The House

            I grew up playing the Game like the others. The rules were simple: break apart the house next door. But you had to do it without getting caught. Legend says that Danny caught a boy called Grubbs knocking out the glass in the front window of the tired three-story. They say Grubbs’ cries were heard from as far away as Main and the Boulevard. They say that poor Grubbs was never seen again. Of course, if you ever asked one of the long-timers, they’d tell you they never heard of Grubbs, but the front window of the house is still busted.

The House still stands there, miraculously, on the corner of fourteenth. In those early days of my life, it became a game to make the house next door to the shelter look worse (easier said than done). The sickly yellow paint peeled in strips, and most of the windows were blocked by the backs of shelves or desks or something of their nature. The porch’s awning was being held by only one of its four support beams—two of them had fallen before anyone could remember, and we had promptly taken care of the third. On the side of the house that faced the shelter, there were burn marks—remnants of a house fire, perhaps. Wooden flats covered several of the upstairs windows. The short drive was infested with St. John’s Wart. If you looked close enough, you could see the gravel path—now buried in weeds—that led to the front door. The door was nicked from thrown rocks, and the screen door that should have been in place was long ago taken as a prize. It wasn’t altogether uninviting, though. From an outside perspective, you might say it was the appearance of the house that drew us there, like pirate adventurers to Spanish galleons. We could feel that the house was strangely cursed—though you’d only feel it as a kid—and it was just begging to be taken down.

            My gang at the shelter created the Game to destroy the house next door. Before that we had started wrecking the shelter, itself. When Danny started getting on our cases about it, we took to the surrounding residences. This is the only home you got now, so why are you wrecking it? he had said, but back then, we took pride in our delinquency. None of us had family except for a few who had more to gain by pretending they didn’t. We weren’t in the System; we were just on the streets like animals. When Danny found me, I’d been taking trash out of dumpsters. Lord only knows what happened to my parents. The shelter was Danny’s project. He found some money from a private donor and gave a home to us street urchins. We never questioned it; we just sort-of gathered there, under the radar. We were forgotten—leftovers swept under a rug. The shelter, no more than an abandoned building, protected its residents from the slum-stink of vomiting summer sewers. Some who came to the shelter tried desperately to get out. There were a lot of us, though, who were practically born to stay at the shelter. For us, the shelter was home.

            It used to be that I didn’t play with the other kids. I spent most of my time with Jango and his books. Jango was one of the long-timers. Most of the long-timers were just begging to talk to you about their lives before they had landed. Some of them had lost their cash in stocks or from gambling. Some had just fallen on rough luck. Jango never talked about his past, though. He told me once that the past was a relic, and that, like most relics, it has no practical value. He said Forgive the past. Then forget it. I never really learned where he came from, but I guess it never really mattered. What mattered to Jango, though, were his books. Most he had brought into the shelter, and used to set up our own little library. Most of us couldn’t read, so it wasn’t a big deal, but to Jango, literature was worth more than cash. He taught me Poe and Lovecraft—the horror stories I loved most. We didn’t go to school so most of the shelter kids were stupid, and couldn’t read. I’m still pretty stupid, probably.

            Danny encouraged me to start playing with the other kids. He said he didn’t like me hanging out with Jango so much. You should be around other kids, he said. It was with Danny’s encouragement, that I met Rat. Rat was short, even for our age, and wide—like a rat. He had dark hair and was the first of us to find a hair on his chin. I remembered Rat from meals because all the kids had to sit together. He was the first boy to call me Worm. Ey, Bookworm! Why come ya never git your face out them books? That your name, ennit? Worm? Danny said that I would be a good influence on Rat and the other boys, but I couldn’t guess why he would think that.

            I took to the name Worm well enough. We all got our names, and it made us something of a club and a family. I was Worm, Rat was Rat. There was Hawk and Pink and Fresh and Skinny. The gang—that’s the ones I just told you about—made me the plan-guy, since I was “educated.” I figured out the best way to steal fruit from the carts past twenty-third, and when the best time would be to go by the restaurants for free stuff (You would normally think it was the end of the day, but if you could catch them around noon, they started tossing the uneaten breakfast foods). I learned the best way to avoid police, and taught the others the paths they should take if they were ever caught so they wouldn’t lead them back to the shelter.

