DON'T FEAR THE REAPER

Penny had a total of two college-level English classes under her belt, both of which gave her information that bored her to the point of brain rot. Once she had a satisfactory grade on record, she deliberately made an effort to eject it all from her memory, but she hadn’t been as successful as she hoped. As she looked up at the dilapidated home, she remembered some story about a guy in a busted ass mansion. Everything had been just another metaphor. A fissure down the middle, an inability to connect, a sinking, a sickening. Loss. She thought of Evelyn’s dead sister as the warped, wooden steps buckled beneath their feet. She thought of that empty space, of something once there then gone. It was truly depressing as hell, and Penny bit her tongue before she could tell Adam to put a cork in his nervy muttering in a way that might’ve ended this whole thing before it even started. 

She settled with shooting him a look over her shoulder, even though she could internally agree that the vibes were off. “Okay, what do you need here? What’s going to make you chill out?” She asked, mentally taking stock of anything in her bag that may dull his apprehension, but the strongest thing she had on hand was an almost-empty packet of Benadryl. Which, by the look of Adam, might actually be too strong. “She’s old. The worst thing that could happen is she has some sort of sundowners thing and we just book it out of there.” Her mouth twisted downward as they neared the front door. “She’ll probably just be happy to have someone to talk to.” And Penny carried that confident conviction through his eye roll-worthy insistence that she ring the doorbell, and then through the following failed attempt to get it to make any sound. And when the door swung open ominously, it sort of pissed her off. More fuel for Adam’s wig-out.

“Shhh—” Penny started, hushed but emphatic, but cut herself off before she reached the ‘-ut up.’ “If you pass out, I will not be fireman carrying you out of here.” She pointedly held up a finger, briefly placed it over her lips, and then stepped over the threshold. The entryway was paneled with a dark wood on the bottom half of the walls, the rest covered in a faded red wallpaper; it perhaps had a more discernible pattern once, but she could only catch glimpses of blossoming rhododendrons now. It was as dull and cold as the darkening sky outside, where the clouds hung low and threatening. Literally, the vibes were so off, and Penny pushed aside the niggling, uneasy clench of her stomach. She cleared her throat, and reached back in mere threat to drag Adam in herself, then continued in a sweet voice reserved specifically for getting her way with anyone over sixty. “Ms. Garretson, are you home?” She called out. “It’s Penelope. May Loewenstein’s granddaughter.”

They stepped inside the house, finding themselves in a small, narrow corridor leading to a staircase, a square of darkness cut out of the side wall— which, moments later, his eyes adjusted enough to recognize as a doorway. Beyond it, only black. A small collection of picture frames hung crookedly on the walls, their glass dully reflecting moonlight. Adam’s gaze traveled slowly around and landed on the one closest to him. He could just barely distinguish the shapes of two women in it, smiling, their arms around each other, dark hair whipped by a strong wind. He could tell it was an old photograph, faded and discolored. A happiness trapped forever in a distant past.

Together they stood unmoving in the hallway. Listening, waiting. Then Penny called out to the darkness, making Adam glance sharply at her— if he had a surplus of concern, she seemed to have none. “Wait, we don’t know— maybe there was like a break-in or something—” he hissed, glancing back at the front door that had swung loosely on it hinges, now standing open to the fast-falling dusk. Maybe Mrs. Evelyn Garretson was currently growing cold in her favorite armchair, mouth agape, skin already blueing. Maybe the burglar was still somewhere in the house, prowling around in search of heirloom silver, and even now his head was lifting at the sound of a girl’s voice carrying boldly from the downstairs, eyes narrowing, mind quickly formulating solutions to yet another unexpected complication, two more loose ends to take care of—

Before Adam’s mounting panic could develop the scenario any further, it was interrupted by shuffling. He went still like a startled rabbit. The shuffling sounded like slippered feet moving over carpet, then a thud and scrape, furniture moving. Adam felt his breath hitch uncertainly in his lungs, eyes locked on the open doorway, watching as first a single light, then a shape, materialized from the dimness. 

