She's sold this house six times in the past two years. Our hero doesn't even have to look at the fact sheet. It's not a bad house, 325 Crestwood Terrace, English Tudor, newer composition roof, four bedrooms, three and a half baths. She says, "I have to tell you." She says, "You lose a case like this, after you generate all this bad publicity, and that house will be worthless." To the new owner, Helen Hoover Boyle says, "Unless you're ready to go to court and prove the house is unlivable, unless you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the previous owners knew this was happening. There might be more events after that, but no-body's lasted a fourth week. The third week brings the phantom shadows that circle around and around the dining room walls when everybody is seated at the table. A wadded-up face of wrinkles, the eyes hollowed-out dark holes. If the owners last long enough, they'll be calling in another week about the face that appears, reflected in the water when you fill the bathtub. First the phantom message, then the baby cries all night. What's odd is the baby doesn't usually start until the third night.
Of course, the message appeared in the living room floor. Helen needs the new owner at 325 Crestwood Terrace to shut up a minute. You can't let another agent beat you to the next rainmaker. Murders, suicides, serial killers, accidental overdoses, you can't wait until this stuff is on the front page of the newspaper. So she needs to look it up in the codebook.Īnd Mona says, "Relax. Our hero wraps both hands around the mouthpiece and points the telephone receiver at the scanner, saying, "It's a code nine-eleven." And her secretary, Mona, shrugs and says, "So?" Helen Boyle snaps her fingers until her secretary looks in from the outer office. What she needs is a new cup of coffee and a seven-letter word for "poultry." She needs to hear what's happening on the police scanner. And this new owner on the phone is not what our hero, Helen Hoover Boyle, needs this morning. A couple of nights later, a baby starts to cry from inside the north wall of the master bedroom. Others are sure it's because they didn't tip the movers. Some new owners pretend a friend has done it as a joke. Then on the first morning they come downstairs, there it is, scratched in the white-oak floor: They'd measured rooms and told the movers where to set the couch and piano, hauled in everything they owned, and never really stopped to look at the living room floor. Not when the inspector showed them through it. Not the first time they toured the house. By Chuck Palahniuk Doubleday Copyright © 2002 Chuck PalahniukĪt first, the new owner pretends he never looked at the living room floor.
0 kommentar(er)
