“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.