Why Doesn't Anyone Rent This Place?

The sky rips over us as we drive out of our old familiar, our parents’ neighborhood and their stuffy old ways and the beat-up old buildings that used to be something special and now lie as monuments to our society’s collective sense of neglect and waste.

We make for the ocean, not to live there, but to make a day out of the experience like many others from more blue-collar zip codes. We packed few things; stood on the beach until we couldn’t take it anymore, as if we wanted to ‘get our monies worth’ out of the sun and sand; and then I chose to drive Francis around the hills to do some sightseeing.

It wasn’t before long that my dear fiancé Francis looked up rent prices for some of the rooms and home that we can afford nearby, we she stumbled on a real Doozy.

You may think I’m a cynical guy, and you’re right, in my life, there has never been anything that was ‘too good to be true’, if it looks too good to be true, than it probably is, and yet here we are a mere few hours later and Francis finds this awesome one bedroom studio apartment for rent cheap in a valley nearby, the place ever has its own lake.

Of course, when it comes to a place like this you start off by asking yourself, I wonder why nobody rents this place?

My line of inquiry is vague enough for the landlord’s imagination to get piqued about my perception of his sale, he quickly and desperately shows me pictures of the ad and compares them to what we see, after all what you see is what you get, right?

As we tour the apartment, I get a funny vibe from the Landlord who rents this place, he’s a real try hard, going all out with his fake smiles and phony laughs to ‘be our friend’, this is worse than being patronized, its high energy sales mixed with a pungent amount of desperation.

               Francis is the daring one who like to bicycle down back alleys by herself, of course she gets to the point quick and tells the man she is concerned about the seclusion of the apartment may make it difficult to get the help we need when we need it.

We look at the lake, and for a moment there is a lull of silence in the conversation, Me and Francis are left speechless at the sight of the pristine calm waters surrounded by the torn down ruins of other apartments, I think in this moment we both truly coveted the apartment by the lake, owning the pleasure of being here for ourselves for a moment.

“You want to hear a story about this lake?”, He asks the open air since every other human is preoccupied with the lake.

I’ll tell you something that happened to me at this lake, then he continues without skipping a beat, ‘what if I said no’, I thought, then he goes on, I had a heart attack right here, and I thought I was going to die, with my last breath I looked at the lake and a human looking shape came out of the water and touched me on the heart.

‘Wow’, I thought, ‘that sounds made up, but why make that up’, so I ask him, hoping to draw a circle around the truth with more questions, “why did you tear down the other apartments?”

Francis adds her two cents, “it seems like you’d make a killing renting out multiple units?”

“The lake doesn’t want it”, he says while staring at the lake, “with all that beauty and tranquility why would I destroy the lake? Instead, I took out the dock and the boats, and the floating platform, and I expanded the lake, people come and go, but this lake should be forever.”

               I see Francis look at him with admiration and I know he sold her, which means he sold me too, in the end we decide to be good stewards to the lake and a three-month lease, just to check the place out.

Like most good relationships start out, we tend to move around a lot, anything to avoid living with my parents, or hers, God bless them all, but we work hard to have our liberty, and here, we have our privacy and a nice view of the woods.

Day 1: We’re moving everything important to us, for me; my computer that I edit videos on so I can keep paying for this place, for her; all our bathroom stuff and her computers and cameras, she must be thinking the same thing as me, gotta keep up.

Day 2: Francis and I are moving everything we can live without, but yet still need, extra clothes, boxes of things we still want from our last move, and cleaning supplies, by now we’re making pacts amongst ourselves to buy what we need with our moving fund, at this point I realize our mutual access to the moving fund inadvertently is a test of our relationship, the test of trusting someone with your money.

Day 3: We’re committed to calling this our last day, if it doesn’t fit in my car, or her hybrid, then we officially don’t need it, the artwork she created will get picked up by her sister later. While moving our stuff I can see what the things that are important to us also define us, without our things, it would be hard to believe we even exist.

It’s late afternoon and the reflection of the sunset reminds me of why I’m renting this place, I still wonder what happened to the last people that lived here when Francis emerges from the apartment wiping sweat from her glowing brow.

