“We can clean it all later.” I startled everyone with the cold command in my voice. “Right now, focus on this room. It’s the main problem.”
Max made his introductions, and I smiled as he upgraded me from “friend” to “someone who does house clearings.” Mrs. Bell’s eyes widened, but she didn’t object. Meanwhile, I pointed to the piles of ducks, barely viewable past the mountain of catalogs and old cardboard boxes. “Any idea if those are any good?”
“Well, I…I just don’t know.”
Mrs. Bell examined the pile, and her expression turned reluctant. “Some of these are actually quite well done, once you get them away from the trash.”
I was afraid of that. “Right. Well, take all the best ones outside. Kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom—anywhere Joe actually lived. Leave the crappy ones.”
Max rubbed his jaw. “Should we clear out all the rooms in the house?”
“Not like these. The other bedrooms? Opening the doors should be enough. Show Mrs. Bell.”
They both nodded, comforted by my certainty, the tasks I was setting them. That was good.Props, Rabbi had said. Well, maybe props had their purposes after all.
I picked up another box of paper, and Mrs. Bell scrambled to her feet, following Max into the back of the lake cottage. The first door he tried was a closet, the second apparently another bathroom—one Emily hadn’t been taking baths in. “Oh, my God!” was all I heard. A rapid succession of doors opening and closing followed. They came back looking a little stunned.
“Well, be glad there wasn’t an attic or a basement,” Max said.
“But where did he get all the paper?” Mrs. Bell protested. “Some of that—I mean, that had to take years to collect.”
I shrugged. “Is there a distribution center or Walmart anywhere close? He had to go somewhere to get his duck supplies. Wouldn’t take a man too long, if he was committed. And Joe was definitely committed.”
“I had no idea.” Her voice was hollow.
“C’mon. Let’s keep moving— Paper first, then any ducks we can find except the very best of them. Again, those you can put outside. The rest can just go in a pile.”
In the end, it took us four hours to clear the paper out of the main rooms of the house. I didn’t care about it being clean; Icared about it being more or less empty. By the end of it, I was satisfied.
And I hadn’t even done anything significant yet.
“You, um, want us inside the house or outside of it?” Max asked. I could tell he and Mrs. Bell had pow-wowed a little more closely over the past few hours. She looked at me the same way I’d seen too many people look at Rabbi Mordechai over the years: with hope, doubt, and desperation.
But I could feel the stirring inside of me, and what was more, the house could feel it. Joe’s pile of suckier-than-average carved ducks sat in a jumble in the center of the room, so much less malevolent now without the stacks of crap everywhere around them. The whole place had an air of overhanging murk, the windows cloudy with dust and grime. Now that the walls had been cleared, I could see why Joe had blocked his view of them.
It was like my own room—Sam’s too—but a million times worse, because from the looks of things, Joe had never even tried to clean off the layers of swear words, occult symbols, crude drawings, the bubbling wallpaper and paint, or the bodily fluids. Every exposed surface of the place seemed to pulsate with violence and outrage. And it stank as if it had all been drawn on yesterday, not probably years ago.
“Poor, poor Joe,” Mrs. Bell whispered.
“The walls can be cleaned and painted. I’m a fan of Kilz,” I said. Max looked at me oddly, but I powered on. “As to what’s next, you can watch if you want to. It’s not really that dramatic.” I blew out a short breath, pitching my smile to deliberately bright, almost manic. Fooling Max and Mrs. Bell, I hoped.
But they weren’t the only ones I wanted to deceive.
“I don’t know.” Max looked around. “This already feels kind of dramatic.”
I picked up the second item I’d stolen from the church. I knew Grandma Kate back at the house had a bible. Hell, sheprobably had six of them. But I didn’t feel right stealing one of hers. And given how messed up she clearly already was, I didn’t want to think about what she’d done to the insides of those bibles.
“So, what are you going to do now?” Max asked.
I shrugged, hefting the bible, feeling its heat in my hands. “Use my props. That’s why I brought them.”
“But Joe wasn’t a practicing…anything, so far as I can tell. He wasn’t a believer.”
“Yeah, well. You see where that got him.”
I picked up the bottle of water, then splashed some on myself, savoring the burn. I wasn’t wholly good, but I was still in control of this situation. Holding the bible in one hand, I walked around the edge of the room, sprinkling holy water and reciting the rabbi’s benediction for a blessed house.
The windows started to creak a little. I smiled, ignoring how my fingers stung. I opened the bible and began reciting the psalm Rabbi Mordechai most often used for this purpose, Psalm 91.
