Surreal Estate: A Short Story Read online

  Anna paled. "What do you mean, 'he says'?"

  "His ghost says, I guess would be more accurate. His ghost is making the house look like it's going to fall apart. His ghost has been screaming at me and my husband not to be home wreckers."

  Anna held up her hand, palm out. Her eyes shifted back and forth as if looking all around her. "Now, wait," she said. "Now, wait. What are you talking about?"

  Wendy leaned forward and put her feet flat on the floor. She clasped her hands, put her elbows on her knees, let her clasped hands hang in front of her. "I know this is hard, Mrs. Jericho. Maybe you won't even believe me. But I thought the best thing to do was to tell you about it." Her shoulders slumped and she stared at the red plaid rug.

  "Are you some kind of psychic? I never even knew you were married."

  Wendy glanced up and discovered only lively interest in the older woman's face. "Well, the two are kind of connected. I never knew I was psychic until my husband died, but, you see, he's with me, even now. I started seeing him during his funeral. He's sitting over there in the rocker."

  Malcolm obligingly rocked the rocker, and it moved.

  "HOW are you doing that!" screamed the old man. "TELL ME!'

  "Oh, my goodness," said Anna. "Oh, my goodness!"

  "And your Lefteris has been yelling at me for being an evil woman since I rang the doorbell. Right now, actually, he's yelling at my husband because my husband knows how to make things move and your husband doesn't."

  "He was always terribly competitive. Had to have a greener lawn than Rusty and Mrs. Kay, had to have a better barbecue, had to have a bigger office at work," said Anna.

  "That's right. Betray me. Stab me in the back!" Lefteris cried.

  "Had to have a prettier wife," said Anna, and smiled, showing her dimples.

  "How can you talk like this to strangers, Anna! I was always respectful of you!"

  "He says he was always respectful of you," Wendy relayed.

  "Of course, of course. He knew what a prize he had in me." She dimpled again, her eyes dancing.

  "Well, you see, if he doesn't find relief somehow I don't know how I can move into your house. I can see him, and he keeps screaming at me."

  Anna looked up, glanced around. "Lefteris!" she cried.

  "What? What, what?" he said.

  "What do you want?"

  "I want to be with you, my little Anna," he said in a caressing voice. His face had softened; it was the first time Wendy had seen him smile.

  Wendy translated.

  "Well, come on then to the retirement village with me," said Anna.

  "I built myself into this house. I can't leave."

  Wendy and Malcolm looked at each other. Then Wendy turned to Anna and repeated word for word what Lefteris had said.

  Anna began to cry. Lefteris stood beside the couch, holding out his hands to her but not bringing them close enough to touch or go through her. After a little while, Anna said, "How is it that your ghost husband goes with you, while mine is trapped here?"

  Wendy fished the locket on its chain from where it had been hiding inside her blouse. "This belonged to Malcolm's mother. She died when he was six, and his father gave him the locket. He took it with him everywhere. The night we got married, he gave it to me. I think that was harder for him than any other part of our relationship, because it was like handing me a part of himself to take care of. He was always afraid I would lose it. But he gave it to me anyway.

  "We've been talking about this ever since he returned to me. We don't really know how it works, but we believe that when people invest themselves strongly in a physical object it can act as an anchor for them after death. Malcolm is attached to the locket. He can get about a block away from it, if he wants to; but if he goes any farther than that he feels vague, like he's about to fall apart. Our dream was to build the locket into the house so we could share the house, and he could finally feel safe. But now, you see, your husband has attached to the house — ”

  Anna smoothed the tears away from her eyes and looked up. "The house is too big for me," she said in a low voice. "I cannot stand it alone."

  "But Anna, you're not alone," said Lefteris.

  "I am not going to stay," Anna said. "I simply can't."

  "How can you break a promise like that, a life promise we made to each other?" Lefteris cried.

  Without hearing him, she held up her hands. "Look," she whispered. Her hands were tremoring. "And there are little gaps.… I wake and find myself in the chair when a moment before I was in the bathroom, brushing my hair. Time has started slipping away from me." She stilled her hands in her lap. "You see," she said, and paused. She took a breath. "You see, I need help."

  "No!" Lefteris cried. "We promised to take care of each other. We promised we would be strong for each other. We promised we would stand against the world together. We promised we would never need anyone but each other. Anna, you don't even know these people!"

  Wendy slid closer on the couch and reached for Anna's hand. It trembled in her grasp.

  "Anna!" cried Lefteris.

  "Do you remember your wedding vows?" Wendy asked Anna.

  "Oh, I remember everything about our wedding, my dear, right down to the bootleg whiskey in the back room. My sister Mary and I spent hours stitching seed pearls onto the lace of my wedding dress. And every word of our vows — well, they were not so rare, in any case. Love, honor, and obey."

  "What did Lefteris say to you?"

  Anna sighed. "Love, honor, and cherish."

  Wendy looked at Lefteris's ghost. "Sir," she said to him. "Do you love, honor, and cherish this woman more than you do your house? More than you do a promise she can't keep?"

  "You don't understand," he said. He walked away through a wall.

