The Graveyard Shift (11 page)

“Time for a shower,” Jack said, chuckling to himself. “I hope you’re in the mood to mingle.”

Jack talked to me, and often. Even in his best days, Jonathan Everton never noticed my presence. With him I was more of a silent guardian. Only the children acknowledged my being, when we played hide-and-seek games in their youth. Eventually, they too turned a blind eye. Now, with a new master, an adult who knew of my life force, it was as if I had made a real friend. It was nice. And so it was pleasant when Jack invited a dozen or so friends over that night. They were quiet artist-types that wore scarves and tiny, circular glasses and said things like “postmodern” and “Avant-garde” as they sipped hefty goblets of wine carried up from the cellar.

They admired Jack’s work, and I could see in their eyes that they were fond of him.
As fond of him as I was. They didn’t just like his art. They respected it. And they respected me. Hands delicately reached out to caress me, and soft whispers confirmed how ‘cool’ I was. How ‘elegant.’

“I’d like to make an announcement,” Jack called out, half way into the night. “Ladies and gentlemen
, please, if you could gather round.”

Men and women assembled in the den as Jack stood before the hearth. I hadn’t noticed it before, because I was so entranced by the people admiring my walls, but Jonathan’s lamp was sitting on one of Jonathan’s old night stands, both on center display, like artwork. I might have thought it was artwork, too, but never knew that Jack felt this way.

“I know you’re wondering why I relocated my gallery, and to here of all places,” Jack said. With that, total silence finally fell over the room. “And that’s because art is alive.” He clenched his fist, swept across the room with mischievous eyes, and repeated, “Art is alive.”

“Hear, hear,” toasted a man, as he raised his wine glass. This was met with a few bursts of muffled applause.

“And I’m going to demonstrate that for you all tonight,” Jack said. “Because this house—
this house
is alive. This entire house is art, and it is
alive
.”

This was met with some hushed whispers. What was Jack doing? Why was he calling attention to me?

“Turn on your master’s old lamp,” Jack said. “Please, I beg of you. Don’t make a fool of me in front of my new friends.” This was met with a bit of laughter.

I don’t
know why I did it—perhaps it was out of blind trust—but I complied with his request. The lamp flicked on, and the crowd oohed and aahed not only as the bulb burst to life, but as the lamp’s chain remained swinging to and fro.

“Is this some elaborate trick?” another man asked, giving a slow, sarcastic clap. “Bravo, Jack. Bravo.”

“No trick,” Jack replied. “What do you want it to do? Ask it anything. Maybe, just maybe it’ll answer.”

More laughter.

The man raised his hand to his chin and thought. “I don’t know, close the door?”

Jack gestured for me. I made the door slam firmly in its threshold. The
young woman beside it jumped, threw her hand up to the breast of her flannel jacket, and let out a nervous laugh.

“Some good trickery,” the man continued, even as
his very embarrassed date tugged at his coat’s sleeve and quietly asked him to stop. “How do you do it, Jack? Switches? Hidden strings? I love the gimmick, but come on, you want us to buy that this house is actually alive?”

Jack didn’t have to say anything, because that angered me. I didn’t like this man, not for doubting Jack, but for doubting me. And so I unscrewed a light bulb on the ceiling—eyes were drawn to it as it flickered out and swiveled madly in the socket—and dropped it toward his head. The man stepped nimbly aside as it exploded on the floor into a thousand tiny shards, gasping in bewilderment.

“That almost hit me!”

Yes, that
almost
hit him, but the fire poker near the hearth—that I delivered, blunt side first, straight into his liver.

“What the fuck?” the man demanded, as he recoiled and grabbed his stomach in agony.

“Easy, easy,” Jack said, with his hands spread out in a gesture of peace. “This man meant no harm.” He glanced at the man with hands spread. “Now do you believe that it’s alive? Aren’t emotions a sign of life? You taunted it, and you got a response. Anger.”

It was true. I was angry, angry at being exploited like a novelty. I was not a parlor trick to be sh
own off. I was a house, a sentient guardian for those that dwelled within me.

But it was too late. I had showed them what they all wanted to se
e, and for the next thirty minutes the gallery was abuzz with men and women that wandered my hallways and ran their hands along me like children learning the contours of a new toy. And they egged me on while they did it.

“Can you make time go forward?” a young man asked idiotically, as he stared up at one of Mr. Everton’s old clocks.

I turned the clock upside down on its nail, and when the fellow leaned sideways to stare, I swept the rug out from beneath his feet.

“Can you do something for me to show me you’re
really
alive, house?” a woman asked, as she and two friends walked into the den.

I unplugged the lamp in the corner of the room and
whipped her straight in the hindquarters with the cord. I didn’t need to justify my existence to the likes of
her
. And yet, rather than scream and run as the other tenants had, this girl laughed. And asked me to do it again.

They were actually enjoying themselves. I was perplexed. Something was deeply amiss here. I had made a miscalculation about Jack. Jonathan Everton had a maxim that he firmly repeated to his own growing son over the years, and it came to me at that moment.

“A man is equal to the friends he keeps,” Jonathan had said to young Theodore. It was an idea that I had always agreed with, but never truly understood. That is, I never understood the depth of the sentiment until that moment.

I watched Jack grin, hoisting his wine glass aloft to salute the giggling woman whose backside I had just whipped. The sight of him—of his approval of this juvenile madness and the exploitation of my presence—it broke my heart. I did not appreciate the reckless foolishness of his comrades, nor of his encouragement. It disappointed me. I had opened myself up to trusting Jack and now I witnessed a side of him that I did not like. And what was that he had said about opening a gallery within my walls? Was that the purpose of the fully loaded box truck sitting out front? And of the art easels currently strewn all about the main floor?

