THE LODGER

Illustration by Andy Paciorek

Honorable Mention, 2021
The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award

BY C.C. ASHMEAD

“Do you have something sharp?” the man asked, squatting by the box and looking up at her with a smile, “like a key?”

“Oh, sure,” Lara said. Without thinking she gave him her house key. Later she realized that he never gave it back.

She’d been so intrigued by the box. It was square, sealed up in clear tape, and medium-sized. Yet it appeared to contain everything he owned. As he used the key to cut through the tape, he said, “I never know what’s inside.” She laughed. In hindsight, though, it was a strange thing to say. Hadn’t he packed it?

Lara’s basement was a dank, unwelcoming place. The fireplace was plastered over, the window a thin rectangle that looked up through a grate. It had no furniture and little light, and Lara doubted that any person could improve it. But the lodger seemed unbothered. “Trust me,” he said, “I’ve seen much worse.”

It was only then that Lara remembered to ask his name. “Since,” she said, suddenly shy, “you’ll be living here and everything.”

“Me? Oh, I’m the Devil.”

Lara laughed, and he laughed too.

“What do you mean, you want another shift? Don’t you already have three jobs?”

“I’m saving for college.”

Matt handed Lara the box from the shelf, and Lara grunted as she accepted it. “All the new elk horns. Two for three sale.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his glove and stepped down the ladder. “Is ‘Mr. B’ bothering you?”

“No. He’s nice. It’s only been a few days.” Lara thought about it. “Two weeks, actually.”

“What does the ‘B’ stand for, anyway?”

“I’m not sure. I think he said Baxter.”

“I worry about you,” Matt said. His German shepherd, in a down-stay four feet down the aisle, began to whine.

“You shouldn’t. I’m seeing Auntie.”

“Why don’t you take out loans? Cut yourself a break?”

“I will.” Lara trailed after him, carrying both boxes. “Just gotta get my life in order.”

The German Shepherd opened its mouth to make a low, belligerent bark.

“It’s her new food.” As Matt took kibble from the fanny pack around his waist, the dog rose and lunged at Lara. Lara thrust out the boxes, and the dog sank her teeth into one with a ripping noise. Lara was so shocked that she could not even scream.

“Pogo! Pogo, down!” Matt grabbed its collar, but the dog bared its fangs. Lara backed away, holding the boxes.

“Unacceptable, Pogo!” Matt dragged the dog down the aisle by its collar, its paws scraping against the slick floor. The dog keened and looked over its shoulder at Lara, growling, until Matt dragged it out of sight around the next aisle.

The rest of her shift, Lara mopped down the floors, changed the filters in the fish tanks, and helped peevish customers whose arms overflowed with chew-toys, Kong balls, and stuffed ducks. She fed all the animals, even the ferrets, those furry little red-eyed snakes. Was it her imagination, or did the fish dart away into the reeds when she approached? Even the pudgy lovebirds in their cages went silent when she passed.

As she left, Lara saw Matt standing in the room where they shampooed pets. He had shut himself in there behind a wall of glass. He waved when he saw her. Pogo was tied to a chair in the corner, her eyes fixed on Lara. Her lips were pulled back to reveal white fangs.

Don’t you dare, Lara thought, concentrating hard on walking at an even pace. Don’t you dare blame this on Mr. B. He’s just your lodger. He definitely isn’t —you know. The D-word.

As soon as Lara arrived at Auntie’s apartment, Auntie made tea from a hard, ginger-like root that had the face of her dead husband. This lent the root mystical but not magical qualities. Auntie claimed to have found it two weeks earlier in the onion bin at the Trader Joe’s. The tea was a little stinky, but otherwise inoffensive. It made Lara doze off while Auntie wheedled over what to do about Mr. B. When Lara awoke, Auntie was dangling a dead trout over her face. Lara wrinkled her nose.

“You smell that? Good.”

“You think he stole my sense of smell?”

“I don’t know what he do. But your hair healthy. Your skin good, too. Something bad going on.”

