《Floorboards》


 Chapter 1: Violet

    Winter was settling in when I arrived at that house. The air, leaving behind the briskness of fall for the curt bite of snow, hung heavy over the property. The yard that surrounded it was coated in a layer of dead and dying pine needles. What few deciduous trees still stood on the grounds had long since shed their leaves in preparation for the cold and stretched their bare limbs out towards an overcast sky. The house itself felt like winter.


    It was the house I was born and raised in, and yet it felt like a stranger. I suppose it had a somewhat gloomy aura¡ªperhaps it would have excited a thrill-seeker to see such an antique: a behemoth standing strong against the best efforts of time.


    As for me, I couldn''t say I felt the same.


    For as long as I could remember, I had always been a complete and total failure. Where my brother Virgil got straight A''s and a full ride scholarship to study psychology on the East Coast, I barely graduated high school and only sort of scraped by in our local community college. Of course nobody would be impressed with my general associate''s degree and pitiful transcript, but that was all I could manage. Even as an adult, even after our aunt died from cancer and Virgil left the house without a word, I never got better.


    I could never find any passion in my life. I tried anything I could get my hands on¡ªgardening, piano, archery, knitting, reading, hiking... Nothing worked. None of the jobs I worked were satisfying either. Everything felt empty and hollow to the point that I didn''t even really want to feel better, I just wanted to lie down and forget. And every time I felt like that, every time I wanted to forget about the world, I couldn''t help but think about Virgil and how much better he was than me.


    In middle school, I had tried to be friends with Virgil. I really did want him to talk to me, for us to be closer. I wasn''t particularly good at talking, but I still tried. Maybe I thought that he could fix me, that we could be real siblings and that I could be a real person. He pushed me away every time. I guess it made sense in the end. Virgil hated me about as much as I hated myself, I think.


    So what do you say when, after three years of radio silence, that kind of brother calls you and says that your parents are officially dead? ''Congratulations?'' ''I''m sorry for your loss?''


    He was my brother, my twin, the same age as me right down to the hour, but it felt like I was talking to a stranger who had somehow dialed the wrong number. I couldn''t recognize him. All I could think about while he was on the phone with me was how different his voice sounded. It was lower, deeper. It was dead and glassy like a gutted fish. When we were younger he had always been angry, always had something bothering him... He would shout sometimes, throw things, maybe slam the door and lock me out. He had a stitch in his brow that never came out when I was around. But at the very least, he was alive and breathing; his short temper aside, he was still a person. The man on the other end of the phone didn''t feel like a person. It was like I was talking to a tin can.


    ¡°...Violet, are you listening to me?¡±


    ¡°¡ªSorry?¡±


    ¡°So you weren''t listening.¡± He sighed, and I heard something like papers being shuffled before he continued. ¡°The main point is that they''ve been missing long enough to legally be declared dead, so I filled out the forms for it to be done. I''ve dealt with most of the paperwork, but I can''t finalize the inheritance without your input.¡±


    ¡°Mine?¡±


    ¡°Yes. You''re the only other living family member.¡±


    ¡°Oh... Okay.¡±


    ¡°Most of their assets are purely fiscal, but there''s also the house... I''m not interested in it personally, but we''ve got to do something with it.¡±


    ¡°The house? Where?¡±


    ¡°What?¡± A hint of exasperation had crept into his voice. ¡°Colorado, in the mountains. We lived there when we were younger, before Lisa adopted us.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± I couldn''t remember at all. ¡°Right, sorry.¡±


    ¡°Anyways, it''s an old house and it hasn''t been maintenanced in over a decade. At this point it''d probably be better to just tear it down and find someone to buy the land...¡±


    ¡°¡ªNo. No, I''ll take it.¡±


    ¡°I''m sorry?¡±


    ¡°I said I''ll take it.¡± A quiet house in the mountains, where nobody would have any reason to look for me. It seemed absurdly convenient. ¡°Am I allowed to do that?¡±


    ¡°I mean... I suppose? I''ll ask the attorney about it. If you''re going to have the house, then the value will probably be deducted from your portion of the money our parents had...¡±


    ¡°That''s fine. I don''t need it.¡±


    He was silent for a few moments. If I hadn''t known him better, I might have even thought that he was thinking about something I said. ¡°Alright then. I''ll let you know when everything''s settled. And about the funeral, since we''re here...


