Page 35 of The House on Prytania
Her response came as soon as I’d hit Send.U need every minute hurry take uber
I sent an eye roll emoji before replacing the phone in my back pocket, unwilling to admit how tempted I was to simply leave my bike there and Uber back to our apartment, where I knew a warm bubbly bath would be waiting for me. And I would. Just not yet. I sniffed the air, satisfied that I smelled nothing but the usual scents of old wood, drywall dust, and a wet breeze blowing in from the river.
Goose bumps blossomed on my arms and exposed neck as I turned the key in the lock and opened the door. They had to be from the damp air that confused my body temperature, making it unable to distinguish between cold and hot when the temperature hovered between seasons, as if debating with itself. They had to be.
I stepped inside and flipped on the newly installed switch by the front door. Jolene was still brokering a deal with a local high-end lighting supplier, so only bare bulbs currently lit the house, but at least I now had electricity. The late fall day had already begun robbing the sky of light, creating darkened corners logic told me were empty, but my imagination showed me oily shadows with the head and limbs of a person.
I headed toward the kitchen, flipping on lights as I walked, eagerto check on the progress. Thibaut was making custom cabinets to match the design Jolene and I had agreed on. She’d originally suggested a yellow-brick-road theme, with the pantry painted like the Royal Palace of Oz. She’d been so earnest that it had taken me ten minutes of trying to say “Hell no” in a polite way so as not to hurt her feelings before she’d told me she was joking and that she was a little insulted that I’d doubted her sense of style.
Flipping on the kitchen light was met with the familiar sound of scurrying as the aircraft-carrier-sized winged cockroaches found their hiding places faster than I could pick up one of the cans of Raid I’d placed strategically around the room. I had finally stopped trying to put lipstick on a pig—Jolene’s words—by calling them the more genteel “palmetto bugs,” as I’d been taught while living in Charleston. Because whatever you called them, they were large, pervasive, and, according to Jolene, the devil’s own spawn. Sadly, pest control wasn’t even a glimmer in my eye while construction was happening and doors and windows were constantly open. I looked forward to when I could schedule monthly visits from an exterminator like Jolene probably looked forward to a new lipstick color.
I bit back my disappointment at seeing the empty kitchen walls. Thibaut had promised to show me how to install the glass subway tile backsplash, but that couldn’t go in until the cabinets were placed. My disappointment was quickly replaced with surprise when I spotted the large piece of furniture in the center of the floor, still smelling of the fresh coat of black lacquer paint that covered its surfaces.
It appeared to be the bottom half of a breakfront, with heavy carved legs and a bronze lock and key on the two front cabinet doors. The top was missing, allowing me to see inside the cavernous opening of the bottom half, and making me want to rub my hands with glee imagining the options I’d have choosing a surface and how gorgeous this piece would be as my kitchen island.
I walked around it twice, hoping for some clue as to its origin, before pulling out my phone to text Beau.Can u talk?I stared at the words on the screen before backspacing over them. I didn’t have timeto play another waiting game while my overactive imagination worked overtime as it considered different possible reasons why Beau wasn’t responding, all of which involved Sam and none of which involved clothes.
I opened the Uber app, then held my thumbs momentarily suspended as a door hinge whined from somewhere upstairs. I moved as stealthily as I could in my new leather flats—a concession to Jolene that I highly regretted right then—and stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up toward the upstairs closet. The door sat fully open, the inside shrouded in darkness. I flipped the switch that turned on the upstairs hall light, trying hard to remember if the door had been closed when I’d arrived.
I listened for any further sound of movement, reminding myself that the front door had been locked and that Thibaut was obsessive about checking all windows and doors before he left. His and Jorge’s tools were neatly stowed in a corner of the kitchen, untouched, as were the boxes of plumbing fixtures in the front room waiting to be installed.
It was an old house, I kept repeating in my head. Full of weary creaks and groans from simply withstanding gravity and the vagaries of Mother Nature for over a century. Just like Melanie’s dad, who sometimes needed my assistance to help him stand after he’d been kneeling in the garden too long, his knees popping as they readjusted to a standing position. It beat the alternative, as he was fond of mentioning. I imagined my house felt the same.