My floorboards groaned as I felt rage well up within me. There was fire in my belly. And for a moment it overwhelmed me. I acted without thinking, without control of myself. Many things happened in the following seconds, only a handful of which I was able to later recall.

The reverie of the partygoers was silenced when every one of my windows slid upward and came crashing down in their frames, slide locks firmly set in place. In the next second I slammed all of my open doors closed, upstairs and down, effectively sealing the majority of the party into the confines of the den. After I killed the electrical service at the control panel in the basement, one woman dropped her wine glass, sending a blood-colored spray of cabernet across one of the
Evertons’ largest rugs. In the firelight, the glass shards sparkled like electrified snowflakes under her shoes.

The woman screamed, which was followed by another. I scarcely even heard it over the sound of what came next. The flames in the fireplace surged outward and into the room, flailing like a whip toward Jack’s guests, and even at Jack himself.
All those attendant to my wrath were backed against the walls, scrambling to claw at the immobile doors and windows. I was unable to reach them with the flames, but I knew that I didn’t need to burn them. I slid the flue shut with a rattling creak and immediately smoke began to fill the room.

I tried to hurl Jack’s paintings and their stands toward the hungry fire, but found them immobile against my will. Instead, I split the wood floors where the feet of the easels stood, causing the stands to collapse. His precious paintings, those of such vibrant color and love, tumbled to the ground.

The scene began to blacken as faces and limbs became blurred to me. And then I realized that the looming darkness was not just an effect of the smoke. It felt as if I were losing control of my being. My seething vengeance began to drift away, like so much dissipating ash in the wind. The roaring flames, the billowing smoke, and the frightened beasts screaming in my den: all of them were swallowed by the storming shadows of my rapidly approaching unconsciousness.

And then the world went black.

I do not know exactly how much time passed.

When I awoke, sunlight shone through my windows, kissing the hardwood floors with morning warmth. Outside, the sparrows sang their
song, and never before had their voices been more welcome. Glimpses of the party scene replayed in my thoughts, scenes from a passing dream. Though I was not one for dreaming. I do not think I was capable of it. I recalled the distress and the anger, the unleashed rage, and felt ashamed.

Panic st
ole over my waking mind as I rested there, my being focused in the upstairs study, soaking up the morning sun. What were the results of my fury? What had I done? Had I frightened Jack away? He was the closest thing to a friend I had possessed in decades. Even worse, had I hurt him? Or possibly killed someone with my attack at the party? The scene came crashing back to me with horrifying clarity.

I did not feel well. Perhaps it was a residual effect of my convalescence, but I had trouble focusing my thoughts. My senses felt dulled and incomp
lete. And there was pain. A quickly growing throb began to spread through my wooden bones. Something was wrong with my insides. And yet I found it incredibly difficult finding the willpower to investigate. It took all of my strength to divert my physical attention from the warm, calming serenity of Mr. Everton’s study and move about the house.

My mind drew me downstairs, where my senses told me I would find Jack.

When I first sighted Jack, I was relieved to find him alive. I had pictured a heap of smoke-choked corpses awaiting my return to the den. What I found instead, was Jack on hands and knees, whistling and doing some repairs to the damage that I had no doubt caused during my outburst. My relief was so great that I unlatched my windows and inhaled a deep gust of rich, outdoor air. Briefly, the aching pain subsided.

“Well hello,” Jack said, without looking up from his work. I turned my attention back to him, aware now of the grating sensation of his sandpaper against my floor.
“Nice to see you. I was wondering when you’d get around to stirring again. The party must have really done a number on you, eh?”

Indeed it had. And as I watched Jack’s careful, loving hands sanding the spots on the floor which I had collapsed to topple his easels,
I felt bad. I felt guilty even. I looked to the mantle above the empty fireplace and saw that the sunflowers had not been disturbed. For that I was almost doubly thankful. And then I scanned the room to inspect the other paintings. They were all fine, as well. But then I paused, considering the entirety of the room as a whole. Something was different. No, not just that. Something was
wrong
.

It took a moment, but I finally registered what had happened. With dawning horror, I realized what this man had done. He had stripped me of every piece of antique furniture that the Everton family had left behind. The sofas, the ottomans,
the office furniture: all of it was gone. Even the beds, the twin frames where young Theodore and June dreamed the dreams of youthful innocence, had been taken away. My bones shivered within the walls as I finally learned what that dull, persistent pain was. It was the absence of the furniture, torn unwillingly from my body like perfectly healthy teeth.

When had this happened?
And why? Once more I felt the boiling surge of pure anger rising inside of me. But it was halted by exhaustion. My senses dulled, blackness again threatening to overtake me. My windows snapped instantly to their highest positions, but slowly slid back to rest against the sills.

“That’s what I thought,” Jack said, smirking as if I had confirmed something to him. “I hope you don’t mind that I’ve taken the liberty of doing a little rearranging. After all, I’ve only got another week to get this place fixed up before the gallery opens. Your little stunt with the fireplace set me back a whole six days. I’m just now finishing.”

Six days, he had said. How was that possible?

“Don’t worry, I’m in the process of making sure that sort of thing never happens again.”

To my horror, I could see instantly what he was talking about. It wasn’t just the furniture. All of the Everton’s belongings were gone. Every single item. Jonathan’s lamp was gone. As was Gloria’s vanity mirror in the bedroom. Even the refrigerator and stove had been replaced with old, antique-looking models just slightly differing in appearance from the Evertons’, and to a stranger, they might have looked as if they had had been there all along. But I knew they were different. I knew they were replacements. They all smelled—and felt—like Jack.

And so, when I tried to light the stove and set his new curtains ablaze, the only fireworks I found were in the corner of my vision. I became woozy once more, and after my vision hazily restored itself, I saw that the knob on the stove had not so much as budged.