Home and Beyond: A Collection

By Ann Stratton

The combined stories from the short collections Monday is Winter and Other Stories and Home Is What You Make It.

 

Ten stories that look at what makes a home, and places far from home, and whoever or whatever you may meet there.

 

A house haunted by a woman whose work is never done.

A man in search of work, and the bowling ball that urges him onward.

Leslie got roped into cleaning up the old parish house, and there's someone else there who's not there to help.

Someone had hidden a body in the freezer, and it's Orlando and Amanda's job to sort it out.

A king, who'd rather play with babies and puppies than fight wars.

A prison camp escape attempt and the brave children who make it.

Eric is lost in the desert, with one last match to his name. Who will get to him first, the coyotes or the mountain lions?

A woman who is just trying to do her work, but family troubles and politics make that harder than it needs to be.

A chance meeting at a coffee house, and the conversations that ensue.

A tornado has just ripped through his neighborhood and it's up to Xhavean to get the survivors he finds to safety.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ann Stratton
• Release date: Jan 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215503577

Ann Stratton

Ann Stratton started writing at age thirteen with the usual results. After a long stint in fan fiction, honing her skills, she hopes she has gotten better since then. She lives in Southeastern Arizona, trying to juggle all her varied interests. 

Book preview

Home and Beyond

A Collection

The E-Book Edition

Ann Stratton

A Blind Woman Production publication

Copyright © 2023 Ann Stratton

The stories in this collection have appeared in the previous collections Monday Is Winter And Other Stories and Home Is What You  Make It.

To give the reader more of a sample, all legal matter has been moved to the end of this book.

* * *

Forwarding Address

My mother said the house I bought was built in the early to mid 50’s or so, part of the post WW2 building boom. It sat in a subdivision full of similar little houses in the ranch style that had gotten much more eclectic and, in one or two cases, eccentric over the years. Mine was one of the more conservative ones. It had been stuccoed some time in the last twenty years or so and painted a modest dirt brown with dark brown trim. The landscaping had gone through every fashion in the intervening years and now consisted of white gravel and one ancient, shedding eucalyptus tree.

Originally, it had been a two bedroom with one bathroom, but a previous owner had added two more bedrooms and another bathroom. He hadn’t done much with the layout, and it was cramped, dark, and confusing. As soon as I could get the money, I would get the whole thing redone. I wanted wide open spaces. I wanted light. I wanted a layout that didn’t require a map and a string to figure out.

In the meantime, I was stuck with it. But it was my house. My very own house! I could spread out how I wanted! I could decorate how—or as best as, considering what I had to work with—I wanted! Oh, how I had plans!

The previous owner had been an elderly woman who’d died of either cancer or natural causes, I was never quite sure which. Whatever the case, it involved a lengthy illness, leaving her bedridden for the last year or so of her life. It’s not really as creepy as you might think, or at least I wasn’t creeped out. It was my house, and as soon as I got it cleaned up and up to my own standard, there wouldn’t be any problem. One of my psychic friends declared it conflict free. The woman apparently died without regrets, or at least none strong enough to leave any residue. Since I’m about as psychic as a rock, that didn’t bother me.

Once the deal was closed and all the inspections and paperwork were taken care of, I had to clean the place out. The previous owner’s friends and family had done a good job of getting her belongings out of there, but you know there’s always some kind of detritus left behind. If I finished cleaning it out myself, then I’d have a better idea of what I needed to do to make the place all mine. Also any repairs that needed to be done. I was kind of cringing about that little detail.

Getting the kitchen clean was an involved project. I think I must have gone through a fifty five gallon drum of degreaser and cleaner getting the walls and ceiling clean. Nothing deliberate, just too many years cooking in there, and Mrs. X’s inability to reach higher than my head, and later the lack of strength and health. The appliances still worked, so I could use them until I could get new ones. I put refacing the cabinets on my list, and a new sink, and new counters, new flooring, a paint scheme closer to my own tastes. It took me three days to get the place scrubbed out. It was a considerable relief to put my pots and pans and dishes in the cabinets, and make myself my first real meal in my own house.

The bathrooms needed to be gutted and rebuilt from the ground up, and I resolved to not use the shower in the back bathroom until that was done. The wallboard behind the tile was melting. Any more water on that, and the whole thing would fall in. All the fixtures needed replacing, the wallpaper had to go, and all the latches and hinges on the cabinets had given up. Still, the bathrooms worked, for which I was properly grateful, and I scoured every surface in them until I felt less squeamish about using the toilets.

The hot water tank worked, though it was high on my list of things to replace. It knocked something terrible when it was heating. Hot showers did wonders for my well being after long hard days of cleaning.

