It was now less than a month before my lease ran out. My job was gone, despite all promises of safety or the company posting its highest year-over-year earnings for the quarter. This is why large companies fail. I reasoned, more to comfort myself than to offer any profound insight. They become machines with automatic triggers, forgetting the human cost of their decisions. It didn’t matter that my team was understaffed and on the front lines of keeping the online infrastructure together. They didn’t care that six months were spent training me, getting up to speed, and all that time and money was now lost to them. Things are uncertain, therefore contractors must go, regardless what was promised or whether it made sense.
I quickly signed up for unemployment. The extra $600 helped, but even so, I was now making less than half of what I normally made in a week. None of this would have mattered too much if I wasn’t about to move into I giant old house in questionable condition on which I’d blown nearly all my savings. In all the insanity I still hadn’t had a chance to even visit the house.
I called every moving company in the area. None of them were willing to move me in time. Finally, he decided to just pack up all of his belongings and leave the furniture. None of it was particularly nice or expensive. Mostly typical self assembled items one bought for their first apartment. It wouldn’t have gone with the existing decor of the new place anyway I joked to myself, imagining the laminated pressboard next to oak built-ins and sitting on ancient hardwood floors.
It took well past midnight to finish cramming my belongings into the back of the Tesla. Nothing about this was ideal. There was only one charging location on my route and even stopping there to fully charge I’d be a lot closer to the car’s range limits than I’d like. Especially considering it was packed full of his belongings. Cursing the virus and every decision I’d made over the past three months I closed the trunk pulled out of my apartment complex for the last time.
The first leg of the trip was pretty uneventful. It was still early enough that no one was on the road, and much of it was still familiar. I reached the charging station around dinner time and, after plugging in, I walked over to a nearby restaurant for dinner, hoping some food and a few cups of coffee would wake me up, but after polishing off the last of the meal and 3 cups of coffee my mind was still dragging.
I decided it would be a good idea to stock up on caffeinated provisions. Also realizing it would be smart to gather all I might need for a week. Food, cleaning supplies, typical house stuff. Space in the car was tight, but I was able to squeeze in three bags of supplies. I tried to buy the smallest and most versatile sorts of essentials. I had no idea what awaited me at the house. There may be supplies there, but they may all have spoiled or been ruined. It was still unclear what a year or more of neglect might have done to the house. The agent, apparently, had only been in a few rooms of the house. The owner had dragged his feet in cataloging the items within, and having a chance to be rid of it immediately, never bothered to follow up. Clearly the realtor and I were very different people, for, had it been me, I would have explored every nook and cranny of that house at the first opportunity.
For not the first time in this whirlwind, I considered how odd the situation was. How foolish I’d been to buy a house that no one seemed to know much about. These were strange times to be sure, but for no one to even take the time to see what they had within this house. To make no attempt to catalogue it, why it baffled the mind. Perhaps the owner needed cash immediately, or was well enough off and so disinterested in the house and their distant and deceased relation that having it taken care of was more important than getting the most money or collecting any family memorabilia or heirlooms. The old woman had been dead for over a year after all with no one troubling to check up on her. Clearly there was no one around to care about her wellbeing so why would anyone care for the house? After all, one would have to be mad to take responsibility for such an enormous old house in the middle of nowhere. I laughed aloud at this thought, inviting stares from the one or two other people also at the charging station. The display read 90 minutes to go before full charge. Given I didn’t know what to expect arriving, I wanted to give myself as much of a charge as possible. Feeling a fresh wave of exhaustion, I decided the best course of action was to take a nap. I set the alarm on my phone for an hour and a half then pushed the driver seat back as far as I could, given all the stuff piled behind it. It was hardly far enough back to make a difference, but the exhaustion overpowered any discomfort, and soon I was off to sleep.
