The House Guest by Edward Ahern

It was a backyard party with an announcement. Bev’s promotion had been long coming and George Filmore had broadcast invited her coworkers and as many neighbors as he could get hold of. The two groups, unknown to each other and with little in common other than Bev, exchanged oil and water chit chat, slithering off each other without really blending.

Enough of the evening had elapsed for second and third drinks to work on inhibitions, and the noise level was at full crescendo. It was Bev’s evening of glory, and George had encouraged her to do nothing but mingle and bask. He spent his time ensuring that the bar and buffet were well stocked, and chatting with anyone who looked ignored.

Like the heavy-set woman who stood apart, alone, holding a large carryall bag. George nodded to and patted the shoulders of various people as he walked across the yard toward her. “I don’t think we’ve met, I’m George and I belong to Bev.”

“I’m, call me Alwina Alborg. Quite the gathering tonight. A real attention getter. Drew me right in.”

George smiled. “Don’t worry, everyone will be on their way home before the cops would need to be called. I don’t recall your name. Are you a new neighbor?”

“Just visiting.” She fidgeted. “Terrible way to introduce myself, but I wonder if before we continue our conversation you would invite me in to use your facility. It’s a matter of some urgency.”

George studied the woman in the dimness of the party lights. She was older than he first thought, her formless clothes looking like stone washed linen. But he had no excuse to refuse her request. “Of course. Go through the door under the deck, the ground floor bath is on the right.”

 “Thank you,” she said, then reached out and took his hand. She shook it formally as if being presented at court, and quickly walked into the house.

George dropped her from mind for about twenty minutes, then realized that he hadn’t seen her come out.  He scanned the crowd and when he couldn’t find her, went into their home. He moved quickly from room to room, but the bathrooms, kitchen, bedrooms, everything was vacant.

The ground floor bath, which she would most easily use was pristine, not a drop of water in the sink. But in the upstairs bath the hand towel was wrinkled and wet, the sink was damp, and there was a faint aroma of- what?-  something harsh and acrid.

 He came back out into the yard to find that Bev had been looking for him. It was time to cut the celebration cake. He replaced his worried expression with a smile and handed her the cake knife.

In the post pastry lull he leaned in toward Bev. “Who’s Alwina Alborg?”

“Who? Never heard of her.”

“She’s old, really stern looking. I let her use our bathroom.”

Bev’s smile was mellowed by three drinks and a sugar high. “Must be one of your long-ago girlfriends.”

That night, as he was sitting on the edge of their bed, Bev came over and kissed him on the top of his head. “Thanks for the party. It was fun.”

He stroked her thigh. “Just don’t get used to it.”

“No, of course not.”

They smiled at each other, recognized responses, and shifted into the comfortable patterns of married sex.

George, usually a heavy sleeper, woke at two am. He couldn’t shake his unease at having no idea what the stranger may have done or taken. He pulled on undershorts and tee and went back through the rooms then sat down at the desk in his little upstairs office. In the still of the witching hour, with not even the refrigerator running just then, he could almost hear his heart. And something else.

There was a faint scritching coming from behind the walls, as if something with claws was moving between the joists and beams. George got up and tip toed to the wall, then went to an adjacent bedroom and put his ear back up against another wall. Whatever it was had stopped, as if aware of his presence.

George held still, breathing gently through his mouth, listening, but heard nothing more. Mouse, he thought, or maybe a bat. At worst a possum. After another soundless five minutes he realized how tired he was and went back to bed, eventually falling asleep.

The next morning Bev’s usually chipper startup was muted. “You seem a little off your game. Everything all right?” he asked.

She looked up from her second mug of Italian roast, slightly bleary eyed. “I didn’t sleep well. The food maybe, or too wound up from the party. Just ignore me, I’ll come around.”

They reunited that evening after Bev’s office stint, just the two of them. They practiced unprotected sex in hopes of creating a child, but without success so far.  George wondered if the lack of generational bonding could eventually put the stale on their marriage.