    ¡°I think it''s pretty obvious that we don''t need one, so you don''t have to worry about that.¡±


    The story went that my parents'' family had owned and maintained the house for generations. While I didn''t know its exact age, its vaguely Victorian architecture and antiquated appearance did suggest that it might indeed be very old: old enough, even, to require a skeleton key. How it hadn''t been robbed or simply destroyed in all the time that it remained unoccupied was a mystery to me, but the front door swung open with minimal complaint.


    While not in evident disrepair, a furry layer of dust clung to every surface. The walls were drafty. The furnishings were out of date. The wallpaper was yellowed and faded, peeling off to reveal both the styles of eras long past and the moldering walls hidden beneath. The air was sharp and dry, the kind of sharpness that makes you want to sneeze with each breath. It mostly just smelled like dust. The hint of evergreen and rotting oak that crept in around the edges, though, was strong enough to make me grimace.


    The wooden floors creaked and groaned as if they were being strained past their limit by my weight. Decades of hot summers and even colder winters had expanded and contracted their planks until they couldn''t return to their original size. While the house was certainly abandoned, at some point it must have been emptied of my parents'' personal effects¡ªevery drawer, cabinet, and shelf laid bare and vacant. The windows were swathed with spiderwebs, but the view outside was certainly scenic. Mountains rose and fell sharply into the distance; the sky was somehow both bright and gray at the same time.


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    It would make for a lovely place to die.


    I wasn''t really planning to die before Virgil called me. It was just that the house made it all so convenient. A paid-for house out in the mountains and just enough money to live without working for a few months. If I was able to go through with it, then everything would be over and I wouldn''t even be bothering anyone; maybe some hikers would find my body in the woods and Virgil would have to do more paperwork, but nobody would grieve or be scrambling to make ends meet. Even if I chickened out, I still had the option to get a job again and keep living until I couldn''t take it anymore. It was perfect. Romantic, even¡ªjust like the shitty novels that my parents had written while they cooped themselves up here.


    ...Obviously I knew it wasn''t healthy to think of it that way. There''s nothing romantic about me hurling my sorry ass over a ledge, regardless of how miserable I am while doing it. But making a decision for once in my life, doing something drastic and irreversible, actually felt pretty good. I was giddy with a sense of manic euphoria. As I walked through the house¡ªup and down the stairs, peering through windows and peeking at corners¡ªeverything seemed foreign and unreal, like I had walked onto the set of a historical drama. I wasn''t happy, but my steps were light. The heavy weight of ¡°survival¡± had been lifted off my shoulders. I didn''t want to waste any more time on life; I had nothing to lose anyways.


    That being said, I didn''t go out immediately. Maybe I was just afraid, but at the time I had the very reasonable justification that I wanted some time to decompress before I made my decision. I wanted to savor the inaction, to rest a little more. Naturally, though, it was a little hard to have a relaxing nap in a bed whose blankets seemed to be knit from dust and cobwebs... So, some cleaning was in order.


    I was never a very good housekeeper, but I did some minimal dusting and sweeping to make the house less, well, fuzzy. I couldn''t find a laundry machine anywhere, so I just tossed the old blankets in a corner and slapped my own on top of the mattress. That was where the cleaning stopped: now that I was able to curl up in bed comfortably, I had no desire to do anything else.


    My tendency to lie in bed for hours on end was something that I developed after my grades spiraled to oblivion in eighth grade. Wrapped up in blankets and swaddled in warm, silent darkness, it was my one hideaway from the world.


    Of course, Virgil wasn''t pleased by it in the slightest¡ª¡°You can''t just hide from everything¡± this, ¡°You''re being ridiculous¡± that. Sometimes he''d yank the blankets away, grab my arm and tug me out; those were some of the only times where I actually believed that I had a brother. I would oscillate between seeing him as a fiend and a saint. He clearly could care, so why didn''t he care about me? What had I done wrong for him to be so mad? I didn''t want to think about it, but he always found a way to make me wonder.