            The Game made its come-back in the summer after I became Worm. Whenever we walked outside we would sweat. Danny was making repairs to the shelter, so we were forced to stay in the sun to play, anyway. If we went too far from the shelter, though, our shoes would begin to squish with the garbage-bag leakage that was in abundance that summer. Instead, Rat told us the story of the House.

            It’s haunted, guys, totally. Ain’t no one been in there ever! I heard a witch used to live up there in the upstairs. She was the kind that ate kids, you know? That’s why we do what we do and break the house. We have to avenge Grubbs!

            The argument compelled us, so we struck up the nerve to play. We started small: tearing out loose nails in the porch; scratching crude remarks into the side of the house. Anything we took, we would collect in a corner behind the rusty push mower in the shed behind the shelter. Sometimes we would hide things in really obvious places around the shelter, itself, just to see if Danny would ever catch onto our scheme. It was Fresh and Skinny who yanked part of the railing off the porch and slid it under the Danny’s bed. For an entire week, we would systematically sneak into his room to see if he had noticed.

            About a month or so into the Game, Danny caught Hawk throwing chunks of broken asphalt at the upper windows. The rest of us hid, and not a soul came to his aid when we heard him screaming from the beating. Because Hawk got caught, Pink dropped out—she was only in it for Hawk from the start. The two of them ran off one night, and we didn’t see them again that summer.

The next week, Fresh got caught by the police for lifting mangoes near Uptown. Skinny showed up out of breath from having run all the alleyways it took to get back to our haven. Skinny and Fresh had apparently been lifting from the same shop consistently, so the shop-keep set up a trap. Fresh’s arm was gashed, and bled through the torn shirt he’d wrapped around it.

Got fenced by that rust-trap off the Ave. I live though, he said. When his cut started changing color, though, we showed him to Danny. He chewed us out for being reckless and sent Rat and me away. The next morning, Danny and Skinny were gone. Jango told me he’d taken Skinny to the hospital. Gangrene, he’d suggested. Or Tetanus. Whatever it was, Danny came back alone. We didn’t see Skinny again that summer. We never saw Fresh, either.

Rat insisted that we continued, even though it was just the two of us. Rat and Worm, he said. We’s a team, man. We gotta stick it through. Rat decided without me that we needed to step up our game. The witch must be vanished!

“Vanquished,” I corrected. He wanted to break into the house—a task that had not been achieved by any of the shelter kids before us. I knew that there couldn’t be a witch or anything in there—they weren’t real after all—but I still thought it would be a bad idea to try to break-in. Fresh was arrested, Hawk and Pink were probably living it up somewhere, and Skinny—well Skinny could be dead for all we knew. Ever since we lost the gang, I’d been worrying about what we did here. Whether it was right.

Ten year olds shouldn’t be having existential crises, Jango told me. Despite Danny’s request, I still came to chat with him every so often. You steal because you have to. You break things because you’re a volatile ragamuffin, and that’s what you do. Don’t worry so much about it.

I ended up asking Danny, as well. I didn’t mention the house or the Game, but I did ask about the other things. What happened to Skinny was unfortunate, but I’m sure that he’s fine. I was playing around with the helmet he left on the floor by his door. Danny was once in Iraq, but he left and came here. He had always said that there were better things to be done than killing people. We knew what he did was illegal, but even the long-timers kept quiet about it. You have to remember that what we’re doing out here—our home—is technically against the law. We live a rent-free life, and make the best of our condition by scavenging things from around us. We take care of each other the best we can, but when we can’t, we have to enter the System.

“And that’s what happened to Skinny? To Fresh?” I asked. We were in his room. The chunk of the house’s porch was still nestled beneath his bed, collecting dust now.

Yes. They’ll be put into the foster system, for sure. They’ll get lost among the hundreds of other children matched with families just looking for a tax cut. But you’re safe here. Remember that. Remember that we watch out for each other. Now go do some chores.

