The house was a plain yellow rectangular structure with an awning above the front door and a long porch in the back, white window trim, gray shingles on the roof. I was relieved when I saw it. My mother had predicted doom and gloom when I told her I was moving in with Roy, not to his condo in town, but to his childhood home upstate. She had conjured pictures of trailer parks and double-wides. My mother has a very dim view of the standard of living in rural areas. She’s a die-in-the-wool New Yorker and anything lower than four stories is a hovel. I told her she worried needlessly. Nothing would change much for me, just the location. I write for an online publication and with a decent connection I can work anywhere. Roy said service in the area was good and I had no reason to doubt him. Roy is a reliable guy. He’s a GP.

He had an opportunity to get out of New York and back to his roots. The resident family doctor had decided to retire to Florida and his practice was for sale. Wouldn’t it be perfect if Doctor Roy Seitz, a local boy, could take over?

Roy and I had been dating for a year and were on the verge of cohabiting–meaning I spent almost every night at his condo while still paying rent for my small apartment. We were tiptoeing around a more permanent arrangement, the kind that involved rings and signatures.

“Not to rush anything, Clare honey, but this might be the nudge we need.”

He was being kind. I am the worst procrastinator.

We decided to go up for a long week-end. Roy wanted to see the practice and I wanted to see the house, and meet Roy’s mother, Mutti. I had talked to her on the phone several times. Our conversations were pleasant. She wasn’t getting out much. She was in her seventies and she wasn’t very mobile. She was old enough to be my grandmother. As she was fond of saying: “Roy came into our life pretty late.”

So, my head full of my mother’s misgivings about places where green spaces were called fields and forests instead of parks, I contemplated the house Roy grew up in, and it was fine. Quite remote–the nearest neighbor was two miles down the road–but fine. The front yard needed weeding and trees needed trimming, rose bushes and terracotta pots would improve the look, and the fence could use a fresh coat of paint. I was in full homemaking mode and already planning improvements.

Mutti was at the door to welcome us. She hugged Roy and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. The small entrance hallway was cluttered with cardboard boxes stacked up to the ceiling. The old lady navigated between them more deftly than I expected and led us to the sitting room.

The furniture was bulky, plushy and over decorated with crochet doilies; these things were like an invasive vine; they were everywhere. We made our way through a labyrinth of side tables loaded with knickknacks. A rake wouldn’t have managed to get through the shag carpet. The moment I thought about the accumulated dust, I started to sneeze. I don’t do discreet ladylike sneezes. I erupt with hurricane force in series of twenty exhausting repeats. I excused myself.

The boxes in the hallway were almost the end of me. I banged my shoulder on one side, my knee on the other and my head as I reached the door. The front yard was the end of the obstacle course.

“You okay?” Roy said, when I ventured back inside.

“Miserable allergies. I should have brought my pills.”

“Lots of pollen this time of year,” he said.

The large kitchen was definitely less dusty. Thanks to my clogged nose, the smell of old grease and ripe garbage was bearable but I made the mistake of leaning on the sticky countertop. I had to tear myself off.

“Do you have help with the house, Mrs. Seitz?” I said. Were the wet wipes we took on our last hiking trip still in the car’s glove box?

“Mariska comes once a week,” Mutti said. “She only does the first floor, of course. I’m not using the upstairs at all. My bedroom is down here. You will have to pay the girl more, Roy, when you move in. There will be more work.”

You bet! If she paid Mariska anything, it had to be less than motivating. A serious heart to heart with the girl would be required.

“It will be okay, Mutti, don’t worry,” Roy said. “Clare, do you want to see what we got upstairs?”

He was smiling broadly. I wondered if I could find a biohazard suit in my size.

The three large bedrooms upstairs would have been spacious without the invading boxes. Boxes, boxes and more boxes. Even the en suite bathroom was full of boxes.

“What’s all that stuff?” I said.

“Family souvenirs,” Roy said. “You know, these things you can’t bring yourself to give away or throw away. We’ll push them aside. It will be all right.”

He had to be kidding. Push them aside? Where?

“I can’t even see the commode, Roy! Come on!” I opened one of the boxes. It was chockfull of baby clothes reeking of moth balls.

Roy laughed. “We may need those one day, Clare!”

I was holding a ragged onesie with more holes than fabric. “Roy, it’s trash. It wouldn’t even make a decent rag. It belongs in the garbage bin. I saw an overflowing one in the kitchen.”

“You can’t do that. These are my mother’s things; they have meaning for her. She would be very upset. She’s lived here for a very long time. We are her guests, Clare. It is not our place to shake things up.”

“What do you mean, shake things up? I’m getting rid of crap.”

