“Glad we got the Indian burial ground convo out of the way,” Amara says.
I don’t want to rain on Tobias’s parade, but there probably isn’t a square foot left in Virginia that isn’t haunted by now. Not this blood-soaked soil. Watch your step, I want to say. I bet we’re waltzing over a long-forgotten Civil War battlefield right now. Why stop there? Hopewell hosted its fair share of KKK rallies. Maybe the Grand Dragon himself led a lynching on this very stretch of soil before it was zoned for housing. Not to mention Jamestown is just up the river. Maybe a Powhatan army was massacred right under our feet and we just don’t know.
“Park your car in the back,” Tobias says.
“Why?”
“There’s a security service that comes through here every few days, making sure no squatters burn any of the houses down or whatever.”
I’m about to ask, How do you know?, but Tobias is already pulling back the tarp over the front window and slipping inside. Amara looks at me and shrugs. “See you inside,” she says.
The plan, as much as Tobias has shared with me, is to send Silas off into the afterlife in style. He spoke of our little weekend wake as if it were a camping trip. Instead of tents, we’d be roughing it inside this empty house. There was no running water, he warned. No electricity. We packed our sleeping bags, with enough food and beer for a couple nights.
Tobias is offering catharsis. A chance to say goodbye.
Say I’m sorry. Forgive me. Please. Even now, I can’t get this niggling voice out of my head: If you hadn’t kicked him out of your apartment, if you’d just been there for him, if you…
I’m the last to slip inside the house after moving my car. The windows have yet to be installed, sealed with a transparent membrane of clear plastic. Someone has sliced through the tarp that opens into the dining room. Or what will be the dining room one day. Will it still?
There’s no carpeting in the house. Just plywood subfloor. The house doesn’t absorb sound the same way normal houses do, so every step echoes off the walls. Whatever natural light slips through the window frames is filtered through greasy plastic tarps. A dull, washed-out dollhouse.
There’s a viscosity to the air. Every breath coats my windpipe with sawdust. I don’t mind the smell. I have a fuzzy memory of my dad sweating over a piece of furniture in his woodshop when I was little. Sawdust suspended itself in the air, drifting about—like snow, almost—getting in my hair and all over my clothes. The smell of raw wood steeped itself into my sweater. For days afterward, I’d bring my sleeve up to my nose and breathe in deeply, inhaling the memory of fresh pine. I loved that smell. Then Mom went ahead and dry-cleaned it away.
“Toby!” Amara calls. “You gonna give us the grand tour or what?”
He’s in the living room. Calling it that—living—feels wrong. There’s no life in this place.
From the candy bar wrappers and potato chip bags scattered across the floor, to the water bottles lined along the wall, it’s as if he’s been camping already. “Have you been crashing here?”
“Just a couple nights.”
“Since when?”
Tobias doesn’t respond.
Amara heads to the kitchen to unpack. A couple Igloo coolers will have to suffice for a fridge, since there isn’t one. We’ll be dining on beef jerky, M&Ms, and gallon jugs of bottled water. The beer was Amara’s idea and Tobias didn’t argue. “Anyone thirsty?” she asks.
“Not me,” he calls from the living room.
“Erin? It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
“No, thanks.”
“Well, I’m starting. I’m day-drinking this whole weekend away and none of you are going to stop me. Are we all clear on that?”
“Crystal.” I find my way to the first-floor bathroom, the guts of its plumbing exposed. The toilet has been installed but the cistern is empty. I test the handle, jiggling it to see if it might flush. Nothing happens. “Guess we’ll be peeing out the window?”
“I spotted a porta-potty in the backyard,” Amara calls out from the kitchen. Her voice draws me in and I find her glancing out the rear window frame. “Whatever turds are floating in that pool of blue chemicals have probably pickled themselves by now.”
“Guess I’ll just hold it in.”
“I brought a pot,” Tobias calls from down the hall.
“Welp, at least we can say we’ve got a pot to piss in.” Amara cracks a can of Brooklyn Lager, the snap of aluminum bouncing off the walls. I can’t help but wince.
Amara holds the can out. “Still cold. Sure you don’t wanna toast to our dream home?”
“Yeah, no, I’m good.”
“Here’s to domestic bliss.” She raises her can, toasting no one. I make eye contact even without a drink. Force of habit. Amara sips, then hesitates. “What’s behind door number one?”
There’s another door in the kitchen. When I open it, I’m greeted by shadows. Cool air spreads across my face. A new smell drifts up from the darkness, like dried milk. I flick the exposed light switch once, twice. Nothing. “Nope. Not going down there.”
“You hungry?” Amara pulls out a bag of beef jerky, ripping open the package with her teeth while juggling her beer. “I wonder if they deliver out here.”
“No outside contact,” Tobias calls from down the hall.
Amara rolls her eyes. She picks an unfinished cabinet and tosses the bag of jerky in, then a bag of trail mix, humming to herself, “Is that all there is?”
I decide to wander up to the second floor.
“If that’s all there is, my friend…”
“Be careful upstairs,” Tobias nags.
I keep playing house and try to imagine the family that will move in one day. The life they’ll make for themselves here. Could it be my family? What kind of life could I have here?
I navigate through my daydream family, moving in for us all and mapping out our lives inside. This room’s for the kids, this room is mom and dad’s, and this room is for guests.
The second floor is far more skeletal than downstairs. In the bedrooms, pieces of Sheetrock have been nailed in place, while other walls are nothing but wooden framing. The drywall has yet to be sanded and primed. Tape seals off the seams between the sheets.
I can see faint scribblings in grease pencil along the corners of the plaster to show where they cut through the Sheetrock. I spot numbers—dimensions—penciled along the edges with annotations: Master B. Guest B. Bathroom. They read like secret messages left behind for someone to find.
When I’m sure nobody’s looking—who would be?—I pull out my Sharpie and find a corner in what would’ve been a closet to leave my own note:
ERIN IS HERE
Open wide, Silas whispers in my ear.
I spin around and find nothing but thick sheets of pink-and-yellow insulation stuffing the inner cavities like cotton candy. I know you’re not supposed to touch insulation—your skin will itch for hours—but I’m tempted to pinch a bit, pop it in my mouth, and swallow. Suddenly I’m at the county fair with Silas again. We split a tab of acid before coming, marveling at the spiral of lights chemtrailing off the rides. Now we’re sharing a cotton candy. Silas tugs a pink tuft and holds it out to me: “Say aaah.” I do as he says and he places it on my tongue. The fibrous threads dissolve in my mouth. The melted sugar runs down my throat as I swallow, and my entire mind expands. My eyes never leave Silas as an explosion of sugar radiates through the rest of me. My turn. I pluck a tuft and wait for him to stick out his tongue, but instead of placing the cotton candy in his mouth, I smash it against his nose. “Rude!” he says. I laugh out loud, remembering the moment, startling myself when I hear the sound of my own voice echoing throughout the hollow house.
“Erin!” Tobias’s voice reaches up the stairs. “We’re ready!”
“Coming!”