They Don't Come Back - Part One

“Why don’t you at least think about it?”

It’s been three months, twelve days, and roughly four hours since she left. I hate myself for knowing that. And now Ben is insisting that I move into a crusty old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere that his great-great something or other built.

“It’s actually pretty nice. My dad put a ton of work into it before he got sick. He thought he might be able to use it as an Airbnb, but I’m not about to spend my weekends driving all the way out there to finish it.”

“Listen, Ben, I appreciate the offer, but I’m fine here. I just need some time to work through everything.” It’s bullshit, I’m not fine here, and I know it.

“Dude, you’re living in a world that no longer exists. You’re never going to get over her if you don’t let go.”

He’s right.

“You’d be doing me a favor. I could use someone to keep an eye on the place and make sure no one breaks in. At least until I figure out what I’m going to do with it.”

“Alright, fine. I guess it might actually be nice to get away from the city.”

“Yes! I’m telling you, this is exactly what you need! You’ll love the place. No neighbors. No traffic. It’s the fresh start that you need.”

Starting fresh. It sounds exhausting.

“Why don’t you live there? You could work remotely like I do. You and Sarah are in that small apartment with the dogs, don’t you want all that extra space?”

“Eh, Sarah and I both love the city. You hate the city, I don’t even know why you moved here in the first place, it’s not like you ever go out.”

“Beth wanted to live in the city.”

It’s true, I never really liked living in the city. Beth did. She always wanted to be around people, while I did my best to avoid them. Beth, my entire life was built around another person, and now that person is gone. My life was once again my own, and I had no idea what to do with it.

“Fuck the city, and fuck Beth! Go live out in the country. If you get lonely, there’s a little town about ten minutes away. Not much there, but you could always go hang out at the diner. My dad and I would stop there on our way out to the house. I hated going up there as a kid, but I always looked forward to going to that diner.”

“What do you mean you hated going up there? I thought this place was awesome?”

“No, it is, it’s just a little weird, is all. Like, especially as a kid. You know, when you’re a kid, you’re scared of stuff. It’s a big old house in the woods, and my grandpa always told us fucked up stories about the woods. Like I said, I’m a city guy; that rural stuff just isn’t for me.”

“Fucked up stories?”

“No, not like really fucked up. Listen, he was drunk most of the time, and I’m not even sure he knew what he was saying, but as a kid, a creepy old drunk guy telling you stories about creepy stuff in the woods, while you’re in a creepy house, of course, it’s gonna creep you out. You know?”

Packing hadn’t been too difficult. After Beth moved out, there wasn’t much left in the apartment. I’d never been one to accumulate stuff. I had my computer, laptop, desk, and chair. Just enough clothes to get by. A few kitchen items, mostly mugs. I could order a bed and maybe a couch once I got settled in. In the meantime, a sleeping bag would suffice. Ben said there were a couple of pieces of furniture left over from when his grandparents lived there, but he wasn’t sure exactly what was left, since he hadn’t been down there much. I got the impression that the old place made him more than just a little uncomfortable.

It’s strange, the elasticity of life. You don’t realize how stretched you are until something snaps and you shrink back down to your natural state. A busy life with a fiancé and a large studio apartment in the city, packed full of decor and appliances, to a few boxes in a Honda, all by myself.

The Honda CR-V was almost seven years old, but still had less than 40,000 miles on it. A testament to how little I left the apartment. It wasn’t a big vehicle, but it held everything I was bringing with me to my new life. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling a small sense of relief. I didn’t want to admit it, but Ben had been right. I needed a fresh start. The past needed to remain in the past to make room for the future.

The drive from Pittsburgh would take close to three hours, and had been pleasant enough so far. It felt good watching the city give way to urban sprawl and eventually to rolling hills, farmland, and woods. After a couple of hours, I had gotten off the freeway and onto old state routes. Every so often, there would be a small town where two of these highways from a bygone era intersected. Some were towns that existed to serve travelers before the modern freeways hijacked the traffic, and others were old mining or mill towns for the workers of some long-dead industry.

I’d listened to music for a while before trying to distract myself with a podcast. It didn’t help. My mind kept wandering back to Beth. We’d met in the freshman year of high school. I’ll never forget seeing her walk into class that first time. I don’t think I said a single word to her throughout high school. Our friend groups didn’t overlap, and we only ever had one class together. I didn’t know much about her, but my heart always raced whenever I’d see her. Even after graduating from high school and moving on to college, I still thought about her from time to time. You can imagine my shock when, while I was sitting in my car debating whether to go to class, a car pulled in next to mine, and I looked over and saw her. I grabbed my bag and got out of my car just as she was getting out of hers.

She looked at me, and our eyes met. “Hey, wait, didn’t we go to high school together?” I said as if I didn’t know exactly who she was.

“Oh, yeah! You were in one of my classes. Aaron, right?”

She remembers me. Holy shit, she remembers me.

“I think it was geometry or something.” I know it was geometry.

“So what are you going to school for?”

“Computer science,” I told her.