Roy grabbed the ratty onesie and put it back in the box. “If you throw things away, Mutti will know. You don’t want to start our lives here with a quarrel, do you?”

She would know? “Does shaking things up include cleaning that pigsty of a kitchen? No way I’m cooking a meal in there until it’s scrubbed floor to ceiling.” I was struggling to keep my voice from going into the shrill register that would instantly turn him deaf to all logical arguments. I knew my Roy. He had an infinite capacity for walking away from trouble.

“You’ve been here half an hour, yet you already know better than anybody how the place should be run. It is not your most endearing quality, Clare.”

He left the room, abandoning me in the maze of boxes.

#

One month later, Roy was the new local GP. We were staying in a motel until we could move into Mutti’s house. Roy had put his New York condo up for sale. I had not yet given up my apartment.

I didn’t have to fight Mutti on the kitchen clean-up. She let me handle Mariska. I suspected she was relieved not to have to confront her. She was like her son in that regard. I scored a big victory with the girl. Jobs were scarce in the area and I doubled her pay. She wasn’t stupid and she wasn’t lazy, she just didn’t see why she should break her back if nobody cared. We worked hard and sanitized the kitchen.

I wasn’t as successful with the boxes. Mutti agreed to look at them, but look was all she did. She pulled stuff out and put everything back, sighing, mumbling sadly, tears streaming down her face, mouth working. She looked so desperate, so overcome with emotion that I could not bring myself to be firm with her. There was time. We’d get there. Mariska and I hauled the boxes out of the master bedroom suite and moved them to the other two bedrooms. It was far from ideal but Roy was overjoyed.

“You see, it works! And with the doors closed, you don’t even know the stuff is there. It’s perfect.”

Typical. Put your head in the sand. Or in a cardboard box, rather!

We bought a better bed, linens and bathroom supplies and moved out of the motel.

#

I’m twenty-six, healthy, and I have a good head on my shoulders. By now, you know I tend to take control when things get iffy and I’m stubborn, annoyingly so at times. I’m not likely to go flipping nuts when something goes bang in the night.

Nothing went bang in the night.

Things went thunk in broad daylight.

The boxes in the hallway and the bedrooms were irking me. I pictured a lightning strike, glass catching a ray of sun, an electric outlet giving off a spark, and piles of newspapers, catalogs and magazines smoldering and going up in flames.

I went at it cautiously. Even if I didn’t believe Mutti would know what I was doing, as Roy had implied, I didn’t want to distress her needlessly. I didn’t dig into the hallway boxes, I targeted the stash in the bedrooms and I made careful choices. Anything that might have some value, I put aside.

I moved stuff out, little by little, in the big straw basket I used for grocery shopping and dumped the trash at the recycling center. I folded the empty cardboard boxes and lined them against the walls. Pieces of clothing and shoes that were not too battered went into the donations box at the supermarket. It took time but I was making progress. I was very pleased with myself.

#

Thunk.

Remember the ragged onesie? It had been in the first basket load I dumped. A symbolic gesture. And, frankly, a direct challenge to Roy. I’m not proud of the petty sentiment behind it.

I got my comeuppance.

I was working on a stack of boxes, opened one of them, and my heart went thunk. It sounded weird, like a wet sponge in a barrel.

I was staring at the onesie.

It had to be another, different blue-striped baby garment. Maybe Mutti was the kind of woman who bought things she liked in doubles. I wish I’d done that with some really comfortable shoes. I rationalized. Of course the garment would be worn out in the same places. The feet and the knees. Babies crawl, don’t they?

I threw the thing away. I swear I did.

The next day, the onesie was back. Worse, the cardboard boxes I had folded were gone, and the space I had cleared in the smaller of the two guest bedrooms was filled up again. It was as if somebody had followed me to the dump sites and retrieved the discarded trash to put everything back exactly the way it was before.

It wasn’t a subdued thunk this time, it was an icy finger at the base of my neck, and glacial sweat going down my spine.

I never told you what my writing is about. I debunk urban and other myths. I subject fantasies to the test of science and common sense. I believe in the power of reason. And the value of experimentation.

I selected a small oil painting–it wasn’t a lost Vermeer!–and dumped it at the gas station. It was mid-afternoon, my car was the only one in the parking lot, and I watched the garbage bin for twenty minutes after tossing the artwork. I saw the gas station attendant throw a half-full coffee cup in there. It hit the lid and spilled. No other activity. None.

The next morning, the painting was back in the box.

I knew I was losing it.

I had visions of Sisyphus pushing his rock up the mountain only to watch it rolling down and having to do it all over again, and of the other Greek guy filling up that leaky barrel for all eternity. I was in hallowed company. Mythical company.

