For Sale By Owners

‍It what point does it start to cool down? The boy asked in earnest.

It doesn’t, they laughed.

The fire was waning but it had done little for the ungodly temperature aside from melting the Jet Puffs to the rusty skewers. The air felt barely breathable, what with the smoke and the swarms of insects that suckled on the pale strips of wrinkled skin between the group’s outerwear. The entire property was barely habitable anyway, but the six of them and Uncle’s two Border Collies moved mountains and meetings to get here because, after all, they told the boy, it was important to tell their stories in the place they happened. Promises had been made and broken to head South to fix it all up in the past decades, but everyone has been awful busy. Plus the heat, God. Untenable for a nice family get-together. Sometimes fondness for the past does not supersede fondness for creature comforts, they jested, scraping tacky white sugar from their teeth with the tips of the skewers. But we’re glad you’re here now.

And they all were fond of the place, at least in the theatrical dance they’d been putting on for the young stranger earlier in the day, all of them fumbling about the kitchen in the same clumsy shapes they’d made in their childhood. 

Ah, the forks! Here.

Don’t you remember—

They’d exchange knowing looks and smile at their observer. You’ll find out.

There were cobwebs, sure, but the property wasn’t particularly menacing, the boy observed. Bad for the story. There was a strange quality to this crew’s interactions, as if they’d studied newspaper clippings of the house prior to the meeting to appear more familiar with it than they actually were. But he’d done his research. He was a diligent storyteller, he assured himself. These were indeed the cousins that spent the summers here; these were the wan, gnarled versions of those children that swore with their hands on the Bible that they’d seen monsters on their back porch. Like any dutiful anthropologist, he was determined to record the truth, or at least the most faithful version of the truth, for posterity before the heat claimed the land like it had Louisiana and Texas and Florida. This land had twenty-odd years left, but the cousins, with their trembling hands and strange, high, clear voices, did not. Their myths would be laid bare for the disaster tourists and mercenaries and then it would be told in the history books. And, he hoped, as he swatted away insects the size of his eyeball, this odd night would be worth it.

Okay, he said, so tell me.

Uncle Brick

It was just Grayson, back in the day, he whistled through a loose incisor.

I only got the Brick nickname much later. As you well know, we’re trying to sell this place to the right kind of buyer. So don’t make us sound like hicks. Call me Grayson when you write this down.

You know, when I was a boy, the days used to fluctuate ever-so-slightly. Being young was like being adrift on a raft atop this great swelling body of fluid, and time moved in this strange way. As a kid, you’re sensitive to those gentle top-level currents beneath you. Now, not so much. Not so much at all. But being here, those currents were different. Much more violent—long languorous stretches and then freefalls. You’d run to get the football just past that fence and hours had gone by. You could sit right there, on the porch, read a book and play games of chess and you’d come back inside and your Coca-Cola was still cold. I’m getting to the story, Carrie, stop rolling your eyes. 

It got to the time when I was on the cusp of becoming a man and the way this place worked got to be somewhat unsettling to me. I got it in my head that I was done with these summers with my grandfather; done with those days that felt like I was making them up as I went along. I decided it was time to leave, so I went to the garage—do you see it over there? And I got everything I needed. What does a young, healthy man need for a journey back home? Food storage; a knapsack, some sturdy shoes. So I got them and I left and I told nobody.

I know it’s dark, but if you remember walking out behind the shed when you arrived, there’s a small grove of trees. Hypothetically, if you pass through the brush there and walk straight for about a mile, you’ll meet the neighbors, who have all sorts of upscale cars and a paved driveway and if you walk down that one, you’ll find a gravel road that cuts straight for about three miles to the east-west interstate. It’s a good road to walk on because there’s little traffic and it leads straight to a gas station with phones and cheap snacks. I’d been many times with the cousins; with grandfather. 

As I walked through the brush, though, the thought occurred to me that I had never gone alone. I knew the way, trust me. I knew it well enough to know that it shouldn’t have taken more than an hour and a half. It shouldn’t have taken days. I shouldn’t have pushed through that brush past three nightfalls, or left my shoes hanging in tree limbs to return to the same trees, naked from their leaves. It shouldn’t have snowed. I shouldn’t have found that woolen hat buried underneath the peat. I shouldn’t have used up my food supply; shouldn’t have prayed to God or whatever was listening and found that I stepped out of the brush into the neighbor’s carport in the bright of day and been swiftly picked up in their Cadillac and plopped back on the same porch I had just exited from. Shoes ruined, beanie in tow. Just in time for lunch.

Connie

‍Well, I’m not disagreeing with you, Brick. Time moves differently here. I remember that day you came home because it was the last time I saw you sweat! Ha! You should have come back the next summer because it only got stranger from there. 

So, kiddo, I don’t think we gave you the full story here. Our grandparents were very spirited, very gracious hosts. We had a big family at one point and the house reflects it. There were years where we had enough cousins for a full-field softball league. I never participated, of course. I liked to sit on the periphery of the field because I used to suffer bouts of extreme melancholy and softball has a way of really pushing one past the edge. Sometimes I could persuade the other kids–what were their names again? It’s been so long. Davie, do you remember? Sometimes I could persuade them to come watch with me, but I oftentimes felt like the others never really existed at all. We had so many cousins.

That was, until the monsters got here. 

