Last Dance
by Dan Cardoza
There are a thousand ways a house can invite you in, but first, you
have to knock, and after, after? You have to answer the door.
The pressure behind my eyes, the auras, it all equates to the headaches
returning. Damn it. And last night, today, the headaches are worse than
ever. It’s a reoccurring hypnic cluster-bang.
Most of the Time, Maxalt kicks the headaches in the ass, so why the
sudden uptick? They have returned with a vengeance, especially the ones
that wake me at night. Their precursor: sleep, strobe lights in
vulnerable situations when I feel out of control.
My GP at Kaiser is the one that diagnosed them, my hypnic’s. “They are
rare, I give you that,” he lamented. The way he went on to described
them made me feel like I’m supposed to some kind of rock star, “The
headaches will get you off work whenever needed.”
Hypnic’s have been described as ‘alarm clock’ headaches, the way they
startle you awake. There are nights I don't get much sleep on purpose,
so I don’t get triggered.
And too, what’s with all the sadness lately? I feel as though I’ve been
running away from a funeral? I'll get a handle on it, I convince
myself.
Lately, I've worked long hours to avoid a miserable home life and to distract myself from the persistent, upsetting headaches.
I arrive at the house later than I prefer. I’m off the clock now. It’s
Time to relax before I brace myself for the two hour drive back to
Sacramento. The spooky location is my new favorite photography spot. I
set the emergency brake under a dead hickory tree.
The two stories Victorian reminds me of a Spanish or Portuguese ship.
It has a mythical presence, a bow, a Mizzen mast, and a stout stern.
The second story balcony will have to do as the ship's main deck. I
imagine something evil walking the plank. No one I’ve spoken to knows
much about the 1800’s house. Their reticence is less about history than
superstition.
If it were an old wooden ship, it certainly appears capable of having
carried a burden of cargo on any restless sea. There’s something about
this ancient place that gives me chicken skin. I’ve been here three
times. Each visit raises my hackles. Fear is the perfect photo I intend
to capture, the transience and darkness of its essence.
I’ve heard it’s haunted for some time. A California photography group
that I follow on Facebook has agreed that the house is paranormal and
too risky to enter. My obsession is to prove them all wrong.
There’s a two-foot tall stump in front of an old set of wooden steps.
The steps lead up to the arched doorway. The doorway is ajar, lockless.
Blackness greets you as you enter.
Somebody’s looked after the vintage decay, at least enough to prevent
the outdoors from taking over. The house’s ethereal bones look out of
place in the regional topography of double-wide trailers and run down
farmhouses.
It’s the valley of dead earth. The corn is lucky to reach three feet in
height in the valley, barely suitable for cattle or plowing under, but
not much else. The vines that once climbed their way up the two pillars
of the home's pergola were violently trimmed back. They have dried and
withered. The dead vines cling to the exterior as skeletal metatarsals
and phalanges, each gaunt twig empty of sun.
Three arched windows grace the second floor. Gingerbread cedar trim
gives the old place a certain elegance in death. A tall brick fireplace
leans into the western wall as if holding it up. The mouth of the fire
stack, even from my SUV, appears diesel engine black. It’s been
scorched over the years from exhausting winter's carbon dioxides.
The trees that once sheltered and shaded the tall house have caught the
worst of storms. Their staghorn branches fight and rattle in the wind.
The surrounding soil that once lusted after the vegetation now
patiently waits for an eco banquet. It intends to devour all the rot,
sawdust, and compost. We will all end up down there.
Looking up, there it is directly behind the house, rising over the
roofline. It’s what the photography group called the Jesus cross. It’s
a charcoaled fire stick with a cross member beam. At least that how it
appears to me. Lighting as sharp as sin had its way with it decades
ago.
I'm not going to lie to you. The house is scary as shit. But that’s what I love about the mysterious place.
My name is Ben. I’m an armature photographer. I travel the state 20 on
occasion to attend to business for the state of California, property
lines, encroachments, almond, and pecan quarrels. Trees don’t pay
attention to that kind of stuff, but farmers do. I keep ranchers from
turning into the Hatfield and McCoy’s. It's a 'fences make good
neighbors,' sort of thing. My boundaries prevent a good amount of
shotgun blasts to the head. I find that part of my job rewarding but
not my passion.
