Photo by Robin Jonathan Deutsch on Unsplash
“You do it!”
“No, you do it!”
“I’m not gonna do it! You said you were gonna do it!”
A circle of brave young boys stood on the sidewalk outside the dark house, casting lots and aspersions as to who would be the one to knock on the door. It was a ritual that had gone back untold decades in this town, where the local young gentlemen would argue about entering the unlit façade on Lucius Street until well after sunset, at which point they would all realize how late it was and go home.
Not a soul dared to cross the fence line, for fear of death and a fate worse than, as their parents had all promised them. This particular group bickered back and forth until the streetlights flickered on with a whine like a cat waking from its third nap of the afternoon. In a few moments, had nothing else happened, the group would have disbanded to the chorus of crickets that always heralded their departure.
Tonight, though, their inevitable cowardice was to be waylaid by young Jamie. Jamie was new to town, having just moved in down the street about four weeks prior. Jamie was an unusually observant child, having taken notice of the cadre that met near the street corner from time to time. He wondered what sort of game they were playing at. Jamie even walked toward them a couple times the week before, only to turn around and feign disinterest if anyone should turn their eyes in his direction. Tonight, though, Jamie was determined.
Jamie walked with purpose, his hands in the pockets of his light zip-up jacket his mom had insisted he wear. It was still a touch warm for layers, with the late summer sun stretching out over the quaint southern village and extending its visit through mid-October, but Jamie’s mom was a mom, after all, and he would be dressed for safety.
“Hey! What are you guys doing?” he shouted while still several feet away. His heart had been thumping uncontrollably, urging his feet to turn back towards home, but Jamie wanted to take a certain, irreversible action. Now that the boys were watching him, there was no turning back.
“Who are you?” a pimply little short kid at the back of the circle shouted back, jumping above the others to make sure he was seen.
Jamie, who was a couple inches shy of average himself, kept on walking. His unkempt bowlcut flopped about a little as he stepped. The bowlcut had been Mom’s idea, but they compromised. She wouldn’t make him brush it unless he was going to school. That was his first act of rebellion, and it gave him courage.
“I’m Jamie,” he answered as he stepped up on the curb. “My family moved in down the street over there.”
All the boys looked over Jamie’s head back in the direction that he pointed.
“Oh! You moved into Sarah’s house,” a chubby kid to the left said.
“Dang, man. We liked Sarah. She was hot. Why’d you make her move?” the short, pimply one said.
“Sarah’s family moved three months ago. Her dad got a job in Nashville, you idiot,” the tall kid with the baseball jersey on retorted while slapping the short one in the back of the head. “This kid didn’t make them move.”
“Well excuse me, but she was still hot and a whole lot more fun to look at than this guy,” the short, pimply one replied.
“Forget him,” the tall one proclaimed, now talking directly to Jamie. “He’s kinda stupid, but he’s alright sometimes. I’m Fred. This kid’s Squid.”
“I don’t know why I hang out with you,” Squid complained.
“Because nobody else likes you,” the chubby one shot back.
“Hey, shut up, Greg!” Squid screamed.
The rest of the circle laughed at Squid as he leapt towards Greg’s throat. Not that the diminutive Squid had a shot at reaching Greg or inflicting any harm on him. Greg looked like he was just “big-boned”, but he was really a great deal stronger than any of the others.
“Sorry, man. Like I said, I’m Fred. We were just hanging out here in front of the old Zahn house.”
“The Zahn house?” Jamie asked innocently enough. The question was not received so well. Each of the boys standing there, all weaned and raised on the dangers of the Zahn house, just stared at Jamie. For some, it was with envy that they peered at his innocence. For others, it was nothing short of the fear that the Zahn house engendered in them seeping through.
“Man, everybody knows about old Zahn!” Squid screeched, finally breaking the stunned silence.
“Give him a break, Squid. He’s new to town. You think people in Los Angeles know about Zahn?” Greg stood to defend Jamie.
“But I’m not from Los Angeles. I’m from…” Jamie started, but was cutoff quickly.
“They should know about Zahn! Everybody should know about old Zahn!” Squid interrupted, turning to Jamie with an explanation. “Old Zahn is the worst man who ever lived. Most people think he’s dead, but nobody really knows for sure. Kids used to disappear into his house and never come home. They say the police checked it out, but they could never find anything to prove he was doing anything. And the creepiest part? His lights were always on!”
“Why is that creepy?” Jamie asked, rightfully confused. “Aren’t haunted houses supposed to be dark and spooky?”
“I never said it was haunted, you superstitious rube. I said he was evil!” Squid yelled.
“You didn’t say he was evil, Squid,” Fred corrected. “You just said he was the worst.”
“Shut up, Fred!” And again, the circle fell into their old ritual of laughing at Squid, the ineffective hothead.
“There aren’t any lights on now. If he always kept his lights on, shouldn’t this mean that he’s dead?” Jamie asked.
“That’s the thing. It wasn’t like his lights all went out one day and never came back. It happened slowly. One by one,” Greg continued, picking up where Squid had left off. “They say the last window to go dark was that top floor one right up there.”
Greg pointed to the attic window, and all the boys turned to look, half expecting a shadowy figure to be standing there staring down at them.
“That can’t be true. Can it?” Jamie asked, starting to feel a chill at the thought.
“It sure is,” said Orson, the quiet, shy fellow who had been hiding in the back of the circle. “My cousin told me so. He’s in high school.”
The rest of them agreed with Orson, murmuring their concurrence with uncertain sounds and grunts.
“So what are we talking about, then? You guys just like standing here and discussing it?” Jamie wondered aloud.