Lara stood, waving her hand in front of her nose. She staggered to Auntie’s boudoir at the foot of the bed. She looked at herself in the mirror. Even her acne was gone.

“Weird,” she said. “I haven’t slept since he came.” She added, “That’s not true. I just keep having the same dream . . . which is that I’m lying awake.” She laughed.

“Nobody sleep,” Auntie said, “when the Devil watching ’em.”

“Are there lots of devils, Auntie? Or just the one?”

“Ha! Only the real thing good enough for you?”

“I guess I want to know who I’m dealing with. Is he the CEO or more like the janitor?”

“There just the one, girlie. But he got many faces.” Auntie wrapped the trout back up in wax paper and ferried it from the room, talking all the while. “After all he not really no man. No woman, neither. What he more like—you never seen a snapping turtle? He like the handsomest man in the world, a big movie star. Tony Shalhoub! And you go kiss him on the cheek and it all fall away and he snapping turtle on top of snapping turtle.” She returned now, still smelling of fish, and layered her right hand over her left. She lifted her right hand up and down, like a jaw.

Lara pulled at her lips in the mirror. She wondered if she was pretty enough to realistically kiss a movie star, such as —why did Auntie like him so much?—Tony Shalhoub.

Auntie was stern. “You think he in love with you?”

“No. No way.”

“The Devil fall in love too.”

“You said it’s not a man.”

“Men don’t fall in love! Men die.” By this Auntie seemed to allude to her late husband, now memorialized in her cupboard as a desiccated root. “Devil no man. Hurricane fall in love with a ship and send it to the bottom of the sea. Poison fall in love with your body and kill you. Virus fall in love and it—”

“Okay,” Lara said, “I get it.”

“Nothing about you bad,” Auntie said, climbing onto the bed and reaching over the frame to grasp Lara’s shoulders, “except your heart open. A thief attracted to that open door.”

Auntie’s head hovered above Lara’s, and in the mirror Lara couldn’t help but feel that they together made up an ancient Egyptian statue: Nefertiti and child. She spoke to this statuesque image when she said, her voice small:

“Auntie, what do I do?”

“You bring him to see me. I’ll take care of it.”

“Can’t you come home with me today?”

Auntie crossed herself and brought out the three rosaries that hung beneath her flowing clothing. One was wood, one silver, one obsidian. Auntie believed there was power in the number three, just like she believed if you took a bath on Friday you would turn into a fish, and if your second toe was longer than your big toe, you were destined to rule your husband and keep a clean house. It was hard for Lara to remember that Auntie was really just crazy, and Lara herself was over-reacting, and Mr. B was just your regular run-of-the-mill guy, because when Auntie took her hand, she looked as serious as when she saw a gun.

“No, baby girl. Your home his turf now. His.”

Lara’s hands shook as she unlocked her front door. Her house, like all the other houses on her street, had a narrow front yard, a narrow back yard, and iron grills on the first floor windows. It was distinguished only by its sugar maple tree, which this time of year was verdant green. She noticed now that its top had withered. The branches there extended like benighted claws. Birds circled above but did not land. They flew down the street to sit on the telephone wire.

Inside the house Mr. B had on her oven mitts and apron and was wafting steam from the oven. When he saw her he waved and said, “I wanted to surprise you!” He had a little bit of flour in his hair. Cute, Lara thought.

“Let me take your coat. Tonight we’re dining in the best French restaurant. Sound good?” Before she could speak, he escorted her to the dining room.

“So,” she asked him, “you’ve been to France?” She pulled her teeth through the fresh bread he had baked. Her stomach grumbled. She had never been so hungry.

“Oh, sure,” he said, “I’ve been all over.”

“I guess you travel a lot.”

“When I can. But it’s not satisfying, traveling.”

She snorted.

“Really, Lara, I’m not kidding. I’ve eaten noodles next to a yak, and I’ve pulled potatoes out of the earth in Peru and looked up to see a purple sun. Like the dawn of creation. The first day. But it’s better to have a home.”

