Demons and Other Inconveniences

 REMEMBERING

   

  EUNICE STUBBINS was a silly name. Even back then it sounded made up, but it wasn’t–she wasn’t. As an adult, her name jerked me from my comfortable surroundings and returned me to paralyzed terror. It made me an eight-year-old again, quaking and crying under my covers, afraid for my very soul. For decades I’ve tried not to think about her but today I received a package from an old friend. Inside was a note:

  “Hello Sam,

  My dear friend. I hope this finds you well and gives you some long overdue peace.

  Always, Erin.”

  Stapled to the note was an obituary that had been clipped from my hometown newspaper. There she was. She’d only spoken to me one time. It was something I’ve always regretted.

  If you’d asked me this morning, I’d have sworn she’d seen a hundred and twenty-five Christmases but the obituary says she died at eighty-nine. That would’ve put her just shy of sixty back then, and that is incomprehensible to me. Even taking into account the inflation caused by the imagination of a small boy, she had to be ninety when we were neighbors–she just had to. The oldest woman–if woman is even suitable–I’d ever known. She lived in the neighborhood’s haunted house. In memories, it was shaded by storm clouds and guarded by an angry black cat, although those could be embellishments.

  You’re dead now, you evil bitch and I hope you’re in hell where you belong, forever being torn apart by all the children you took. Now maybe I can sleep.

   I went back home once when I was thirty years old. There on business, something dared me to drive through, and I took the dare. As a child, my neighborhood was an empire and my bedroom a fortress. I often got lost in the vastness of both. As a grown-up, the old town seemed somehow compressed. The yards were small; the houses grouped too close together. My old ten-by-ten room would’ve been claustrophobic had I gone inside. That was eight years ago.

  Old Eunice lived in a run-down house with vacant lots situated on either side. Those three lots were on the corner of the street we lived on, Rutledge Way, and the cross street that led into town, McNeill Road. It was only a few doors down from where I lived. We kids knew those empty lots stayed empty because no one could stand the smell of the rotten, decaying children she most assuredly preyed on—those who had been stupid enough to try and sell her Girl Scout cookies or school band candy bars. We stared at the house whenever we passed, and always held our breath. It was an unspoken law.

  The house loomed three stories high with dormers spaced as if they were the eyes and nose of an old and wise creature. Peeling paint and creaky boards held together a rundown porch and wooden railings looked like the jagged teeth of a crazy homeless person. The vegetation was scraggly and brown but grew up wild and tall nonetheless.

  A crusty old cyclone fence lined the perimeter and weeds climbed it as if trying to escape. The rest of the yard was barren save for some concrete bird baths that never contained water. One ancient oak tree stood next to the house like a gnarled and arthritic hand, especially terrifying on windy autumn evenings when the sun was low and crows lined its branches.

  It was the kind of place that bred legends amongst local youth, daring them to run up and touch it on full-moon nights. It was the place older kids used to scare younger siblings into submission. Eunice will get you if you tell mom or Eunice will get you if you touch my candy or even If you don’t help me clean my room, Eunice will get you.

  Parents stoked those fires as well. Do your homework. Mow the lawn. Eat your beans or—you guessed it folks—Eunice will get you.

  Until I read that obituary, I imagined she still haunted the kids of Walker’s Woods. A handful of people I grew up with still live there or really close by, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they’d passed on the tale of Eunice, the Devil Woman to their own offspring. It just takes one person telling that story to keep it alive and breathing like some terrible thing kept chained to the wall and like any tall tale, the more you feed it, the bigger and hungrier it gets.

  I saw her often back when I was maybe four or five years old. She used to sweep her front steps and walkway, and on occasion, she even left in her car. We weren’t permitted to play near the Stubbins Place, always mentioned with air quotes. Mom considered us a nuisance to the poor old woman, or so she said, but I think she was afraid. I think all of the adults on our street were. My older brother Kevin and I tempted fate sometimes when boredom was too much and we would drift toward that house, but one of the neighborhood moms or dads always sniffed us out and steered us home.

