Chapter 2, or the Second Installment

Several weeks had passed.  Kit and Daniel had officially moved into their new house without much event and were now well underway with making it their home.

The limited furniture they brought with them from their previous apartment did little to fill up the four bedroom Victorian, but that was to be expected.  The house was always meant to be a little bit of a project for the two.

The previous owner had renovated the kitchen in a small effort to modernize the ancient house, but every other room remained untouched.  Kit and Daniel had known the house was old but were constantly surprised by evidence they found that exposed just how long ago the house had been built.

A week after they closed on the house their furniture showed up. As they were finding a temporary home for everything Daniel had ventured into the basement and hearing the loud patter of footsteps over his head looked up to find that he could actually see through the floor boards that served as the ceiling above him.  Each time the wind would blow they could hear the entire house creak as though it was struggling in its effort not to topple over.

Kit had commented that he could really hear the house settling, but Daniel helpfully pointed out, “The house is over a hundred, I’m pretty sure it’s set.”

Another day had come and gone.  Daniel had taken his day off to effectively unpack the master bedroom so they could finally access all their clothing again.  They had lived out of a suitcase for so long, being nervous movers they had packed up their old apartment a month before they were scheduled to leave it, so opening these sealed boxes of prized knick knacks gave both of them a wonderful feeling of surprise.

After laying out his clothes for the next day Daniel had climbed into bed and prepared to let sleep take him over.  Kit, being a little less tired stayed up reading under the soft, blue glow of the reading light Daniel had bought him a year earlier.

Kit’s eyes were getting heavier and heavier with each page.  His book was doing it’s job of ushering him into the land of dreams.  But in a resilient attempt to finish his chapter he kept turning, one more page, then one more.

Several minutes had gone by and Kit wasn’t aware that he wasn’t even reading anymore.  His book just sat in front of him like a blank canvas he couldn’t take his eyes off.  The silence of the house was deafening after noise of the busy streets of Hoboken where Kit and Daniel had lived for almost a decade.  The silence had a way of pressing on the ears in a more offensive way than any late night siren could.

Kit’s book started to fall out of his grip, seconds away from sleep his hands lost all remaining strength of the day and let the book fall. But in that second between wake and sleep as the book fell towards Kit’s stomach an almighty creak echoed through the house.

Kit jolted out of his near sleep in a slight panic.  In less than a second the gentle hum of his resting heart had bolted into a nervous beat.  The creak had come from the staircase that ran against the wall where his head lay.  It couldn’t have been that loud but in the silence of the old home it pierced like a knife.

Kit looked nervously to his right and saw Daniel still asleep and unfazed.  There was no one else in the house; no creature or person that Kit could think of that could claim the unmistakable sound of someone taking a first step onto the main staircase.

Kit lay there, shaken and uneasy trying to keep his breath as calm and quiet as possible.  The normal silence had returned to the house but he waited, expecting at any moment to hear the sound of a second step.

“I should just go look,” he thought to himself.  “Get up and go look just so you can see that there’s no one there or else you’ll never get to sleep.”

But he didn’t move.  Paralyzed by the terrifying images that were now racing through his imagination Kit stayed as still as he could, hoping that he heard another step so he’d have reason to wake up Daniel but also praying that he didn’t hear anything.

The silence crept by and no sounds came.  With each passing minute Kit’s breath calmed more and more and the palpable tension that had exploded with that creak seemed to dissipate.  After about five minute he realized that he had been so close to falling asleep that the noise had probably just been him jerking a little when he dropped his book.

Slowly sleep found its way back to Kit’s eyes.  With one final breath he released the last evidence of fear he had been holding and let the night engulf him.

Chapter 1, or the Prologue. Whichever

I’m mostly going to be treating my blog from here on out as a vomitorium for writing.

In honor of the 1 year anniversary of me and my husband buying our house, I’ve started writing a little story inspired by us.  This is Chapter 1, or the Prologue.  Whichever.

“Did they get the old washer and dryer out of the basement?”

“And the mattress out of that upstairs bedroom?”

“Yeah the mattress too.”

Kit and Daniel had worked tirelessly over the last two months to buy their house.  After an exhausting real-estate search they had finally found a house they could agree on only to be met with countless battles during the closing.  An inept bank that couldn’t be bothered to move faster than a snail’s pace along with an agent who did little to help them made for more headaches than either Kit or Daniel could have anticipated.

But all of that was behind them.  Today was finally the day when they would close.  All the fights, all the worrying, all the nights of tossing and turning with the fear they were making the biggest mistake of their lives were behind them. All that was left was a final walk through and the signing of papers.

“Yes, they got it all out.”  Amy could possibly have been the worst real-estate agent in New Jersey, but neither Kit nor Daniel had anyone to compare her to.  All she seemed to have done was open the door to the old house Daniel had actually found.  The minute their offer was accepted Amy became conspicuously difficult to get a hold of, and useless when they finally could.

The final walk through was basically over but neither of the boys could bring themselves to say they were ready to go.  How could they have agreed to buy this house?  They were barely in it for fifteen minutes before they had to put an offer in, but after having lost three houses to fast moving buyers they were anxious not to miss out on another opportunity.

It made so much sense at the time for them to jump on it.  But two months of battling with closing agents, banks and home inspectors was enough to make anyone second guess themselves.

“Alright, so are we ready to go?”  Amy could not have been more obvious in her desire to get everything over with, and Kit and Daniel hated her for it.  But the fact was there was no way to put things off any longer. There was nothing in the final walk through stopping them from going forward with the close.  Nothing except an overwhelming sense of dread.