  "What?" said Anna. "What does he say?"

  "He's gone."

  Malcolm rose from the rocking chair. "I'll see what I can find out," he said. He followed Lefteris through the wall, leaving the chair rocking gently.

  "He's gone?" Anna whispered. "He doesn't forgive me, does he?" Her voice got a little louder. "He never could stand weakness in any form." She bent her head to the side, her gaze resting on the red plaid rug. "He said we were like two pillars together. We could build a life and a family on our shoulders. He said we were strong like two foundation stones, and we could share our strength by holding hands. But his hand is not here any longer, and I am not a stone, and neither was he." She placed her hand flat over her face, covering her right eye. "Now you tell me," she murmured to the carpet, "he has been here all along, and I didn't even sense him. He told me to always lean on him when I was troubled, but how can I lean on someone I can't even see?"

  Wendy rubbed her thumb over the back of Anna's hand, gently stroking the cabled veins and arteries, feeling the tendons beneath her touch.

  "I have to go and live among strangers. I have to trust unknown caretakers to watch out for me. I live in the ruin of my own body and I cannot rebuild. Pride cannot mortar my walls any longer." Her hand tightened on Wendy's. "It was so hard to make this decision, but I have been contemplating it a long time. Lefteris died three years ago, and I knew…I knew I couldn't support everything we had built together. Now I've made the hardest decision of my life, and here he comes, making it harder again. If only I could hear him and answer his arguments myself! A good fight used to clear the air for us."

  Wendy frowned. "Wait. Wait." She sucked on her lower lip.

  "What is it? Is he back?"

  "No. What you said gave me an idea. Your body is a structure. This house is a structure. Marriage is a — I wish Malcolm and I knew all the rules!"

  "What are you thinking?"

  "If an idea structure could work like a physical structure — if Lefteris could move into the house of your marriage, or your heart — but I've never heard of that. Of course, this is the first time Malcolm and I have met another ghost. We don't know if anybody else's ghostliness works like Malcolm's."

  "If I build a house
in my heart, Lefteris could move into it and come with me to the retirement village, you think?" Anna glanced at Wendy. "I have him in my heart already, always; I wear him there as I wear my wedding ring on my finger."

  "Does he know that? Maybe the idea won't work, anyway. But anything's worth trying. If he moved into something you built together, maybe you could see him — ”

  Malcolm walked back through the wall, pulling Lefteris by the arm. Lefteris's mouth was set in a stubborn line. "Home wreckers," he said, and tried to pull his arm out of Malcolm's grip.

  Wendy straightened. "Sir," she said. Anna studied the direction of Wendy's gaze, followed it.

  "You are an evil young woman," said Lefteris.

  "Do you want your wife to kill herself?" Wendy asked. "Is that what you really want?"

  "Of course not!"

  "Please be very sure. What you are doing now is the same as telling her to kill herself. She wants to take care of herself, to get the help she needs to survive. If she listens to you and chooses something too hard for her to handle, she courts death. Do you love your wife?"

  The fury slowly left his face. He stopped trying to jerk his arm free of Malcolm's grasp. After a long moment, he said, "Alive, I loved her. Dead, I love her. But it is the house that sustains me. If I leave the house, I kill myself, and that is a sin against God."

  "What does he say?" Anna whispered.

  "He says he loves you but he's not sure he can leave the house." Wendy bit her lip and said to Lefteris, "We thought about structures that might sustain you. You built yourself into the house. Did you build yourself into your marriage? Anna says she carries you in her heart."

  Lefteris looked at Anna. His face softened into a smile again, and then saddened. He walked to Anna and reached out a hand. It disappeared into her chest.

  Suddenly another ghost smoked up out of Anna and stood half in the couch behind her, facing Lefteris. It was a younger man, his hair black and thick, his eyes alight. "Who are you, old man?" he said.

  Lefteris staggered back. After a moment, he said, "That is how she remembers me." He turned an angry face at Wendy. "There is no room in her heart for me!"

  "You stiff-necked old donkey!" said his other ghost. "Have to have her all to yourself, do you? Death has not granted you any virtues, has it!"

  "Will you leave and let me in?" Lefteris asked.

  "I will not leave!" said the young man. "But if you ask me very nicely perhaps I will make room for you."

  "Wait just a minute," said Wendy. "Anna, a ghost came out of your heart and is talking to this other Lefteris about both of them living in your heart together. Do you want that?"

  "I don't understand," said Anna. She sounded very young.

  "I wish, I wish you could see them," said Wendy.

  "Does she want to see us?" asked the younger Lefteris. "Easy." He reached into the back of Anna's head, worked around in it, then said, "There."

  Anna looked up and screamed. Then she clapped her hands over her mouth. "Lefteris," she whispered. She glanced back and forth between the old Lefteris and the young one.

  "Lefteris?" she said.

  "How did you DO that?" older Lefteris asked. He held up fists and shook them in frustration. "How is it everyone knows secrets except me?"

  "Lefteris," said Anna, her voice a little stronger. "What did I tell you about jealousy, always?"

