Flickering

Lyz Mancini

Flickering

She made herself walk past the house again. Sinking, it seemed, into the earth. Like something monstrously heavy had rolled down its porch ramp again and again, pushing weight into the grass and now-wild begonias. Someone planted them with care, with dirt-smoothed hands, but now they tangled with unnamed greenery and wound their way with hunger through the spokes of a rusting bicycle wheel. There was no sign of life now, except for the single lightbulb above the screen door.

Lily was drawn to unease, the tightening of her muscles beneath her clothes, the catching of breath. Her thoughts always volleyed to the worst explanation no matter the context, reveling in the maybes, the horrors, the rocks scattering down the precipice into freezing water below. She had seen bad things. This reality for others made her feel less alone. It was why she could fall asleep to every film starring a man with a mask and a chainsaw. The shivering fear of possibility tensed then relaxed her into restful dreams. She found these moments, but they also found her.

52 Greene Lake Road was a 1950s ranch-style house painted eggshell. It could have been white once. It was near a lake but not that near a lake. The curtains inside were too far to infer a fabric or color, too thick to move in the breeze despite the slight crack in one window. The chimney remained unsmoked. The wood of a small shed off to the side was decorated with a molded pattern that to Lily resembled coffee stains. There was never a car in the driveway. There were never bags of groceries waiting to be brought inside. There was never music. The mailbox’s mouth was always left yawning and empty. The grass was always the same length, not crewcut short but not wildly overgrown. Nothing ever moved or changed.

Except for the porch light. Sometimes it was off. Sometimes it was on. Today it was the latter.

Lily shivered into her puffy winter coat. Her dog, Bagel, barked and pulled on his leash. He wanted to get going. This was his least favorite route because it didn’t involve turtles, geese, horses, or other dogs. She had been drawn to this route because of this house. It was the almost-antithesis of life. If it weren’t for that damn light, she wouldn’t have even glanced twice. She stood there now, wind whipping her hair, fingers growing blue, staring. Trying to make sense of it.

There was a famed house in Los Angeles, clear across the country from Lily. It was deemed the Los Feliz Murder Mansion. In 1959 a cardiologist murdered his wife with a ball peen hammer. He attempted the same with one of his three children, then swallowed a fatal dose of Nembutal.

That all wasn’t that unusual. Lily’s favorite podcasts were full of stories almost boringly like this. What was odd was the fact that the house was never demolished, revamped, or even redecorated. If you climbed the wrought-iron gate and picked the lock of the front door, you’d find the living room bedecked and bedazzled as if preparing for Christmas morning. Dusted tinsel. A haphazard wire tree. Satin ribbons and bows from unwrapped presents.

Bagel whined. The wind mimicked him. Lily dropped a treat from her pocket. A car passed. Too close. The lightbulb was bright. Had it been changed? She made sure her walks differed in time, in days. No one was there on a Wednesday morning or a Sunday night. But that damn light—a spiral, a waft, a blinding glow. A whispering cry for help. A desperate need to be seen. Sometimes on. Sometimes off.

The endlessness of possibility kept Lily adhered to the concrete. Say there had been no mass murder. Perhaps an old man sat at the kitchen table inside, allowing his tea to grow cold, his sunspots to darken as he reveled in his loneliness. His wife chose those curtains. Bugs scattered across puddles of milk. There was great happiness there, or it was never there at all. Maybe the darkest evil was festering beneath the carpet, lurking, waiting, watching for someone to notice it. Maybe there was hurt. Maybe there was screaming. Maybe people bled. Maybe they loved each other. Maybe the house was not there. Maybe Lily wasn’t.

Unimaginable things happened in imaginable places. A truth Lily was well-aware of—it was why she recreated the sensations whenever she could. As a reminder from what she escaped.

Time was disrespectful of loss.

When Lily was a girl, she’d read The Bell Jar so much the pages yellowed and fluttered like rose petals to her bedroom floor. The fig tree metaphor plagued her, watching each branch grow outward from you, every possible life you could live, only being able to choose one. The grief and sorrow of never being able to live out every branch.

Figs are full of wasps, anyway.

This house—was it a fig branch? One she never chose? Or was it the one she chose and could never return to? It was familiar, yet her brain couldn’t quite place how.

She glanced down at her fingernails, bluer. Like antifreeze. Her skin translucent from the winter. From this path. So far from home. Bagel chewed on a piece of ryegrass.

If she left, how would she know when the light turned off? Her body, her skin yearned to see a finger from inside, gnarled or new, reach to flick the switch, provide an answer. Living or dead, this house? Her? Maybe that was haunting. Maybe that was heaven.

Lily never drew closer. She never looked away. She stood at the same exact distance, watching, her eyes growing cracked, dry, relentless, for a reveal one way or the other.

—

Lyz Mancini is a writer living in Catskill, New York. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Catapult, Salty, Shortwave Magazine, Vautrin, Witches Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a Tin House Winter Workshop and Pitch Wars alum.