I've mostly lurked on Reddit and sometimes enjoyed stories here, though I've mainly lurked on other subs. Like a lot of stories here, this sounds crazy, but I need to tell someone about it. I'm out in the middle of nowhere but I found a signal for the moment.
Long story short, I've had an exceptionally bad year with my personal life so I moved out to the country to flip houses. I wanted to throw myself into my work, give myself a real challenge. Some people are like that after bad breakups and personal loss, I guess. I just really wanted to keep myself occupied.
"I'll be straight with you. I need the money, and you're paying way too much, but this is a bad idea, son," said the guy who owned the land, Mr. Rhodes. "For a number of reasons."
He started ticking them off on his fingers, which sported a wedding band, class ring, and a ring for the Rotary Club, I think. He looked sweaty under his cowboy hat.
"You got eyes, you can see this is practically a ghost town," he started off.
"I'm aware of the challenge," I said. There were a handful people living out here, but it was a tiny unincorporated community about twenty miles away from the county seat, which was tiny and remote on its own.
"And people out here ain't exactly rolling in it. I looked you up on the Internet. You're a pro. You're not exactly in the business of hammering old shacks back together."
He was right about that too. I'm very good at what I do. I'd gotten a start with a loan from my parents, but I was pretty talented with flipping houses. My architecture background didn't hurt, but it was my insomnia and obsessiveness that were my real assets in the biz. I'd almost been offered a show on HGTV, but... things happened. There wasn't much out there in the press about me; I wasn't that well known. But Mr. Rhodes might have suspected something.
"I just need to get away from the city. And I mean,I've been lucky with money in my life so far...I could give it away when I'm finished. Donate it to the community, maybe. People do live out here. And there's a couple McMansions on one side of town so some wealthy people too."
"I see your point, but this place is a money hole. A big one. And there are other, um, factors you might say."
"Factors?"
Mr. Rhodes sighed. "Mind if I get a beer out of my truck?"
"Sure, fine," I said but I sighed inwardly.
We sat down on some rusty chairs outside the dump I was trying to buy. The beers were lukewarm but I didn't mind. I hadn't drunk since right after the incident but I trusted myself out here, middle of nowhere, cicadas humming, a slight breeze blowing up a bit of dust.
"Look, it sounds superstitious, and I'm a Christian. But this house has some bad history."
"I know some people died here." That didn't phase me. Sometimes they call it a "murder house" but I've dealt with that before. It's part of the challenge to me, an I'm not superstitious either.
"Yeah, that was bad," he said. "But it's just been a revolving door of awful shit, excuse my language. Domestic violence, CPS coming out here. And we're so far away that people can get away with some terrible things. The community pitches in, we take care of each other, but for some reason, this house has just seen a lot of grief."
"That's all tragic, and I'm sorry all that's happened, but bad things happen in a lot of homes. I'm kind of in the house redemption business," I said, smiling and taking a swig of my beer.
"A lot of it happened behind closed doors, so who knows how bad it really was. But black boy got lynched on that big old tree."
He pointed to a cottonwood on the edge of my property."
"Right out in the open. In the 90s. It ain't like that here now, you understand, but I thought you should know."
I did freeze a little with that. The cottonwood looked sickly, an alien in a land of stunted mesquite trees and shrubs. It was shedding a little bit in the breeze.
I looked at Rhodes to see if he could tell. I'm only an eighth black, but also an eighth Hispanic. And I had a no-good great granddad that ran off might have been Asian, he was ambiguous and didn't stay around long enough for anyone to get to know him. So I'm ambiguous too, but I guess Rhodes figured he should warn me. Sometimes I was black enough, or not white enough, and I guess it made some sense out here.
"I just thought I should let you know. That's longer ago so it might not have been something that came up."
"Well I still think I can do something with the place."
"You're not hurting for cash, why don't you demolish it and start from scratch?"
I did see his point. It made more sense. I appreciated Rhodes not trying to cheat me.
"You said you do woodworking when we talked on the phone. I kind of need to have something like that to occupy my whole mind."
He nodded.
"Okay then."
We stood and brushed bits of rusty paint off the backs of our jeans, and then drove to the bank in the "city" of the county seat and it was all squared away. Rhodes and I shook hands and said we'd see each other around. I went to check out of my motel room, and took my duffle bag, air mattress, tool boxes and a few other possessions back to the house.
I had to sleep in a haze of bug repellent and heat, but I felt pretty good. I kind of felt like I was sweating out my past.
In the dead of night,someone knocked loudly at my door, three times, but I woke up and thought it was a just the end of a nightmare. I've had a lot that ended with loud noises since I decided to leave the city. I didn't have close neighbors and this seemed like a bland prank even for bored country kids.
In the morning, I stepped on the sagging porch to find a large brown mailing envelope with a neat typed mailing label with my address.
I opened it to find an eviction notice.
"The hell?" What fresh nonsense is this, I thought. The plumbing would need some major work, but the running water at least trickled. So I showered and brushed my teeth before I really looked at it.
