The House Read online

  No, Melvin was far too inept for that as well. He was a social basket case who didn't even have enough courage or acumen to pursue anything but small talk with women.

  Which was why he ejaculated fervently in his pants when Squirrelly pulled down her top to flash raggy tits.

  Melvin almost drove off the road, his orgasm was so intense.

  "Ah-ah...aaaaaaaaaaaaah..."

  Squirrelly could feel some penetrating dampness on her hand. She blinked, confused. "Shit, man. Did you come?"

  "I-I—"

  "You didn't even give me time to get it out!" she giggled.

  "Oh-oh-oh. That was great..."

  She pulled her top back up, shrugging. "Cool. So you're gonna give me twenty bucks, right? I really fuckin' need it, man. I mean, you must be pretty rich driving a ride like this. It would be even better if you could give me...forty!"

  He was still catching his breath. He dug a $100 bill from the pocket of his Armani Bermuda shorts and gave it to her.

  Eyes bloomed large as blood-shot cue balls. "Oh, man, you fuckin' ROCK!"

  I wonder, he dared, if she would go out with me...

  "Can I have your egg rolls too?" she inquired.

  He waved a hand. "Sure. You can eat it all if you want."

  She squealed with delight, bouncing in the plush seat, and then leaned over and kissed him right on the lips.

  This, in a very convoluted way, and via writing that would surely be deemed as less-than-expert, communicates the very first sexual experience of Melvin Paraday's life.

  (II)

  Yes, upstate New York was an arctic wasteland akin to, say, Vladivostok during the winter, and a perennial black hole for taxes, but during the summer months, it really was an absolutely beautiful place. Rolling, verdant green hills, cozy old Colonial houses, and an endless blue sky. Melvin had lived there all of his life. Just because he was socially inept didn't mean he was shallow. He was actually very smart, had always excelled in school, and truly could appreciate such transcendental things as natural beauty and how it related to an evolved mankind.

  Squirrelly, on the other hand, was probably not as transcendentally capable. She scratched her stubbled underarms, unconsciously sniffed her fingers, and spat out the window. She likely weighed less than a hundred pounds, yet she did indeed consume all thirty dollars' worth of carry-out Chinese food. Her exposed midriff stuck out as a tight little pot now, which rumbled.

  She continued to chatter away.

  "Yeah, man, a snuff house. Used to be where Big Paul V had his people make his grossest flicks."

  Flicks, Melvin thought. He'd been right. Not tobacco, pornography. Dirk had mentioned that too. "Big Paul V—would that be Paul Vinchetti?"

  "Oh fuck yeah, man. You've heard of him? Worst motherfucker to ever walk the planet. Big Paul V Junior's the son of Vinch The Eye, and when The Eye croaked, Paul took over the whole underground porn gig for the mob. And can you believe it? All the feds got him on was tax evasion and contempt of court but shit, man, they laid 20 years on him with no parole."

  So it's all true. I'm renting a house that used to be mafioso...

  "Paul went up to the federal supermax in Ray Brook a couple of years ago. I didn't even know anyone lived in the house. Did you buy that place?"

  "No, I'm renting it." Melvin didn't bother saying why.

  "Shit, you picked a hell of a place to rent. That's a fuckin' horror house, man. The Vinchettis used that house to make their worst snuff since all the way back in the '70s when The Eye was the toughest don on the east coast. And my sister—" She grabbed Melvin's arm as if to divulge something infamous. "She was in the house once."

  "Your sister?"

  "Yeah, her name was Spooky."

  Melvin's brow rose. "Was? You mean—"

  "Well, she disappeared a long time ago. Used to be a model in New York but she got methed out and then Vinchetti put her on the street. Thank God I never got near his people, huh? After she got too beat to turn tricks, they used her for scat flicks and she actually made one in that hell-house you're renting—"

  "Scat...flicks?"

  She didn't hear him. "—and that was only a couple of years before she disappeared." Her birdlike shoulders shrugged again. "She probably OD'd or they just said fuck it and finished her off in a snuff. I heard she said something to piss Vinch off and they cut off her arms to use her in kinks."

  The words that came so nonchalantly out of her mouth stunned him. What the heck is she talking about? Cut off her arms? Kinks? And—

  "What are scat flicks?"

  "Piss flicks, shit flicks, puke flicks, stuff like that. You know."

  No. Melvin did not know.

  He had no fucking idea.

  "I-I really need to talk to you," he stammered. The road wound up, up, up through beautiful summer countryside. "About the house. What I've heard about it is—"

  "Is it's fuckin' haunted," she finished as if clairvoyant. "Lotta fuckin' stories about that house, man. Main reason I believe 'em is what Spooky said last time I saw her alive."

  Melvin seized up with excitement behind the wheel. It was nearly the same excitement as having his crotch fondled by a woman for the first time in his life. Not just for the article, but the mere fact that he was interacting with a woman—like a regular person! "What?" he close to begged. "What did Spooky say?"