“A home,” Lara said.

“Maybe you don’t agree?” He leaned forward. His face was smooth, his eyes light, almost green—the green of the sugar maple that was dying. But trees died of natural causes all the time. Lara felt ashamed of her suspicions.

“I guess I don’t know,” Lara said, “I’ve never gone anywhere other than . . . here.”

“It’s a nice place to be,” he said.

She snorted again.

“You should be grateful, Lara. There are people out there without a roof over their heads. I don’t just mean the homeless, either. People who never call any place their home. Wanderers.”

“This lemonade is amazing, by the way.”

“It’s okay, Lara. I’m not always one hundred percent happy either. People like us never are.”

Lara felt uneasy and baffled by this comment. He must have seen this in her expression, because he took out the napkin he had stuffed at his collar and held up a hand. “The piece de resistance.” He said this in a funny French accent, and she smiled. He hurried into the kitchen to bring out a massive cut of beef sitting in a limpid, reddish sauce.

“Mushrooms, cabernet, pearl onions . . .” He trailed a serving spoon through the broth. The meat fell apart, revealing yellow bone. “You’re drooling, Lara.”

“Where did you learn to make this?”

“Like I said,” he explained, spooning some into her bowl, “I’ve been all over. I’m a habitual dabbler. I can make at least one good dish from any cuisine.” As he sat down, he surveyed her and said, “You should try my pad thai. I’ll make it tomorrow.”

Lara’s eyes widened at the taste of the meat. Such richness and subtlety of flavor seemed unfathomable. It reminded her of the tea she had drunk this morning, shredded from the root that resembled Auntie’s late husband. Auntie who loved Tony Shalhoub. Tony Shalhoub who you wanted to kiss, until you learned he was a Jenga tower of snapping turtles. . . . The conviction came over her with the clarity of sudden good health. Lara pushed the plate away and glared at Mr. B. Her hands shook.

“It’s not overcooked, is it?”

“I know what you’re doing.” She pushed her chair back and stood up. Grabbing her coat, she walked out of the house.

Why does he want to know how happy I am? Lara wondered as she walked along the road, her hands in her pockets. What does he mean, ‘people like us’?

It was dark. She had arrived home from Auntie’s at 2 PM, Lara calculated, and now it was nearly 9 PM, though she did not know how the moments had been stolen from her. She walked to the bus stop a half-mile down the road and waited, checking to see if Mr. B had followed. She had the vague sense that somebody would stab her between her shoulders. But Mr. B had no reason to give chase. He lived in her house. It’s his turf now. Auntie’s words came back like the wail of a distant ambulance.

The bus arrived, and she boarded it, flashing her electronic card and muttering “thanks” to the driver. The driver’s eyes followed her in the rearview mirror. Lara sat in the back and would have pulled her knees up to her chest had it not looked so childish. She watched the streets as they slid past in the night. The feeling of a mistake settled in her stomach. In hindsight, something about Mr. B sickened her. She couldn’t explain it. She put her head in her hands. Nobody had ever warned her that she could feel this crazy and, at the same time, be all alone.

Three stops closer to the city center, a man shuffled on board. Lara watched him enter and felt fear. Auntie had said that Mr. B had many faces. In this heat, you smelled the homeless before you saw them. Lara was reminded of her conversation with Mr. B. The man collapsed into a seat, diagonal to where Lara sat, holding the yellow vertical pole of the bus. He clutched it, staring, then blurted out, “I’m schizophrenic.”

Lara nodded and looked ahead to the bus driver. She could no longer see the driver’s eyes.

“I hear things.” The man leaned forward. “I see things.”

Lara wondered if the bus driver could help her, then wondered if the bus driver could even hear her. The alley of the bus seemed longer than usual. Lara’s eyes flicked to the man. He was wearing two or three coats, and sweat shone on his forehead.

“I see you,” he said.