It’s the third time I’ve stopped to photograph the old place. My first
visit was maybe three years ago. It’s not like nature will reclaim the
structure anytime soon. California is not the Amazon. So, I’ve taken my
time. There is something that draws me back here, Time after Time. In
part, it’s the winters and summers and how they interact with the
abandoned house that is most attractive, all its moodiness and slow
decay.
The beauty in all the falling down and ugliness is what’s appealing.
The house's intent to ghost itself is intriguing, the part about how in
1000 years from now it will be invisible. I wouldn’t tell just anyone,
but somehow deep inside, I believe the old house wants me here for its
own reasons. It’s as if it has something to share with me, something it
wants for me? It’s difficult to explain. I don’t confess this very
often. We all have a straight jacket waiting for us out there, and yes,
they do make your ass look big.
There are a few outbuildings on the property. And a fallow garden that
once grew red tomatoes, radish, but mostly a bounty of nothingness.
There is an old chicken coop with a rotten floor part earth now, sticky
with mud and feathers no matter what time of the year.
There's a quintessential pet cemetery with a lot of 4-H crosses. Witchweed as thick as varmint fur encircles the damned thing.
A detached garage looks more like an automobile or motorcycle fix-it-up
shop than a place to park an old car. The east wall is leaning in the
direction of where the wind wants it to go. Maybe a struggling farmer
or rancher greased tools in there, poured gas and diesel into cans,
blood, hung deer, butchered them? What’s left on the ground is oiled
and splintered, more slaughterhouse floor than a flat surface.
An old John Deere Tractor insists on staying broken down behind the
house. It rests on what was a piss-colored lawn. The tractor looks
tired, sold and re-sold, spent from dragging around that damned old
chisel plow with the worn, dull blades. The rusty green thing has never
been paid off. Too many skinny farmers and bad seasonal paychecks
received down at the co-op.
But the house itself, the dark Victorian, is the most intriguing of all
the lifeless remnants. Outside are the bygone antiquities. Inside the
house, macabre ghosts swirl and whirl at the grand ball we all imagine
attending one day.
Whoever painted the house last channeled Andy Warhol. The paint has
faded, and it’s been weathered from sand storms. Yet the teal hue
remains magnificent, the dull patina only adding to its remarkable
allure. It’s a tone very out of place in such a dried and blue-collar
environment, just outside the city of Yuba City, California, a city
that was once voted the worst place to live in America.
The window trim is Andy too. It’s mustard yellow, maybe painted in the
Roaring '20s. The color has been softened from sun and Time. The teal
and mustard together make the place appear unworldly, better suited for
an unstable cliff overlooking a rocky shoreline.
A nearly downed hog-wire fence surrounds the property, maybe 5 acres in
all. The 5 acres have been gouged out of farmland, now 6000 acres of
dried up weeds.
I am waiting with the window down and soft music. I can hear the
occasional hiss of a car intent on speeding past the old farmhouse.
Whisking the driver home where it’s safe and warm. Highway 20 connects
Yuba City and Colusa, a small town down the road, next to the tall
river levies of the big-shouldered Sacramento River. Out here though,
in-between, I might as well be abandoned on the far side of the moon.
The first time I entered the house, I was careful to not fall through
the rotting floors. I avoided the windows, the mostly broken and
shattered glass, and the decaying clapboard walls. I used a fish-eye
and Canon EF 14mm f/2L lens. In some places the holes in the roof and
ceiling line up. The blue against the foreboding blackness inside of
the house looks amazing in a photo.
That Time I drove halfway home with my headlights off, not knowing it.
It was in a daze. It was no big deal, but I did pass a few cars. My
excitement and hysterical laughter are what was troubling.
About six months later, during my second photoshoot, my shots were all
about the fireplace brick, its hearth, and mantle, what was left
behind, and what was taken. The round and oval dust rings could have
been from a crystal vase or even an urn that held someone’s ashes. All
this excitement has allowed the dominatrix of my imagination to make a
slave out of me.
The living room was empty that day, except for an old high back chair.
The chair was plush. It had been made of deep walled corduroy. It was
maybe the most single expensive thing that had been n the house.
Cigarette burns pocked the overstuffed arms, mostly the one on the
right where a heavy hand must have rested. Someone tired and weary sat
there, let the unused ashes take away most of the expensive smoke. A
master must have dozed off, not wanting to. A troubled and weary mind
can do that to you.
