Excerpt: Broken Houses

Suddenly, from somewhere downstairs, I heard Todd mutter, “oh fuck.”

And then footsteps. Quick ones.

I carefully put the brush and mirror back where they were and rushed to the top of the stairs. Todd shot out of the dining room and came partway up, then turned back around, trying to peer through the door to the dining room. “What is it?” I asked.

Then I heard a car.

“Fuck!” Todd came running up the stairs towards me. “He’s pulling in the driveway.”

“The police?”

“No, just a car – I don’t know whose it is.”

“What do we do?”

“Just – let’s stay calm,” Todd hissed, “maybe it’s just a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness or something…”

“Can we get out a back door?”

“No, this is the only way down, and he’d definitely see us through the dining room…” we stood, wide-eyed, at the top of the stairs, listening. Hoping we’d hear some knocks on the door, and then the car starting up again, driving away…

Instead we heard the rumble of the garage door being thrown open.

“Fuck!” we both hissed. I looked wildly around for somewhere, anywhere, to hide, but Todd grabbed my arm and started pulling me into the room with the shelves. “In here! Hurry!”

“Who is that?”

“I don’t know!” Todd slid open a closet door partway and pointed at a tiny hatchway in the back. “In the corner – there. Crawlspace. In there. Now!”

“What about you? Is there room?”

“Yes, I’ll be behind you, just fucking get in there!” he pushed me towards it, panicking himself. I crouched down and crawled in – and almost immediately started sneezing as a huge cloud of 80-year-old dust flew up into my nose. I was in some kind of dark tunnel, with one wall on a slant; the roof narrowed to a point just a foot over my head as I crouched. It was hot and smelled like old dust, and plastic bags stuffed with clothes or blankets covered the floor. Behind me, I thought I could hear Todd closing the closet door. “Hurry!” he hissed, as we heard the alarm going off. “Move in, let me in!” Whimpering, I crawled over the bags as Todd squeezed his way into the space behind me, urging me further. We finally came to a stop when I hit a huge wall of bags, and I crouched, leaning my knees on the pile, and Todd huddled up close against my back.

We waited.

The alarm cut off a few seconds after we both got in, and for a moment all I could hear was the two of us breathing heavy, as we tried to calm down. I tried to slow my breath down, tried to breathe low and slow, like Carlos showed me in meditation – it would help me calm down, I thought, and it’d definitely be quieter. Then we started hearing footsteps in the house downstairs – just one set, stopping and starting, making its way through the rooms downstairs. A couple doors opened and shut, and there was the rustling and scraping of someone looking through clothes hangers. Then a moment later, we heard another door open, and footsteps again, sounding strange and echoey like they were in a tunnel.

“He’s going downstairs,” Todd whispered, directly into my ear. I jumped a little – I hadn’t realized his face was so close. He felt me jump, and put his hand on my back. “Sorry,” he whispered again.

He left his hand there. It kept me calm – Todd was here, if anything happened we’d both come up with a way out of this. It was going to be okay.

The footsteps echoed back, and a door shut. I felt a weird sort of pulse thumping against my back, and realized that it was Todd’s heartbeat – he was pressed against me and his heart was pounding hard enough for me to feel it. I leaned back against him, hoping that would help to keep him calm.

The footsteps started up the stairs. Todd and I huddled closer together.

The footsteps slowed at the top of the stairs, and stopped and started a couple times, as if someone was trying to decide which way to go. We heard another couple doors open and shut, one close by near the landing, another further off in another room. Todd’s hand crept from my back around to my upper arm, and he held on, pressing even closer; we both tried to curl up together like we were trying to become invisible. Both of us trying to breathe without making absolutely any noise, but both of us so scared that we were almost panting.

...The door to the closet we were in suddenly rolled open.