Lara leaned toward him and said, “Can you help me?”

The man looked surprised. Perhaps nobody had ever said it to him.

“I have no one else to talk to. You’ve got to help me!”

“Okay,” he said. He sounded reluctant.

“It’s not money. I want advice.” When he continued staring at her, she said: “I’m living with the—with the Devil.”

“Sure,” he said.

“He moved into my basement.” Lara searched her head for details. “He dresses really nice. Designer suits. He’s got this coat with this red lining that’s so cool. And he wears these crazy sneakers.”

“There sneakers, and there sneakers.”

“These look like space-ships.”

“Got a picture?”

She showed him on her phone. He nodded.

“That Kanye,” he said, “Buy that around a thousand. Easy.”

“A thousand dollars?”

“Uh-huh.” He was taking their conversation more seriously. For a man who smelled like underarms, he had a professorial air. He crossed his arms. “And you say this man is . . .?”

“Yeah.”

“The—,” he pointed down.

She nodded.

“And you not an agent?”

“A what?”

“I got these people following me. Over there my brother. But my brother dead since we were kids. So who is it? An agent. And over there a lady, follow me around and sing me showtunes. She got no talent but she want me to get her on The Voice. When I ask other people about her, she run away and hide. So I don’t know if you all the way there.”

“I’m not,” Lara said, “I’m almost positive I’m not.”

“Oy!” The man wandered up the aisle, holding onto the poles, then stopped in the middle to shout: “That lady in the back, you see her?”

The driver did not respond.

“I said, you see her, too?”

“Yeah,” the driver said without turning her head.

The bus glided to a halt. A few people boarded and looked at the homeless man where he stood in the walkway. He ran a hand over the black beanie on his head, looking bemused. “Keep that money,” he said, pushing through the people, who recoiled in disgust. “I got my own problems. But good luck. He got good taste!” He shuffled off, leaving Lara alone.

Lara stayed out of the house all night, walking, walking, walking. She hoped that walking would show her what to do, but all it showed her was that, whatever she did, she still had to go back home. But back home meant back to Mr. B. He knew, she was sure, about her conversation with the schizophrenic. And she wouldn’t be surprised if he could see her thoughts in her own head. Most certain of all, he knew her fear. She stank with it. As she walked, from dusk into dawn, into morning, into traffic, she watched people recoil. No matter how much she washed herself, no matter how well she scrubbed, she would always stink with it. Always. He knew this, too.

When Lara returned home, Mr. B was sitting on the first-floor couch, working on his laptop, a baseball cap on his head.

“You’re supposed to stay downstairs.”

He turned to her. “You feeling okay?” He shut his laptop. “You didn’t come home last night. I was worried.”

“What is it that you do, exactly?” Lara took an apple from the fridge. She leaned on the counter and watched him. Her head pounded.

“I am employed. You saw my references.”

“But, like—you sell things? You talk to people?”

“I operate a virtual marketplace.”

“You mean a company?”

“No.” He smiled.

Even though she was tired, or maybe because she was tired, his smile was incredibly irritating. “So what, do you code? Do you make apps? Anything?”

“You have a very specific idea in mind, it seems.”

“I just want a straight answer.”

“I sell services. Software products. Nothing physical.”

“Why did you come here?”

“I told you, Andrew said you had a room.”

“I’ve asked every Andrew I know. They never heard of you.”

“He said his name was Andrew. But people can say anything online. I can’t help it if people lie, Lara.”

“And where does all your money come from? I mean, if you’re wearing these nice suits and fly sneaks,” she regretted saying ‘fly sneaks’ as soon as the words came out of her mouth, “then why are you bumming around in my basement?”

“Can’t I save a little money?”

“I don’t understand why you don’t have your own place.”

“I told you. I want a home.”

“Everybody wants a home. Not everybody gets one.”

“Are you speaking from experience, Lara?”

She smiled, trying to look cockier than she felt. “True or false: You’re never leaving?”

