Lasting Shadows Read online

  He stepped inside and choked on the smell. The front door opened right into the kitchen. Though the window shades were pulled, the dull brownish light coming through tears in the shades and through the open front door revealed sickly green painted cabinets lining the wall opposite the door and a hardwood floor covered in spots with vinyl strips and recycled schoolhouse tiles. Quinn took a second step in the room as he covered his mouth with a handkerchief and bumped something on the floor with the toe of his shoe. The screen door was lying there, covered in years of dust and cobwebs. He stepped around it carefully and walked up to the kitchen sink. It appeared to be painted black until he leaned in and got a closer look. Something had rotted in the basin. Quinn swallowed the nasty taste in his mouth and closed his eyes as he turned away from it.

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  He stepped back a couple of steps and opened his eyes. There was a small fridge down under the countertop beside the sink. The worst of the smell seemed to come from there. Taking a deep breath in the handkerchief he knelt down and opened it. The typical reek of shut off refrigerator hit him first, and then he noticed a long out of date gallon milk jug with contents that were certainly no longer qualified as drinkable and a forgotten package of ground beef. Something squirmed in the remains of the meat. Quinn jerked upright and slammed the fridge.

  “Goddamn it!”

  He stomped out the front door and down the stairs to his car.

  “Damn it!” He yanked the door open and snatched the phone lying on the passenger seat next to the recorder. He coughed one last time as he dialed the number and looked up at the house as the line rang.

  “Quinn?”

  “Kate… Oh, Jesus.” Quinn half laughed, though he felt like vomiting. “You’re not gonna believe me, I swear.”

  “You were going off to your rental place today. Is everything alright? Did you get there okay? Do you need me to-”

  “I’m here, but Jesus, Kate, this place…” Something looked odd. Quinn walked back to the porch as he talked. The woman across the street seemed to cackle with laughter. “I don’t know where to begin…”

  “It’s a dump, isn’t it? Oh, Quinn, I’m so sorry. They assured me the house was okay. Let me see if I have any of that info here.” Papers rustled in the background. “Look, if you can stay the night I can try to get you in another place tomorrow. I have all your information…”

  Quinn stepped up on the porch and stared in the kitchen through the open front door.

  “There’s a small town right up the road,” she said. “Something-springs. I can’t remember the name of it, but I can set everything up and get right back to you. Oh, Quinn, I’m so sorry.”

  He stepped inside. The screen door slammed behind him and he jumped.

  “Christ!”

  “Quinn? What’s wrong?”

  “Kate,” he said. “I walked in this kitchen not five minutes ago. There were rat droppings and spoiled meat in the fridge and grime everywhere. The screen door was lying on the floor under what must have been years of dust and I’m standing in here right now looking at the screen door, in its place, just where it’s supposed to be. Freshly painted even. And the kitchen . . .”

  He turned back to the kitchen. A rectangular table sat in the middle of the room. Both windows were covered in light, airy, and sheer green curtains. The fridge was newer, though still small, fitted under the counter. The sink was completely new and had a goldish ceramic finish to match the mint green cabinets, cleverly painted with yellow flowers around the knobs. In the corner was a china cabinet painted to match and lining the shelves were green and gold dishes. Quinn sat down heavily in one of the dining chairs.

  “The kitchen isn’t my taste, but it’s exactly what you’d expect.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Kate, I’m going out of my mind.”

  “Oh, Quinn,” she said. “No, you aren’t. You’re just under a lot of pressure.”

  He rubbed his forehead as he went silent. He heard her nervous breathing and the clicking of her ballpoint pen. She took a deep breath.

  “Quinn, I-”

  He tensed.

  “Not there, Kate. Don’t talk about it there. Jerry is a good friend of Gin’s and I just-”

  “I-I’m sorry. Of course.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said, feeling the flush of blood to his cheeks. “I’m just not in a good space for that right now.”

  In his mind he imagined her biting her lip, her own face reddening. A flash of her writhing under him, moaning with pleasure burst into his head. He closed his eyes and shook it away.

  “I don’t want to add to it, but Gin stopped by.”

  “Great. Don’t tell me about it now. Tell me later. I can’t take it right now.”

  “All right.”

  Quinn sighed, dropping his head to the table.

  “She’s wanting alimony? Full custody?”

  “I don’t know.” Kate’s voice became small. “She told me to tell you your stuff is being put in storage and she’s selling the house. She’s gotten an attorney and recommended you get one as well.”

  Quinn moaned.

  “She said if you want joint custody of Angela that’s fine, but there will be stipulations and she left this list.” She went quiet a moment. “You know, Quinn, I really shouldn’t be reading this stuff.” Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. “I feel so guilty. But being with you was so-”

  “Stop,” he said. The word sank out of him like a last breath. “I said before Kate, not there.”

  Again all he heard was the clicking of her pen.

  “I’m sorry, babe,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you.”

  He heard the tone of her voice change to something more motherly.

  “It’s alright, Quinn.”

  “If I could go back and fix everything I would,” he said. “But I can’t. Things are as they are.”

