Echoes of the Wicked

The door groans as I push it open. Sunlight spills across the floorboards, catching in the motes of dust that float like tiny spirits. Everything is coated in a quiet resignation: a chair tipped as if abandoned mid-thought, a half-burnt candle melted into itself, a notebook left open, its pages yellowed and curling.

I step inside, and the air seems to remember someone else—someone long gone; the walls hold their breath. The smell of cigarettes has marinated every surface. A sticky carpet is all he leaves behind.

Not an apology… or a check.

Who am I kidding? Eli Thomas didn’t own a pot to piss in. What he didn’t gamble, he drank.

There’s still a creak in every step toward the desk. I crouch down to pick up the chair by the backrest. There’s an outline on the carpet, a dusty dent that guides my eyes toward the dirty brown pair of boots tucked under the rusted bed like a secret. As if anyone cared about what Grandpa hid.

The last time my mother had the urge to really know him, all we found out was that he was exactly who he said he was. It was a devastating blow for her, which is curious, considering she grew up with the man.

I avoided him like the plague. Six years old. I was six when I truly looked into his hazel eyes, and all I felt was displaced fear. I couldn’t tell you how I knew what had happened in this house, in this room; I simply felt it.

I eye the boots for a moment longer, then sigh. I move to open the window above the nightstand. It cries out as I unlock it and push through gritted teeth. The sticky seal gives, and my arms shoot up with the glass as I groan.

My family was supposed to have this house cleaned up for the realtors, but after they picked at Grandma’s things and took what they needed to remember her, the task was postponed six years and delegated to me.

“You are the only one with the stomach for it,” my mother had said to me in passing—casual, like she didn’t have nightmares about him. Like the smell of beer wasn’t enough to invoke ghosts of horrors past.

I brush my hands on my jeans, then yank the nightstand open. Its contents slide forward, and I yelp, stepping back.

Surprisingly, it’s not the needles that startle me, but what I am assuming is a decomposed garden snake coiled up next to them. A smile creeps onto my face as I kick the drawer closed, and a laugh bubbles in my chest. The irony is that he was terrified of snakes.

I used to ask for toy snakes as a kid, only to scare him. I thought that maybe if I scared him enough, he’d die. “That girl will be the death of me!” he screamed at my mother once, and how I had hoped he was right. That one day I’d be big and scary enough to frighten him into the grave.

In the end, it wasn’t me.

A stroke got him first, and while long overdue, how disappointing.

I made a promise. Not out loud, not to her face, but she would know that there is no honor in his memory. That every drunken hand he raised will be paid in erasure. That he will never know absolution—that in the folklore of our bloodline, he will remain nameless. Eli Thomas isn’t even his real name; it’s just a safe measure to ensure no one will ever remember him.

Still, I reach for those pages on the desk, feeling the echoes of an attempt at redemption as my eyes scan the messy cursive. The ramblings of a sick man inspire no sympathy in me, no familiar sentiment to stop me from tossing it aside without another look.

My narrowed eyes search the room for his prized possession and land on the closed armoire by the door. I head over and use both hands to pull the wooden doors open, scrunching my nose as dust flies out with the smell of mildew. I take a step back to clear my throat in disgust.

His four plaid shirts hang almost performatively next to three pairs of pants, but below that, a box sits ominously.

My mother told me stories of being dragged out of bed and forced to shoot cans with a revolver for his amusement, and I’ve always wondered why he thought it was so entertaining to see his eight-year-old daughter shake under the weight of the recoil.

I pull the box out of the armoire and place it on the bare, stained mattress, yellowed with time and old-man sweat. On top of everything is a car manual for a 1982 Ford Escort. I wonder if that’s the car he held Grandma at gunpoint in that one time—or the one he crashed into a tree. I toss it on the bed and dig through pictures and useless cables, taking a moment to scoff down at a giant gray phone that I vaguely remember playing with, before finding the revolver at the bottom.

I pick it up and open the chamber to see there are still three bullets inside.

“That’s mine,” I hear him say behind me, his voice phlegmy.

“I hated that about you the most,” I say to the revolver before turning around to find no one in the room with me. “Isn’t that funny? I hated you for so much, but the way it always sounded like there was something stuck in your throat was the worst part.”

Suddenly, I’m aware that there’s a faint pounding in the walls—uneven and scattered, like a heart attack happening on repeat.

“Hopefully this is a small mercy, and I’m actually hearing a hell where your heart ends you over and over again,” I say to the room quietly, unloading the revolver and dropping it with the loose bullets in the box. I move to head out when I notice the upright chair, and I kick it back onto its side, sending a fresh cloud of dust up into the streaks of light.

I reach into my pocket and pull out a box of matches I found in the kitchen, in the drawer where Grandma kept the knives.

I strike one match when the sound of an ice cream truck catches my attention, but as I look out into the street, I know that the ice cream truck doesn’t come around here anymore.

I let the match fall on the bed and watch it eat at every thread until it reaches the box before making my way out. As I walk down that dark hallway, I hear the creak of the mattress—the way it sounded when he sat down for me to give him his medicine.

“Oh, old man. You didn’t really think I’d clean after you one last time, did you?” I smile and walk away, leaving behind the sound of crackling, burning wood.