Ronnie was at Ace’s house.
He had been living there for about a year, house sitting it. His job was originally to deter vandals by checking in on the house once a month, but that was not enough. A few times someone had broken in, but strangely enough it didn’t look like anything was stolen.
Just to be careful, Ace suggested he could simply stay there for free until he returned for his yearly visit.
Ronnie agreed.
It was a wonderful deal! Free rent, he could save money, work less, and loaf around whenever he pleased. All he had to do was to cut the grass and keep the house tidy.
One morning, Ronnie woke up, as he usually did, to cut the grass. He slept in the guest room, small, but outfitted to his taste. He had a small desk, with a few books, a green mini-fridge with his favorite snacks, and the bed had his brown comforter set and a few other objects he took with him from his old apartment.
He brushed his short black hair, put on some red shorts and a white shirt, and set out for the dreaded task day.
Thumping down the stairs, the stairs with the too-small steps he went down to the kitchen, then the living room, and paused at the sliding glass doors.
At the side of the pane, was an odd mark he had found over various parts of the house. Ronnie had always noticed them from every time he came to visit, but the longer he stayed, the more he noticed them, in very odd places.
He sighed, looking outside through the glass doors, opened it with trepidation, and stepped outside, approaching his arch-nemesis, the lawn.
The lawn mower was in the same spot he had left it before.
There was an odd circle of obscenely tall grass, encircling the tree in Ace’s backyard, and the lawn mower was left right next to it. The tree house seemed different too—as if it had been rebuilt everyday.
Some days it was new, some days it was old and dilapidated, and once the treehouse was gone entirely, the tree a tiny sapling.
Today the tree and treehouse looked fine, but the grass was still ridiculously tall, reaching towards the sky. Ronnie nervously approached the lawnmower, gripped its old metal bar, and tried to relax.
“I can do this. I can mow this lawn.”
It was a very old lawn mower, not the automatic version where it would whizz around the lawn on its own. Ronnie had to push it on his own, pressing a small button on the side of the handle, and it roared to life.
He flicked his tongue back and forth inside his mouth, playing with the piercing, and pushed the metal contraption towards the tree. Once he approached the tree, the same event, as it always occurred, happened.
“I see that you have also been tricked by the born liar.”
Ronnie didn’t stop mowing, swallowing his fear, telling himself that he was only seeing and hearing things out of stress. That he just needed to wait about two months, and Ace would return for his annual visit, and he would no longer have to continue house sitting.
“Don’t ignore me. I know you can hear me. You leave every time you come closer to the tree.”
Ronnie started pushing faster, and he was sweating furiously, trying to cut down the overgrown grass, but the unwelcome visitor in his head wasn’t helping. He was rude, annoying, and most of all, strange.
“Don’t stop cutting the grass. Free me. Dig me out!”
Ronnie paused, the whirling blades still running, listening to the deep, growling voice in his head giving him instructions. Ronnie wanted to cut the grass, but every time the voice in the head told him not to stop, suddenly he wanted to.
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Reverse psychology at it’s finest.
Ronnie touched his face tenderly when the disembodied voice mocked his nose piercing and body. He stopped cutting the grass, the growling voice in his head grumbled, and once again he had lost his fight against his arch nemesis, the lawn.
“You are weak. No wonder he tricked you, half-metal man.”
Shouting at the grass, flustered, sweaty and red, Ronnie had enough.
“Whoever is doing this needs to stop!”
“I take no orders from you!”
The lawn mower stopped roaring once Ronnie pressed the button on the side, and he was done. No amount of free rent was worth being harassed by what he thought was an angry magical tree, or a very rude psychic playing a weird prank.
“I’m calling Acheus. This is ridiculous,” Ronnie said.
He turned to go back inside, but froze in place when confronted by a monster.
It towered over him, its blue skin moving in waves, smooth and hairless. Naked and genderless, the six limbed beast stood upright, skinny and malnourished. The shape of a face was there, but the missing characteristics of the eyes and mouth were blatantly clear.
Once again, Ronnie tenderly touched his face, but this time in disbelief, as a small slit slid across the beast’s jaw and it’s rasor teeth poked through.
“Take us from this place.”
Ronnie quickly looked away, bile rising up in his mouth as one by one, six more slits opened up, it’s six eyes peering down at him, the air around them vibrating. He refused to look in it’s direction, peering at the ground, waiting for it to set itself ablaze and reveal that he was no longer on the mortal realm, but Hell.
But that didn’t happen.
The cruel god, his soul confined to a small watch, bent over, his limbs hanging out at the side like a broken puppet spoke the truth as he always did. Infiniti leaned in closer, the smell of death seeping from his thin lips, taking more joy in other’s misery. Turning a bright yellow, he again spoke the truth.
“His brother is in the attic.”
Ronnie shivered, and dry heaved, nothing to come out because he hadn’t eaten breakfast. He finally turned to look up at the malevolent force, but it had vanished as quickly as it appeared. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or terrified, but the smell of death and rust stuck in his nose for the rest of the day.
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Ronnie’s afternoon was a busy one.
He took a very long shower and had a brief existential crisis while using his 3-in-1 shampoo. After drinking coffee with lots of cream and sugar, trapezing around Ace’s kitchen in his briefs, he was ready to deal with the issue at hand.
The attic.
Ronnie didn’t know where the entrance was to the attic, so he took a broom from the kitchen and walked up and down the second floor, tapping various parts of the ceiling.
One step, two.
Tap tap.
One step, two.
Tap, tap.
This would continue, until he reached the end of the hallway, near the guest room he occupied. He tapped the ceiling, looking for the attic door, desperate to prove that he wasn’t hallucinating the past few weeks of the angry voice in his head.
A strange mark was on the ceiling, hard to discern, and Ronnie squinted, and chuckled.
“It's another kid scribble. How’d it get on the ceiling?”
He grinned, recognizing the silly mark he had found in various parts all over the house. One on Ace’s frame door, his father’s, the entrance to the basement, the front door, and the glass door to the backyard.
He took the end of the broom and aimed for the mark on the ceiling, but it passed right through. Jerking in surprise, he dropped the broom to the floor, shivered in disgust, and slowly backed away.
“At least I know I’m not crazy,” Ronnie said, talking to himself, standing in a hallway in his underpants, the complete picture of sanity.
He ran off to the guest room, brought back a dark wooden chair, and stood directly under the strange mark. Using the broom, he pushed it in and out, watching the upper handle disappear into the wall, repeatedly, until suddenly, the mirage was broken.
The ceiling was higher than it originally appeared, and from it hung a retractable ladder that could be pulled down and used to get to the top, in which a door with the same mark was.
Ronnie had found his answer, that he wasn’t hearing things for the past few weeks, but it wasn’t what he expected. He held the broom close to his body, as if it were a sword, and he inspected the dimly lit hallway.
“What other part of this house is a lie,” Ronnie asked softly.
Heart racing, the smell of death and rust returning, convincing himself to forget he had seen anything, his body seemed to move on its own. He dropped the broom, stood on his toes and pulled down the ladder.
It clanked down, the sound making him nervous, and played with his tongue piercing, trying to calm his nerves. Gripping both sides of the ladder, he climbed up, and lightly tapped on the mark on the ceiling, expecting another mirage, but instead the small door to the attic opened.
Dust sprinkled down onto his head and shoulders, making him cough and sneeze as he went upwards into the dark abyss.