Mothballs & Wine

As much as she wanted to say the house hadn’t changed over the years there was no way to deny the truth. No amount of imagination or desperate clinging to memories could do more than make the facts more obvious. The house was a shithole. With a heavy sigh she fidgeted with her cellphone and dragged her suitcase up the crumbling concrete walkway to the cracked planks and bricks serving as steps and onto the dangerously unstable covered porch. The support posts wobbled as she inched to the weathered old door. Each nervous step accompanied by a creak and a groan.

Once again the possibility of arranging for a hotel room and calling the whole thing off became undeniably tempting. Aside from bad memories of miserable summers there was the knowledge her grouchy old uncle died in the house just last week. The only reason she had to sleep in the rusty old bed upstairs she’d once occupied as a child was knowing that even a cheap motel would empty most of her savings by the time she got home. That and the inheritance.

The old badger claimed to be wealthy, something she seriously doubted as she unlocked the door and turned the protesting knob. She still had to put her shoulder into it to shove the door open. It was a relief to get off the porch that shuddered under her feet with the impact. Sighing, she started to close the door behind her but wrinkled her nose and left it open. This was quickly followed by as many windows as she could get to open though most had to be propped to stay that way. Everything seemed to be either stuck closed or open. Even the cabinets around were one of the two. She kicked one of the gaping cabinet doors only to have it bounce back and hit her shin.

How could anyone with money live like this? The stench of mothballs was even more overwhelming than she remembered and she swore her first task would be to locate and dispose of every last one of them. There were rumors of eccentric millionaires who lived in virtual poverty and she hoped this was the case. She had to spend the weekend here to get her full inheritance - whatever that might be. Her uncle’s will had stated she could either have five hundred dollars or split the rest with her brother. He got the same deal, if one took the five hundred, the rest went to the one who stayed the weekend.

David was nowhere to be seen so she was stuck making the house somewhat livable on her own, holding her breath between rooms as she worked to pry windows open. She always hated the mothballs her uncle apparently loved. The heavy stench permeated everything and even when they finally got to go home at the end of the summer everything they took held that smell for months. Her parents ignored all begging and sent them back every year since the bus tickets were cheaper than a babysitter and easier than trusting the two to stay out of trouble while they were at work.

The interior had degenerated considerably since those horrible years. She moved away from home over a decade ago and had enjoyed her summers ever since, rarely even thinking about old Uncle Mothballs. She had been shocked when she got the phone call about her uncle passing away since he had been old and not in the best of health back then. She thought he’d quietly died and her mother just never got around to mentioning it.

It looked like very little had been moved around when they removed the body from the living room. He lived a fairly sparse life as such things go and there was room enough to get a stretcher between the shabby pieces of furniture. She wasn’t sure where he was found and decided not to sit on any of the furniture at all… just in case. The thought of sitting where he’d been gave her the heebie-jeebies. The old man died in his sleep from what she’d heard. He fell asleep watching TV and that was the end of it. What blew her mind was that the television worked at all. It was one of those ancient monsters encased in an ugly cabinet. The familiar clunky old dials wouldn’t reach a fraction of the number of channels that exist now, absolutely incapable of connecting to a satellite.

A vintage radio sat beside the antique record player on a table that had certainly seen better days. She smiled faintly as she remembered the chaotic mess of scribbles on the bottom of that table where she’d gotten bored while playing with a box of crayons. It would be a shock if he’d found out and bothered to clean it off. That was well over twenty years ago…

Taking a deep breath of the clean, cool breeze blowing in the window now, she hurried to the next room. The bathroom. She shuddered and again considered letting her meager savings go rather than deal with this. It wasn’t the kind of disgusting seen on some reality TV shows but clearly he hadn’t purchased a bottle of bleach since the year David slipped and fell on the stairs. There was only a small cut on his forehead but the amount of blood that poured out terrified her. It had gotten everywhere and they spent the better part of two days trying to clean it all up. The floorboards soaked up quite a bit by the time they got to start cleaning and she could still see dark splotches where even straight bleach hadn’t been enough.

She tugged the window open and set a dusty shampoo bottle on the ledge to prop it open, gasping for fresh air as she leaned out to avoid breathing in any of the grime and possible mold of that horrible little room. As she took a deep breath, hands grabbed her waist and a short scream escaped before she heard familiar laughter. David released her and leaned against the door cackling. He hadn’t changed at all, ever the prankster.

“Damn it, David, I could have slipped!” She glared at him which only made him laugh harder.

“You should have seen your face!” He gasped, finally making an effort to control himself. “I wouldn’t have let you fall.”

She sighed, cringed, took another deep breath through the window and shoved him out into the hall before making her way to the kitchen which she hoped was aired out by now. The stench had died down a bit but was still clinging to the air. It was more tolerable, though.

“How did you even manage to sneak up on me?” She demanded of her still chortling brother. “This has to be one of the noisiest houses I’ve ever set foot in.”

“Not my fault you walk heavy.” He grinned. “Good idea opening windows, though. What do you want to bet he left us a mothball factory? He had to at least be a major investor in one… It’s going to be like an Easter egg hunt finding all of them. Less rewarding, though.”

“Did you just call me fat?” She demanded.

“Did you just admit to being insecure?” He countered, dodging a punch. “Walking heavy and being heavy are different. Besides, the floorboards sag and you can tell where the support beams are. I walked carefully, that’s all.”

“Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who has to go upstairs to open windows?” She asked.

“I don’t mind the smell as much as you do.” He pointed out with a smirk. “But it’s kinda nice down here...”

“What about the locked room?” She asked, mirroring the smirk as he realized one of their greatest questions would be answered. They shared a room with a curtain nailed up in the middle to create some semblance of privacy while the two other rooms remained locked any time they visited. One was their uncle’s bedroom, the other… he never would say. They were simply told to stay away from it and the old man was so serious, so intense, when he spoke they had been too afraid to go near the door for years.

Once David worked up the courage to look through the keyhole but it was too dark to see anything on the other side. She tossed him the keyring she had been given by the lawyer. While she intended to let him tell her the grand tales of their uncle’s junk room, he had other plans and grabbed her hand. He dragged her up the groaning steps that threatened to give out under them in spite of her protests.

The smell was as bad as it had been downstairs and she quickly opened the windows at the ends of the slanted hallway that separated the long room they stayed in under one of the gables from the two larger rooms. She didn’t know what to expect to find behind any of the doors now and hesitated to open them. Her brother had no such reservations and headed straight for the forbidden rooms.

“Wow…” He said with uncertainty and disappointment in his voice as he pushed open the unlocked door to their uncle’s room and turned the light on.

She edged closer to look in and frowned. Blank walls were discolored in streaks from a leak in the roof. The bed was plain, covered only with dingy sheets and a threadbare blanket that might have once been blue was now a muted gray in the light of the single dim bulb. The closet door hung open to show neat rows of shirts and pants hanging in pairs. No guesswork as to what he would have worn the next day. Or the day after. Or the day after that. It was spooky in a sad way.

A single nightstand held only a mostly empty bottle of whiskey. There was no dresser, no mirror. Aside from two pairs of loafers that looked older than her, the closest the room had to decoration was a liberal scattering of mothballs along the edges of the wall.

“This is just depressing.” She shook her head and backed away. While she hadn’t known what to expect, that was not it.

“It’s like a prison room.” David said, closing the door. “Weird.”

He went to try the other room but this was locked as it always had been. After going through most of the keys on the ring they found the right one. David smiled indulgently as he pushed the door open and felt for the light switch.

They stared in silence for a moment.

“Damn…” David stepped in and looked around the grotesque room. There were shelves full of old books, taxidermied animals, framed pictures of demonic creatures, bottles and jars filled with unidentifiable things. Both windows that should have been visible were boarded up, painted over and had those hideous pictures hanging from them.There was nothing about that room that made her feel safe or comfortable. “Our uncle was a freak… come look at this.”

“No way. You have fun in there, I’m going back downstairs.” She announced and spun on her heel. It no longer mattered to her in the slightest what had happened to the room they used to sleep in, the room across from that morbid place. No wonder they were told to stay away! She decided to get as many mothballs out of the kitchen as possible and make a quick trip to the nearest department store to buy a sleeping bag. She had no intention of walking up those stairs again and as soon as the weekend was over she was heading straight back home with whatever money she could get. Hopefully there was more than the house to be shared. It was distinctly possible the place would be condemned and end up costing more than the money they would get to dispose of. Her only real comfort was that she would get at least five hundred dollars out of this mess. It had cost nearly that much due to losing hours at work and paying for the gas to make this trip.

By the time she emptied the little dustpan three times and hauled the bag of offensive white pellets and half rotted bits of food her uncle left behind to the dumpster it was starting to get dark. She called up to her brother to let him know she’d be back soon and went to get camping gear.

Shortly after she returned and started sweeping again David came back downstairs, nose buried in a stained and worn old book. She rolled her eyes and kept sweeping. It was clear the old man didn’t do more than absolutely necessary, there had to be a few years worth of dust and fallen food caked in the corners and between floorboards. It was disgusting but all she could do was set up her sleeping bag as far from the food prep area as possible. Without the mothball stink dominating the room she could smell something he dropped and hadn’t cleaned up. That or there was a dead mouse in the cabinets somewhere.

She shuddered. “If he leaves us the house you can keep it.”

“What, you don’t want in on this cozy fixer-upper?” He asked sarcastically. “Man, he had some weird ideas… I found a bunch of his journals up there. It looks like he was determined to find a way to become immortal.”

“Are you serious?” She rolled her eyes. “Some people watch way too many movies.”

“Yeah, but it does explain some of that weird stuff upstairs. You didn’t see the half of it from out there in the hall.”

“I’ll probably sleep better for that.”

“Yeah, you always were a wimp.” He grinned and deflected the broom as it swung for his head. “Seriously though, he’s got a big collection of some books that have to be pretty rare. I looked up a couple and there are collectors paying upwards of three hundred dollars for copies regardless of the condition.”

“Really?” She smiled, glad for some good news. “Well let’s sell all that stuff and split the money. The sooner it’s gone the better.”

“You aren’t even a little bit curious about any of it?” He asked incredulously.

“No way! Whether it turned our uncle into a creepy, crazy old man or he bought it because that’s just the way he was, it clearly didn’t improve matters and I don’t want anything to do with any of it.” She said firmly, sweeping another cloud of dirt and dried up bits of food out the door.

“Well, since you don’t want crazy cooties I’ll just give you half of whatever I do sell. It might be worth hanging onto a few books in case the value goes up.” He grinned.

“Whatever. I just want to get out of this stinking place and forget all about our horrible summers here.”

“They weren’t all bad.” He said with a shrug.

“Mostly because if it wasn’t raining we were outside and pretending we were anywhere else!”

“Beside the point.”

She rolled her eyes again and looked around. The smell had faded enough she didn’t feel like she was choking on the air anymore but it would take more than a couple of days to get the place up to her standard of living. Tolerable would have to do. She got her sleeping bag settled along with the big, fluffy new pillow.

“What’ll you do if rats show up?” David asked with a wide grin.

“Shut up.”