I picked the bedroom closest to the back bathroom to be my master. The carpet was ratty and almost as old as I was, so it went first. The curtains were in similar shape, so out they went too. I scrubbed the walls, scraped windows with a razor blade to get years’ accumulation of dust and grime off, mopped up the mud the carpet left, hung up a couple of sheets as temporary curtains, dragged my bed frame in, and laid my mattress on top of it. I fell on the mattress and almost didn’t get out again, but duty called. I brought in my dresser, put my clothes in it and the closet, and the bedroom was mine, all mine. It would be a lot more mine when I’d had the chance to paint the walls a more acceptable color, put down new carpet, hang new curtains, and generally spread myself around.

The living room and the dining room were next. Once again all the carpet came up, all the curtains disposed of, the walls and windows scoured down to the shine, my own furniture set up, all my remaining boxes shoved into one of the other bedrooms to deal with later.

The other two bedrooms were similarly dealt with. I cleaned them down to the shine on the windows, sorted out most of the boxes, and installed my own stuff. I had lots of stuff to install...

I saved the back bedroom for last. It had been used as a home office the last time around and had been fitted with shelves and built in file drawers. Neat, I can use them. I think the carpet was original to the time the bedroom was added on. I pulled that up first.

The windows were just as filthy as every other window in the house. The walls took considerable scrubbing. The shelves took more scrubbing. By the time I got down to the file cabinets, I was pretty much beat. I had a nearly clean room for all that though. It smelled more like cleaners and wet wood than it did stale old carpet.

I made myself a giant salad with iced tea, fruit, and a jerky stick to go with it. I took my dinner to the dining room and set it on the dining table. Collapsed in my chair, I smelled cleaners, wet wood, wet dust, and no stale carpets, no old cooking grease. No more of Mrs. X’s lingering odors. I felt quite content. Slowly, but surely, I was making this house my own. I was putting my own marks and smells on it. Too tired to do more than pick lettuce leaves out of my bowl with my fingers, I admired my work.

I was listening to the evening news when I could have sworn I saw somebody walk past in the hall. Despite being here almost two weeks already and changing out every light bulb in the house, I still wasn’t familiar with all the lighting peculiarities, and it’s possible I just misinterpreted a shadow. Still, it made the hair on my neck stand on end. I licked my fingers, I got up from my chair, and I went chasing a shadow.

As shadows go, there was no such thing. The hall light was dim, new light bulbs and all. I made the rounds. Nobody in the house but me. I went back to my salad, shaking my head at my own gullibility.

It might not have been my first night in the strange old house, but I was still not familiar with all its quirks and characteristics, like wandering shadows. The neighborhood was considerably different than the one I had been living in. It was closer to a main road, and so I could hear the road noise clearly. Earlier in the day, a siren sounded so close it had just about stopped my heart, and I was dreading that late night call.

No emergency vehicles in full warning mode went past that night, but the road noises, traffic on my road, and every anxiety ridden dog in the neighborhood disturbed my sleep, exhaustion or not. I wondered how long it would take me to get used to it all.

I pulled out all the file drawers and scrubbed out the cabinets. I cleaned out the file drawers of all their dust and detritus, occasional notes, paper clips, that sort of thing, nothing I didn’t already expect. I’m curious. I can’t pass up the written word. I read all the notes I found, and none of them made any sense to me. They made sense to their writer who was long gone, so I shrugged and dropped them into the garbage can. I’d shred and recycle them later.

At the back of the bottom cabinet of the last file drawer, I found a folder. It looked like it had gotten pushed back behind the drawer somehow, which was why the previous owner’s friends missed it. I smoothed the wrinkles out as best I could. I figured that if it was something important, I could ask the realtor to pass it along to Mrs. X’s heirs.

A-G marked the thumb tab in shaky handwriting. Pictures, newspaper clippings, typed documents, and handwritten notes spilled out of the cardboard folder when I opened it up.

The pictures all seemed to date to the Second World War. They showed men and women in old fashioned clothes, sometimes with children, posing self consciously. Most of them had notes on the back like Mami e Papi, 1938. Names for the people in the photos. I looked at them, trying to put names to faces.

The newspaper clippings were in various languages, most of which I didn’t know. The few English ones described the horrible situation in Europe. They discussed the movements of displaced people in solemn, serious, or scandalized tones. The non-English ones probably covered similar stories.

The typed documents were in various languages too, most of which I didn’t know how to read. The English ones seemed to be transcriptions of interviews, stories about people who endured a great deal of hardship, leaving everything they knew behind to escape the war. The other documents were probably the same thing, though a few looked like they were official court documents. Somebody had worked the court documents over with a black marker, obliterating names, dates, and places. Somebody else had annotated them in ballpoint, trying to recover the blacked out parts. Handwritten notations marked all over the transcriptions in red, blue and green.