I told Rat I was in. Danny’s reasoning didn’t sit well with me for some reason, but part of it resonated—the part about looking out for each other. If Rat was going to fight a witch, then I was going to help him. The two of us spent days running surveillance on the house, and to our mutual surprise, we learned something. Every Sunday, early in the morning (Rat and I had started skipping Danny’s morning talks), a tall, skinny man with dark shades would enter the house with a large bag. He was always wearing a suit and tie, like some sort of secret agent. He had a solitary halo of white hair on his head, and he walked with a cane.

Every Sunday he would pull up in a rich black car to the curb beside the house—he never used the driveway—the car door would open, followed by the cane. Next, the man would swing his long spider-like legs out, and push himself out of the vehicle. He used the car like a guide rail while he walked to the truck, and pulled out a fabric bag. He always struggled with the weight of the bag as he dragged it up to the house. Rat and I always watched amazed as he pulled a key—seemingly from nowhere—quickly unlocked the house, and disappeared inside. The second Sunday I grabbed a watch and timed him. He spent exactly ten minutes inside the house. Without fail, the door would open at the ten minute mark, the cane would extend—spider-legs following—and he would magic the key to his hand and lock the door. He took the empty bag to the car, got back in, and slowly drove away. The whole process was no more than fifteen minutes in all.

She’s not a witch, she’s a vampire, man, Rat noted. And that’s her servant! He’s one too, that’s why he wears the shades, and comes so early. No sun! He’s probably bringing he jars of blood he collects every week! Rat spent the next couple days fashioning pointed stakes out of broken pieces of the house—We’ll finish ‘em with their own home. Serve ‘em right! Rat had me go out to scavenge for tossed garlic loaves from an Italian restaurant. The way we figured it, we had to get into the house while the door was unlocked, kill the witch or vampire or whatever was in there, and get back out, all within ten minutes. We were daring, though. We could do it.

Our planning and espionage became a game, itself, and for a while, the House remained undamaged. We kept our findings to ourselves, and formed a plan. The very next Sunday, we would sneak-in after Spider-legs. I would keep watch, and Rat would steal the jars of blood. The witch would die that week without her blood, and we would just sneak out before we got caught. The days dragged by, but when Sunday finally came, we were ready.

We were hiding in the bushes near the porch when Spider-legs pulled up. His legs dragged him up to full height, but instead of dragging himself to the trunk of the car, he just stood there, staring expectantly toward the House. I froze. I could hear Rat trying to hold his breath beside me; it came in little gasps. Had he caught us? We held our ground until Danny approached the man. Without a word, Danny walked to Spider-legs, handed him a bundle of cash, and they split—Spider-legs by car, and Danny, toward the House.

I looked at Rat to measure his reaction. His eyes were wide, and I could tell that he was rethinking his decision to go in today. What was Danny doing? Danny walked right by our bush and climbed up the steps to the house. We waited a minute after he went in before we emerged, breathless, from our cover.

No wonder he’s always getting on our asses about the House! Danny’s been working with the witch this whole time! He’s one of them! Rat was frantic.

“Vampire, remember? Now, come on! Are we going in, or what?” I surprised myself. I knew there wasn’t a witch or vampire inside, but I was still curious about going in.

Rat nodded to me, a signal to go ahead. We went right up to the door, and I checked that our coast was clear while Rat put his ear against the door. He slid the door open slowly and we walked in. It was poorly lit. Like I had imagined, most of the windows were blocked by large shelves. Had I the time, I would’ve liked to see what was buried under all of that dust, but we were on a tight schedule. We could hear floorboards above us creaking. That must have been where Danny was.  As Rat scurried quietly toward the stairs, I was suddenly struck dumb. I didn’t know why it never occurred to me before, but it didn’t matter whether witches or vampires are real or not—there was someone upstairs! There was actually someone living in this old house!

Pssst! Rat caught my attention, flailing his arms, and I was broken from my reverie. He gestured toward the upstairs, and I followed after him. A mirror hanging on the wall of the first landing made me start. We looked older in that mirror, as though it were a fun house. Rat pulled me up the stairs after him, and we stepped out into a wider, more open room. The furnishings of the room were all covered in sheets and shoved to the walls. Heavy purple curtains hung from bronze bars above the windows. Dust clung in splotches on the ceiling, and dangled from cobwebs. There was a clear path across the floor that showed the path Danny must have taken—it lead directly to a closed door across the room.