“Why should I?” He did not move forward, but she wanted to back up. It took all her nerve to stand there, eating her apple. “I have everything I want here. Food. A home. I can talk to people I care about. Like you, Lara. And you need so much help. You think I can’t see it?”

“Get out.”

“My lease isn’t up.”

“Get out!” she shrieked, and she threw her apple at him. He caught it. The doorbell rang. Lara turned and ran toward the door and pulled it open, prepared to throw herself into Auntie’s arms. Auntie would save her. She needed to be saved, and Auntie would save her. But Lara gasped. It was her mother.

Her mother wore a nightgown. No shoes. She collapsed forward, and Lara supported her, helping her into the house with Mr. B and settling her on the couch. Mr. B hurried to the kitchen to get a washcloth and a glass of orange juice.

Lara lifted her mother’s feet off the floor and onto the cushions. They were blistered and covered in red sores.

“She needs electrolytes,” Mr. B said. He lifted her mother’s head and tilted the juice into her mouth. Lara patted at her forehead with the washcloth. Eventually, her mother sat, propped on the arm of the couch with a few pillows.

“Lara?”

“Yeah, Mommy. It’s me.”

“How long has it been?” Her voice was the after-image of a voice, hollow and hoarse. Her hair had gone grey.

“Two years.”

Her mother looked around. “Julie . . . Peter . . .?”

“They left. They went back home.”

Her mother clenched her hands and looked down at them, as if expecting to see them grasping something. “I was . . . ” she licked her lips. “You don’t have anything stronger than that?”

Lara looked at Mr. B. He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, Mommy, we don’t.”

“This your boyfriend?”

Mr. B raised his finger and put it to his lips.

“Yes,” Lara said, “he’s living here.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I don’t want to embarrass you.”

“You don’t embarrass me, Mom.”

Her mother’s eyes moved rapidly around the room, as if she sensed a threat. Were she not so weak, Lara was sure that she would bolt.

“You should rest,” Mr. B said. “Don’t exert yourself.”

“Who’s keeping the lights on? Him?”

“No. Me.”

“How?”

“I work. It’s okay. I knew you’d come back. It’s okay.”

Her mother leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She did not cry but made all the expressions of a woman who longed to cry. When she opened her eyes, they were suspicious. She spoke to Mr. B. “I don’t want her to know.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything, Mommy,” Lara said, putting her hand on her mother’s thin arm, using the other to pet her mother’s face. “I’m just glad you’re home.” Lara pressed her ear against her mother’s chest—not to find comfort, but to see if she could hear a heartbeat. She could not believe it.

“Shhh,” her mother said, surprised. “Hush, now. Don’t you cry. Are you crying over little old me?”

“You seem happy,” Matt remarked. Lara had just finished mopping the back storeroom with a mixture of water and bleach. Matt lifted his eyebrows in surprise when he did not need to reach into his fanny pack. Pogo stood erect on her matt, ears back. When Lara neared, she quivered and shrank.

“Of course I’m happy! Aren’t you?”

Students filed in for the morning obedience workshop. A tall man in sunglasses dragged his two pit-bull mixes across the store, pleading with them the whole time. The pinch collars around their necks tightened as they struggled away. When he managed to haul them in, Lara waited with a treat in each hand.

“Look, they don’t even need treats—good doggies!” Both dogs, keening, lay flat on the linoleum, eyes fixed on Lara.

As more people filed in with their dogs, Lara conducted the dogs around the room. Each had its collar removed but, without having trained with her before, stayed where she told it to stay. When she told one to come, it would leap. When she told one to heel, it trotted after, ears flat. At first the owners seemed delighted but, after twenty minutes, a disturbing chill descended. Lara pranced and laughed. The dogs followed, silent. Even the pit bull owner seemed less enthusiastic. His girlfriend whispered as they left: “I didn’t like that at all.”

Matt approached Lara as she washed down the room again, humming to herself. He was about to touch her hand on the mop, then withdrew and watched her.