The worst part was that I couldn’t tell anybody about it. Not Mutti. She would be horrified by what I had done behind her back no matter that it was all back in place. Certainly not my mother who believed the countryside was one of the circles of hell. Roy?

We were in bed. He was reading.

“Darling? Why did you say Mutti would know if I removed stuff from the boxes?”

He pushed his glasses down his nose, looked at me, frowned. “You’ve been at it, haven’t you?”

“That stupid onesie,” I said.

He sighed. “I told you. You think you know everything about everything.”

It was aggravating. “Well I don’t. Why don’t you make me wiser?”

“Let it go, Clare.” He closed his book, switched off the bedside lamp, and turned on his side with his back to me.

He didn’t leave me a choice. I had to talk to his mother.

#

Mutti was in her big armchair, a blanket on her knees, hands folded in her lap, face in repose, looking at nothing. Her Pokerfaced Serenity.

“You’ve been rummaging, girl,” she said.

All right. She knew. Now what? “It’s a fire hazard,” I said.

She pointed at a stool. “Bring it over and sit. My voice is not strong and it’s a long story.”

She wasn’t upset or angry. I had a feeling she had known from the start that I would poke around.

“I am in a quandary,” she said. “It wants you to stay, and I like you, but I’m not sure you’re suitable. Mariska would be a better choice, if she could wrap her head around it. Tricky problem. It wants someone with brains and the brains get in the way.”

“It?” I said.

“The house, dear,” Mutti said. “Do you know how long I’ve lived here?”

“Seventy years and a bit,” I said.

She laughed. Gravel in a blender. The blades would be bent beyond repair. “Double it and you’ll be closer. I still look good, no? I sure can go a while longer but I have to train a replacement.” She leaned forward. She smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg. Pleasant aromas. Christmassy. Eggnog anyone? “What about it, dear? To be like these men in the Holy Bible who lived long, long lives.”

“Nonsense,” I said.

I tried to get up and she put a hand on my forearm to keep me down. It was an iron hand. I couldn’t have shaken her off. I noticed long pale scars on her thin wrist. Old, cruel marks that must have cut deep.

“Have patience, child. Open your mind. Your imagination is as tight as a clenched fist. Listen to the tale.”

She said she was fifteen when she came to the house. She was born in a village nearby and her parents got her a job as a maid. The house was about the same. Smaller windows and a heavier wooden door. Same layout inside. Gudrun Seitz lived there with her son, Albert. Gudrun was a widow.

“Always widows,” Mutti said. “With an only son. The pattern repeats. It started a long time ago.”

I knew where the story was going and my mind rebelled. This was the kind of rubbish I skewered for a living.

“I married Albert. Roy came much later. Albert died soon after. The house is doing things to a woman’s body. For childbearing purposes. When the son is old enough to take a wife, time catches up with the mother. Slowly. The house is clever. It will keep me alive long enough to find the new girl.” Both her hands were holding me now. “The house wants you to be that girl. It sees something in you.” I couldn’t take my eyes off her scars. On both wrists. She noticed my stare and let go of me. “It’s been a long time since the house chose me. Women have changed. I’m not sure it knows that.”

“I’m not good enough for the damn house?” I should have laughed it off and I wanted to scream. The woman had to be mad. Yet, I hadn’t imagined the onesie. Or the ghostly painting. “What about the boxes?”

“The boxes are the house. You should have figured that out by now. Nothing can be taken. We can only add.”

“Soon, there won’t be any room left,” I said.

“The house will adapt,” Mutti said. “It used to be a hut, then a cabin. Who knows what it’ll be next.”

She had an answer for everything. “Does Roy know?”

“It’s between the house and the women.”

The icy finger that had stabbed my neck was now a frozen hand that squeezed my throat. I had sort of held it together up to then. Now I was terrified. Mutti’s wrist scars were seared on my brain. “Can I leave or am I in a box too? If I try to go, will I be zapped right back?”

“I don’t know.” She was looking in the distance; her hands were clasped in her lap. She looked impossibly old suddenly. “Maybe there is still time… If you hurry.”

#

By the time I got to my apartment, I was a shivering wreck. The drive had not calmed my nerves or alleviated my fears, and I knew I was running a fever. I took a couple of pills with a bowl of instant soup and slipped under the covers. I fell asleep like one falls into a well.

#

I heard the shower door bang close. It was so irritating. Why couldn’t he hold the damn thing! He would break it some day. I opened my eyes. I was still foggy, but the fever seemed to be gone.

The room smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg.

Pleasant.

Familiar.

The bathroom door opened. “I’m so sorry,” Roy said. “I didn’t want to wake you up. You were sleeping so soundly.”

I think I screamed.

– M.E. Proctor