  “I know. But you know how I fe-”

  “Yes,” he said, interrupting her. He dreaded the words he knew she wanted to say. “I do.”

  She lowered her voice.

  “You know, I could go there and help.”

  All domesticated and spouse-like.

  “No. I can’t have any distractions, I have way too much to do, Kate,” he said. “I’m here to work.”

  There was a sad sigh on the other end of the line.

  “Alright.”

  “Look, I’ll call you if anything else comes up, yeah?”

  In a broken voice, she spoke.

  “Of course. I’m glad it’s all okay.”

  “Me too.” He heard her pain. “Thanks, okay?”

  “Yeah. Bye.”

  He ended the call and lowered the phone to the table, sitting back in the chair. Again memories of that night seemed to take over his vision. Virginia angrier than he had ever seen her, screaming, throwing things at him, while Kaitlin dressed in the bathroom and tried to slip out. He sighed.

  “Stupid getting caught,” he whispered.

  He watched the phone’s screen fade to black and laid it on the table. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  ***

  A short while later, he walked back out to the car to bring in this luggage.

  “She did that.”

  Quinn turned toward the blue bottles. He slid his sunglasses back on and walked toward the street.

  “What?”

  “She did that. That thing with the kitchen. She does it.”

  Quinn peered through the shrubbery and the bottles and found the white hair and pale face of the old woman. Her blue eyes squinted back at him.

  “That’s what she does. She makes you believe. First, she wanted you out, but then-” He could hear her smile. “Then, she changed her mind. You might be here a while after all.”

  Her laugh tinkled with the glass as a gust blew through them and a flash lit up the sky.

  Quinn turned slowly away and walked back to his car. Quickly, he removed his suitcase and briefcase from the trunk and snatched his voice
recorder from the passenger seat. He heard the rain coming, just up the road. He slammed the door to the car with his foot and bounded up the stairs. The rain burst down angrily at him as he opened the screen door and carried everything inside.

  Lightning flashed once more as he turned back to close the front door. Across the street, the old woman was twirling in her front yard as if someone was dancing with her. The rain pelted her brightly patterned dress, making it cling to her frail form. As her shoes came into view from over the fence he saw they were black with mud. An old man burst out of the front door of the tiny shack-like house and grabbed her arms. He seemed to shout at the air around her. She laughed as he pulled her inside. She turned back and waved as the old man shut the door behind them.

  “Jesus,” Quinn said. He shut the door and locked it, wondering if he remembered to lock the car. “Maybe I should take Kate up on going to another place.”

  He frowned as he turned back to the kitchen. The left wall jutted out into the room about two feet. Quinn walked around it and found himself facing two doorways. One on the same wall with the kitchen cabinets and one on the wall to the left of the front door. The doorway to the left was open so Quinn walked in.

  It was smaller than the kitchen. The ceilings in both rooms were unusually high, which gave them a sensation of space when really both were quite small. He understood now why the wall jutted out so far in the kitchen. A narrow fireplace stood by the door. Quinn bent and peered into it before standing straight and looking back into the kitchen. Perhaps at one time, the hearth had been open and looking straight through to the other room, but sometime in the relatively recent past, the kitchen side had been bricked up and a wall built to hide the back of it.

  The only furniture in the living room was an old recliner with a green and gold flower print, a very frail-looking wooden rocker, a massive table lamp in a bright yellow mod style and the remains of an old metal stand with an ancient CRT television resting on it at an odd angle. An air conditioner hummed in the opposite wall from the fireplace, installed, it appeared, somewhat recently.

  “Comfy.” He grinned.

  By the recliner and just behind the TV stand was a boarded-up doorway with the door still in it, knob and all. Quinn scratched his head at that just as he noticed the same curtains as in the kitchen hung on both the windows in this room as well.

  He turned back and gripped the glass knob of the other door. It resisted at first but finally twisted with a click and opened onto a long, unusually wide hallway. He noticed a switch to his left and flicked it a few times, but nothing happened. He reached up and tugged the chain by the single bulb. It flickered for a second but came on.

  Quinn turned back to the switch, pointing at it, his head tilted to the side.

  “So, what is that switch for?”

  He chuckled and continued his exploration.

  The ceiling was lower than a standard ceiling and far lower than the ones in the living room and kitchen. An oriental carpet runner covered the wood floor, but stopped at the second door on the left, too short to span the entire length.

  The first door on the left was closed, as was the door on the right. At the very end of the hall, an open door revealed the profile of a toilet. He walked all the way to the end, turning first left, then right.

  On the right, he saw another very short passage, lined with wood paneling. At the far end of that stood a much newer door than any he had seen in the entire house, with a standard brass knob. A sad and much-abused brown carpet covered that section of the floor.

