I’ve had people ask me countless times: as a pool cleaner, do you ever get lucky with any hot babes?
It always disappoints them a bit when I tell them no. Even if I wasn’t married with two kids, why would I jeopardize my job by having a risqué interaction? Of course, I get asked a bunch of other questions, like: what’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen in a pool or how do I fix this?
I think the best question I’ve ever been asked had to be about my clients. Sure, people have asked me plenty of times who is my favorite or least favorite client. I’ll never forget one curious gentleman sitting behind the dumpster at the sandwich shop. When I walked by, he asked: “Hey, what’s the weirdest pool you work on?”
At first, I just laughed.
“I don’t really know, probably the Hudgins homestead?”
He smiled in response and nodded his head. After a moment of silence, I continued on my way. Oddly enough, I would be stopping at the Hudgins homestead later in the evening.
After filling up on my sandwich and chips, I resumed my work day. It didn’t take long to eventually arrive at my final stop for the day: the Hudgins homestead. The property sat at the edge of town, surrounded by orchards. The long gravel driveway leading to the house stopped at a large Oak tree, where I liked to park my truck to keep it in the shade.
Stepping out of my truck, I walked up to the wooden porch of the old 1800’s style ranch house. Each step was accompanied by a creaking noise, making me wonder if the wood might soon give way. Using the brass bull head on the door, I knocked three times. Of course, just like the last hundred or so visits, nobody answered.
When I first started my job, my supervisor told me to introduce myself to all of the clients. He explained how important it was to be on the client’s good side, because they would tip more during the holidays and be more patient and understanding if things went wrong. So I had met with each of my clients and had gotten friendly with most of them.
All except for the owners of Hudgins homestead, of course. They were never home. Even when I tried stopping at the homestead at different times of the day, not once would I see them; not even a vehicle. I even tried calling the number my company gave me in the job notes, but it would just ring and ring.
A familiar knot began to form in my stomach as I gathered the things I would need to work on the pool. There was something off-putting about being on the property, it felt so quiet and alone. With so many trees and the surrounding orchards, I figured there would at least be singing birds to listen to while I worked; but there wasn’t. In all my visits to the homestead, the property had always been dead silent and eerily devoid of wildlife.
Making my way to the pool area, I turned on some music at low volume on my phone. I usually did this when I found myself alone in someone’s yard, which was always the case with the Hudgins homestead. When I saw the pool, I let out a long and irritated sigh. The surface had been completely covered in leaves. Since it was the tail end of autumn, I should have expected as much. It only bothered me so because every pool before it had been in a similar condition, and because of daylight savings, it would be getting dark soon.
So I got to work doing all the routine stuff like checking the chemicals and emptying the skimmer baskets. During a pause in my music, I heard the faint sound of creaking wood. It sounded like someone walking up the old wooden porch; but when I turned to look, nobody was there. I shrugged it off and continued to work on getting the leaves out.
By the time I had the pool looking decent, twilight had fallen. I took an after picture of the pool to upload on my job app and headed back to my truck. A cold wind began to pick up on my walk back. I cranked up the heater in my truck while I wrote out the details of my visit on the service card. Without turning my truck off, I headed back up the creaky old porch to leave the card in the pile with all the others. Just when I was about to turn and leave, I saw something in the fractal glass of the front door.
It was a pale and distorted face, locked in an expression of agony. The bright yellow eyes sent me backpedaling, which caused me to trip and land on my rear. Looking back up at the door, the face was no longer there. I scrambled to my feet, ran to my truck, and took off as fast as I could.
The following day, I asked my supervisor if someone else could service the Hudgins homestead. I didn’t mention any of the spooky stuff because I knew he would think I’m crazy. Instead, I just told him I needed my route reduced a bit for the encroaching winter so I wasn’t working on pools in the dark. When he went to the computer to adjust my schedule, a puzzled look fell on his face.
“I’m not seeing any Hudgin in our system. Give me the address?”
“1334 Elder Oak Way.”
He slowly looked over at me before tilting his head.
“Wait, the Hudgins homestead? You mean Heidi Hudgins? That pool by the orchards?”
I nodded, unsure of what other pool he could have it confused for.
“We aren’t supposed to service that pool anymore, the owner died years ago. How long have you been going out there?”
I was speechless. In the four years of working for the company, I had always serviced the Hudgins homestead. Did nobody notice that mistake on my route the entire time? Whatever the case might be, I would never get to set foot on the homestead ever again.