Heart and Home

    I had just move into the oldest house on Williams Street and was unpacking after a long drive from New York. The house was an old Victorian house, with run down shutters, chipping paint and countless other fixings to be taken care of. I was from New York, where I had grew up, and decided that when I turned eighteen I would move out of state, to somewhere more secluded. The small town of Raven in Michigan seemed to fit the bill. There were houses every twentey five feet on the road I lived on, and I had bought the one on sale for years.

    “The house has a history” said the real-estate agent when he sold me the house, “used to live here when I was younger. Never much cared for it,” and, I remember, there was a slight sound of anguish and eagerness in his voice. I think his name was Carl something, I can’t remember. Well, it was late at night and I was taking boxes down into the crawl space beneath the house. I had only a pocket light and one light bulb that hung ten feet from the darkened crawl space. It was pitch black. I put the boxes in front of me, on the ledge to the crawl space and pushed them forward. The ground seemed to groan, and as soon as the boxes had been pushed, they were flying in the air. What I saw was a hand, a, bony, lifeless hand spring from the dry earth and throws the boxes. Another hand came up and I didn’t stick around to see what else would. I ran up the stairs, out the door, and across the street to the neighbor’s house. I had met this neighbor earlier, and he said he would be up till ten at night. It was ten-o’-one. I knocked on the door and he came groggily to answer it.

    “Hey, what are you doing this late?” asked Mr. Sherman’s. Mr. Sherman was forty years old and had thinning hair. He worked down at the local hardware store and was a very generous man.

    “I need you to come look at this.” I said frantically. And before he could protest, I dragged him out the door and back to my house, looming in the full moons shadow. I directed him to the basement, got to the crawl space and- Nothing. No skeleton hands or body just knocked over boxes.

    “Now tell me again why were here.”

    “The skeleton hands, arms they were right here.”

    “Okay well they aren’t any more. I am going back to my house. Now get some sleep.” I watched him as he walked out the door, tugged on his robe as if it were cold and ran back to his house. The only thing I didn’t understand was that it was seventy degrees.

    The next day, I woke up to the sound of my alarm going off and got out of bed to go take my shower. I walked in, grabbed my shaving kit out of the box, and set it on the sink. I turned on the water in the shower and let it run. Meanwhile, I closed my eyes, cupped my hands and splashed my face with water. When I had done this three times I realized the water was unusually cold. When I opened my eyes, what I was splashing with was not water, but blood. At that moment I could taste the saltiness of it in my mouth and feel it dripping off my face. When I looked up, there was a man in a flannel night gown staring back. It was his reflection. But suddenly, another man appeared holding a knife. It was dripping with blood. When he looked back down at the sink there was a heart, still beating and spraying blood, sitting in a basin of blood. I flew back, hit the wall and slid to the floor. That was where I would wake up two hours later….

    Two hours later I woke up on my bathroom floor. There was no bloodshed on the sink or mirror. No, nothing weird at all. Except for that the shower had been shut off in my absence. That freaked me out a lot. So I decided to start digging. No, not in the basement. No way was I going back down there. But at the library. I walked into the Raven Township Library, and a sign on the desk read:

Mr. Peterman

    I walked around the desk and a short man, he couldn’t have been more than four feet tall, was sitting behind the counter. “What do you want?” he asked suspiciously, looking up from a book that he held in his hands.

    “Special reference please. I’m looking for a news article.”

    “How old? If you want a news article, look on your front porch.” said the short man, grinning and thinking that his comment was actually funny. He had red hair and a red beard which led me to think he was Irish.    

    “Look, all I need is-” The Irish man interrupted,

    “Its in the back to your left, you can’t miss it.” he said in a grouchy tone.

    “Gee thanks.” I said in a mimicking tone and I walked back to the special reference. There was a machine where two boxes of reels sat. The first box read:

1980-2000

The one on top of it said:

2000-?

    The date that the house was built was in nineteen eighty, so I started with that box. I sat for almost an hour reeling and cranking until, finally, I hit pay dirt. An article from a nineteen eighty six newspaper read:

Man goes crazy. Kills wife and young child.

    So I then knew what had happened with the heart and the man with a knife. What I didn’t understand was they never found the body. He had come forth to police that he had murdered her, but would say where the body was. So I drove back home, after buying a crucifix, and went to the crawl space in the basement to hang it. I heard a sudden creak and a rustling sound. I turned quickly and it was only a bush outside the window. I finished hanging the crucifix and went straight to bed. I woke up to the sound of dishes being clashed together and went downstairs to check it out. When I got there, the dishes had been thrown from the boxes, and a man was standing in the middle of the kitchen. He turned around and it was the same man from the mirror and the newspaper article, the same man whom had sold me the house. He grabbed a handful of dishes and threw them my direction. I dodged all but one which grazed my forehead. I walked back slowly and the man perused faster. I ran to the basement, ripped the crucifix from the wall and held it out in front of me. The man came running at me faster and faster then- Poof. He was gone.

    I was going back to bed when I heard another noise mumbling from the bathroom. It grew louder as I inched my way towards it.

    “Help me.” it said softly. I was almost at the door. “Help me. Please.” I was at the door. I put my hand on it and got ready to swing It open. I busted the door open. “HELP ME! WHY WON’T ANYBODY HELP ME!” The voice screamed at the top of its lungs. There was blood every where. On the floor, the bathtub, the sink and walls. The mirror was the only exception. There was a small place where the mirror had been rubbed free of blood. When I looked into the glass what I saw this time wasn’t my own reflection. It was the real estates man’s reflection. What was his name again? I thought to myself. He was covered in blood. He had been the murder. But he must have aged. No duh, he’s a ghost, said the voice at the back of my mind. Then I felt a hot stabbing pain in my chest, and saw blood coming out of the wound. There was a heart in the sink. My heart. Still beating and spraying blood. I ran to the bedroom and fell into a fuzzy haze…

    I woke up in the basement. I could hear a noise upstairs. A lot of noises in fact. I walked up the steps and walked through the door. There were police officers everywhere, and I walked up to one.

    “Excuse me sir, what’s going on?” I asked tapping him on the shoulder. The man turned around slightly, rubbed his shoulder and went on talking to his buddy. I walked up to another police officer, same thing. I walked upstairs and every thing came together. They were carrying a body out on a stretcher. There was a hole in his chest and a knife in his hand. Blood was everywhere in the bathroom. When I walked in, I looked in the mirror. No reflection. Then I realized that body was mine. The woman had been killed by a stab to the heart. But what I didn’t understand was that if he wanted me out of the house, why kill me, why trap my soul here? So now I wander aimlessly through the house. Waiting. Waiting for the real estate man to sell the house again. Oh, wait time to greet the new visitors….

The End