Okay, so my neighborhood is like a lot of neighborhoods in a lot of cities: It started life in the 1800s as a Victorian suburb, fell on hard times in the mid-20th century, slowly became sketchy and then dangerous, was “rediscovered,” mostly by hipsters, who bought the houses cheap and renovated them in the 2000s. The neighborhood became safer (read gentrified) and has now become desirable and expensive (the houses are very cool) and priced out of the range of the people who used to live there, as well as the hipsters who moved in and renovated the houses in the first place.
My wife and I moved in shortly after the first wave of hipsters, primarily because it was still affordable, and got a glimpse of what the old neighborhood was like before people like us moved in. Two houses down from us lived a pair of elderly brothers who were essentially hermits. We occasionally saw them walking to or from the grocery store, but that was about it. They both had long scraggly, hair and beards and their clothes were filthy and looked as if they hadn’t been changed in years. If any of the neighbors on the block spoke or waved when they walked by, they never acknowledged it.
Their house looked as bad as their clothes. It hadn’t been painted in who know how long and the brothers kept all the windows covered with black plastic. The yard was overgrown, except for when some guy who looked almost as rough as the brothers did brought over a mower and cut it every two months or so. Nobody on the block every mentioned “property values” when we talked about the brothers, but I’m sure everybody was thinking it. I know my wife and I were.
We had lived there several years when one Christmas my wife–we’ll call her Jenny–decided, in a fit of what now seems ill-advised charity, to take part of our Christmas meal over to the brothers. My response was, essentially, “Are you out of your mind?” but she gave me that look that suggested I didn’t have anything to gain, but a whole lot to lose, if I didn’t go along with her. So we packed up a couple of plates–turkey and all the fixings–and headed down the street.
The window on the front door was covered with black plastic, of course, and when we knocked I saw a couple of dirty fingers appear on each side of a small hole in the plastic and open it about an inch, so I knew that one of them was checking us out. Jenny, who is, I’ve got to say, a simply lovely person, called out “Merry Christmas! We’ve brought you some Christmas dinner!” in the brightest voice you could possibly imagine. That’s when whichever brother peeking out through the plastic bag shouted in the ugliest voice you can imagine, “Get off my porch you ____\, or I’ll shoot you through the door!” The word he used was about the worst thing you can call a woman, and when Jenny turned around she was already crying. After she passed me, I looked at the hole in the plastic–the dirty fingers were still there–and mouthed, “Fuck you, asshole!” which at the time seemed like the appropriate response.
That was the end of our interaction with the brothers, or so I thought. A year or so later we saw an ambulance in front of the brothers’ house, and eventually paramedics carry out a body covered with a sheet, put it in the ambulance and drive it away. All the neighbors talked about it, of course, but nobody risked any display of sympathy toward the remaining brother. A few months after that, our neighbor on the other side of the brother’s house called at 3 o’clock in the morning and said, “The brothers’ house is on fire.” By the time I got outside, the house was fully engulfed, and before the fire department could get the fire under control, the house had burned almost entirely to the ground. Firemen discovered the body of the second brother on the floor of what had been one of the bedrooms. We watched that brother get carried away, too.
A sad, story with a tragic end, right? Except that the story didn’t end there. One morning a few months after the fire, I was rushing around, late for work, trying to find my keys or something, when I looked out the window and saw both of the brothers sitting in my car. You can imagine what my reaction was. I now know that the saying, “I almost pissed myself,” is more than a figure of speech. I screamed for Jenny and ran to the kitchen, but by the time we got back, my car was empty. Jenny at first thought I was messing with her, but then got a better look at the look on my face.
After that, I saw the brothers in my car every couple of weeks or so. They were always in the front seat, staring dead ahead, and they never looked toward the house or acknowledged me in any way. I watched them, always terrified, until I would blink and when I opened my eyes again they would be gone. Once I got up the nerve to run outside and open the car door, but they weren’t there when I did. Jenny never saw the brothers, and, while I’m still not sure she believed me, was nice enough to laugh at me or tell me I was crazy. All she said about it was, “Honey, I believe that you believe.”
I became afraid to drive my car. I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were in there with me. They never were, at least not that I knew about, but I worried because I could never be sure and spent as much time looking in the rearview mirror as I did at the road. Would I crash the car if they appeared while I was on the road? Probably.
When I tried switching my car’s spot on the street with the spot where we parked Jenny’s car, they moved with my car. I never saw them in Jenny’s car. I tried parking across the street to see if that made any difference, but it didn’t. Every few weeks, I looked out the window and saw the brothers, or the ghosts of the brothers or whatever they were, sitting in my car, like they were waiting on me. I tried taking a picture of them several times with my phone, but nothing ever showed up in the photos. A few times I got Jenny to the window while they were in the car, but she couldn’t see them.
I became more and more freaked out. When Jenny offered to switch cars with me, I protested, but not that much. She felt safe because she had never seen them. The brothers continued their random appearances but didn’t seem to notice that we had switched. I thought, if it’s just the car, why not replace it?, so I went out and bought a new car. (2023 Accord Hybrid if you’re curious. I know, I know, dull, but I’m not a particularly interesting guy on a good day.) So guess what? This morning they were in the Accord. No, I’m not only afraid to drive the car, I’m becoming afraid to go outside. They’re after me, I can just feel it. Am I going to open my eyes one night and see them standing at the foot of my bed? What do I do now? How can I make them leave me alone? Any help would be greatly appreciated.