    ¡°You can''t do this,¡± Virgil had chastised me once after yanking me out of my comforter cocoon. ¡°You''re being childish.¡±


    I glared at him from where I sat on the bed, my face half-buried in my arms. ¡°Shut up, you jerk. Aren''t I a kid anyways?¡±


    He gave me a mean stink eye in return. ¡°You''re thirteen.¡±


    ¡°So? I''m not an adult.¡±


    ¡°You''re not a baby either! Just ''cause you''re not old enough to vote doesn''t mean you''re not old enough to have a brain.¡±


    ¡°''Scuse me?¡±


    ¡°I said what I said.¡± He was glancing at his nails like he had said something so obvious that it wasn''t even worth paying attention to. ¡°You, Violet Bauer, are the dumbest brat I''ve ever known.¡±


    I think after that I must have swung at him... not that it would have gotten me anywhere. I fought some when I was younger, and I would usually win simply by virtue of playing stubborn and dirty. When I fought with Virgil, though, he would always beat me. I was always left completely outclassed and cringing in the dust. He knew how to push my buttons, but I don''t even think he knew he was doing it. He just hated me by nature and he knew how to make me absolutely miserable... So, he would. Like salt in the wound, he always had to rub it in that I would never be like him. No matter how hard I tried.


    Virgil always seemed to know something that I didn''t. It was infuriating how effortlessly he surpassed me; he didn''t have to try at all. Anything I did, he could do better¡ªso why do anything at all?


    I didn''t understand why he hated me so much at first. I could understand why he''d hate me now, after all of the fistfights and arguments and airborne objects, but I never got why he held so much animosity for me back when we were just little kids. I knew he could laugh. When school was over for the day, I''d see him laughing and playing together with his friends every now and then. He had friends, so obviously he didn''t hate everyone. But whenever it came to me, he was cold like a frozen tundra.


    If someone asked if we were related, he''d say no. If we went home at the same time, he''d walk on the opposite side of the street. He didn''t seem to like Aunt Lisa either, but when it came to me I was no better than the dirt on his shoe. I couldn''t remember what I did to make him so upset. Before Lisa was taking care of us, I couldn''t really remember anything at all.


    At first I thought that maybe it was normal, or that Virgil and I both shared that void in our memory. What little I could remember about our parents was transient, like lantern slides flickering in and out. I know that they insisted the whole family be smartly-dressed and well groomed. My father had a booming laugh; my mother sported a beautiful smile. They were decorated novelists, but they were eclectic and reclusive¡ªthey lived out in the Colorado mountains with off-the-grid tinfoil hat enthusiasts and hippies of an age gone by, avoiding the public like the plague. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn''t remember their faces or even their names. When I mentioned this to Virgil, though, his face knitted together into a look of disgust.


    My parents were a strange, almost hypothetical existence for me. The stories my aunt told me about them seemed almost purposefully vague, embellished with homely details but lacking anything concrete.


    ¡°Are Mom and Dad like you?¡± I was sitting next to Lisa on the couch when I asked that, glancing over a book she had picked out for me. She chuckled a little.


    ¡°I''m not sure what you mean, honey. ''Like me'' how?¡±


    ¡°Well...¡± I frowned. ¡°I dunno. They like reading books, right? We like doing that.¡±


    ¡°I think so,¡± she replied. ¡°Your parents make a living off of writing books, so they probably like reading them too.¡±


    ¡°Probably?¡±


    Lisa slowly thumbed through the magazine she was holding, not looking in my direction. ¡°I don''t know for sure. Laura wasn''t really the bookish sort when we were kids, and David, well...¡±


    She set it down for a moment. ¡°I barely spoke to David at all. He was a man of few words.¡±


    ¡°Hmm.¡± Like most children would, I had started to lose interest once she started giving vague answers. ¡°So what''d they write?¡±


    ¡°Murder mysteries,¡± she said. ¡°Thrillers, dramas, that sort of thing. I assume that''s how they got to know each other in the first place.¡±


    I glanced up at her, my curiosity piqued. ¡°Did they ever write about a real murder?¡±


    Lisa sighed. ¡°Stop it, Violet. That''s just gruesome.¡±


    ¡°Hmph, whatever.¡±


    We read in silence for a while. The rasping noise of us leafing through pages bothered me somehow, especially the wobbly sound that Lisa''s magazine had. I set the book down, staring out the window while I tried to think of something to say.


    ¡°Will we see Mom and Dad again?¡±


    Lisa stopped turning the pages, becoming very still.


