sense of occupancy to it.
“This is weird. They’ve got a couple of like ancient bait casting reels over here, but they have spinning reels on them.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Jen quipped.
“Well, it’s an “I don’t know the first thing about fishing” thing.” Tanner said. Jen laughed through her headache.
“What’s with the table? There are still cards on it. Man, did these folks leave in a hurry, or what.”
Tanner walked to the table as he spoke. Three hands, 4 cards down, all the way around. ”Poker. Five card stud, I think.” The truth was he knew little about poker, but he figured she wouldn’t know the difference, and he wanted it to sound a little macho.
“Five card draw, I think.” She said, pulling up the four down cards nearest her. She looked at these because they were in front of the only thing in the place that appeared to be upset. The chair had been turned backwards, and lay on the floor.
“Dead man’s hand.” She said.
“What’s that?” He’d given up on the macho thing.
“Two pair, Aces over Eights. It’s what Wild Bill Hickock held in his hand when he was shot in the back in a saloon. In South Dakota, I think.”
Tanner was impressed, and a little embarrassed. He instinctively looked at the other hands.
“The two pair would have won.”
“Maybe he did.”
About this time the sun, seemingly a distant irrelevant object to their current situation, ducked behind a cloud. The result was that combined with the gloom under the pines, within the house it was almost as if night had fallen. They both looked up from the table and scanned the first floor, as if the whole house had changed. In a way it had. Now there were no spot lit items. Everything lay in gloom. Everything save one thing. Through some trick of the light – perhaps a tree limb blew out of the way for a few moments and allowed the only direct light available to find a window, slant inwards through the top floor onto a picture over the mantle.
“Wow. It’s like a spot light on the picture. Wonder who it is?” Jen said.
Tanner and Jen walked to the fireplace and looked side by side – still hand in hand – at a yellowed and faded photo of a boy – a young man, perhaps - holding up a stringer of smallish pike, with an eerie, almost garish smile on his face, as if he’d taken pleasure watching the fish die.
“Creepy kid!” Tanner said.
“It’s hard to say whether he’s a kid or not. The light shifts and he looks like he’s our age.” Jen said, squinting hard at the face. Then, as suddenly as it had gone, the sun-spotlights shown in again, and the room seemed relatively well lit compared to the momentary gloom of a moment before. The picture, by contrast, disappeared into the grey semi-dark above the mantle.
“We better go. It’s getting late, I think”. Tanner said.
“Yeah.” Jen said, looking at her watch. She was ready to take something for this headache, too.
“What time did we leave?” she asked.
“I think it was about 2.” Tanner said “Why”
“When do you think we got here?”
”Oh, probably about 3:15, 3:30. Why?”
“It’s quarter to six, that’s why!” she said looking at him wide eyed. His eyes widened too. They looked around.
“Let’s go.” They said in unison, leaving through the back door, closing it unlatched on the inside. They walked around the front, crossing over the porch to avoid the undergrowth. Jen peered in one last time through a window, hands cupped around her face. She saw an odd old shoe in one of the chance sunlit spotlights now. A loafer with a penny stuck in the tongue. A penny loafer.
“I don’t remember seeing a shoe in there.” She said.
“I don’t either.” Tanner responded.
She turned to Tanner, about to tell him to come look, but he was already pressing his face against the glass.
“What shoe?” he said
“Right there…” she started, but, looking at the same spot, there was only bare floor surrounded by darkness.
“I guess the light moved.” he said.
“I guess…” she said. Backing away from the window. She backed all the way off the porch and jogged back to the boat.
“Hey! Wait up!” Tanner said as he jogged behind.
They were soon off for the opposite, brightly lit, summery late afternoon shore. It looked real and right. Jen did not look behind her as they pulled away and was grateful to the healthy sounding, beefy V8 as it roared to life. Tanner was in a hurry, and that was alright with her. He didn’t look back either, until they’d reached the middle of the lake. When he did, he was almost relieved to note that the house had gone back into hiding again in the dense pines of the far shore, almost as if it hadn’t existed, as if the last few hours hadn’t elapsed. Jen’s headache faded as the evening sun lowered and her distance from the house and the day’s adventure lengthened.
Delcie
The accursed clouds moved in almost every day at the same time. Prime tanning time, about 2 pm. Delcie cursed, not loud enough to be heard over the radio, but loud enough to register her