The handwritten notes looked like someone was trying to create a coherent narrative of all this material. If the folder was going to be marked A-G, there had to be more folders, with more material, and maybe somewhere a schematic or diagram to pull this all together.

I sat there on the floor that hadn’t been scrubbed yet, my butt getting muddy. All this stuff was fascinating, even if I could read only half of it. Less than half. I wondered who did all this research. I wondered what the point of this research was.

It was none of my business. Reluctantly, I put it all back into the folder, got myself up off the floor, and carried it into the living room. Tomorrow or so I would take it to the realtor to be given to the previous owner’s heirs. I’m sure it was something they’d want to have.

The doorbell rang while I was getting a drink. I wasn’t expecting it, and I jumped, spilling water down my shirt front. I said impolite things while mopping off my shirt and going to the door.

The mailman stood there. He held a thick envelope in his hand, marked with that green ticket that meant somebody had to sign for it. He looked surprised when I opened the door.

Mrs. X? he said.

No, she doesn’t live here anymore, I said. You must be new.

Yeah, this is my first day. This is 4356 North Eighth Avenue, isn’t it? He held up his scanner.

Yeah, but I’m not Mrs. X. I can’t accept this package.

He looked down at it. I tried to read the address on it upside down. Considering the number and types of stamps, it was from somewhere far away. We can’t send it back. It’s an overseas mailing.

Well, I said, annoyed, maybe you can take it over to the realtor. They have the addresses for Mrs. X’s heirs. They’d be the ones to get it.

He looked at me with his best puppy look. The effect was somewhat lost behind mirrored sunglasses. Can’t you take it to her?

I looked at him as if he was stupid. How long has he been a mailman, anyway? What kind of training did they give him before they sent him out here with his little truck full of mail? Wait, the postal service is a government operation. Never mind. She’s dead. I don’t know her address in heaven. Or hell, or purgatory, or limbo. Take it over to the realtor’s and they can forward it to her heirs.

Now, I am not psychic or sensitive or anything else like that in the least. My psychic friends tell me I’m a dead rock as far as psychic phenomena go. But I swear, as sure as I stood there and tried to tell a baby mailman how to do his job, I felt someone come up behind me and try to look past me to see who was at the door. My hair stood on end. I got cold chills.

Can’t you take it to them? I still got a lot of mail to deliver.

I was about to give him the realtor’s address, so he could stick the envelope back in his collection box and reroute it. I opened my mouth, and I said, Sure. Give it here.

Thanks! He grinned all over, like a puppy, had me sign the green ticket, had me sign his tablet, and jumped back into his mail truck before I could change my mind. I stood there, looked at the fat envelope in my hand, and wondered what I had just done.

No one was behind me. I knew that. I was the only person in the house. Yet, somebody had come up behind me wanting to know who was at the door. I closed the door and looked around my newly settled living room, looking for whoever had spooked me like that.

Nobody. Of course. I was alone in the house.

I shuddered and went to put the envelope on the dining table. It’s an old house with all its own idiosyncrasies, and I didn’t know very many of them yet. There’s any number of explanations for the unknown presence behind me...

I put the folder with the envelope and got on with my cleaning. I finished the filing cabinets and started on the floor. It took three buckets of soapy water to get the mud up, and another two of clean to get the floor rinsed. After that it looked pretty good and I felt very accomplished, with the last clean room to my credit. I turned around in the middle of the room, admiring my work and dreaming of the changes I’d make. New paint, tile floor, refinish all the cabinet faces, set my books and computer on the shelves and desk, put my files in the cabinets, and I’d have a pretty nice office space.

If any of the local emergency services had any calls that night, I didn’t hear any of them. I was too tired even to pee. I almost didn’t get out of bed in when my alarm went off.

Sitting bleary eyed over my cereal and tea, I looked at the folder and the envelope lying on the dining room table. Some of the material was spilling out of the folder. I picked up the folder to shuffle everything back together. The envelope looked different. The flap was open.

I didn’t do it. I know better than to mess with someone else’s mail. I sat there with the folder in my hand and looked at that opened envelope. I put the folder down. I picked up the envelope. An aggressive hand and a thick pen addressed it to Mrs. X. I couldn’t read the return address. The ink had smeared or water had been spilled over it, and it was just an indecipherable blur.

The stamps had unfamiliar designs and unfamiliar alphabets. Likewise, for the originating post office stamp. It had been routed past several more post offices with unfamiliar alphabets, until it had gotten to the States. Those stamps I could read. This envelope had traveled more miles than I ever had.

I looked at it, a messenger from some corner of the world I