“I think you should take some time off, Lara.”

“But I’ve been doing such a good job!”

“We’ve had complaints.”

“Oh, phooey. People just don’t like it that they can’t control their own dogs!”

“I don’t think that’s why,” Matt said.

Lara dropped the mop. “Fine. I quit.”

“Now that your mom’s home, that makes a lot of sense,” Matt said. When Lara extended him her lanyard and ID card, he retracted his hand. Then, as if surprised at himself, he indicated the empty seat of one of the fold-up chairs. As she left the room, sloughing off various uniform items, he kept up a stream of excuses: “When I gave you the job it seemed like the right thing to do. But now you’ve got a support system again, and we’ve got enough staff, and . . . ” As she glided through the sliding doors and onto the sidewalk, he remained shadowed in the store. Pogo lay behind his heels, her head on her paws. When Lara so much as gestured forward, Pogo scuttled back, like a cockroach afraid of the light.

“I really am worried about you, Lara,” Matt said. But he did not approach her.

She laughed, putting her hand above her eyes to block the summer sun. “Matt, it’s fine. I’m fine. More than fine.”

“I see that.” His mouth opened, as if he wanted to tell her something. Instead he reached down and rubbed Pogo’s head. “Lara. I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry.” He kept saying it over and over, even after she turned and walked away.

“Quitting that job is the best thing that ever happened to me,” Lara said.

“I agree,” Mr. B replied.

“And you, Mr. B. I really have you to thank. For giving me the courage, you know?”

They were sitting around the kitchen table, her mother and Mr. B and Lara, and they were laughing. Laughing! In this house? After all that time? Her mother’s hair was clean and combed, and Mr. B had cut it into a bob. This suited her mother, though it sometimes looked like knives swinging around her face.

At night they put on records, and Mr. B and Lara danced around the table, while her mother laughed and clapped her hands. Mr. B taught Lara steps that only old people knew anymore, and her mother threw back her head and sang. On these nights, with his hands on her waist, Lara became aware that men’s hands have different qualities, and there was something comforting in Mr. B’s hands, their self-assurance and sense of purpose. He knew where he was leading her and what he was doing. Sometimes, when he put his hand on the bare flesh of her shoulder, she could hear somebody in the back of her ear, screaming. And then Mr. B would change the music, and the voice would go away.

Otherwise there was no such thing as time. There was only Lara, her mother, and Mr. B. All the windows were shut and the curtains drawn and the cracks stuffed with old rags. The sun was a form of poison. Yet the house was well illuminated. The light came from below.

Lara had not been in the basement since Mr. B first moved in. Now she walked down the stairs to his room. “Wow,” she said, “I love what you’ve done with the place!”

“Oh, it’s just mirrors. And a little bit of smoke.”

Lara vaguely remembered the basement as small and spare. (She only vaguely remembered anything that happened before Mr. B: the Dark Ages.) Now the basement appeared to have several doorways. Through these she could spy halls extending in all directions, like the arms of a spider. The floor was carpeted and warm and almost seemed to respire beneath her bare feet. Mr. B patted the seat beside him on his couch, which was large and had the aspect of a throne. Lara sat and stared into the fire. The plaster had been removed. The fireplace beneath was so deeply recessed that it seemed to look into a black void. The fire was red, the light it cast like a pool of blood.

“Mr. B?” she said.

“Yes, Lara?”

“Do you do this often?”

“Do what, Lara.”

“Live with people like this?”

“No. Not too often.”

“But you have done it before?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Then she said, “I haven’t.”

“I know.”

He took her hand. Was it just her, or did his fingers have a few extra joints? His thumb rubbed circles into her palm.

“I signed a contract for you, Lara. You could—if you wanted to—sign a contract for me, too.”

There, on the coffee table, near some of his books (a few were in strange languages, weirder even than Chinese or Hebrew), was a contract. It was printed on crisp white paper in large font. One page. Lara held it up and read it, then extricated her hand from Mr. B’s.