    ¡°No,¡± she said eventually. ¡°You can''t see them again. I''m sorry, Violet.¡±

 Chapter 2: Virgil

    ¡°I''ll take it.¡± As her voice cut off into silence, all I could do was stare forward at nothing in utter disbelief.


    ¡°...I''m sorry?¡± What the hell do you even want it for?


    Violet Bauer was the polar opposite of a go-getter. Her ambitions were nonexistent, as was her drive to succeed. I couldn''t even begin to fathom why she wanted that old wreck of a house. What could someone like her see in it? Was I talking to the right person?


    ¡°I said I''ll take it. Am I allowed to do that?¡±


    I couldn''t really remember much about that house, but what little I recalled filled me with disgust and dread. It was something dark, squirming in the corners of my memory and reeking of rot. Her willingness to come forward and take it made that disgust creep forward again; I was filled with a sudden derisive suspicion that she was up to something. She had to be up to something. She was always up to something.


    Everything about Violet Bauer made me uncomfortable. Ever since we were kids, there was just something wrong with her¡ªlike a corpse wearing human skin. Her and Lisa both; they both felt like living dead. To have someone like that in that house, after leaving it abandoned for over a decade...?


    ¡°...Ha.¡± I ran my hands through my hair after the call was over, rubbing the back of my neck with a grimace. ¡°Great. Just... great.¡±


    The phone sat silent and still. I couldn''t really put my finger on what it was exactly that was making me so high-strung over this, but the feeling of discomfort was clear.


    Tugging open a file cabinet, I thumbed through the folders and files searching for the inheritance documents. It was something I had been working on for years. I wanted our parents'' disappearance to be set aside, for them to be declared dead and for whatever assets they had lingering around to be dispersed... so I had spent an inordinate amount of time searching for articles and messing with red tape in order to sort everything out. The benefit of all the trouble I had gone to was that, essentially, I knew everything that was possible to know about our parents and their estate.


    Neither of our parents were born to a particularly prestigious background. Our mother, Laura, was born and raised in rural Colorado. Our father David, on the other hand, came from a more urban area in Nebraska. David had gotten a Bachelor''s of Science in the field of pathology, and Laura had a Bachelor''s of Arts in journalism and public relations. Since they were rather private and unsuccessful early on in their life, I have no idea how they met or what they were doing at the time¡ªat some point prior to Violet and I being born, Laura was employed as a reporter for a local newspaper and David interned at a laboratory.


    Their main claim to fame was the books they would write together, which would show up on the bestseller lists every now and then. From what I could gather their writing was little more than pulp fiction, but evidently it worked well enough: they retired young, and not long after they went missing.


    That''s where the record stops.


    I did remember that, when Violet and I were both eight, our aunt Lisa took us away from our mother''s family home in Colorado to live with her in the rural outskirts of Oregon. After that we never heard from them again, and Lisa died from natural causes while I was pursuing my bachelor''s degree. That was it.


    I had no idea what Violet had been doing after I left; I had assumed it was nothing, like it was before. No matter which way I looked at it, I couldn''t quite understand what she had seen in that house. After all, I''d had it appraised at one point and the consensus was that it was worth less than the ground it stood on. The damage it had racked up from all its time unoccupied and unrepaired was in the tens of thousands, if not more, and it wasn''t in a particularly desirable location.


    So then, why did she want it?


    ¡°...You still here, Virgil?¡±


    I have to admit that the sudden noise made me jump a little. I shoved the files back in my desk, flashing the speaker a weak smile. ¡°¡ªMichael. Sorry, I''m done now.¡±


    ¡°No worries. Everything work out okay?¡±


    ¡°...Yeah.¡±


    ¡°That''s good, then.¡±


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    Michael was my dormmate, a sluggish and cynical guy that hovered around six feet when he wasn''t slouched over like a sagging tree. He was... a computer science major? Maybe? Whenever he talked about his studies I wasn''t even sure he was speaking English, but he was nice to be around.


    ¡°You were gonna call your sister, right? Viola or something?¡± His expression was disinterested as always, not meeting my eyes or even facing in my general direction when he spoke.