She intently marches towards the water with a smirk on her face while barely acknowledging me as she walks past, “The burgers are almost done!”, I futilely say as she throws off item after item of her clothes, stripping herself to her birthday suit before enjoying the lake more than I was by looking at it.

Francis swims free and fast as the lake water shimmers and shines while she swims around in the crystal-clear lake, while on a dive underwater with her limited vision Francis can clearly make out sharp edges and hard surfaces, a perplexing.

    Francis’ bare cheeks glow in the afternoon light while in focus in the viewfinder of a camera. From a high vantage point in the woods nearby, the camera rolls and the eye of the lens wonders from Francis to David at his bar-b-que and back again.

    The landlord, satisfied with his camera angle, tightens his camera rig, and walks away while the red-light flashes record and Francis is in frame.

    After walking away from his ‘observation area’ the landlord tours his gallery lost possessions in a makeshift cellar filled with his own filth and clothes and top off with a makeshift bathroom and shower.

Francis’ makeup is well done, as expected of her, and her cheeks glow in the light of her home -studio set up while I finish up an outtake cut for her next video, I wish I could have recorded her swimming, but she would never do that.

I don’t edit video because I don’t have a face and body like Francis’, I edit because Francis hates editing and I love her, so I need to love editing too. I’m going hours into this studying my dear Francy, frame by frame, sometimes gauging weather her smiles and laughs are real shot by shot.

After a while you get to the point where you Know-know, what things like the background look like and what does and doesn’t belong, by the end of my editing, a shadow figure outside of the window is consuming all my attention. Is it just a play of shadows or something in the background?

Questions bounce through my mind like rubber balls in a hallway, like a child, I follow my curiosity without a single thought of harm.

I get to the space outside the window and find footprints leading from the window to the lake, now I’m officially freaked out, my first thought is, nobody else knows we’re here, except one person.

The drone flies high with it’s million killer bee buzzes, this was one of the things I had to have here, my professional grade drone camera, I want to see how far a person would have to swim if they crossed the lake.

I didn’t tell her about the footprints, since there’s nothing I can do about it, yet I told her I’m just shooting b-roll footage in case she wants it later.

It’s not long before I’m left in shock, I can clearly see a structure under the lake, and I can see that it continues under the ruins of the old apartments.

By now I’m curious as to what lies in the woody hills around us, and as I take my drone to the far edge of the lake I get a phone call from the landlord.

I start off the phone call by telling him about the structures that I was seeing under the lake and how it looked like it went under the old apartments, when he cuts me off and tells me about some special tool in the garage used to get into the attic, then he piques my interest when he tells me I can have whatever is left up there.

I forget all about the drone during the call, but when started talking about the footprints, he cut me off again and told me I shouldn’t swim at night, because “you don’t know where the bottom is.”

While up in the attic, I find left over items from the previous tenants under a hazy blanket of dust and cobwebs, there’s not much, but the gem of this collection is a VHS tape I find in a cardboard box.

I watch the video of a happy family, no more than one year ago enjoying the lake, it reminds me of when I was young and carefree, I also think of how Francis makes me feel like that, until something I see startles all comfortable thoughts from my mind.

With the software I got, and my editing skills, I expertly enhance the video and I am reminded of the horror that brought me here, that same shadowy figure in the background looking right at the camera, I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight.

I’m shaking and sweating as I’m looking up ancient relics while under the guise of editing, this is my final act before having to worry Francis over the thing.

Just when I think I’m in the clear, Francis surprises me and asks me about my research after seeing images of pre-Christian religious symbols, this is where I tell a selective truth, and tell her that Vikings were said to have once lived in the Americas, nobody knows where they vanished to.

“But some of the glyphs from the structure on the lake are of an ancient temple dedicated to the god of the underworld”, I say hoping we won’t have to start packing tonight.

To my surprise, Francis laughs off my observations as paranoia, she even reasons that there is still no evidence that Vikings have made to California, in which she’s right, being wrong for once has brought me comfort, and seeing her this defiant to the dread that I feared for days is inspiring, I feel like I can tell her anything.

She always has to beat me to the breakfast table and have something ready, I know she doesn’t like to get up early, so I know she only does this for me, because she loves me, she finds a way to get up and go.