I’m kidding. I didn’t personally see any monsters. But it really makes you wonder—how could a house fit thirty cousins at a time and still feel so small? Who was there with me, besides you all, of course—who was really there? We had so many cousins come and go, I’m sure you’d be able to find pictures of them on the wall inside. That’s part of the deal, right? You get to investigate the missing cousins and the old monsters and we get to sell the house to the museum before it gets too hot? Well, I’ll tell you. There were maybe forty cousins here and they were all so wonderful. We played in the outfield, me and the cousins.        

They were all around our age, some of them so tall and strong and slender and some squat, like the insects that weaseled their way into the wet dirt. I have such fond memories of this place. It’s a shame we haven’t come back here in so long. It’s as if I only remembered the volume of the family now. I can almost feel them here. Those wet grasses and the squelch of the mud by the fence and the way it felt if you curled your fingernails into it, rubbed it on your face and stuck it in your gums and watched the kids hit the ball as if you were viewing them all through a spyglass a million miles away. We had fun back in the day.     

They did, at least. I was quite melancholy.

David

I think journalists, or whoever you claim to be, have a proclivity towards exaggeration. That’s the root of the sickness that infected this family. Tell someone living in heaven a story about angels conspiring against God and they’ll get the idea that they serve Lucifer. Of course when the townspeople start saying the house is cursed, or that there’s an ancient evil that lives in your pond, or that the multitude of cousins that drift in and out of the property are, hell, otherworldly entities, someone’s young brain will begin to believe something is awry. The fact is, and will remain, that our childhood was beautiful.

You’re here to document local folklore? To preserve the sanctity of our family story? Eat our marshmallows and accept our hospitality? I don’t believe you’ve made the drive for any of those reasons. I know you. I see that you’ve come to give money to us and make even more money from us, and to somehow confer some sort of outside logic to the unreasonable old family legacy. There will be nothing true for you to preserve. We are the last ones who experienced the truth, and the truth is that we spent great stretches of sunlight together here in this house and on this land. Great and wonderful and terrible things happened, and that we were happy until we were told we shouldn’t be.

And still, to my great displeasure, I know you will quote me anyway. I’m trying to accurately describe the character of my first eighteen summers and I cannot stop thinking about myself sitting here, next to you, in this darkness, knowing that I have just witnessed you pull that small car into our port mere hours back, knowing that you walked the halls of this house and saw us fumble about and watching our distance from ourselves unfurl in real time, in front of you, a stranger. I know you, and the shape of your face and the slope of your back and yet, I’m speaking to you through a thick blackness and I don’t know that you’re really there. Do you understand me? I have to have faith that I am trusting the entity in front of me and that it is the boy I know that explored the house just as the sun was dipping below the crest. But I don’t know.  I can’t know that this silhouette in front of me is you and I am trusting it is, and I’m talking to you and I feel safe, but maybe I am not. So if the townspeople say, hey Davie, we’ve heard there’s a darkness that plagues your property and likes to sit around dead campfires past sunset, did you happen to talk to someone last night at the campfire posing as a boy? Of course I will retroactively understand that I’ve been duped. But we’re here now and there’s nothing to clarify.

I want you to remember how things are, right here, before you corroborate the stories, before you purport to confirm or deny local legend. 

Arnie

Hey, let’s lighten the mood. I’m the one who talked to the monster on the porch. Is that not the reason you’re here? I won’t recount to you the exhaustive details of the monster encounter, because Davie won’t let me. I’ll tell you, though—

Oh, Davie, you will let me? 

Okay, well, here’s how I remember it. I’d been plagued by this monster for as many summers as I can remember, though I think at this point in the evening we’re all wailling to admit that we can’t remember that many summers or if they were summers at all. But I’m pretty sure, well I have faith, that the monster was here when Brick still came around. I didn’t really think of him as a monster but I certainly didn’t think of him as a cousin or a grandfather. Those were the only two classes of beings you really came across in those days. He came to visit me on the hottest days of the year, I believe that, and he snuck around corners so none of you all could see him when you were doing the dishes and such. He would move things around in his wake. Sometimes eyeglasses. Sometimes he would wear my clothes and leave them, perfectly shaped, as if there was someone slouched nearly dead on the chair. This was the extent of his mischief, which is why I took a liking to him. I knew he would have been technically visible to anyone, but he chose to only show himself to me. He was inhuman and he was mischievous, like a child. In many ways, we were all monstrous at one point.

I’m sidetracking. The one summer that he really did make a point to be known was the last time we were here and that’s when everyone in the town started talking about the devil in the daylight. I knew from the start that the gas station attendant was referring to my monster because one day I walked through the forest to the gravel road and I could feel him behind me. I knew at that point we were headed for trouble because he never crossed property lines but there he was, behind me, for the trip, and when I went to get my Slim Jims and peanuts he stayed there and caused trouble after I left. The gas attendant swore he was there but the cops thought it was me, the arsonist. That’s when the real monster came out. That summer, as I’m sure you knew, it started to get so hot that the nicer families started to leave, like the ones with the paved driveway and nice cars. That summer, the forest started smoking and the bugs came out and the news started talking about impending disasters and the churches started turning towards the Old Testament. I didn’t set that fire near the marsh. I didn’t leave my jacket there. I didn’t steal or cheat the whole summer because I stayed on this very farm, trying to convince people the devil was around the corner, wearing my clothes. That’s when I talked to my monster and told him to cut the shit and leave us alone, and Davie and Connie saw it too. My cousins and their shadows were the only people to believe me. And maybe you, too.   

Do you believe me? It was the monster on the porch.

Photographed by Eji Studios

Styled by Audrey Taylor

Written and Produced by Annie Bush