Mount Disappointment

MOUNT DISAPPOINTMENT

Nobody tells you how the mountain got its name. Not the realtors, that's for damn sure. Some poor schmucks hauled themselves up there in 1875, thinking they'd claimed the highest peak in the area. Must've felt real smart until they saw the actual summit peeking over, like the mountain itself was giving them the finger.

I stood in the Toners' driveway at ten PM, freezing my ass off with another love letter from Christina’s lawyer burning a hole in my pocket—the third one this week, still sealed. The first two had been bad enough: demands for furniture, threats about credit card debt, and crap about emotional damages. Like if I didn't open this one, maybe it'd disappear. Fat chance. I tugged my jacket closer, but cold finds a way in. Always does.

The security lights buzzed overhead, throwing shadows across what had to be the saddest excuse for a house this side of the Continental Divide.Christina would've called it "a fixer-upper with character"—same way she'd once described me. Weeds pushed through concrete like nobody'd told them driveways weren't meant for rattlesnakes. The shutters hung crooked, and those windows... just watching.Waiting. Like the intake nurses at Valley View Psychiatric, right before they'd suggested my "voluntary commitment."

Time does funny things when you're standing in front of a place like that. Minutes stretch like taffy, thick and sticky. I found myself counting the cracks in the driveway—seventeen, no, eighteen.Or was it nineteen? Each time I counted, the number changed. Like the concrete was growing new scars while I watched.

"Jimmy!" Debby Toner's voice cut through the night.She bounced down the wooden steps between levels, dressed for prom instead of her graveyard shift at AT&T.Her badge caught the security light, throwing disco-ball flashes with each step. But something was off about those flashes—they lingered too long, left trails in the air like sparklers on the Fourth of July.

My duffel bag—standard Air Force issue—held everything I had left after Christina's lawyer finished with me. Eight years of military service bought me combat boots, dusty medals, and warfare training that meant squat in Hollywood. Christina hadn't minded the struggling actor bit when we first moved here—said it was romantic. The romance wore off around the same time as our savings.

The cat in Debby's arms looked like something from a pharaoh's tomb—cream and chocolate Siamese, wearing that smug face that says, "I used to be worshipped as a god." Blue eyes caught the security light and threw it back like laser beams. I reached out to pet it. The thing went from regal to rabid—hissing, slashing. Nearly took off three fingers.

Those eyes, though. They followed me even when the cat turned away. Like paintings in a haunted house, always watching. I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision.The medication they'd prescribed after the incident at the audition—the one Christina's lawyer kept bringing up—sometimes made things swim.

"Sting doesn't like strangers," Debby said, pulling the cat closer. "Moose named her." She smiled, but her teeth seemed too white, too sharp.Like she'd borrowed them from something that lived in deeper waters.

Speaking of Moose—he filled the doorway like an eclipse in a grease-stained uniform. Built like a brick wall with arms. His Raiders cap still had the price tag shadow, and his smile was pure car salesman.But those eyes... made me think of winter mornings watching the Delaware River freeze over. Same kind of cold. Same kind of distant.

The world tilted sideways for a moment. I steadied myself against the railing, feeling the wood grain shift under my palm like it was breathing. The mountain loomed behind the house, its peak seeming to bend forward, listening in.

"Room's on the top level," Moose said, steering me toward the house. "Great view of the mountain. You'll love it here." His fingers dug in just enough to remind me who was built like a wall and who'd spent two years doing vocal warm-ups in their car.

The jet-black front door announced us with a horror movie creak.The air inside hit like a wall of wrong—Pine-Sol and secrets having a fistfight in my nostrils. The olive-green shag carpet looked like it had hosted its own Vietnam. Paths wore through it like the Ho Chi Minh Trail, all leading to a bulletin board half-hidden behind a dying fern: schedules, med charts, something that looked suspiciously like a social security check.

I squinted at the charts. The names kept rearranging themselves—Eleanor, Agnes, Mimi, Nana, Jimmy.Wait. Jimmy? My name shouldn't be there. I looked again, but now the charts were just blurs of blue and red, like medical forms underwater.

"I need to pick up Tommy from school. He's only six. He needs his mama." An elderly woman's voice drifted down like fall leaves, each word brown and brittle. "The crossing guard wears an orange vest... Tommy needs... Tommy's waiting at Colorado and..." A pause, then with sudden clarity: "This isn't my house.This isn't my house!" The last word stretched into a keening wail before snapping off, like someone had flipped a switch.

"That's Eleanor," Debby said, voice honey-sweet but eyes sharp as broken glass. "We take care of our own here." She emphasized 'own' like it was a promise. Or a threat.

The stairs played tricks—half-flights everywhere, like M.C. Escher had a crack at interior design. Each step brought new sounds: wood groaning, adobe crackling, steel creaking, and Eleanor's endless murmuring. My military instincts kicked in, mapping exits, noting sight lines.But the exits kept moving, doorways sliding left and right when I wasn't looking directly at them.

"Both my grandmas are here," Debby continued."Mimi—she was a concert pianist until her fingers started playing songs that weren't there—and Nana, who still thinks she's teaching third grade in 1962. And Moose's grandmother, Agnes, who predicted her husband's death so many times they finally locked her up the one time she got it right." She pointed to doors as we passed—all closed, all with fresh-looking locks. "They need special care, you understand. Like Eleanor." Like you, her eyes seemed to add.