  "Well, nobody used the house for anything all through the '80s and most of the '90s 'cos of that. Ask any of Vinchetti's soldiers. They say that place was so fuckin' haunted sometimes they'd run out of the joint blubbering like babies, and I'm not talking wimps, man, I'm talking buttons and hitters and subs Vinch'd hired for the real sick work. These guys would chop up a judge's baby or cut the face off a cop's wife without thinking twice but they wouldn't go near that house. So they just never used the place for anything. But one day some new jobber took Spooky up there for a scat. She said she heard voices and saw chicks walking around the place right in front of them but they weren't really there. The ghosts would write shit in the windows. And they kept hearing a radio playing music and news from 1977, which makes sense 'cos that's the last time the house was actually lived in, and some guy pulled a psych-job on some of Vinch's down-and-dirtiest scat chicks. Did 'em with an ax, I think. Oh, and it turns out there was no radio anywhere in the place but they could hear it anyway. Now, sure, people bullshit and make up stories about places, but I believe this 'cos it was my sister who told me, and there ain't no way she'd lie to me about something like that. No reason."

  More corroboration. Melvin couldn't have been more enthused. This'll be great! Dirk'll love it!

  Squirrelly clearly hadn't washed in a while; Melvin could smell musky B.O. and oil secretions from her hair. Her teeth were a mess, and she kept scratching her legs for no apparent reason. Crack bugs. Her lips were glossed from the grease in the Chinese food that she'd just about inhaled.

  "I'm actually stayin' at a place just a little ways north of the Vinchetti house—"

  "That compound?" He and Dad's fruity wife had seen it yesterday when they'd staked out the grounds. "The realtor said it was uninhabited."

  "We shack up there sometimes," Squirrelly said, "'Cos no one bothers to run us off. Me and Chopper and some of the D's, in between their runs."

  "You and...Chopper?"

  "Yeah, he's my guy."

  Melvin gulped. "You—you have a boyfriend named Chopper?"

  "Well, yeah, sort of. I take care of him and his people when they're upstate. He and his boys run crack from Florida, bring it up here on their bikes. Never heard of the D's? It's a motorcycle gang. The St. Pete Decapitators."

  Some of Melvin's zeal reclined. Great. She's got a boyfriend named Chopper and he's in a motorcycle gang called the Decapitators. Now he could never ask her out on a date! But at least she was staying nearby. The compound, in fact, was the only other dwelling within twenty miles of the Vinchetti house. Maybe he'd be able to interview her for the article.

  "What exactly is tha
t place?" he asked next. "This compound? It looked sort of like military barracks or something."

  "Don't know," she said. "But it's a pretty creepy place itself. You could come down and look at it but... Well, you better not, not while Chopper's there. Sometimes he gets crazy from Milwaukee's Best and PCP. He might kill ya."

  Melvin gulped again.

  "One time we went into a hardware store to buy denatured alcohol 'cos sometimes the D's make kat, and there's, like, nobody in the store except the old man behind the counter, so the old man winks at me and makes some comment about how he likes my butt and, man, that was it for Chopper. He vised the old guy's head into the paint-shaker and turned it on high! Fucked him ALL up!"

  No. Melvin would not be going to the compound again.

  Around the next green, sweeping bend, the house loomed. He could see Gwyneth's Corvette parked out front, Gwyneth herself wandering around the sloping front yard. Melvin drove past the end of the driveway and pulled over on the shoulder about a mile down, near the compound, where he dropped Squirrelly off. "I like you! You're not a dick like most johns!" She gave him a big wet greasy kiss, said "Thanks, man!" and got out and skipped away toward the old fenced-in grounds. Melvin watched after her, smiling in sentiment.

  My first kiss! My first handjob...sort of!

  All she'd left in the bag was a single fortune cookie. Melvin crunched it down and read the tiny slip of paper.

  PREPARE TO BE EMBRACED BY SOMETHING FROM THE PAST, it read.

  He turned the HUM-V around.

  And drove back up to the house.

  (III)

  Backtrack two days.

  It went like this.

  "It's a half hour or so past Pennellville on the county highway," said Dirk, the editor-in-chief, at lunch. "I want you to check it out. You're the only guy on my staff who does what I tell him. And I'll give you a bonus, in advance."

  "How much?" Melvin asked.

  Dirk busted out in his annoying belly-laugh. "How ever much that burger you're eating costs, tough guy!"

  "Thanks, boss."

  Dirk looked like a fat version of George Bush with long hair. He wasn't a very nice guy and he used people they way he was using the chicken wings: after he sucked the meat off, he discarded the rest, useless. "We need more funky stuff in this piece of shit we call a human-interest newspaper," Dirk said. "The big piece last week was about the rising price of bulk tomatoes and how it will affect Syracuse culinary culture. That's really stretching for something to write about."

  "Yeah, but ghosts, haunted houses?" Melvin asked. "Isn't that contrived?"

  Dirk's eyes narrowed. "What's that mean?"

  "Isn't it kind of hokey, tabloidish?"

  "Well, yeah, that's what I mean. The upscale yuppie punks in this city don't want to read news. And they don't want to read about tomatoes, either, or Vitamin E or the stolen wheelchair black market or cigarette additives. They want to read something scary and fun! So just fuckin' go to this fuckin' house and write a piece about it. We'll call it ‘The Most Haunted House in Upstate' or something like that. Stuff like this'll up our advertiser rates, you watch. Write the piece. I'll give you an extra twenty-five bucks."