  Older Lefteris sighed. "That it is a viper's bite on my heel and weakens me as long as it holds on," he said. "But Anna, I am like a baby. I do not like it."

  "Of course not," she said. She stood and took a step toward him, lifting a hand — and then the hand sank back to her side and she slowly folded toward the floor. Wendy jumped up and Malcolm did too, but it was the younger Lefteris who caught her and eased her collapse onto the couch.

  #

  "As I am the man she believes and wishes I was," said the young Lefteris as Wendy rubbed Anna's hands between hers, "I have more generosity of spirit than you do." He beamed at Older Lefteris, who gave him a ferocious frown.

  "Even though it will diminish me to mingle with you, I shall do it," said Younger Lefteris.

  "In you I can see clearly what Anna told me about pride being a hobble that makes you take short steps," said Older Lefteris.

  Wendy and Malcolm looked at each other. They flicked their eyebrows up and down.

  Younger Lefteris laughed. "We heard her, but did we ever listen? If you become part of me, some things will change for you. One thing is that she becomes the center of our life. We don't have the work, and we don't have the house. We don't have the evenings at the Taverna with the other men. We enter a smaller existence."

  "What do you think I've been doing since I died?" Older Lefteris asked. "I cannot even step beyond the lawn."

  "So you are ready to join me?"

  Older Lefteris looked at the ceiling, lifted his arms and spread them wide as if embracing the house. "I built this well. You don't know what it is like to be inside a board, to hear it think of the tree it once was, to speak to nails and hear their tales of hiding in the earth before the forge, to ride the currents of heat like sparks rising from a chimney…."

  "You can tell me," said Younger Lefteris.

  Older Lefteris slowly lowered his arms and smiled at his younger self, then looked at Malcolm. His eyes narrowed. "You better be good to this place," he said, frowning.

  "Maybe you can brief me before you go," said Malcolm.

  Anna's eyes fluttered open. "Lefteris," she said.

  "Anna," said both Lefterises.

  Bewildered, Anna looked at Wendy. Wendy gripped her hand. "Watch," she said, nodding to the Lefterises.

  They studied each other, then walked toward each other. They grasped each other's hands, paused a moment, staring into each other's eyes, then pushed closer. In a shimmery moment they melted into each other, gasping, and finally a single Lefteris, a midway mix between the two who had stood there a moment before, turned to look at her. "Oh, Anna," he said, touching his hand to his heart. "I feel your heart touching mine."

  She held her hands out to him and he came to her, reached for her hands, but his passed through them. They both cried out. In distress and anger, they stared at Wendy.

  "It's not the same as being alive," she said, "but it's much, much better than losing a person entirely."

  "I caught her when she fell," said Lefteris.

  Wendy nodded. "Sometimes you can do that."

  He frowned. "Wait. I will return in a moment," he said, and walked out through the kitchen wall."

  "Can he come with me?" Anna asked.

  "I think he's gone to find out," said Wendy.

  Malcolm was watching the wall where Lefteris had disappeared. He turned to Wendy after a moment. "Can I try something?"

  "Sure," she said.

  He walked to her and reached into her chest. She gasped, then tried to figure out if she could feel him. She thought not. He pulled his hand out of her and they both looked around. There was no new Malcolm.

  "I wish we had a book like the one in Beetlejuice," he said, not for the first time.

  "So this is your young man," Anna said faintly. "Please introduce us."

  Wendy had just made introductions when Lefteris returned. "I walked to the end of the block," he said. He beamed at them all.

  Wendy found herself smiling back at him. She thought about all the things she locked inside herself: groans, frowns, smiles; thought about Malcolm's leash — how he couldn't stray far from the locket. By buying a house, she and Malcolm would be tying themselves to a specific place. And that was a dream they had. Were they crazy?

  Lefteris had just slipped a leash.

  "Let's go for a drive!" he said.

  "We can drive past the retirement village," Anna said, "and you can look inside."

  They were still learning new rules. New restrictions — but new freedoms, too, Wendy thought as she rose. Malcolm put his hand on her shoulder and she felt it. She grinned over her shoulder at him.r />
  =End=

  About the Author

  Over the past thirty-odd years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold adult and young adult novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her fiction has won a Stoker and a Nebula Award.

  A collection of her short stories, Permeable Borders, was published in 2012 by Fairwood Press. She has a young adult novel forthcoming from Viking in 2015.

  Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She teaches through Lane Community College. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.

  For a list of Nina's publications, go to: http://ofearna.us/books/hoffman.html.

  Connect with the Author

  You can connect directly with the Nina Kiriki Hoffman through Facebook.

  Other Nina Kiriki Hoffman Titles

  You can find the following titles online. The links below will allow you to purchase directly from Amazon or read free fiction online.

  Short Fiction:

  "Trophy Wives," by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Family Tree" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Escapes" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "The Ghosts of Strangers" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Ghost Hedgehog" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "How I Came to Marry a Herpetologist" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "The Weight of Wishes" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Key Signatures" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Haunted Humans" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Zombies for Jesus" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Fast Wedded to the Ground" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "A Wolf in Holy Places" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "The Dangers of Touch" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Airborn" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman