We Buy Houses
His sleep regressed when he started Kindergarten. That was four years ago, and I’m still stuck sleeping with him in his twin bed every night.
“Where are you going!?” he screams when I take my first step out of his bed, attempting an escape.
He’ll never let me go. I’m stuck here.
We Buy Houses.
At least, that’s what my signs claim, hammered in the ground by every intersection in town. The “We” was as a trick, creating the illusion of a legit company full of real estate agents and house flippers. But it was just me.
I drag him to every open house. What else can I do? Hire a babysitter or drop him off at his grandparents’ every time one became available? A big part of this business is timing. Even the most dilapidated houses get snatched up in the blink of an eye. I never have time to hand him off.
So, I guess it is “We.”
Early on, he thought every house we bought was ours to keep. The concept of flipping is hard to explain to a child. There were houses he loved and wanted for himself, and some he hated. And then there was 617 Sycamore Ave. The house he wouldn’t enter.
Every parenting book says the same thing: trust your kid’s intuition. Listen to them. Make it clear they are being heard.
I didn’t do any of that. 617 Sycamore was a beautiful house hidden beneath overgrown everything, in the middle of the most sought-after neighborhood in town. A house no one would buy because it was deemed “unfixable.” Some even used the word “haunted.” But the price, oh my God the price was so cheap, and the neighborhood…
I begged him to come in and have a quick look. And to his credit, even though I could see the fear in his eyes, he took my hand, and we stepped inside together. But after one step he was running away, screaming, “I’ll just wait in the car!”
I bought the house for so cheap it felt like robbery. I laid in his bed that night dreaming of a plan for 617 Sycamore. Blast the wall in the dining room. Rip out the carpet on the stairs. Replace the light fixtures in the main bathroom---
“That’s where I died.”
A freezing wave of fear rushed through me. I looked down at my sleeping son, arms cuddled around his haggard teddy bear, and watched as the raspy sound of an older woman’s voice escaped from his barely moving mouth.
“I cracked my head open on the counter. My husband found what was left of me a week later, after he got back from a trip with his not-so-secret girlfriend.”
She went on for hours, describing her death in gruesome detail, going so far as to tell me what her cat did to her after so many days. The voice finally petered out and slept. I, on the other hand, did not. I sat in the dark the rest of the night in a petrified shock.
The next morning he didn’t wake up. He slept through my alarm and as the sun invaded his room. Even when I got out of his bed and went downstairs to make breakfast, he didn’t stir.
My wish had come true. He was finally sleeping alone, but now with a visible shiver and deep cough. I yearned for what I once had. Him screaming for me, “Where are you going! Where have you been?!”
The silence was as terrifying as her smoker’s voice.
Not knowing what else to do I laid back down with him. I put his head on my chest and, as I usually do as a fly-from-the-seat-of-my-pants single father, went through all my options. Hours passed and I realized, realistically, I only had one.
I asked him a question, hoping she‘d answer.
“What do you want?”
“Get me to my husband and I’ll release your boy.”
“The one who cheated on you?”
“I want to haunt him until the day he dies and for an eternity after. If not, this body will do.”
“Gimme his address.”
I rang the bell with my son by my side. Not awake but standing, his ice-cold hand in mine. When the sixty-year-old man in a flowing Tommy Bahama shirt opened the door, I introduced myself and told him I had a client who would be willing to pay top dollar for his house and asked if he’d ever consider selling.
He let me in because, as I’ve learned through the years, everyone has a price. And as my sleeping child took one step into the house his skin warmed, his eyes fluttered, and I heard his sweet 10-year-old voice ask, “Where are we, Dad?”
We stayed long enough to see something unseen bump into the mirror hanging behind the man. She was there. She got where she needed to be. It was his problem now.
“Wanna check out 617 on our way home?” I asked as we walked back to our car.
Not only did he want to, but he ran inside and explored the house as if it were any other. I watched him, now knowing my son was different. He sensed her presence; he took her where she wanted to go. He was a vessel.
Now we hunt those houses down. The ones where tragedy looms. Where spirits are trapped. Most are pissed off, vindictive, and downwright evil, but they always leave him when we take them to where they want to go.
“What if one doesn’t want to leave me?” he asked me one time, his voice trembling.
“I’ll never let that happen.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Trust your kid’s intuition. Listen to them. Make it clear they are being heard.
But the houses are so cheap, and we are the only ones who can fix them.
I can do this.
He’ll be fine.
We buy houses.