“Oh, nice! I’m majoring in graphic design, but I’m taking some website design classes as well. I really hate JavaScript, though.”

“Well, if you ever need any help, I’m pretty decent with JavaScript.”

“Really? That would be great!”

A few between-class tutoring sessions turned into going out on the weekends, and by the end of the year, we were looking at apartments together.

The podcast cuts out. I look down at my phone to see that I have no signal. Ben had said cell service was pretty spotty down here. Probably another reason he didn’t like spending time at the old house. Unlike me, Ben was always on his phone. He always wanted to know what everyone else was doing. It was like he was terrified of missing out on something. Personally, I preferred missing out, which is why I finally agreed to stay at Ben’s grandparents’ house.

Not long after losing cell service, I see a sign reading ‘reduced speed ahead’, I’m coming up on another town. This one feels even more forgotten than the others. There’s a gas station, a small grocery store, a barber shop that looks like it’s been closed for at least a decade despite the open sign hanging on the door, a few vacant storefronts, a pizza shop, what might have been a bank or library, a diner, which must be the one Ben mentioned, and perhaps a couple dozen houses scattered about the hillsides. There’s also a bar and a church, because, while plenty of businesses struggle in towns like these, churches and bars always manage to get by.

I pull over and park in front of the grocery store. It’s no Wegman’s, but they should at least have something to get me through the first couple of days.

The place smells like stale cigarettes. The clerk sees me and gives me a friendly smile, but his eyes look at me with distrust. I’m an outsider; it’s to be expected. I do my best not to look suspicious as I walk up and down each of the four narrow aisles. I grab some peanut butter, bread, and chips. There isn’t much in the way of produce, but the apples seem alright. I also picked up a case of bottled water. Ben wasn’t sure how good the well water was, and I at least needed to be able to make coffee.

I could feel the clerk’s eyes on me as I got into my car. I took a glance back at the store to see him staring at me from the window. I gave him a smile and a polite wave. If I were going to spend at least a few months here, I would need to try to be friendly with the locals. At the very least, I didn’t want them to see me as a threat.

About three miles outside of town, my phone told me to make a right down a dirt road that I might have missed had I not been anticipating it. The winding dirt road climbed upward out of the valley before dropping back down on the other side of the mountain. Up ahead, along a shallow curve, I spotted an overgrown gravel driveway just before my phone announced that I’d reached my destination.

The driveway was narrow, and my car brushed against the branches of gnarled thorn bushes and sumac. After about fifty feet, the overgrowth gave way to a prairie of grasses and goldenrod. It might have been a wheat field back when this was a working farm. The driveway cut the field in two as it gradually climbed a slight hill. As I neared the top of the hill, I saw the chimneys rise out of the field, followed by roof peaks and gables, until eventually the entirety of the old house came into view.

It was a Queen Anne, built for a large family. It was in decent shape considering its age and lack of occupancy. Ben said they moved his grandfather out of the old house as dementia took hold of him back when Ben was just ten. In the last twenty-five years, no one had lived there. His dad had hired a contractor a few years back to fix some of the larger issues with the house. Roofing repairs, windows that needed to be replaced, updated electrical, but much of the cosmetics hadn’t been touched in decades. Ben’s dad had done some interior work before he got sick. Some fresh paint here and there, a new sink in the kitchen, along with some newer appliances, but that was it..

It was a beautiful structure, but it wasn’t difficult to see why Ben thought it was creepy as a kid. And while I don’t believe in ghosts, seeing that house for the first time, I questioned whether I’d made a good decision agreeing to live here.

I pulled out the key Ben had given me and unlocked the door. As soon as I opened the door, I was hit with the smell of stale air. It was dark inside. Drapes and curtains were closed tight over every window. Ben said I’d have to go down to the basement to turn the power on at the breaker box. I’d deal with that once I opened some windows and carried my stuff in.

Obviously, it didn’t take me long to get what little I had into the house. I pulled back the drapes in a couple of rooms and opened the windows to bring in some much-needed fresh air. Now I needed to find the basement so that I could turn on some lights and explore the place. Just inside the front door was a small foyer area, ahead, a hallway that led deeper into the house, to the right of the hallway was a set of stairs to the second floor, and to either side of the foyer area were large arched entryways that opened into what must have been the main living room and what must have been a parlor.

Down the hallway was a door on the right beneath the stairs. Assuming that was the door to the basement, I walked over and pulled it open. I was right. The only light I had was the flashlight on my phone. I should probably pick up a good flashlight as soon as I can. The stairs were steep, and my light did very little to illuminate that wall of darkness. The basement floor was dirt, and the walls were made of stone. I couldn’t help but imagine someone down there in the dark waiting to ambush me. Why hadn’t I walked the entire house inside and out to make sure no one had broken in? Someone could be living here for all I know.

The unease was beginning to make my legs tingle with the fight-or-flight urge to flee. I did not like being down there. Thankfully, just before I lost my nerve and went back upstairs, I found the breaker box and quickly flipped the main switch, energizing the house. I wasted no time getting out of the basement, and once upstairs, I walked through the house flipping on lights and pulling back curtains.