Let this remain here when I’m gone. Let this be my explanation for what happened and why it happened. I’m sorry Em, I’m sorry Joel and I’m sorry to you for what we did.
I’m sorry. Please forgive me.
Where to begin?
Well… I guess there were three of us when this all started.
College wasn’t easy for me; academically speaking I’ve never been the best at studying, asking questions or even attending class. Knowing Emma didn’t make that easier. She was like the old best friend who constantly gets you into trouble despite only knowing her since the start of the program. She’d text me to skip class and grab a beer or to stay late at a party that I knew would make me groggy for class the next day. The difference of course was that she didn’t have as hard a time as me. She was one of those people who could skip an entire lecture and show up the next day hungover and still ace the test. I’m not envious of her ability, I’m sorry if it sounds like that; I’m more impressed than anything. She worked hard for her place there. She came from a broken home (whatever that means) and scraped penny after penny together to pay her tuition. I admire and have always admired that level of commitment.
It was a different case for me.
I’m not embarrassed to admit that my stint in post-secondary education was a gift from my late grandfather. It was a decree of his will and he set aside a couple thousand dollars for me to attend college so long as I picked a suitable, business-focused, major. I remember pouring over the lists of possible courses, those pre-approved by my grandfathers’ estate and those I knew I could make the case for and for whatever reason “hotel and resort management” piqued my interest. It wasn’t one of the courses my grandfather had in mind but his lawyer ruled it acceptable and my “free ride” had begun. Emma often teased me about the privilege of going and she wasn’t wrong but at least my situation was the better one between Joel and I.
Joel was the third person in our little trio and the counterweight to Emma’s heavy toll for fun. Joel was brilliant but also studied hard to become brilliant. Like me his ride was free but unlike me it was because his entire family was rich; including himself. Emma often teased him about paying for our dinner and buying the first round but in truth, it was great having someone with money. It gave us the ability to talk about what we wanted to do after school, it gave us the chance to dream about a project together, it opened the door to all of what happened and for that… I wish I had never met Joel.
The three of us grew really close over the program. Emma particularly excelled at design and management for hotels and event spaces, Joel had a great mind for numbers and accounting and I had the ideas; including the idea for what to do after all this was done; buy a house together.
It started out mostly as a joke; Joel was talking about how money gives you opportunity and we were teasing him about our envy. He mentioned wanting to use his money for all of our futures and Emma joked about buying a hotel. I said that the hotel business has too high a startup but flipping a house or turning it into a rental property would give us some income to play with and all of our collective ears perked up. Housing in the city was extremely high rent and buying a property would be astronomical but if it was possible and with our teamwork; we could make a killing. The idea floated for a few days and honestly ended up leaving my mind until Joel asked us to meet up with big news.
“The Langdon House”
I remember him saying it as he laid down a polaroid photo of a decrepit old building. I was more surprised that the only image was a polaroid but Em was biting immediately,
“What is the Langdon House?” she asked,
“The answer to the question, ‘Siri, where does our future lie?’” Joel said with a smile. Emma arched an eyebrow and turned to me. I had picked up the polaroid and eyed the house. The picture was faded and slightly off colour but my eyes studied the house’s façade with interest. The arched roof and peaked window frames gave the house a personified feel, as if it has a face of its own. The grey colour of the photo made it seem like a monotone still and yet something about it felt vibrant and alive. I’d like to pretend that I was immediately off-put by the image but the truth was; I loved it. Something about the house felt visceral and exciting. Almost like it was a movie set.
“Looks like a murder house.” Emma said, looking over my shoulder at the picture before turning back to Joel.
“Doesn’t it?” Joel said with a smile, “but I checked it out, nothing like that. Just an old house that looks spooky, the owner is a baker.”
“A baker?” I said as I continued to study the picture.
“Yep. I mean, the murdering baker could be a thing but it’s the farthest thing from my mind when I think of fresh loaves of bread.” Joel said as he sipped his coffee. The waitress come by to refill mine as I turned the photo over in my hand to see a handwritten note on the back of the polaroid.
“What does ‘Harold Limas 1823’ mean?” I asked Joel as I read the hand written note on the back.
“Got me,” Joel said, “the baker gave me the photo to show you.”
I put the photo back down and Emma snatched it up to study it.
“Why didn’t you just take a picture with your phone?” I asked as the waitress approached with our breakfast.
“Thought this looked apt, gives the feel of the place more than a cell phone camera would and man, you guys have to see it. You’re going to love it. The baker said we can make an appointment to come by whenever.”
Emma and I shared a look and as our hot breakfast plates were placed before us, we all agreed to at least go and visit the house the next day.
The baker was a large, jovial man with large workers hands. The photo that Joel had given us was much drearier than the house actually looked but still kept the spirit intact – it was the right call to show us it because frankly the house didn’t look as special in person. We spoke to the baker who explained that he had lived there for the past 40 years and was looking for a change. I can expand on the ins and outs but long story short; we loved the place. Turns out that while he did own the place and live there, he’d spent the majority of the past 40 years living elsewhere. He had bought the house for he and his wife but after her abrupt passing couldn’t bring himself to occupy it nor to get rid of it; so, it sat largely unused.
The sheer size and number of rooms meant we could split the rooms with drywall and rent out not only one or two but possibly 6 different apartments and given that it was in the city but on a relatively quiet street (surrounded by empty lots and large vacant storage lots for half destroyed cars) the excitement between the three of us was palpable.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Joel paid for the building in one go and two weeks later, at the start of September, we owned a property, “The Langdon House”
Why Langdon? At the time I didn’t know and didn’t care. The baker’s last name was Miller and the photo had a picture of a man named Limas but it didn’t matter to us; the house was perfect.
We spent the first week exploring the house. We had taken a tour but there were a lot of areas that seemed unsafe or not worth exploring at the time; mainly the attic and the basement. The attic was crowded with junk right at the doorway; bookcases, desks, tons of furniture and Emma was eager to pull it out and go through it all (the baker had sold it to us “as is” so Em was secretly hoping for some high price furniture) but personally, I was more interested in the basement.
The basement was large but had a lot of work done to it over the years. Tight narrow passageways existed from the moment you hit the bottom step. They wind you throughout the basement to a guest room, a bathroom and a few storage rooms. I was excited to take a hammer and tear down all the walls in order to open up the space. We could redo it from scratch and offer more rooms, keep it open for storage or make it a communal laundry space (we hadn’t decided yet) but whatever it would be, it needed to be gutted.
If I could go back to any point in time I would go back to then. I would decide that the basement is fine as it was, opt to flip the house instead of renting it and live our lives in peace.
But I didn’t do that and because of that choice - the peace we could have had was forfeit.
Over the next week we started to work on the walls of the basement. Day after day Joel and I swung sledge hammers and wedged crowbars, desperately trying to chip away at the plaster covered beams in the basement. The dark, almost iron coloured wood of the support beams slowly revealed themselves as we worked our way through the basement. Slowly but surely, we began to open up space and after a few days it was large enough for a couch and even a bed. We were tired but felt triumphant, like anything was possible. Then we found it.
It was the final day of clearing the basement. Joel had noticed that one of the back walls stopped short from the edge of the property. You wouldn’t notice unless it was gutted but because most of the stone walls were revealed you could tell that there was one wall that didn’t quite fit. We debated breaking it down at all (as it didn’t lose much of the space) but in the end, god help us, we decided that starting from absolute zero was the right call, so we tore it down.
Joel sunk his sledge hammer in first and immediately let go when the smell reached our nostrils. A rank, putrid odor assaulted our nostrils with such force that we both recoiled as if being hit by electricity.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Joel bellowed as he spun around and retreated to the stairs. I equally held my gloved hand up over my mask as if the barrier would aid any smell and form upstairs Em called out,
“What?”
Though I couldn’t see him smiling through his mask, I knew he was by the way his eyebrows arched behind his glasses. If he wasn’t such a good liar he’d of been snickering when he called back to Em,
“Come on down and see.”
She had barely made it halfway down the steps before she made a sound as if she was vomiting and ran back up the stairs cursing him under her breath. We both burst out laughing which only meant more of the nauseating smell forced its way into our lungs. A price worth paying.
“What the fuck is that?” Em said through the muffled voice only her shirt could create as she held it over her nose and mouth. The abrupt smell becoming common place now, we approached the sledge hammer which was still stuck in the wall, its whole head gone and only the handle sticking out. The smell was vile as we approached and with one hand on his mask Joel reached out to grab the sledge back.
“It’s stuck.”
I rolled by eyes and grabbed with him, for a moment I felt it give but it didn’t come from the wall. Behind my safety goggles my eyebrows arched in confusion but we kept yanking. There was a soft sort of give to it as if stuck in mud but it wouldn’t come out. Joel and I both looked at each other and almost at the same time, took our hands away from our mouths and yanked hard with both of our hands. The sledge came free from the wall and we tumbled back.
“Fuck that is nauseating. I have to leave” Em called out from upstairs as I heard her move towards the kitchen.
“Hold up,” I called out not loud enough to hear as Joel and I stood up and looked at the wall. He grabbed the light we had been using from the broken plaster and wood next to us and shone it into the hole. Beyond the wall we could see the back, stone wall of the building. It looked the same as the other walls only it was slicked with black. The glint of light reflected off it like the stone was wet. As we approached the smell was beyond sickening but the curiosity, we both had prevailed and we inspected the hole up close. Joel looked first, leaning down and putting an eye up to the hole.
“It’s too dark.” He said flatly as he stood up from the hole and aimed the light at it.
“Oh I know,” I said as I walked back to grab the sledge. I reeled back and drove the hammer into the wall higher up, but this time the hammer didn’t stick. I waved at him to hand me the flashlight and shone it in the second hole I made then gestured for him to look back through the first hole.
“Holy shit.” He said, almost as a whisper. He looked at me with a face that I’d never seen before and then gestured to swap places. I swallowed hard and handed him the light to shine in the second hole and with a deep breath of putrid air, bent down to look into the hole.
What I saw chilled me to the bone.
Beyond the wall was a room, small and stone walled. The walls we’re covered in a wet sheen as if having been underwater. The smell was beyond sickening but what froze me in place was the colour; a deep red coated the entirety of the room – not in fine brush stroke but spattered everywhere. I stood up and met Joel’s eyes.
“Fucking hell.” I said and Joel nodded, the colour drained from around his eyes.
The terror I felt was but a taste of what would come; a nightmare that we would have all but avoided had we only looked at the head of the sledge hammer and seen the deep red finger prints that were left up on it from its first break into the wall.