TEXAS 3-DAY NOTICE TO VACATE
(NONCOMPLIANCE)
STATE OF TEXAS, COUNTY OF ____Goodbye
TO:
J. Malcolm Hart
_________________________________________________________________________
ADDRESS:
492 N County Rd.
_________________________________________________________________________
As outlined in Article 24.005, Texas Property Code, you are hereby notified that three (3) days after delivery of this notice, I demand possession of said property listed above, now occupied by you, unless you cure the following lease violation:
LEAVE THERE IS NOTHING HERE FOR YOU. YOU WILL NOT FIND WHAT YOU NEED.
_________________________________________________________________________
THERE IS ONLY DESTRUCTION DESTROY ME DESTROY ME DESTROY ME WORSE THAN BONE BLOOD___DESTROY___ME__________________________________
If not, I shall proceed to repossess said property on the first (1st) day after the three (3) day notice period. At the end of the third (3rd) day, I shall check and verify that you are in compliance with your lease agreement.
I HEREBY DEMAND that you pay all past due rent or vacate the property at once or I shall proceed against you as the law directs.
SIGNED this __23_ day of _______May_______, 2019___.
The signature was a indecipherable scrawl. Whoever had signed it had pressed their blue pen down so hard that it almost tore through the paper.
It looked pretty official, even had a strange little watermark.
But it was clearly bullshit. I had paid for the house outright, the bank was just for the notary and for Mr. Rhodes to deposit the check. I didn't have a landlord and there was no Goodbye County.
There must be some bored kids, but I admired putting spooky legalese into a prank. Pretty creative.
I crumpled up the letter and threw it in a corner. I needed so much stuff, even a trash can, but I wanted to stay and work on the house. I'd pull up some of the horrible linoleum and then go into town for some provisions before the grocery store closed at nine pm.
I toiled away, feeling good with the mindless work. A tiny part of me kept thinking "what are you doing?" and played slides of my happy life back in the city, just a couple of weeks ago.
"That's gone for now," I said out loud to no one, to myself. "This is where you are."
I finally went back into the living room, stretching my sore back. I froze, seeing a couple of items on the living room wall, about eye level.
One was the eviction notice, but it looked like it had never been crumpled at all. I ran my had over the smooth printer paper. It was eye level on the wall.
The other item was a thick pad of little yellow post-it notes. It had been hammered in with a long sharp nail. I was being pretty loud with the linoleum, but I would have heard someone banging this into the wall. I got my hammer and pried it out.
There was a little doodle on the front. A pretty good doodle. It took me a second but it was a penciled sketch of that painting... The Scream.
I pulled up a second and third sheet and it was The Scream again, and then again, but peering more closely, they were a little different.
I stuck the first notes back on in order and flipped through them. It was like a little movie, a movie with the little man in The Scream wavering, opening his mouth like he was screaming louder, and then melting quickly with his eyeballs running down his body.
I'd been sweating in the oppressive Texas heat, but suddenly, it was a cold sweat.
I wasn't so sure it was kids pranking me anymore.
The part of my mind that had been wheedling me before to go back to the city got louder.
"Fuck you!" I yelled, turning slowly around in a circle. I was yelling at the prankster kids or the racists who liked art history, or the... whatever that was in my house. "I'm not leaving!"
I hammered the post-its back into the wall with the long, dangerous-looking nail.
"Help me decorate if you want too, that's fine!"
I left to go to the store, drove too fast, threw cans and boxes in my cart with a little too much force.
The other shoppers gave me glances. Great. Already getting a reputation as the angry black man, I thought. But I was mad as hell. I started heading over to the sporting goods section to buy a guy, but then I remembered I didn't have any utility bills or anything yet to prove my residence. Hell, I hardly had utilities so far. And also...
I pushed it out of my mind. Took deep breaths, did my visualizations, and bought some snacks and bottled water. Some ice and a cooler until I could get a fridge. And a box fan.
Then I went back to the house.
It looked the same, new art installations, linoleum mess in the kitchen. I got some work done on it. I felt fairly calm.
I ate a Dinty Moore meal and made instant coffee. It was like I was in college again, only lonelier, dirtier and way worse for wear.
After another trickling shower, I was ready to chase some sleep.
"I'm not here to fuck with you," I said quietly to the thing, whatever it was. "Don't fuck with me, man. Please." I told myself I was fine but my mind kept raising. After awhile, I got up and swallowed a couple of Benadryl to help me sleep.
I fell asleep pretty quickly on my living room air mattress. Benadryl gives me sweaty sleep and only knocks me out for a few hours. I hoped I would sleep through the night somehow but the memories and stress woke me up. I looked around, and groggily noticed something else on the wall. A big dark rectangle right by the post-it. I admit, I jumped.
There hadn't been a door there. Now there's a door.
Submitted May 29, 2019 at 06:35AM by BecauseoftheLeaves http://bit.ly/2Wx7Eap
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