Verdugo Hills

VERDUGO HILLS

                                               By Deirdre Fryer Baird

Jimmy hasn’t slept well lately. He sits on the edge of his bed and his gray mane of hair hangs in his face. He can’t seem to remember the day or the date, and he is tired. He wanders the house during the night and at times lights a candle so he won’t disturb others in the house or stub his toe. He and his wife Annie stopped sharing a bed years ago because she said he drove her crazy. She now sleeps in their daughter's bedroom who had moved away ten years ago. To keep her from him, she locks her room at night. But he could still hear her yelling in there. Age is a wonderful thing.

He tried to ignore the whisperings and bells ringing in his ears at night. It meant nothing unless someone from the past was trying to tell him something. Maybe, it was a ghost.

He had heard and seen the aftermath of those who had lived here before. They would find broken plates in the dining room and garbage moved from the can to the floor. He and Annie used to think it was thrilling and funny. But he could hear them now too. Mumbling their angry words from the past. Violence and dark things had happened in the house before they bought it twenty years ago.

He pattered through the house at the base of the Verdugo mountains. He breathed in the clear air with a tinge of crisp pine in the bright of the early morning from the open window. The floors were tile but were never cold due to the radiant heating – the hot water pipes that had been built into the floors of this house back in the forties.

Jimmy moved from the bedroom through the living room into the kitchen for his cup of tea. He was surprised to find Annie with her caregiver, Susan, at the table laughing at something. “He had a bunch of newspapers, but I hid all the lighters,” Annie chortled in her mixed-up way. They shut up when they saw him. Annie was usually sleeping at this time in the morning, always sleeping in the morning. Before he could cope with her, he backed out of the kitchen and opened the front door to gaze upon the bluish Verdugo mountains tinged with purple so close and overwhelming that he could almost touch them. It was corny that – “Purple Mountains majesty,” popped into his head when they were illuminated by the sun as they were now. He and Annie were not native to California.

It seemed as though they had lived in this house forever. They made it theirs; as much as anyone can make an old house theirs but it was never theirs. The others had never left. There were always stories and secrets in the walls. Rumors from neighbors about violence between the adults and little children and dead babies, but that’s only gossip. Their kids had grown up and moved on and found reasons not to come home, but that was the way of the world.

He stood outside his front door looking up at the mountains and his eyes moved down, distracted by a girl standing across the street. She leaned against a car. She was small and didn’t look old enough to drive. He felt that stirring of his manhood, a distant clarion call that had deserted him many years ago. He could take her, subdue her, have her and no one would know. He thought she was staring at him and he reformed his thoughts before he confronted her knowing that she was looking at the house.

He put on his happy face and waved at her.

As he ascended the driveway, he saw that she was not a girl but a lady. A small pretty lady of probably thirty or some younger years. She had longer brown-reddish hair, a petite figure, and wore aviator sunglasses that made it hard to discern her thoughts or expression.

“Hi. Good morning. Can I help you?” He wiped at the saliva from the corner of his mouth.

Her head turned slowly as though she had only now noticed him. She removed her sunglasses, and he was disarmed.

Behind those glasses were beautiful crystal eyes of blue-green with yellow tinges. Thousand-year-old eyes rolled around in his head. If times were different, he would have taken her in his arms kissed her hard with passion, and filled her on the hood of the car.

She interrupted his thoughts and pointed at the house with the stem of her sunglasses.

“Do you live in that house?”

He wanted to give her something. A special answer or an armful of flowers.

“Yes, we do,” was his only reply.”

“My father built that house.”

He touched her arm to convey his want. She gave a gentle shrug to get him off, like a bug.

“We love it here. The house with the warm floors there is nothing like it.”

She looked directly at him, saw through him, knew what he wanted and why he lied.

“That house was built with hate and full of vengeful spirits. Burn it to the ground.”

“No, no,” he said, with a small laugh turning from her and pointing at the house. “There aren’t any spirits. It’s a great house.” But she knew he was a liar. She knew that he heard the whisperings at night.

“After you burn it down, salt the earth so the spirits can never return.”

Jimmy turned and she was gone.

He returned to the house and he ignored what was there. It was more difficult to ignore his wife.

“We saw you talking to yourself again in the street. You are an embarrassment. I will have you put in an asylum.” 

He was now a non-husband; a partial caregiver. He had sold his business and he was only able to afford a part-time nurse for Annie. She would have to go to a facility soon. Sometimes, he thought he was losing his mind.

Now, this crazy lady had appeared out of nowhere to tell him his house was haunted. “Burn it to the ground and salt the earth,” she said. Like he was going to do that.

Jimmy woke in the night and wandered the house with a candle in his hand. He entered the bedroom where his daughter had once lived and saw the two old women encircled in each other's arms. He was appalled.  The two women morphed into an older man with long hair and a child. There was ringing in his head and a whispering in his ear. “They are evil, burn the house to the ground, and salt the earth.” He turned and the beautiful small woman he had seen before was there. So near to him that he could smell her sweetness. He grabbed her and dropped the candle in his hand. It rolled toward the bed where the women were deep in sleep. He tried to pick up the candle but the bedding was in flames and he was afraid. There were flashes of blue and red like those Verdugo Hills in the sunlit mornings. He ran back to his room and hid under the covers. He smelled the bitter smoke and ash and could hear the rancorous screams of the dying ladies. but he did not wake. The whisperings in his ears said; “Burn it down.” He peeked out from the covers and the small beautiful lady stood over him.

Light burnt through her hair and her eyes. He felt the desire in his loins.

“Annie, Annie,” he cried before he realized that his house was in flames and the firefighters pulled him out of the burning house through the window.

Annie and the caregiver had both died.

Only earth remained of that house with warm floors. Jimmy was going to live with his daughter in cold Chicago. His daughter drove him to where the house once stood before they went to the airport. He stood on the dirt with a blue vessel of salt. But she was already there.

The beautiful small lady of his desire swished salt back and forth over the earth. She took him by the hand and they salt that wicked ground together.

“They are at peace,” she said. His arm encircled her waist, and she pushed him away. “Not in this life.” She smiled and she knew he had set the fires for her, and for what was once a young man’s desire.

She let go of his hand and took the salt canister. 

Jimmy’s daughter calls to him. It is time for him to go. He turns for a last look at the Verdugo Hills which are purple in the evening sunlight.

As spirits must do, I finish the work alone.