It was Bev’s turn to cook dinner, and as she was preparing a veal Bolognaise, she heard a frantic rustling in the kitchen ceiling, punctuated by the anguished, high-pitched squeal of something caught. And judging by the ensuing silence, killed.

“George!” she yelled out. “There’s something in the ceiling. Come quick.”

He dropped his tablet onto the living room sofa and hustled into the kitchen. “What’s up?”

“It’s terrible. Sounds like animals killing each other in our ceiling.”

George recalled the sound he’d heard very early that morning but didn’t mention it. “Well shit, it’s an old house and I guess we’ve got visitors. I’ll call a pest control company in the morning.”

“Can’t you do something now?”

“Okay, hold off on dinner till I can run out to the housewares store and get some traps and poison.”

As he was driving over to the store he mulled over placements. Basement, attic, under the sinks, maybe some closets. Without a child or pet, anywhere was fair game.

He returned armed with the latest critter killing traps and poisons and after dinner placed them throughout the house. He suspected that whatever was in the walls wouldn’t come out for a stroll so it could be killed, but for Bev’s peace of mind made a little show out of setting everything up.

There were no more noises that evening or night, but it occurred to George that it had probably dined about the same time they had, and was enjoying a post gustatory nap.

George slept fitfully that night, but Bev, who had a real loathing of vermin, stayed awake sitting up in bed. George got up the next morning and started researching exterminating companies. He settled on one particularly ruthless sounding supplier- Cain’s Guaranteed Pest Extermination. He video conferenced the company as soon as it opened.

Cain to his surprise was a no-nonsense ferrety-skinny woman.

“George, here’s the deal,” she said.

 “We’re going to drill holes in the walls and ceilings, install cameras and insert poisoned bait. It’ll look ugly but can all be patched back up. We’ll also install traps inside your crawl spaces. If it dies inside the house, we may have to open up a larger hole to remove the carcass. Otherwise, it’ll stink and maybe discolor your ceiling. It’ll take about a week and will cost you three thousand dollars.”

George agreed, hung up, and called Bev at work. “Listen honey, I’ve got some exterminators coming tomorrow. You’re not going to be able to get any sleep here. Why not stay at your cousins for a few days until this gets resolved.”

“That’s not fair to you.”

“Fair is less important than your sanity. Come home and pack while I cook dinner.”

“I’ll call Sarah and see what she says.” George could hear the relief in her voice.

He then started looking for rat holes and droppings. On a crouching inspection of the exterior ground level of the house he stopped cold. Behind a forsythia bush was a gaping hole the size of a bowling ball, stucco and lath roughly torn sway like it was papier Mache.

George knelt down and shined his flashlight into the hole, but saw nothing. There was an acrid, funky odor. What the hell. Hole’s big even for a possum. There can’t be enough vermin in the house for it to eat. It’s probably prowling the neighborhood.

Once the exterminators arrived, they drilled holes, installed cameras, primed meat with poison and set up traps. They told him they used raw chicken. “Everything tastes a little bit like it.” And that they’d remove and replace the meat every day so things didn’t get stinky.

As they were finishing up for the day, the front door bell rang. It was their next-door neighbor, Peter. “George, have you seen Mortimer? I let him out in the back yard to pee yesterday evening late and he’s disappeared.”

George stifled a smile. He knew of no one who would want to steal an obese basset hound. Then he remembered his house guest. “Ah, Peter, was there any sign of a scuffle? Torn up grass, blood?”

“Yeah, part of the flower bed was ripped up. You think something got him?” Peter’s voice had gone to quaver.

“I’ve heard coyotes are on the prowl again. But hopefully he’s just mooching a meal down the block. I’ll keep on the watch for him.” Goodbye Mortimer, he thought.

That first night, everything set out, motion at one of the baits set off an alarm. George jumped out of bed and went to his lap top. The dining room surveillance camera’s light had automatically switched on and recorded a blurry, furry something. As grainy as the video was, George could see a flat-tailed otter like shape with carnivore incisors in a sort of alligator snout and claws that looked too predatory for digging. It resembled absolutely nothing he’d ever seen in nature shows.