The closet seemed less menacing now with the arc of light spilling into it from the hallway. Maybe what I’d seen in the video had been just odd shadows caused by the too-bright light from a bare bulb. My mom had told me that as a child I would never believe her when she told me something was hot and I shouldn’t touch it. I always needed to find out for myself, leaving nasty blisters on my fingers but the odd satisfaction of knowing for sure.
I marched up the stairs with heavy steps, attempting to show confidence either to myself or to anyone—or anything—that might belistening. I flipped on my phone light and gave a cursory inspection of the closet before moving into the two slowly developing new bedrooms and the bathroom. After satisfying myself that I was alone, I headed back toward the stairs.
A soft sound from behind me made me pause. It was the sort of sound made by someone attempting to hold their breath to avoid discovery. I turned around to face the closet, aiming my flashlight into the two back corners. There wasn’t enough wall space on either side of the doorway inside the closet for anyone to hide, but I looked anyway. I wasn’t going to lie to myself by thinking I’d imagined the sound. Maybe flying cockroaches had evolved enough to make human sounds. As horrifying as that thought was, the alternative was so much worse.
Gripping my phone just in case I needed to use it as a weapon, I turned again to leave. I’d made it to the top of the steps before I was stopped again by another sound. Atap tap tapfollowed by a high-pitchedscreeeeechlike a fingernail on an old school chalkboard.
I marched back to the closet and stood inside the doorway, holding my breath and listening. A swoosh of air brushed my back, turning me around toward the stairway just as the closet door slammed shut in my face. I sprang forward and twisted the knob, which wouldn’t turn, the rational part of my brain telling me that there was no functioning lock on the new doorknob, that if I kept trying it should turn and open. Except it didn’t.
Something unidentifiable brushed my cheek, and I screamed. I swatted with both hands, dropping my phone, the beam of the flashlight now aimed up at the ceiling. A ceiling that seemed to be moving with shiny bits and pieces reflecting the light from the screen. One of the bits dropped onto the floor in front of me, followed by the flutter of an insect’s wings passing by my ear. I made a grab for my phone just as the light flickered out and something landed on the back of my neck.
I screamed again. And screamed and screamed and screamed as I pressed myself into as small of a ball as I could and raked my nubbyfingernails against my scalp again and again until the skin felt raw. Yet I couldn’t stop screaming or scraping, doing anything to keep away the silence that would allow in the thought that I couldn’t escape.
The door flew open, and the hall light illuminated a surprised Beau as I threw myself at him. I wanted to keep running, to find the cans of Raid and kill as many of the bugs as I could, but Beau held on to me, his arms tight around my waist, pressing me against him.
“What happened? Why are you screaming?”
I kept my face tucked into his neck and pointed to the closet, my eyes clenched so I wouldn’t have to look at what I knew was there and had felt along my arms and the back of my neck and hair. “Don’t let them out! They’re all over the ceiling. They’re falling on me.”
“What are? Nola, you’re not making sense.” He pried me away from him and held me at arm’s length. “Open your eyes. Now.”
I shook my head, only part of it out of resentment for Beau telling me what to do.
“There is nothing in the closet, Nola. What did you see?”
I opened my eyes, the overhead light blinding me momentarily until they adjusted; then I turned my head to look inside the closet. Empty except for my phone in the middle of the floor. Keeping my arms wrapped tightly around me, I walked inside to retrieve it, looking up at the pristine newly painted ceiling and at the empty hanging rods along the side walls.
“There were—” I began, my attention suddenly drawn to the sound of Beau snapping the band against his wrist.
“It’s... still here,” he said with a low voice.
“It? It wasn’t an it. It was hundreds and hundreds of roaches. They were everywhere. On the ceiling. Falling on me. They...” I stopped.
Beau was staring behind me, into the closet, his eyes widening in fear. Without turning around to see, I ran at Beau again, and he managed to stop us both from tumbling down the steps. With one swift movement, he grabbed the closet door and slammed it closed before lifting me in his arms and settling us on the floor with our backs against the door.