Evelyn Garretson stopped at the threshold of the doorway without crossing over, flashlight in hand. She was bundled head to toe: long housedress, thick, lumpy sweater, a crochet blanket wrapped around her stooped shoulders, misshapen daisies embedded in the pattern. She looked between the two of them. She didn’t seem very alarmed to have intruders standing in her foyer. Pouched in folds of wrinkled skin, Adam could see eyes so pale they looked like they’d blow away and leave a cloudless sky. They were, surprisingly, very alert. 

Then she stuck a finger in her ear and wiggled it around. “I was listening to my music,” Evelyn informed them, quite loudly, as if said music were still playing and she wanted to make herself heard over it.

Adam looked at Penny, at a loss. What music? The old house creaked around them and otherwise, there was silence. His gaze returned hesitantly to the old woman, one hand straying up to scratch the back of his neck. “Hi Mrs. Garretson. We were just, uh...” In the neighborhood? Dropping by? Hard to explain why they’d just walked into her house without invitation— it seemed too soon to start getting into all of it— but Evelyn didn’t even wait for whatever half-assed explanation he would’ve invented. She turned away from them again, her shambling steps igniting sparks along the carpet. Either she was expecting they would follow or— maybe to her they were only as real as the music, Adam realized. Leave the room, and they too would disappear. 

Disconcerting.

A quick dialogue of furtive expressions and gestures followed. Adam’s waving hand, motioning towards the empty doorway (What was that all about?) rebuffed by Penny’s skeptical, arched brow (How should I know?) and a stand-off as his own eyebrows inched higher (Now what?) and her eyes performed a final, exasperated roll (Oh my god, just go!), culminating in Penny taking the lead, yet again, as he huffed quietly and trailed behind. Passing through a dining room where all the chairs wore white shrouds, they entered a small parlor. The olive paint was so peeled it looked like the walls were shrugging out of their skins. A lampshade hung askew, spilling the light out sideways. On the table besides it, his eyes immediately fell on a pair of black, stereo headphones; oh, Adam thought with certain relief, shoulders almost sagging as a distant orchestra launched into a faint allegro molto. Evelyn had sunk back into an armchair closest to the radiator. She pulled an orange afghan blanket onto her lap, and fumbled to turn down the dial on the handheld Walkman the headphones were plugged into. “My grandson left me these,” she told them, voice rasping. “Damn radio keeps goin’ on the fritz and I can’t take it to get fixed, so now I’ve got these ear muffs to play my music. I look like a damn air traffic controller! Ha.” Her startling, pale eyes lifted and found Penny first. Recognition flickered across her face. “Oh, hello dear. I didn’t know you were coming by today.” She pointed one finger, curled and arthritic, at a half-drunk cup of tea. “I made tea. Pot’s in the kitchen, help yourselves.”

@pennywilding

If it had been Connie or Oliver or Dave standing here with him, he may have hung back, shying half his body behind them, gauging the situation from a safer distance. But because it was Penny, it felt imperative to Adam that he stand his ground. So he did— hands stuffed deep into his pockets, padded shapeless by his winter coat and the many layers beneath it, Adam stood on the sidewalk with narrowed eyes and his chin ducked low into his itchy scarf, shivering every time the wind blew past and rattled the branches of the naked trees. He looked like a wary turtle, poking its head only half-way out of the shell.

They were standing across the street from Evelyn Garretson’s rotting old Victorian. He could see where the shingles had slid off the roof during the rainy season, and where the gutters were still clogged with last autumn’s putrified leaves. Around the sagging porch, the lawn had become a thicket of wildly growing grass, brittle and frost-bitten. “I’m not sure about this,” Adam said, eyeing what looked to be an ancient wheelbarrow half-sunken in the weeds. “Shouldn’t we have called ahead? Maybe she’s not even home.” He knew this last-ditch effort stood no chance of convincing Penny, nor himself. Both of Evelyn’s front windows were streaked with old rainwater that had dried brown, like rust, and one was dark, but the other held the faint glow of a lamp burning somewhere inside. Someone was definitely home.