Rat started first, dead-set on getting to the door, but he wasn’t looking where he was going. I saw the fold in the rug a second before rat tripped on it. He landed with a dull thud on carpet, spraying up dust all around. I knew what would come next, so I ducked behind the curtains. The sudden light from behind the curtain made me strain my eyes, and made me temporarily blind. I heard the door open, though.

Who’s there? Rat? Rat, what in the hell— Danny’s voice came in angry whispers. I heard him lift Rat and shove him toward the stairs.

Wait, Danny, please. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it! Rat squeaked. I waited as I heard them go downstairs. As my eyes adjusted, I could see out the window. It must have been that one that Hawk had smashed, because there was a hole straight through it. I had never been as high as a second floor before. I never noticed how bad the roof was on the shelter. I recognized for the first time how tall the buildings around us were. I looked down and saw Danny throw Rat into the yard. Danny headed back into the House, and Rat looked directly up at the window where I was hiding. He waved his arms over his head and gave me the thumbs up before he ran back to the shelter.

And then I was alone with the dusty curtains. I slid down to the floor and waited for Danny to come back upstairs. Surely he would realize that Rat wouldn’t have gone into the House alone. When Danny came back through, though, he didn’t even look for me. I wiped my brow, and looked around. There was broken glass and a small chunk of asphalt beside my foot—the one that Hawk had thrown through the window, I guessed. I started playing with the shards of glass, carving shapes and letters into the wall beneath the window. It felt like an eternity had passed before Danny left the room, and I heard him run back downstairs. I peeked out the window—wiping away dust—so I could watch him make a beeline for the shelter.

Alone again, I sat there. My nervous excitement had turned into a paranoid fear, and I held my breath as though Danny had somehow managed to deceive me and was not in the shelter, but was actually standing in that room, waiting for me to reveal myself. I plucked up the courage to crawl out from beneath the curtain. Dust clung to me in sheets, giving me the appearance of some sort of ghost. I wiped myself off the best I could, and looked around. With Danny gone, now, I knew that I was free to look around the house as much as I wanted. Until next Sunday, the House was completely empty except for me, and whoever—whatever—was behind that door.

The door itself was without dust. Its paint was cracked and peeling like the outside of the House. There was some gold flaking that swirled in patterns around the edges. The metal doorknob looked cold and heavy. I wanted to see what was on those shelves downstairs. I wanted to peek beneath the sheets in this room, or check out the other side of the House, but the doorknob pulled me to it. Without thinking or worrying, I wrapped my fingers around the knob and turned. The door stuck a little, so I had to lean my weight against it. It yielded, and I stepped into the room. The floorboards creaked as I stepped inside.

The first thing I noticed was the smell of citrus, lemons, I thought. Then it was the floor—spotless. The room was bright, too; the first one with any electric lighting. There were no windows, no furniture hiding beneath sheets. The room was empty of dusty bookshelves and ugly purple curtains. Instead, there was a large bed, tucked in the corner. A four-poster, I think they were called. A large white dresser sat against one wall. It had a large polished mirror above it that made the room seem twice as large as it actually was. Everything in this room was so pristine and clean—it was begging to be destroyed. The white surfaces asked to be marked or scraped; they begged for dust so that they could match the rest of the House.

There was another door that was open beside the dresser; I could hear the sounds of someone moving beyond that door. I took another step into the room, trailing dust and cobweb behind me. A few more steps brought me to the door. Inside, there was a small kitchenette. An old woman was shambling around, putting aluminum cans on shelves. A kettle shook with heat on a burner. She was humming. The melody was one I did not recognize, but it made me sad. I leaned in a bit more so that I could hear it better; as I did so, a floorboard creaked underneath me. Startled, the woman looked back at me. Her face sagged with age, but her eyes were wide with surprise. She looked at me standing there—a juvenile trespasser—and opened her mouth, as if to say something. Some sounds—words maybe, but not fully formed—came from her lips, but I was in a panic. I jumped backwards, running into the dresser, and fell. Something crashed to the floor with a twinkling shatter. A frame of some sort—its glass sliced my hand open.