The chair appeared to be a selfish chair, the chair the master of the
house once sat in, a chair that had worked overtime so a tortured man
could feel more comfortable, a wicked chair, one that would allow a
man’s evilness to reboot. The chair appeared out of place in the large
room, maybe a little stuffy for a skinny cattle rancher or a failed
farmer who’d gotten too okay about a bottle and losing crops. Whoever
sat in the chair, in front of the snapping hickory fireplace, more than
likely wanted to be left alone the rest of his life.
The two bathroom’s porcelain sink and toilet handles were missing,
taken by some city ghost intent on hiding them away, never to be looked
at again.
Faces in the broken bath mirror appeared shattered. A wall cabinet door
was hanging in disrepair. It’s ecru backing quarter inch thick
shipboard. The shade of paint would have made someone feel calmer. A
rusty razor sat in the corner of the bottom shelf. It was bent and
rusty red. Shortly after, I left for home again.
I hadn’t cut myself shaving in a couple of years. My Gillette Fusion
usually takes care of that. It wasn’t a big deal until I realized I was
smiling at myself in the bathroom mirror. It had been a week since the
second farmhouse shoot.
I’ve shared most of my photography with my two kids and wife. We have
no extended family. But of all the photo’s I print at Walgreen’s and
keep in albums, it’s the ones from the old vintage Victorian that
attract the most attention.
*****
I ready myself to enter the house for the third and last time. It is
early winter, November 2018. It’s windy and cloudy out, intermittent
sprinkles. Somehow the place seems more foreboding this trip.
Before I enter, I adjust the thick bristled entry rug. It has an
embedded horseshoe in rust with a tan background. I flip it around and
point it toward the house. Today I intend to shoot the kitchen, having
saved it for last. Kitchens are beehives of activity. They tell us so
much about family dynamics. I feel as though I am a voyeur as I head
for the heart of the house.
It’s a magnificent kitchen, lots of built-in cabinets and counters,
with plenty of cupboard space. It was painted white or ecru over the
years. What enters as light muddies the kitchen’s colors. The sky has
let itself in through a failed patch in the 12-foot ceiling and roof.
Upgraded cabinet handles and drawer pulls grace the drawers and doors,
half of them missing or stolen. The drawer bottoms are cracked and
broken, unable to hold a clutch of silverware. Hulls of walnut shells
litter the carved up wooden counter. Someone who couldn’t afford a
butcher block had cut and sliced with a passion. The gashes are deep
and wide from slicing with a hefty meat clever. Rodents and raccoons
have made themselves comfortable, shitting all over the floor,
cabinets, and shelves. Mice crap sprinkles the cupboard bottoms as
thick as wedding rice.
A massive latticed window emptied of memories graces the wall at the
end of the kitchen where a large farm table might have rested. The
windows paneled frames were battered and splintered into disrepair
allowing an icy wind to make the room feel like a meat locker. I pull
up the collar of my warm parka.
I carefully walk around the holes in the floor. Bent nails appear as
barbed hooks showing off different kinds of animal fur and bits of skin
leather.
I adjust the camera’s settings, the aperture speed, attaché the new flash. I begin to take ghostly photos.
It’s in the kitchen where I feel it the most, the atmosphere of discord
and pain. I continue my shoot. I feel at one with the room.
It’s then I am hit with the first vision. It’s coming from nowhere and
everywhere. The weather outside is a wintery jungle beating its
blustery drums. A lightning strike enters the house on electrical
stilts. It walks the long boarded halls. The cupboards rattle and shake
as if there is an underground tremor. A rusty hinge gives way, dropping
its damaged door to the floor.
In a flash that feels like napalm, I see a man’s arm. The arm is in a
downward arc, wrapped in sweaty blue denim. At his working man's cuff,
there is a fist as bloody bar room knuckles. Cast-off spatters the
kitchen. After the light disappears, the room is noiseless.
I was twisted around and thrown against the kitchen counter. After I
get my bearings, I place the camera and attached flash on the
countertop, the rest of my fear. I spin back around and brace myself,
gripping the dusty wood behind me. I’m petrified wood with eyes.
Unexpectedly, just behind me, the camera’s flash ignites. I fear it’s
impossible without a trigger finger. The downward stroke of a knife
appears. The knife glints butcher shop new, over and over again. Then
more silence.
After a brief pause, the kitchen’s tarry darkness is exposed. Thin
white slices of reality reveal itself n a strobe fest of horror. My
head begins to pound like a death knell. This bloody knife is driven
downward, over and over again. A staccato of blood splatters the
ceiling, floor, and walls. Shrieks and horrific screams pepper the
loving kitchen. The wind drops a wooden curtain rod to the floor as
loud as an ax. I nearly piss my pants.