In the kitchen where we share an unspoken truce to never hold back at our diner table, and example we want to set for our children, if we have any, here I tell Francis about a re-occurring dream I have periodically, which I have kept from her.

“What I can remember is that you always sleepwalk into the lake, and I ends up following her into a dark realm of strange living creatures, that’s why I’ve been taking the sleeping pills, so I don’t remember my dreams and just sleep.”, I feel like I’m trying to sell her on my new dependency.

I see my words washed over her by her eyes and somewhat pale expression and I know my words made an impression, it is now, that I lie my darkness at the feet of my dear Francis and strip myself bare of my fear and anxiety, she destroys my world with a silent gesture.

Francis turns around and shows me a drawing of a dark figure that I am all too familiar with already, the same dark stranger from my editing bay and the back of my mind, then she tells me she’s been having dreams too.

Francis suddenly awakens from a nightmare in a cold sweat, and after trying to subtly wake up David, who is sleeping like a stone while on the sleeping pills he has developed a habit for, Francis decides to go for a walk.

The refrigerator closes and Francis looks to the bedroom for a second, hoping David will be awakened as she gets some milk and cookies then walks back towards the bedroom, when she sees the tool to get into the attic and which piques her interest.

Francis slowly creeps into the attic, and notices David’s equipment and Drone when she turns on the lights, the knowledge that David has occupied the space and said nothing negative about it empowers her to explore the dusty and cramped space.

Francis feels her inner child’s curiosity in her as he feels compelled to look out of the vent folds of the attic and see how far she is from the ground, as she gives in to herself to look out the window and she remembers all the time she was a little girl, and she was never allowed in the attic.

Through the slats of the ventilation Francis is shocked to see a little girl looking at the lake that looks just like she did when she was young, then she sees the girl look at her, almost reading Francis’ thoughts and then the girl walks into the lake.

Francis is shocked by what she sees, and in a moment of panic, she dashes out of the attic and swiftly runs out to the lake, in her heart, she had to disprove herself crazy, she had to prove that she was just too tied as she makes her way out of the apartment to the lake.

A hand is seen by Francis rising out of the water and slowly descends back into the water almost as if saying goodbye to her.

Francis is almost driven mad by fear and anxiety as she is caught in a dilemma, to hurry and save the girls life, or wake up David and see if he can help.

In this moment of panic, her mind goes to a dark place of a time when her mother threw her into the water to ‘teach’ her how to swim, and where she almost drowned for the first time in her life, and she learned to never trust anyone until she met David.

It is her thought of ‘doing what David would do’ that she remembers her courage and throws herself in the lake with all the confidence of her own swimming that she gave herself in high school, sure that she can save anyone, including David.

I wake up and realize Francis is gone, not unusual, but normally the apartment is fill with the liveliness of her morning sounds, my need to use the bathroom forces me out of bed, and on my way I build up the assumption that she has gotten up early to unpack more of her things in the attic, since the attic is still open.

After finding her keys in the kitchen and seeing no sign of her making herself or me breakfast, I remember seeing the attic still open and briskly make my way up with a sudden chill crawling down my spine realizing how quiet and empty it is without Francis until I hear a woman’s voice echoing over the water.

I rush to the shore of the lake after hearing an echo of Francis’ voice, then I swim into the crystal-clear lake where I can see Francis’ phone at the bottom at the edge of the structure under the water.

Forgetting all fear, I desperately swim to the bottom, where I reach for the phone, then a hand reaches back and a Francis with her skin covered in scars and black veins screams grabs hold of my arm with a deathly cold grip and screams through the water, “come and see!” then she pulls him through a dark hole from where she came which seals behind them.

The landlord watches the lake next to his camera, then he starts to have heart pains, and the camera begins to malfunction, almost with anticipation of his impending demise.

An illuminated figure from the lake appears and approaches the landlord then touches his heart and the landlord recovers from his heart pains then he tells him in a ghastly voice, “the deal is still the same, for every one year of life they had left, I will give you one hour, I have granted you forty-five more hours”, then the sprit dissipates into glowing orbs and swarms into the lake.

In the wake of the lake spirit disappearing and the calming of the water, the landlord is left alone with his thoughts, and he thinks to himself, ‘forty-five more hours, I must rent again.’.