I pulled myself up, using the dresser, leaving a smear of red on its wooden surface. The woman made another sound as she came around the door, but I was already gone. I bolted through the open door and back into the dirty, dusty House. I stumbled down the stairs, and busted through the front door. For a second, I thought I should turn back to lock it, but it was too late, and I was too far gone.

I ducked in the back door of the shelter and tried to catch my breath. I’d been caught. That was it. Whoever this woman was, she would tell Danny, and then I would get in trouble, and he would send me away. Yes, that’s what he was going to do. In my startled paranoia, I snuck my way back to the bunks where we slept, but bumped into Jango.

Spy games now? He was holding a book as he usually was—this one small and green. I tried to find words, but I was too shaken to think. I was dizzy and feeling nauseous as well. What happened to your hand? he asked.

I looked at my hand, blood still gushing from the wound. “I—I—I don’t—know.” I began to cry. I hadn’t cried in so long. I cried from the pain of the cut, as Jango took me to wash it up. The pain became frustration—at myself for falling, for being caught; for getting scared and running away. It became frustration at Rat for running away, at Danny for being secretive and all the other kids for leaving me here alone. I became angry at my parents, wherever they were, for leaving me lonely and disconnected.

And then the blood was gone, washed away, and my tears stopped. We wrapped up my hand in strips of a torn shirt, and Jango told me to be more careful. When Rat would come in later to ask me about what happened, I didn’t respond. He didn’t say anything about Danny chastising him. Instead, he bullied me to tell him about the room. When he pressured me, I just told him it was books, loads of dusty old books. I don’t know why I lied, but I wanted to keep the woman secret for some reason—maybe to hide my shame. I was a coward, after all. A worm.

The next week, Danny came to talk to me. I had developed a cough, and was sitting in bed, sick. I hadn’t gone out since the incident, and Rat had stopped coming to see me. I drew pictures on weathered sheets of paper and flipped through books that Jango lent me. When Danny came into the room, I knew it was because he knew.

You were with Rat last week, weren’t you?

I nodded.

You broke a picture frame.

I nodded. I was in trouble, of course.

The woman in that house is a dear friend of mine, did you know that? She gives us money to keep the shelter running.

I shook my head.

Is your hand okay?

I raised my eyebrow, confused.

She said you cut your hand. There was blood on her dresser?

“I’ll clean it up, Danny. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything.”

It’s fine. It’s cleaned up. But your hand, Danny reached out to take my hand. She asked about your hand. The hand in question had never stopped stinging. Half of the time it felt like it was on fire, other times it was numb and cold. Today, I had forgotten about it and it laid beside me limp and useless, still wrapped in that same torn shirt. Danny lifted my arm. The bandage crunched with dried blood as he unwrapped it.

I was suddenly hit with a sickly sweet smell. I looked over and saw that my hand had turned a blackish-green color. Danny had to rip the shirt away to remove it from the wound, but some of the fibers stayed attached, anyway. Some pus squirted out in spots where it hadn’t yet healed. Danny looked frightened. It felt weird to see him touching my hand, even though I couldn’t feel his fingers against mine. The cut ran deep from the space between my thumb and pointer across to where my palm met my wrist.

Shit, Danny swore. He reached his arm under my legs and lifted me out of the bed. Come on. We gotta get this cleaned up. He tried to get me to my legs, but I fell. I hadn’t realized how dizzy I was until he tried to get me to walk. My vision got really dark and blurry suddenly, and I felt like I needed to throw up.

The next few hours of my life are still foggy to me this day. I remember snatches of consciousness. I remember seeing that white room again, and hot water being poured on my hand. I remember that woman, closer this time. Her old hazel eyes looked into mine. I remember looking for a bit of life in them, and—finding it—passing out again. I remember a different white room, this time colder, more people. It was a hospital. I had never been in one before. There was a tube running into my arm which was cuffed to the bed by a strip of Velcro. Danny had put me in the hospital.

I spent about a week in recovery. During that time, several people came in to talk to me. They talked about foster care, and medicine. They asked about where I came from, and how I got here. They made me pick a real name, Alex, and told me I’d be moving in with a family when I left. The first time they let me walk, I went directly to the window. I looked out at all the people milling about. Sick, cured, visitors, family—just people being people. I looked at my bandaged hand, soon to be better, and thought that I would soon be one of them. Yes—one of them.