Houses. They come in all sorts, big and small, located in cities, small towns, and out in the country. Sometimes they’re homes and sometimes they’re just buildings. They often hold memories, good and bad. Here are two very different stories about houses. Janet writes about a house in a dream—and water. D. Z. pens a story about a house on a farm—and fire.
Dream House
Janet Dawson
Grandma Polly and Aunt Lu huddled at the dining room table, engaged in one of their epic, take-no-prisoners Scrabble games. Grandma used all her tiles to spell “amethyst,” and she triumphantly counted her score.
Water ran in rivulets down the wall. I walked into the kitchen, where Cousin Ralph stood at the kitchen sink as water overflowed onto the floor.
That can’t be right, I told myself. Grandma Polly was Mom’s mother. She and Aunt Lu had been dead for years. So had Cousin Ralph, a cousin on Dad’s side of the family. What was he doing in Grandma Polly’s house?
What was going on with this damn water?
I woke up, reached for the bedside light, and sat up. My cat stretched out next to me, emitting a faint snore. “I’m glad you can sleep,” I said. “Third time this week I’ve had this damn dream.”
The house was always the same—Grandma Polly’s house on a quiet, tree-lined street in a small town, near the city where I lived.
In the dream, water leaked from the ceiling, dripped from corners and light fixtures, dribbled in through the windows, even though they were closed. Water pooled on the hardwood floors and soaked into my grandmother’s braided rugs.
Mom grew up in that house and lived there in her later years. After Dad died, not long after Grandma, Mom sold the suburban house where she and Dad lived and moved into Grandma’s house. Eight months ago, Mom died. I’d cleared out the house and had it appraised and inspected. All was in order—there were no water leaks, anywhere.
So, why all the dreams about water? Besides, the dream house looked the way it had when Grandma was alive, not when Mom lived there. I pondered this a few seconds more, then turned out the light, hoping I wouldn’t have that dream yet again.
I was meeting the realtor the next day at the house. I got there early, checking the mailbox. I’d forwarded Mom’s mail to my own address, but as usual there were a few things in the mailbox, advertisements—lawn care, furnace repair, an ad for a plumber, with a graphic of a leaky faucet.
Water again. I tucked the ads into my purse and opened the front door, going inside. The house had a living room with a fireplace. There were two bedrooms, with a large bathroom between them. A wide doorway at the back of the living room led to the dining room, then another door opened onto the big kitchen. There was also the side porch, accessed from the back bedroom. The porch was where my great-grandfather had lived. I barely remembered the old man. He’d suffered a stroke and Grandma Polly moved him into her house to care for him. The side porch had been enclosed and turned into a bedroom with a bathroom at the back and an exterior door. After the old man died, it was a guest room for visiting family.
I did a walkthrough of the rooms, seeing no signs of water leaks. Nor was Cousin Ralph lurking in the kitchen.
That damn dream.
I went out to the side porch and peered out the window, seeing a purple glass wind chime on a tree limb next door, casting purple highlights on the floor and walls of the room. It was the same shade as—
Amethyst. In last night’s dream, Grandma Polly’s high-scoring word. Years ago, Dad gave Mom a heart-shaped gold locket, with her initials engraved on the back and a large round amethyst on the front. The locket had gone missing, a few months before Mom died. We’d looked for it everywhere and couldn’t find it.
Was the dream house trying to tell me something? I went into the bathroom off the side porch and looked at the sink. Then I pulled the ad from my purse and called that plumber.
“It was caught in the U-bend,” the man said an hour or so later. “I’m surprised it didn’t get washed all the way down.”
“Good thing this bathroom wasn’t used all that often,” I said, holding the locket as I rubbed the amethyst with my thumb.
The Second Death
D. Z. Church
“Crazy. That’s what I say. Torching a centennial farmhouse for firefighting practice,” Ray Johnson adjusted the suspenders on his bright yellow fire-resistant pants.
“What bugs me is how eager Jake Jacks sounded,” Fire Chief Crone responded, looking up from his desk at the volunteer fire station.
“At his grandfather’s inurnment two days ago, Jake told me his grandpa’s will jumped his dad and left Jake the farm. Entailed was the word he used, like I know what that means.”
“Means Jake is the caretaker, can’t sell the farm, just farm it or lease it out. Main thing is, he can’t sell the land. Maybe one of Jake’s boys gets it when he passes. It’s a bit of a curse. Ties Jake to this town.”
Town was a single street with a population sign stuck at 106, off a once busy highway between two larger towns. The Chief remembered a gas station, a market, and a lumber store on the main strip. Only the lumber store remained, having moved into the elementary school when they started bussing the kids out of town.
Twice yearly, the county offered fire training for the local volunteers, rarely with live fire, making this offer a big deal. Still, Crone admitted the eagerness of Jake Jacks to burn down his grandfather’s house bothered him. A lot. Why not fix it up?
“If you’ve got the time, Ray, let’s drive over and check the place. We’ll need a plan for firing it to ensure no one gets injured during training. The fire safety folks will want to review it.”
“I got the time,” Ray said, snapping his suspenders, his mind on Jake. Jake’s grandfather took Jake and his brother in when their parents split, as in, his mother took off with an appliance salesman. Two years with his grandfather sent Jake running to the town’s Evangelical Church where he was welcomed. He still clung to his faith. His younger brother left the area at sixteen, got on fentanyl, and that was that. They found him in an alley.
Ray never figured it, his memories cluttered with images of running across cornrows with Jake. They’d laugh until they fell in a pile, one boy’s head on the other’s stomach. But that was before.
The farmhouse was a mile out of town, a right-hand turn and a half-mile up the road. The two-story Sears house with a sagging front porch and chipped white clapboard walls occupied a large yard shaded by walnut trees.
The Chief drove around to the back where they let themselves into the kitchen. Ray hunched his shoulder at the chill he felt as he strode into the furnished front parlor. The Chief followed. At footsteps behind them, both men jumped and turned.
“What the what?” Chief Crone studied Jake Jacks.
“You should have called. I was down to the barn.” Jake adjusted his DeKalb baseball cap, a flying corncob on the front panel.
“We came to check out your offer and plan our training,” the chief answered. “Though a mite confused as to why.”
“Follow me.” Jake led them back into the kitchen and out a door in the pantry to the storm cellar. He flapped open the double doors to the earthen basement and stepped down into the darkness. Two steps in, Ray turned, rushing back up into the sunny day.
The chief put a hand on Jake’s back and lit his phone’s flashlight. Jake’s grandfather hadn’t been inurned. He occupied an open pine casket staged in the center of the small cellar. A wooden cot, a stained mattress and cuffs bore testament to the room’s prior use.
“Evil lived here.” Jake said, “You burn it or I do. You’ll get your training either way.”
That night, the fire raged up from the storm cellar through the house with unexpected ferocity, repelling the volunteer firefighters. The windows shattered and the paint crackled before the house imploded, sending a tempest of sparks high into the night.
When the embers faded, Jake Jacks kicked a bit of dirt, shook his head, and muttered, “The abominable and sexually immoral shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”