  Dirk was serious. Not that being paid piss-poor by the paper mattered. Thank God for Dad, Melvin thought. I...don't think I'd do very well working in McDonald's. But the conversation got some cogs turning. "The... What's the place called? The Vincent house?"

  "The Vinchetti house," Dirk corrected. "Used to be owned by Paul Vinchetti, big mob boss out of the Utica, Rome area. Made underground porn in the house, real ugly stuff. There were murders there in the late '70s. Some kid went caveman in the joint. Big time."

  The most vague recognition began to flitter. Melvin pointed a french fry like an instructor's stick. "Oh, yes, I have heard of it. I remember some people talking about it in college. They'd go up there for beer parties during the breaks."

  "Did you go?" Dirk cut in.

  Melvin stammered. "Well, er, nuh-no." Then he said fast, "But these people swore it's really haunted." Another thought flashed, a conflict of sorts. "But I need to tell you, I might not be right for the piece. I don't believe in ghosts."

  Dirk winced. "I don't give a fuck. Just write the piece. What are you, Bob Fuckin' Woodward?" His fingers were red from Buffalo wings. "Five, six years ago, before I hired your sorry ass, one of my writers did a piece on psychics and he interviewed this old dude named Alexander Nyvysk, an ex-priest. He died in Florida last year, I read. But, anyway, his gig was he'd travel across the country to investigate houses that were supposedly haunted. In the interview he said he couldn't stay in the Vinchetti house more than a couple hours. The place burned out his equipment the minute he plugged it in. And he took some other psychics with him, and one of them fucking died. Heart attack within five minutes after walking into the place. Nyvysk said the Vinchetti house is more haunted than any house he'd ever investigated, and he'd been doing it for over twenty years. It's the perfect house to do a write-up on. Nobody's going to pick up a free city paper if they know it ain't got nothing in it except political editorials and Greenpeace save the fucking whale hippie shit like that. And tomato prices. We need stuff that's got some kick, and I don't care if you...make stuff up along the way. You can't fucking walk and chew gum at the same time, Melvin, but you can write decent articles with some snap and style."

  Melvin frowned. "Thanks. And I'll really be looking forward to that extra twenty-five dollars."

  Now Dirk's chin was running red with wing sauce. "Yeah, yeah, so go up there for a week and write it."

  "Dirk, I can't just walk into the house and live there for a week."

  "Yes, you can. I already rented it for you. Go to the realtor's next door and pick up the key."

  This sounded odd. "You rented it in advance, for a week? Dirk, you're the tightest cheapskate I've ever known. I can't see you renting a house for a week just for me to write an article."

  "Let me put it this way, I got the place for the right price. That's how popular a rental this joint is."

  Wow. Melvin thought about it. You know, this might be kind of fun. "All right, I'll do it. I'll leave tomorrow."

  "Good man." Dirk ripped another big belly laugh loud enough for other patrons of the tavern to turn their heads and frown. He passed Melvin twenty-five dollars. "Your bonus, see? In advance, just so you know I'm serious. You're my best writer, Melvin."

  I know, Melvin thought. So why can't I get a job on a real newspaper?

  Melvin excused himself for the bathroom, and when he returned, he saw that Dirk had left, sticking Melvin with the tab for lunch. The tab came to just over twenty-five dollars.

  (IV)

  "How many people have rented this house?" Melvin was asking the realtor.

  The man never introduced himself, scarcely even looked at Melvin when he'd come into the office, as though Melvin reminded him of someone he didn't like, or an unpleasant experience. "Well, none," the man answered, scribbling something on a lined pad. "When Paul Vinchetti Jr. went to prison, the state of New York seized all his assets. Any of his property was sold or taken over by the holding company that owns this office. Most of the land we sold off, but this house and a condo he had in Utica we rent...or try to rent, in this case." The bald realtor looked more like a pawn shop clerk; he wore one of those tacky wool sports jackets with patches; the jacket was flecked with cigarette ashes. Some indefinite resemblance occurred to Melvin but he couldn't identify it.

  Then the man looked up at Melvin directly for the first time, with a glimmer of anticipation in his eye. "You want to buy the place? Five grand, and you get two acres."

  "No, really," Melvin began.

  "Like I said, four grand."

  "I'm not interested in buying it," Melvin tried to make clear. "But why offer to rent it at all? It doesn't sound marketable." He eyed the feeble rental brochure. "It looks like a dump to me."

  "It is, and, no, it isn't marketable." The realtor was back to scribbling
. "We're just trying to get something out of the place. It's not worth the cost of knocking it down and trying to sell the land alone. Who wants to live way out there anyway? In the winter, way out there? You might as well be in the middle of Finland. They don't even send plows up that far when it snows. Why? No one lives past the southwest junction off the county highway. But we're thinking maybe this article you're writing will attract these ghost-hunter weirdos."

  "We're thinking?"

  "Yeah, Dirk. He's my brother."