The room is out of control, I tell myself, I'm not losing my mind. I promise myself, over and over again. Stay calm asshole, isn’t this what you are really after?
The images appear more white noise than an aberration, a bloody
scramble of time-lapse photography. Broken knife handles litter the
rotting floor like metal ears of corn through a farmer’s combine.
Everything that exists is a fury of anger and violence.
In the center of this chamber of dread, a manic disco ball reveals
itself. It floats as if a bright talisman just over the floor of the
kitchen, dead center. I watch as it spins faster and faster out of
control. It tilt's on its axis as if a world out of control. It spins
faster and faster.
Out of nowhere, I hear this shredded vintage voice. It’s a witchy,
Donna Summer. She’s psychic surround sound, singing ‘Last Dance.' Only
this time, her voice is silt and decay, her breath feral and rotten. As
the 80’s music throbs, I can hear the horrible, unrelenting screams of
children. I nearly vomit. I panic.
It’s stupid, but I slap my face in an attempt to get back to reality. I
quickly grab what I can and promptly feel my way out of the kitchen
toward the house's front door. The hell with breaking a leg, I have no
choice.
Behind me, the kitchen continues to whirl its unworldly light. My new
flash attachment that has been disconnected continues to flare,
recharge, and light. I’ll leave it for Donna Summer. I'm out of here.
She can keep the maniacal God-damned thing–Pop, pop, pop, the sound of
metallic wheezing, last chance, last dance.
I exit the two story farmhouse, nearly tripping down the broken steps to the ground.
Shaken to my core, I chirp myself into the SUV. I sit dazed and
frightened to the core. I turn up the heat. It's freezing. The windows
quickly fog up and encase me in a tomb of vapor. I welcome an anxiety
attack, the first in a long time. Bring it on,
I say to myself. I pull out a paper bag, one of a handful I keep in the
glove box lately. I breathe into it, puffin and out as if I am a
mechanical madman. Nothing is real any longer on my planet. Inside, the
steam feels claustrophobic. Ghosts and demons are out there washing the
windows and windshield in shadows and wind.
The SUV shakes more than the wind as if someone or something is rocking
the bumpers. I swear to myself it’s a prank, something leftover from
Halloween. Whoever they are, they’ve been waiting and watching for just
the right time to scare the shit out of me. I’ll be damned if I’ll
regress and let this emotional train wreck get the best of me. I’ve
worked too hard in therapy over the years, all the medication,
mindfulness, you name it.
I use my paper bag and an extra sweatshirt to wipe down the windows. I
turn on the air conditioner to clear things up. It works, then nothing.
Crack–a rotten branch falls from the hickory tree onto the hood of my
car. To hell with the dent, I freeze in place. Thunder and lightning
crack the icy layers of wet sky. I mumble inside my head. ’m done here for good.
I power the engine. As I turn left onto Highway 20 and head back toward
Yuba City, I silently say goodbye to my horror shit show. I promise to
keep all this crazy stuff to myself. Who in the hell is going to
believe me anyway? My family already thinks I am eccentric and
c-r-u-e-l.
*****
I hate the King Burger, the company’s scary mascot. But tonight it’s
the only restaurant open in town. It’s 12:00 A.M., but the lights are
still on. I’m starving for a few hamburgers.
I clean up my face and hands. It’s a job, but the alcohol wipes come in
handy. There’s always the filthy Burger King restroom that smells like
a sewer with all the piss in the grout.
One of the three kids behind the counter takes my order. It's late.
They shuffle like zombies. After I swipe my card, I search for an out
of the way booth in the back. I attempt to scroll through my camera
photos. There are none. Jesus, this has never happened to me before.
I’ll have to file away the memories in my gray matter cloud.
"Here you go, sir, red hot fry’s, and a big ass King XL, oh, and your
diet coke. Is it cold out there tonight, sir?” She situates the grub on
a tray in front of me. She’s an older woman with sunken, tired eyes.
Her appearance is a little witchy. I half expect her to offer me the
spices of fennel and nutmeg, with talc of dried owl eye. Why is she working this late?
“It was a lot colder down at that old farmhouse west 20," I say, not recognizing my voice. It’s like we are in an 1800’s play.