As I slept I had strange dreams of overgrown drives, old rotting corpses, and an old house no one wanted to step into. I wandered endless hallways, shadows moving just outside my vision. The entire time I felt as if someone were behind me, but looking back revealed no one. Then, while wandering down the same passage as before it occurred to me, I was following someone. An old lamp like one would see in a period film lit the way ahead, held by boney fingers framed in moth-eaten lace and silk. Dry, corse hair peaked out of a matching lace fringed pink nightcap. The fraying, shredded hem barely grazing the old wood floor. I was not afraid, however; despite her ghastly appearance I felt a strong fondness and sympathy for this deceased woman. This was a place she loved, felt at home. Suddenly, the previously endless corridor stopped abruptly. The glow of her lamp revealed a large set of French doors. The glow of the lamp made it impossible to see what lay beyond. Instead, my own face, and the hollowed skull of the woman reflected back upon us. The woman took an old, tarnished brass key out of her pocket. The tip fitting the lock still shiny from use, rubbing against the inner locking mechanism countless times. Slowly, deliberately she stuck the key into the hole and turned it gently clockwise. Suddenly, the sound of cascading chimes split the air through the silence. The woman’s head turned around suddenly staring accusingly at me as I snapped awake.
The suddenness of my phone’s alarm snapped me back into reality immediately. I could feel my heart pounding as I looked at the gauges on the display. The battery was now fully charged. I could leave. As I reached to put the car in drive, I realized all those cups off coffee were now ready to leave my system. Unbuckling, I opened the door and headed to the restroom. As I walked, my mind went back to the dream I had. I had no idea the final resting place for the old woman’s remains. It felt appropriate somehow that I pay my respects to her, but all I’d been told was the woman’s body, the bedclothes, and mattress had all been removed and the coroner performed an autopsy. Given how little care was given to the fate of the house and all inside, and how long it took for anyone to notice her absence for that matter, who would have taken charge of taking her to her final resting place. Then again, if the house had been bequeathed successfully to her relation. The one from whom I purchased the property, someone must have been in charge of executing her last will and testament. This realization combined with my now empty bladder filled me with a sense of relief.
With no job, few possessions, and no relations of my own to worry about, I felt a kinship with this woman and hoped to be a good steward of this place she called home her whole life. My main focus was clear. Let’s just focus on arriving in one piece. I still had many hours of driving ahead. Starting the car, hearing the familiar chime of the GPS resuming my route as my audiobook picked up where I’d left it, I pulled out of the charging station and began the final leg of the journey.
It was dusk when I finally passed over the state line. It was clear to me then that I would not be getting to the house until quite late. Past midnight at the very least. It was upon this realization I became extra grateful for the nap I took and the pack of energy shots I purchased at the grocery store. There was still plenty of my audiobook left to keep my mind occupied during the drive, and, immersed in that world of fanciful fiction, it didn’t seem long at all before the GPS announced we’d arrived at our destination.
To say we’d arrived is not entirely accurate. Without an exact address, I had to rely on longitude and latitude. The GPS, unaware of the drive leading to the house, could only take me to the closest road. I circled back and forth on the narrow country road, unable to make out anything that looked like a drive. I cursed myself silently for not asking the realtor to put a sign next to the entrance or something of the sort. The car chimed at me again. This was the third attempt the car made to alert me of its dire need for more juice. It was a new sound to me, for in the year and a half I owned this vehicle I’d never let the battery get this low I’d had nowhere to go, honestly, and every month, when the lease payment went through, I’d questioned why I’d even purchased a car in the first place, let alone one so expensive. The charge was now so low, it no longer showed how many miles it had left.
Not wanting to be stranded, I finally decided it would be better to shut off the car and explore on foot. If the car ran out of juice before I even found the drive, there was no way I could push it up the long, overgrown drive anyway. Stopping the car at what appeared to be the part of the road closest to the coordinates in my GPS, I pulled off to the side of the road and, silently praying it would start up again when I came back, I turned off the car and stepped out into the warm summer’s night.