  Parents talked about Eunice. “She’s just not quite right,” one would say.

  “I know. That poor woman,” another would answer.

  We learned a lot listening to the moms who had gathered in our kitchen to sip coffee or eat lunch with our own mother. They never talked about housework or cooking. It was always more interesting than that. And frequently, the old witch was the topic of conversation.

  Once, my mother told my father, “She never speaks! And she wears that black dress every day. You know, I was behind her at the post office last week and she, well she smelled terrible.”

  Dad said, “I wonder if there’s any family to speak of, someone to take care of her, or at least check in on her?”

  They called her poor and feigned worry but none offered any help, at least not that I ever saw. No one was neighborly enough to ask if she needed anything or to take her a meal or cookies or anything. Old Eunice just had that groove that said, “Keep Away!”

  It wasn’t long after eavesdropping on that conversation that I stopped seeing her pilgrimages to the mailbox. There was a new brass mail-slot installed on her front door. It gleamed next to the rotten wood and faded paint. She stopped driving altogether, and left her old AMC Pacer parked out on the curb for months at a time. Joe’s Tow and Stow came and took it one day. The bulbous windows and odd shape of the vehicle made it look just like a fish bowl being dragged down the road. 

  Until I got my driver’s license, I kept two sets of friends—school friends and neighborhood friends. I think most kids do. From my experience, the neighborhood friends were two things. Convenient and real.

  We clung to each because we were all we had. There were three months of freedom each summer and no time to decide who was cool or who was worthy. Once all the labels were removed, the playing field was leveled and kids acted more natural. More like kids. It was about adventure and packing as much into life as you could, passing out from exhaustion that night, and starting over the next day. I loved the neighborhood kids because they were silly. Everyone found a way to fit in.

  Those were the relationships that mattered to me. The ones I won’t ever forget, because we shared real things. We got in trouble together and watched each other’s backs. We trusted and we made and kept promises. We pinky swore. No matter what happens, this goes to the grave.

  I’d show up to help each one of them in a hundred years if they asked, and I expect they’d do the same for me.

  WONDER

  -1981-

  Our crew stood in Jason Walker’s front yard and watched as the car left. It was a safe enough distance away from the creepy lady’s house and didn’t draw parental attention while we spied on the man with the tow truck when he knocked on her door. As we watched, none of us speaking, he peered in the window, shrugged and then slipped something in through the mail slot. A minute later, he was using a winch to drag the fish bowl’s front tires onto a tow trailer.

  “Do ya think she finally died?” asked Jason.

  “She sure does smell like it,” Erin said causing giggles.

  “You never smelled her,” Jason said.

  “Did too. Smelled almost as bad as you,” she said.

  “I’ll give you something to smell you litt…”

  I interrupted with a tale of my own. “One morning on my way to the bus stop, I walked by that car,” I said.

  “You’re a liar. My momma says you’ll go to hell for lying,” Jason
said, high and mighty. He hated me and as far as I could tell, he hated everyone else too.

  “There ain’t a lot your momma doesn’t say,” said Kevin, my brother and best ally. Jason glared and balled his fists.

  I continued, “The rear windows were covered with greasy fingerprints and the seats had old quilts on them.”

  “So?” Jason said.

  “The fingerprints were on the inside of the glass, and only in the back windows. The hands that made them were small. I think those quilts were there to cover up the blood stains.”

  No one heckled that part. Even Jason looked upset. I watched that car, remembering those quilts and handprints. I also remembered the way its faded black paint was all blistered like fair skin with one hell of a bad sunburn. “Now I always walk on our side of the street,” I finished.

  They shook their heads in unison and we all watched the wrecker roll away. I didn’t see Eunice for months after that, only the occasional flicker of drapery or a glimpse of shadow in the window at night if the interior lights were on. She never swept the porch steps or walkway again. That was when the lawn-guy started showing up.