“I’ve offended you,” he said.

“I guess I didn’t realize how formal you wanted to be.”

“Formal, or old-fashioned?” When she didn’t respond, he scooted closer: “Lara, you don’t put everybody who comes to stay here under contract, do you? Only the people you really want to live with. Long-term. Lara—I want to live with you. You, Lara.”

“Really?”

He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Do you think I came here by accident?”

“You didn’t?”

“Of course not. I’ve known about you since you were just a baby. You turned out much better than I hoped. You’re so idealistic, Lara. You never ask for help.” He smiled. “In fact, you remind me a lot of myself.”

Just a few months ago, Lara thought, I was working in some dead-end job, struggling to pay bills, worried I’d never have a real family—and look! This important, handsome man wants me to move in with him forever. He wants my soul. Not to mention my acne is gone, my hair looks amazing, and, for the first time in my life, I’m close to my goal weight. I am normal.

He handed Lara the contract and a pen. It was a nice pen. Long and shiny and gold. She clicked it and put the pen to the paper.

“Mr. B . . . Did my mother sign a contract, too?”

“No. You’re special.”

“Then how did you get her to come here?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, one day she wasn’t here, and then, presto-chango, she was. But, if she’s not under your contract, how did you get her to show up like that?”

Mr. B paused. For just a second too long, he paused. Lara threw the pen away from her, and the contract, and she pushed him away from her, too. Back up the stairs and away from the fire she ran.

Lara’s mother was sitting at the kitchen table, neat and well dressed. But was it her mother? The longer Lara stared, the more the image of her mother blurred, shifted, like she was made of moving points. Then her mother smiled, a huge smile, and Lara realized that it could not be her mother, because her mother had not smiled that way in all Lara’s life. It was no use pretending otherwise. I don’t want what’s pleasant, Lara thought, I want what’s true. She ran to the front door and flung it open.

Their yard was blighted and seemed to extend for miles in every direction. The grass had withered. So had the soil beneath. As Lara took a few paces out of the house, loose dust kicked up, making her cough. From the dry earth, a snake reared, hissing. Lara shrieked and fell over. Looking up, she almost vomited.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of snakes twisted from the gutters, the eaves, and coiled on top of the chimney. Some of them looked like snakes but had human eyes. Some had human teeth. A few, it seemed, had little deformed hands and feet, budding like spring leaves from young tree branches. They were all in the process of becoming something else, they were all disgusting, and they were all crawling up the sugar maple, too—what was left of it. It was grey and barren as a wishbone.

These creatures (she did not know what to call them) made a terrible sound, and she had the horrible feeling that it was a language. They seemed to be moving toward something, steadily, within the house or perhaps just toward the house itself. They took no notice of her. Scanning the horizon, she thought she could see the road. But there were miles between freedom and this house. There was nothing to do but return inside.

When she did, Mr. B was waiting.

“Lara,” he said. He seemed taller, his chin longer, and he had a few extra eyes. “You look scared.”

“Where is she?”

“Where is who, Lara?”

“My mother.”

The creature who looked like her mother sat at the table and continued to smile.

Mr. B grinned. “Lara. You’re not making sense.”

“It’s not her. Not really. You tricked me.”

“You’re upset,” he said, “you’re insane.”

She opened the cabinets under the sink to find a cast-iron skillet. He was moving, slowly, toward her, his hands in the air.

“Lara,” he said, “Lara, Lara, Lara. What are you doing?”

The pan was huge. It had been in their house since she was a girl. It had tough black skin like the hide of some ancient, mud-bound dinosaur. She wielded it with two hands and the muscles in her arms strained. Lara thought, not for the first time, Why do I never go to the gym?

“Lara,” he said. “I bleed, too.”

“So do pimples.” She swung. The pan connected with his right ear. Before he could put up an arm, she swung again. His body crumpled, falling forward. Blood—or something like blood, but thicker and more purple—gushed from his ears. Her mother stood and started to scream. Then Lara leveled the cast-iron pan at her, too, using just one arm, though it quaked with the strain. Her mother squeaked and ran out of the house.