    ¡°Uh... Yeah. Violet.¡±


    ¡°That doesn''t sound very confident.¡±


    ¡°I mean I was calling her, she just... She threw me off balance a little is all.¡±


    ¡°Hmm.¡± Michael pulled out a textbook from the jungle of stuff shoved under his bed, flipping through the pages. ¡°Is that so.¡±


    ¡°It''s just¡ªIt doesn''t make any sense!¡±


    ¡°Mm.¡±


    ¡°She''s never showed this kind of interest in anything before, so I don''t... I have no idea what she''s trying to do!¡±


    ¡°Mhmm.¡±


    ¡°She acted like she didn''t even remember it! I had to remind her what it was! It''s not worth anything either, so what would possess her to¡ª¡±


    ¡°Maybe she didn''t get that it was in bad shape,¡± Michael interrupted, ¡°and thought it''d be better than what she has right now?¡±


    ¡°But I told her it was bad!¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°One of the world''s great mysteries, I guess. By the way, what the hell are you talking about?¡±


    After the initial call and some other conversations relating to her acquiring the house, everything I sent to Violet went to voicemail. She had never been particularly good at staying in touch, but she''d usually pick up if I tried to call her¡ªnow, any time I tried to reach her the phone would just ring and ring. She wouldn''t answer text messages or e-mails. My attempts at mailing a physical letter to her address had ended in return-to-sender. I''ll admit that I can be a bit of a paranoid person, but I feel like this sort of thing would make most people uneasy.


    What did I know about Violet? She was my sister, but because I had always felt so at odds with her I had never really talked to her about anything important. She was insecure and hot-tempered. She used to get into fights in middle school to the point where she was almost expelled. She was closest with Lisa, I knew that much¡ªI couldn''t really tell you why, but Lisa was the only person that she ever seemed to trust. She was reclusive and lazy as a sloth; I had to drag her out of bed at least once a week just to get her to eat something. She would cling to me one minute and swat me away the next, changing her mind on a dime.


    Was that really it?


    As much as I hated to admit it, I knew that I had probably been unfair to her growing up. I thought that maybe, if I tried hard enough, I could remember something that would make everything fall into place¡ªbut I really couldn''t. Violet made me uncomfortable, so I avoided her. I pushed her away fervently, but couldn''t bring myself to sit still when she left herself to rot in her room. The more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that I couldn''t really remember anything about her at all. The ¡°Violet¡± I had made in my memories was two-dimensional, a cutout of the discomfort I felt being around her. Now that I was being confronted by the real deal, I felt like I had been thrown into the deep end.


    ¡°Hey.¡± Michael tapped me on the shoulder, handing me a glass of water. ¡°Earth to Virgil.¡±


    ¡°Oh, uh... Thanks.¡± Bastard, you scared me again.


    He stared at me for a second, contemplating. ¡°It''s still bothering you,¡± he said eventually. ¡°The thing with your sister.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°Yeah, it is.¡±


    ¡°Hmm.¡± He sat down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. ¡°Well, what can you do about it?¡±


    ¡°I don''t know. She''s not answering my calls¡ªor anything else I send her, for that matter.¡±


    ¡°Hmm-mm.¡± We both sat in silence for a few moments.


    ¡°Winter break starts soon,¡± Michael said abruptly.


    ¡°Well, yeah... So what?¡±


    ¡°People leave campus during winter break, right? If she won''t answer you long-distance, you can go there and talk to her in person.¡±


    ¡°...Oh.¡± Well, it''s all very simple when you put it like that. ¡°Winter break won''t be starting for another few weeks, though... Is it okay for me to just wait like that?¡±


    ¡°If she''s gonna die like that, then she''s probably already dead.¡±


    ¡°That doesn''t make any sense at all. Also, your bedside manner is absolutely horrific.¡±


    ¡°Mm, maybe.¡± He smirked, leaning back a little. ¡°You''re not thinking about it now though, right?¡±


    ¡°...You suck.¡±


    ¡°Really though, I think it''ll be fine. Maybe she just doesn''t have reception or something, and you''ll have an opportunity to go check on her in a few weeks.¡±


    ¡°If you say so.¡± Even if I told myself that, it still felt bad. ¡°It just makes me nervous.¡±


    ¡°Everything makes you nervous. Shouldn''t you be worrying about finals instead?¡±


    ¡°Oh my god, fuck off.¡±