“So the lawyer’s office is going to be about fifteen minutes from here,” said Amy, in another attempt to get the boys moving.  “We should head over now just cause we don’t want to miss out on our scheduled time.”

“Fine,” said Daniel, almost in defeat.

“Can we have maybe one more minute here?” asked Kit. “You can head out now if you want to get going ahead of us.”

“I still need to lock up here guys,” she replied, clearly starting to get impatient.

And so they both took one last look around the newly renovated kitchen they were standing in, and with a nervous breath headed out the door.

The two giant oak trees in the front yard cast the entire house in shadow.  Even on such a bright, sunny day almost no sunlight could make its way to the façade of this Victorian home.  The age of the house had been a source of contention between Kit and Daniel.  Kit’s vivid imagination was entertained by the storybook feel of a one hundred and forty year old house.  But Daniel’s practical observations lingered on the ancient problems they would likely encounter when they started the necessary renovations to the bulk of the house.

Back and forth they had debated, but the reality of their budget and the positively ideal location of this house at the end of a private street that was otherwise only occupied by trees made this house a gamble they were both willing to take.

And so the  boys popped into their car, and with nervous hearts followed behind Amy to the lawyer’s office where they would sign their closing papers.

“It’s going to be so worth it,” said Kit as they made their turn off their private street and onto the main road.  “I’m just so excited for all this to be done so we can just enjoy being there.”

“I don’t know,” Daniel responded not taking his eyes off the road.  “I still have this feeling like it’s such a mistake.  I want to be excited, I’m just not there yet.”

“I bet you will get there.  Considering how shitty this whole experience has been, the fact that we still want this house is a huge sign.”

“I’m not sure I do want it though,” said Daniel.

“Yes but you want to want it don’t you?”

“Yes.  At least I think I do.”

“That’ll just have to be good enough for now.”

The rest of the drive they made in silence, neither voicing the mountain of concerns that were building up in the minds.  What if they got there and they couldn’t close?  What if they were about to find out something had been done wrong in the closing?  Some paper miss-filed or name miss-spelled in the hundreds of pages they were expected to sign.

And that most nagging of thoughts, what if I am about to spend the most money I’ll likely ever spend on the biggest mistake of my life?

Having left behind Amy, they somehow found themselves at the lawyer’s office before her.  They waited outside for a couple minutes before they decided they might as well just go in without her.

“And she continues to be less than useless,” said Daniel as they nervously made their way into the offices.

The receptionist welcomed them warmly enough and led them into a conference room towards the back of the building.  Kit was thrilled by the cliche; a huge mahogany table sat in the middle of a library like room full of books Kit strongly suspected were purely decorative.

They sat themselves down and waited for about a minute before their lawyer came in.

“Hey guys!  Today is the day!  So are you ready to sign your futures away?”  James Peake entered the room with the amount of energy necessary to propel a jet.  Dressed surprisingly casual in jeans and a button up he gave off the impression he was ready to got out for a drink and start a fight.  His odd energy wasn’t unappreciated by the two trepidatious boys who sat in front of him.

“So I don’t know where Amy is, but I don’t really care.  I just have papers for you to sign and then we can get you on your way.  Now, you’ve paid me to look out for you and I have.  I can go over everything in these contracts and it will take all day.  Or you can just sign them and you can go enjoy the rest of your day and trust no bullshit is happening, cause I don’t do bullshit.  It’s your call.”

Kit and Daniel could not have liked this man more than they did in that moment.  For once in this headache of an experience someone was talking to them with such clarity that they just wanted to trust him.

“No bullshit then,” said Daniel.  And the great signing began.

In the style Henry Ford an assembly line of paperwork was laid out, and sheet after sheet was passed beneath each of the boys in turn.  Every lame joke their parents had made about signing away their first born child made more sense as each piece of this endless contract passed by.  Every dozen pages or so James would chime in with a “This is to make sure the previous owner pays off what she owes” and a “This is standard New Jersey owner’s rights stuff.”

And in a great moment of anti climax James Peake said, “And that’s that.  You own a house.”

The boys sat there unsure what to do now.  Ok so they own a house, what next?

“So, do we get the keys now?” asked Kit.

“Damnit where is Amy?” said James more to his assistant who had sat quietly this whole time than to either Kit or Daniel.

“I’m here I here!” called an out of breath Amy as she rushed into the conference room.  “Oh no! Did I miss the whole signing!? Oh darn it.  Well boys congratulations!” And she handed them a gift bag with the price tag still on with a cold bottle of champagne sweating inside.

“Oh, thank you” said an uneasy Kit.  The moment could not have felt less genuine, and yet he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t at least a little touched by this last minute gesture.

“Well, one last thing to do,” and she pulled out from her purse a small ziplock bag that looked like it had around five keys inside.  “These officially belong to you.”

And with that, Kit and Daniel, officially now home owners, headed out of the offices of James Peake and away from the real estate agent they hoped they never had to see again.

Feeling a bit lighter, the two drove back from where they had just come, down their private road and into the driveway of their house.  The sun was now sitting behind the house, casting it in a beautiful silhouette as they walked up the front steps.

“Are you going to carry me across the threshold?” asked Kit playfully.

“No.”

And with that they stepped into their home.  Standing there for the first time alone in their house.

Daniel turned to Kit and after a minute of silence asked, “Well, now what?”