Lara kicked Mr. B’s body, but he did not move. His face was bloated and bruised, and it did not look like the Mr. B she knew. Instead it looked like somebody else, also familiar. She pulled him by the arms through the kitchen and down the front steps. Snakes hissed underfoot. A few yards from the doorstep, her mother’s clothes lay empty on the ground, like soiled rags.

“Whatever she was,” Lara said, “can now eat you.”

She kicked Mr. B’s body face down into the dirt. Then she strode inside the house, shut the door, and waited.

“And this is where you’d sleep,” Lara said, indicating the couch. It had come from a friend of Auntie’s and was upholstered in a faded pattern of flowers. But the college student moved toward the wall, pointed at the fireplace, and said, “What happened here?”

Lara and Auntie had boarded up the fireplace with cardboard and nails. Black scorch marks still bloomed outward, as if somebody had exploded something on the wall, against the floor.

“The last lodger,” Lara said, “he got kind of out of hand.”

“Didn’t you tell him it was blocked?”

“He was a stupid man,” Auntie said from the corner. She was drinking tea and watching an episode of Monk on her iPad, rocking in a sturdy chair sprinkled with chili pepper, to ward off evil spirits. The basement’s slit of a window fell shut with a bang. Auntie called on a half dozen angels (and Tony Shalhoub) before getting up to poke it open again with the end of a broomstick.

As Lara led her upstairs, the prospective tenant kept looking back. “Do you smell that?” she asked, wrinkling her nose and her forehead.

“Smell what?” Lara said.

Emerging into the kitchen, the windows were thrown open so that the room dazzled with light. Rosaries hung from every handle, clinking in the autumn breeze. On the table lay trout, stinky tofu from the Chinese market, and open, empty eggshells crawling with jewel-eyed flies. “That’s Auntie’s compost,” Lara said. “You’re probably smelling that.”

“Yeah,” the girl agreed, disentangling a rosary from her wrist as she shut the door. “Probably.”

The prospective lodger reluctantly examined the lease, and displayed less than enthusiasm to hear about the house’s low gas bills. Finally she interrupted Lara to say: “How old are you again?”

“Twenty,” Lara said. “Almost twenty-one.”

“And you’re not in college?”

“I just applied,” Lara said. “I’ve been saving up.”

The girl tapped her foot. Her toenails were painted purple. “It is a really good deal. . . . Can I talk to your Mom about this?”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“Okay, but when will she be back?”

“In a few months, I hope.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s how I’ll be spending my gap year.” Lara smiled. “Finding my mother. And getting a scholarship.”

The girl raised her eyebrows, as if prepared to argue. Then she shrieked. Lara turned. Staring at them from the silver swan neck faucet of the sink stood a four-inch long millipede. It was blonde and, in the sunlight, almost translucent. The girl kept shrieking until she ran out of breath and fell back against the pantry, exhausted. The millipede did not move.

“Kill it!” the girl screamed.

“Why? It’s cute.”

The girl shouted, “Unclean and unhygienic!” emphasizing each “un-” as if rehearsing for a speech. She grabbed her purse and hopped comically down the steps to where her boyfriend was waiting for her in his car. Lara watched her yelling at him as they drove away. Looking down at her checklist, Lara struck through another name. Maybe she needed to add more food to the table. Durian. Blue cheese. Pickles? The smell Mr. B left was hard to cover up.

When Lara turned back, the millipede was still there. There were a lot of those around lately: on walls, in corners, sometimes on her pillow or behind her glass of water. Auntie hated to see them. Lara didn’t. They were quiet, clean, and kept to themselves. Ideal tenants, really. This one seemed to be waiting for something. 

“Tell him it’s sweet,” Lara told it, “but I’m doing just fine without him.”

The millipede turned and ran up the head of the faucet, into the sink and down the drain.

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