“You are lucky, sir. Warm up,” she says with a hint of a smirk. "Last call, sailor, you’re our last customer.” She smiles.
I hate the foul mouthed woman already. My mother used to say that,
‘last call sailor,' before she'd wake me out of a deep sleep. After the
last sleep interruption, she’d turn in for the night. I was only 7
then. She was clearly afraid I wood yellow her starched sheets.
“LAST DANCE/LAST CHANCE/LAST CALL/LAST DANCE!” I Screamed until my
voice gave out, but only inside my skull, using my inside voice.
“There are no last chances, sir."
“Did you hear what I was thinking?”
"Of course not, sir–I can see by your camera that you’ve been taking
some nosy picture of things, again. Some of the folks in town would
prefer that you don't take any more of those,
'none-of-your-business-pictures,’ out here.”
“Excuse me, none of my business?”
“Yup, we mind our own business up here, sailor?”
“Ok, well, I guess. Well, thank you so much for bringing out the hot none-of-my-business-food then.”
She crackles, “More than welcome, Benjamin.”
I must be tired. Her appearance seems to change right in front of me as
if she's changing costumes in a Shakespearean play. Whoever or whatever
she is, she slowly turns and shuffles toward the front and the
registers.
But before she completely disappears, she whirls on her toes, not ten
feet in front of me, and asks, “Sir, tell me you didn’t fuck with the
welcome mat?”
“What? Ah, well, yes, I did. It had a horseshoe on it. I flipped it upside down so all the good luck would enter the house.”
“I know what you have on your mind, friend, but a family was
slaughtered out there at the old farmhouse. I’d say that old farmhouse
has done ran out of luck already a long ass time ago. Luck is for the
living anyway, good folks like you and me, sir.”
It’s impossible to not stare as she disappears. She has a terrible scar
around her neck, a heavy hypertrophic necklace from ear to ear. The
choker scar looks as though it was buttoned down pretty good with maybe
some of those cat-gut stitches, each ‘X’ a sideways cross.
I enjoy the cooling hamburgers as if it’s my last meal.
The BK workers must have turned on the conditioner to freshen up the
place. It’s freezing in here. With each breath, more condensation
appears.
As I get up to leave, I feel bad that I hadn’t offered the older lady a
tip at my booth. And so I walk around to the front counter and the
registers. There is no one left in Burger King. Not one single customer
or employee. I could rob the damned place.
I place a $5.00 tip on the counter and slowly walk out the side door. I
squeeze the Highlanders lock fob until it chirps like a crow and opens
the doors. Before I get in, I take a long look back at the restaurant,
and then, one after the other, the lights click off, row and row. Once
the restaurant disappears into the blackness of night, the parking
lights begin to shut down, one after the other, after the other.
In the pitch darkness of early morning, I hop inside, start the SUV and
begin to drive in the direction of home in Sacramento. I’m tired. I
make sure to keep my eyes glued to the road. I think about my luck
going forward. I worry about how some hypnic symptoms can mimic a brain
aneurysm.
Headlights approach on the narrow highway. First one set, then two.
Their car beams whiz through me, contrails of liquid light. After they
pass me in the rearview, the car's headlamps morph into dragon plums,
everything begins to glow white.
I whip the Highlander off the paved 99 and onto a dark county road.
At the first pull out, I skid to a stop. Inhale, exhale, I tell myself.
My head is rattling like my terrible mother’s pressure cooker gauge.
I grip the steering wheel with all my strength and dig my fingers nails
into its leathery hide, smash my head against wheel, over and over
again.
Then, I stop. My thoughts shine crystal clear: “that relentless
damned mortgage payment, she lied, said size doesn’t matter, the
stepchildren need expensive braces, there are pending layoff’s at work,
I love you like a meal ticket, she said, you weren’t my first choice,
screw you, you aren’t my real a father, chronic stress, she quit
wearing her wedding ring, a glint of light on a stainless steel knife
blade, ungodly relief.”
THE END
© 2021 Dan Cardoza
Bio: Dan’s most recent darkness was published by Aphelion,
BlazeVOX, Black Petals, Blood Moon Rising Magazine, Bull, Chilling
Tales for Dark Nights Podcast, Cleaver, Close to the Bone, Coffin Bell,
Dark City Books, Entropy, The Horror Zine, Mystery Tribune, Suspense
Magazine, Variant, and The 5-2. Dan has been nominated for Best of the
Net and best micro-fiction.
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