George pulled the bait from the ceiling and noticed some tiny nibble marks on one edge. The beast, whatever it was, hadn’t eaten nearly enough to die. George guessed that further bait placements were probably useless. He sent the video to Cain and put in a call to her.

 Cain called him back an hour later. Her tone was no longer self-assured. “Mr. Filmore, your video is startling. I’ve never seen a critter like this.”

“So how can we kill it?”

There was silence. Then. “I’ll have to do research. But first, tell me something. Did you let any strangers into the house? Someone you’d never met before?”

 “A few days ago, an old woman. But what does that have to do with this monstrosity?”

“Probably nothing. But there’s a rumor, an old wives’ tale really, in the trade. About a hag who travels with a ferret like companion. For whatever reason she sometimes leaves the pest with a household. No one admits to having actually seen her or her pet, and some of us refuse to even talk about it, but supposedly it has poison spurs on its hind legs. People who attack the monstrosity reportedly die. All nonsense of course, but I wouldn’t try to confront whatever this really is on my own.”

George heard his voice get shrill. “So what the hell do I do?”

“I can be there by Friday. No charge. If I can trap this thing, it’ll make my reputation.”

“What do I do until then?”

“Make sure you don’t piss it off. Move out if you have to.”

That same day, as dusk was deepening into night, there was another ring on the door bell. When George opened the door, standing in the gloom was the woman from the party.

“You! What did you do to us!”

Her expression darkened into something ominous. “Questioning my actions can be unpleasant.” She softened her glare. “There was an—call it an emergency. I needed to immediately travel without my—call it an associate. Your house was at hand and you granted me admittance. You were not a preference but rather a necessity.”

As the woman spoke, she walked past George as if he were a door stop.

“Wait!” he yelled, “You can’t come in.”

She half-smiled. “Too late. That part of the legend is true, once you allow a being in it has free access. But don’t worry your pretty little head. I won’t kill you unless you want me to.”

“Who? What are you?”

“In one aspect I really was called Alwina. It’ll still do. I am come to retrieve my helper. You are still alive, so you haven’t seriously attacked it. It won’t maim you while I’m here. Stand back please.”

The woman keened, a high-pitched shrillness that penetrated to the bones of the house and tore at George’s ear drums. A rapid scritching could be heard across the front hall ceiling and down one wall. Next to them, the interior wall between the foyer and living room erupted with the sounds of wood ripping apart, The dry wall split open and fell away in chunks. A long, coarse-furred thing crawled out.

It had a flattened, hairless tail, a long snout from which incisors protruded, and two just noticeable spurs on hind legs with very noticeable claws.

“There you are, my pretty. Into the valise now.”

The impossible animal gave a dismissive glance at George and shuffled into the large cloth bag. A rank smell pervaded the room, like an overused cat litter box.

George resisted the urge to run. “What is that thing?”

“Ah. There are so few of them now, so few. It’s very distantly related to the platypus— duck bill shape and poison spurred, but with nasty claws and teeth, and a personality to match. “Now, listen, I’m obligated to pay you for the time it spent in your home.”

She reached into a pocket and pulled out a gold coin about the size of a silver dollar. “You must take this from my hand or the deal is not struck. You should do so, it is worth five hundred times its gold-weight.”

George hesitated, then put out his hand palm up and the woman carefully placed the coin in it.

“That’s done then. We’ll be off.” She picked up the cloth bag and swung it onto her shoulder as it held air bubbles. As she reached the doorway she turned back toward George.

“Ah. One last thing. Like the platypus my beloved servant sometimes lays eggs. It’s exceedingly rare, but in the very unlikely event that one or two eggs were laid and hatch, I wouldn’t interfere with them until they decide to move out. You might even enjoy feeding them.”

Edward Ahern

Image by Dave from Pixabay A Blue egg with a hole where the inhabitant has hatched and left.