Home Improvement: Undead Edition

Steve loomed beside them. Said, “Is she . . . What happened upstairs . . . We . . . It’s like it’s all gone crazy in here! If you think about it—”

Louise whispered, “Parker said not thinking was the way to be here.”

“Parker’s dead,” said Steve.

“So is Bob.” She looked at her husband.

Steve pressed both hands to his temples.

“Story,” muttered Steve. “We just need . . . a story. Bob went crazy, killed . . . killed them, and we, we’re okay, we—Don’t want hate this place!”

Louise grabbed her husband’s blood-flecked arms. “If we know it’s here, we can hear what it knows.”

“What are you talking about? Ghosts? No such thing as ghosts. When you’re dead you’re dead, don’t want to die don’t . . . Wait.”

“Yes, wait: not ghosts. Not . . . people. The house! The house itself!”

Ali moaned.

The wind howled.

Steve staggered from the dining room where he’d killed a man to the living room where another man had been killed.

Louise ran after him.

Found him standing staring down at the floor.

“Blood,” he whispered to her. “We could clean it up. Make this place look great, be great, fix it solid again and . . . and . . .”

Sorrow twisted Steve’s face: “I didn’t want to fuck her!”

“Yes you did!” Louise grabbed his forearm. Dug her nails into his flesh. Felt the exertion push away wind in her skull. “Of course you wanted to fuck her! Everybody wants to fuck Ali! But you wouldn’t have because you want other things more even if—”

Doesn’t matter what I’m thinking if it was true before!

Louise blurted, “Even if you don’t want our baby to love forever! You care about other stuff enough to not fuck her except we came here!”

Match what makes sense with who you are, thought Louise. Use it like . . . like in that aikido demonstration on YouTube.

She yelled, “Parker realized it when he had a child’s mind! He stood outside and felt or thought something and knew enough to stay away and . . .

“His dad: maybe he pushed Parker’s mom away to save her!”

Words blurted from her: “Only needed him.”

“And then he ran out of money to keep you fixed up!” Louise yelled.

Steve blinked: “You . . . who?”

Louise grabbed him: “Us! The house hijacks our thoughts!”

Steve shivered.

Then she felt it, too, cold air, like . . .

She ran back to the hall between the living room and the dining room. The front door gaped open to the whiteout swirl of the blizzard. “Where’s Ali?” she whispered and ran to the dining room.

Found only Bob’s bludgeoned body.

Ran back to the hall where Steve stared out the open door.

Footprints in the snow led off the porch, past the white-mantled pickup truck, past their drift-buried rental car. Vanished in the blizzard.

“She chose,” said Louise. “Ali was that strong. Never realized—”

The door slammed shut in their faces.

Blessed heat circled them.

Steve said, “She broke the first imperative: self-preservation.”

Louise shook him. “Focus on what you knew before! Self-preservation isn’t the first imperative! Remember? Sophomore biology and the first imperative, the first imperative is preservation of the species!”

“You’re just saying that because you want to have a baby.”

Steve stepped toward her.

Louise took a step back.

Like we’re dancing.

“We don’t need a baby,” said Steve.

He took a step toward her. She took a step away.

His voice came out flat. Hammered. Fixed.

As he said: “We need a story for outsiders. To make them let us stay.”

“You want to leave me!” Louise backed into the living room and he danced with her. “Please remember you want to fuck Ali and leave me!”

Blood on the floor tried to stick her shoes to the wood.

“Just need our story,” he whispered. “Could say . . . Bob, Bob went crazy when we found out his plan.”

Louise stepped farther into the blood. “How do you know his plan?”

“And then he . . . he killed Parker and . . . and hurt Ali, that’s the truth! Tried to kill me and that’s the truth! But we fought him off and they’re all gone now and it’s just us and we have to, we’ll say we won’t let Bob steal our dream to fix this place up—we’ll say it’s in honor of Ali. And Parker!”

“No!” Louise stepped backward out of the blood pool.

Steve cocked his head. “Fixing all this could be a one-person job.”

He smiled. Held out his hand to her as he had for their wedding dance. Stood in sticky the color of raspberry swirls in their chocolate wedding cake.

Louise slapped his hand away. His boots slipped and his legs flipped out from under him. His crash shook the house.

The hammer Parker’d used. Lying on the floor by the newly framed window—No: not lying, moving, as like a wave, floorboards rippled to surf the hammer toward the blood pool and Steve’s waiting hand.

Louise ran up the stairs.

“Wait!” she heard Steve yell. “We can fix this!”

His footsteps charged up the stairs behind her.

She made it to the second floor. Raced up to the third, past bedrooms where visions of her husband fucking Ali fueled her fear with rage. She ran beside the hallway railing around the open space drop to the first floor.

Looked across that gap and saw Steve running after her, his face twisted and his fist full of hammer.

Stopped, as if on command, both of them crouching near the rail to glare across the stairwell chasm centering the heart of this crumbling house.

Across the chasm, Steve smiled: “Easy, hon. We’re home.”

Blasts of dust blew from the corners flanking Steve. Floorboards snapped up to slap back down again with a machine-gun racket as two energy waves rippled toward him. They met with a crack! and the wood he stood on exploded in splinters. The railing in front of him blew apart and the hole suddenly made in the mansion dropped him into the chasm of its heart.

He fell three stories without a scream.

Louise shut her eyes. Heard him land. Opened her eyes to a mushroom cloud of dust. She peered over the railing.

Steve lay sprawled on his back on the first floor, homicide’s hammer by his limp right hand, a railing chunk driven into his chest as another crimson pool formed around his outline.

You owe me filled her mind.

She ran down the stairs.

Okay, it’s all okay now, you’re okay.

“No!” yelled Louise as she ran down from the second floor.