I caught glimpses through the keyholes as we passed. Each room was identical—same bed, same window, same occupant staring at the same spot on the wall. But that couldn't be right. The house's layout wouldn't allow for that. I pressed my palms against my eyes until stars exploded behind my lids.

The medication. Had to be the medication.

My room perched at the very top, where the mountain's shadow could reach in and shake hands. The bed looked straight out of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," dressed in a 1975 Sears Wish Book quilt. Elvis watched from his velvet throne, looking as uncomfortable in his aloha shirt as I felt.

The walls seemed to pulse with each heartbeat. Or maybe that was my vision going fuzzy again. I'd been good about taking the pills—hadn't I?The bottle in my duffel felt too light when I shook it. Empty.When had that happened?

After they left, I sat listening to the house settle around me like it was getting comfortable with its new victim. Eleanor's voice kept floating up through the vents, decades spilling out like cards from a broken deck: "The crossing guard wears an orange vest... Tommy needs... Tommy's waiting at Colorado and... Colorado and... Colorado and... Where is this? This isn't my house!"

Her words started to make a weird kind of sense. This wasn't my house either. But then, what was my house? The apartment with Christina? The barracks?The car I'd lived in for three months between auditions? Memory felt slippery, like trying to hold onto ice.

Nine PM brought Moose's heavy footsteps—nightly rounds.

Ten PM: Someone crying. Probably Eleanor. Hopefully, Eleanor.

Eleven PM: Clanging, like somebody beating a hollow pipe with a bicycle chain.

The divorce papers sat unopened on the dresser, taunting me.

Midnight: A lullaby through the vents, words melting like a sun-warped record.

I tried to write in my journal—the one the therapist had recommended.But the words kept changing after I wrote them down. "Today I moved in" became "Today they moved me." "The mountain looks beautiful" transformed into "The mountain is watching."

One AM: Silence. The kind that makes you miss the noise.

Two AM: Moose's voice, honey-thick with menace: "This is home now, Eleanor. We are your family." The words echoed in my skull, bouncing around until they lost meaning. Home.Family. Eleanor. Jimmy.All just sounds in the dark.

Three AM—that's when things always go sideways. In movies, it's the witching hour. In basic training, it was surprise drills. In this funhouse? That's when I heard it—this slow scrape-thump, scrape-thump across the floor. The sound nightmares make when they're trying to be quiet.

Combat training kicked in. I pressed against my doorframe, peering through the crack. The hallway stretched like a throat, emergency lights casting just enough glow to make shadows dance. That scrape-thump got closer.

The walls breathed in and out, like lungs made of plaster and paint.I watched my hand on the doorframe—were those my fingers? They looked too long, too pale. Like they belonged to someone else. Someone who'd been here longer.

My training screamed to stay put, but there's something about 3 AM that makes idiots of us all. I edged into the hallway, back to wall, toward Eleanor's room. The sound resolved into furniture dragging across hardwood—scrape-thump, scrape-thump, punctuated by whispered conversations. But Eleanor was alone—I could see her shadow beneath her door, moving wrong. Just one shadow, twisting in ways human shadows shouldn't.

"Tommy needs his mama," Eleanor's voice croaked, but it wasn't coming from her shadow. It seeped from the walls themselves, like the house was speaking. It seeped from the walls themselves, like the house was speaking through her. Through us all.

The temperature plummeted until my breath clouded.That's when I noticed—the shadow under Eleanor's door wasn't cast by emergency lights. It was darker than darkness, and it was spreading.

I backed away.

Sting appeared at the hall's end, those blue eyes cutting through the dark like laser sights. She watched, tail twitching, as that impossible shadow crept up the wall. Her eyes multiplied—two, then four, then eight.A constellation of feline judgment.

My back hit something warm. Breathing.

“Making new friends?" Moose rumbled. His hand clamped my shoulder, fingers digging to bone."Eleanor gets lonely at night.They all do. That's why we're here—to keep them company.”

I turned, expecting that car salesman's smile. Instead, his face had gone slack, eyes glassy and fixed over my shoulder. His grip tightened until I felt each finger pressing into bone. Through his uniform, I could see other uniforms—orderly, nurse, security guard. All at once, all real.

“Welcome to the family," he said, but his lips didn't move.

That’s when I understood why nobody explains Mount Disappointment's name. It's not about surveyors' mistakes. It's about what lives in these houses, in these families we create when we're desperate enough. About the disappointment when you realize you've walked into something hungry, something that's been waiting.

The scrape-thump stopped. Soft footsteps—too many footsteps—and voices that spoke in Eleanor's voice but weren't Eleanor approached. They whispered about Tommy, about family, about home. About medication schedules, therapy sessions, and visiting hours that never seemed to arrive.

I’m writing this in darkness, listening to "breakfast at seven" being prepared downstairs. Debby's voice carries up, asking if anyone's seen the new tenant.My wrists ache from phantom restraints, and the injection site in my arm throbs in time with the mountain's shadow.I can hear them answering.Eleanor. Mimi. Nana.Agnes. All speaking in perfect unison, all saying my name. All wearing white uniforms now, all carrying clipboards and concerned expressions. All real.All false. All here.

Sting watches with knowing blue eyes.

Outside, the mountain casts its shadow over us all, and I finally understand why they say disappointment lives here. I think I'll be staying for a while. After all, we take care of our own here.