  He reached in and flipped the switch in the bathroom. A small fluorescent light flickered to life over the sink. Inside, all the fixtures were powder blue; blue toilet, blue sink, blue tub. The walls were paneled to match the newer hallway. The floor had been carpeted in shaggy, powder blue, the same style as the brown carpet, but much newer and fluffier. Blue and gold plastic flowers rested in a green planter on the back of the toilet, matching the blue and gold flowers of the shower curtain. A roll of dusty and very old powder blue toilet paper hung in its proper place. The entire room gave a feeling of being stuck in a time capsule, in the late seventies or early eighties.

  He grinned at it, laughing a little.

  He stepped in the room and felt the floor bend slightly under him. Another laugh erupted from him. He backed up into the hall again and took a step into the newer section of the hallway. It bent and gave even more. He shook his head.

  “Unbelievable.”

  Sucking in a deep, hopeful breath, he gripped the brass knob and turned it, pushing the door open with a little nudge.

  He gasped as a blast of extremely cold air-conditioned air hit him. He reached in, feeling for the switch. The storm had moved in over town now and outside was dark as night. He could see the rain hitting the windows and hear it hitting the tin roof which seemed much closer and louder in this room than it did in the rest of the house.

  Not finding a switch he noticed the glint of a chain hanging down from the ceiling light and pulled it.

  The room was tiny and paneled like the hallway. The brown carpet was in better shape in spots, but the walls and the ceiling were not. Water had at some point leaked in and drained slowly down the walls. The paneling bent inward slightly in places as if sculpted. A stained, yellowish, semi-circle curved above the window on the ceiling stretching across nearly half the room.

  “Well, at least the AC works great in here,” he said.

  He pressed his hand into the mattress of the queen-size bed.

  The ceiling seemed higher than the hallway but still not quite standard. Though the bed took up almost all of the room, a small two-tiered end table had been wedged between it and the wall. A long but shallow dresser had been stuffed in opposite it with just enough room to open the drawers. The door to the small closet stood open on the other side of the dresser, the rod bare.

  He turned from the room, closing the door behind him, and marched back out into the newer hallway. Directly across from the paneled room, a dark, cave-like, open door yawned at him. Lightning flashed at exactly that moment, lighting up another of the original tall windows. He cautiously entered the room and fumbled around until the felt the light switch.

  “What the hell?”

  The biggest room in the house, it had been split into two, horizontally, making two floors, connected by a built-in ladder. The floor split the other two windows in half, lighting up both the upper and lower sections.

  He assumed the floor must have been added to accommodate two young boys, as the room was rustic and the ceiling height of both floors were equal. Between the door to the room and the window opposite, the original ceiling height was kept, making a four-foot deep area at the same height as the original house. The single light fixture only glowed in the upper portion, the rustic darkness seemly eerily lit and creepy.

  Quinn left the room and switched off the light and closing the door behind him.

  He turned toward the front of the house again and looked at the last two remaining doors.

  He went to the one on the left first, turning the glass knob and tapping it open with his foot. A flash of lightning blinded him. He squinted and felt around, finding the switch and flipping it on. He stood in a glassed-in addition, a porch enclosed and turned into a room. It housed desks and a huge drafting table and shelves. The shelves were bent from years of too heavy a load. The giant metal draftsman’s table sat anchored to the floor, blocking the glass door in the middle of the wall of windows.

  Quinn stepped into the room and stumbled. The floor dropped at least five inches, his weight making it bend and creak beneath him. He felt the need to get out of that room and off of that floor as quickly as possible, but he glanced back one last time before switching off the light.

  “There’s a story here. I know there is.”

  He closed the door behind him and there he faced the last room. He took a deep breath and opened it. Again he found himself facing a tall window and high ceilings. He found the switc
h and gasped.

  “Oh my god!” He smiled and laughed out loud.

  He stood in a little girl’s room. The floor was covered in thick, hot pink carpet. Two walls had been papered in a rainbow print with unicorns and clouds, the other two had been painted in a bright, shocking pink to match the carpet. Lacy white curtains hung from the tall single window, looking fragile and delicate. An inset had been built in for the bed, with matching curtains to hide the sleeper and the storage underneath.

  Above the bed, a loft had been built like the other room, but this one was only the depth of the bed. Also built under the loft closer to the door was a curtained closet and between the closet and the bed, a ladder that climbed up to the loft.

  Quinn thought a moment and then smiled.

  What the hell.

  He climbed up the ladder and found the mattress in the loft along with another old TV and something much more interesting. There was a square opening leading from the loft to directly over the hall. Quinn leaned in but couldn’t make out anything without a light.

  “I need to get that flashlight app.” He sat down. “Angela would have loved this room when she was small.”

  Angela.

  He sighed deeply.

  She’ll never understand.

  The rain banged on the roof harder than before.

  That must be hail.

  “And the car’s out there with no roof over it.”

  He climbed back down the ladder and peered out into the darkness through the window. A faint blueish glow filled cracks between clouds. The balls of ice also glowed blue and littered the ground. Quinn shook his head and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  Back in the kitchen, he looked at his phone, settling down to find someplace to get something to eat. The power flickered, knocking out the lights for a second.

  Candles. I need some candles.

  Quinn glanced at the corner china cabinet and noticed a hurricane lamp and a box of matches.