“Nawh, man. One of us was gonna go up to the door and see if it’s open,” Squid explained. “Nobody’s seen Zahn in years, but every once in a while somebody goes up to the front porch to look inside. They all say the door is cracked open, just waiting for someone to be brave enough to push it open and step inside, and say hi to Zahn’s rotting corpse!”
Squid jumped forward as he said the last little bit, causing his friends to leap back in terror. He might be the punching bag of the group, but sometimes he punched back.
Jamie had not quite figured out what made him step forward in this particular moment. Perhaps it was just the momentum from his initial steps carrying him deeper into the fervor of meeting new friends. Perhaps it was just prepubescent stupidity.
“I’ll go,” Jamie nonchalantly offered.
The others laughed it off, assuming that Jamie was displaying the same false bravado they all did in bright afternoon sunlight. Several miles away at school. They only began to take Jamie seriously when he actually walked forward towards the front door.
“Wait, no! You really don’t need to do this, man,” Fred shouted.
“Are you crazy, New Guy? He’s crazy, right?” Squid spat, teetering on the verge of hysterics.
Photo by Lan Gao on Unsplash
“It’s gonna be fine,” Jamie said, turning to walk backwards and address his new friends. “I’m just gonna go up there, open the door, and come right back. What else could happen? It’s not like there’s anyone alive in there.”
Jamie relished in the pale terror that washed over the other boys at his intentional wordplay. They only showed a little relief when he grinned back, acknowledging that he was in on the joke.
As soon as his back was turned once more and his feet were again carrying him towards the threshold, that momentary relief passed. For their whole lives, these boys had been indoctrinated to the forbidden terror of this wretched house. It was a place that was not to be violated, and this foolish kid from out of town was about to violate it.
Jamie climbed the short steps up the front porch that mark the entryway to all good Southern homes, noting how the boards creaked and groaned under his meager weight. He was a bit shrimpy for his age, but even still, his frame seemed too great a burden for the aged, rotted slats to manage.
Though the stairs were decrepit and weak, the aged door before him stood as sturdy as an ancient oak, the weight of many years gone by tugging at the hinges. Jamie put a hand to the brass doorknob, entirely forgetting the gaze of the boys whose approval surged him forward in the first place. The knob turned with ease, wanting to spin effortlessly in his hand. As the latch released, the strong door gently swung backwards, itself fading into the shadows behind. The dimming sunlight of the autumn evening had no power beyond the doorstep, a world of black welcoming Jamie in.
And as he stepped forward, disappearing from the view of the others, the boys knew that they had lost a friend they hardly knew.
“Well…he seemed like a cool guy,” Squid announced. “Too bad.”
The others were too stunned to even reprimand him.
On the other end of the door, Jamie stood motionless while his eyes adjusted to the empty blackness around him. Not a single light burned anywhere in the house so far as he could tell. The house was truly empty.
Jamie’s eyes slowly grew to embrace the lightless house, letting vague shapes turn into objects. Even though there was little to see, Jamie noticed an abundance of sounds to decipher. Weather-worn floorboards bent and snapped under his feet, making Jamie wonder if this place was even safe to walk around in. A crackly old radio in the other room played a Trace Adkins song on the local country station, the realization of which told Jamie he might not be alone.
Heavily curtained windows shielded the living room off the main corridor, keeping every surface as bleak as the cellar must be. Every old house had a cellar, right? A grandfather clock by the stairs leading up to the next level swayed gently with the pendulum.
Despite the threatening aura of the house, Jamie held firm. He knew in his heart that any wayward shadows might have been enough to shake his resolve, but there were no shadows to speak of due to the fact that the entire house was bathed in shadow. There were hardly enough points of light breaking through to cast any unique patterns of darkness upon the floor. Rather, everything was bathed in absence. Every surface sat untouched by warmth, waiting for a gentle glow to bless them once more.
The wafting sounds of creaky floors and a poorly tuned radio nearly drowned out the other auditory mystery that echoed gently through the still, stale breeze inside the house. Jamie ceased his movement all at once, though, when his ears plucked a new sound out of the air.
It came through as a moaning, wheezing sort of groan at first. Then it began to form words.
“I said who are you?” the voice struggled to repeat.
Jamie’s chest stopped suddenly before once again making up for lost time. His heart threatened to fling itself from his rib cage as Jamie’s worst suspicion was confirmed. Someone did, indeed, habitate this house.
“Come on out, now,” the voice insisted once more, this time with greater urgency and strength.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It’s just me!” Jamie offered, as if the simplest explanation of “It’s me” would have any bearing on a complete stranger. “I was walking by your house and I assumed it was abandoned. I thought I’d just…walk in and look around.”
“Sure, kid. Sure,” the voice accepted incredulously. “So you’re not with that gaggle of rabble-rousers in front of my fence out there?”
“No,” Jamie answered in all sincerity, since he didn’t know what any of those words meant, exactly.
“Well if you’re gonna explore this ‘abandoned’ house, why don’t you come on in and explore the parlor?” the voice insisted.
Photo by Firdaus Roslan on Unsplash
Jamie found himself obeying the instructions he was given, as he turned and walked through the doorway into the seating area. His eyes were still getting used to the dim surroundings, but Jamie could clearly tell that everything about this house was old. The hardwood flooring that creaked and echoed under his footsteps was old. The clearly useless light fixtures were old and outdated, each one defined by sweeping bronze sculptures that protruded from the bottom. When Jamie broke through the haze that lined the outer extremities of the parlor, he recognized that the man whose house he had invaded was also very old.
While he had white hair like most old men, the aged fellow who sat before Jamie at the moment would be best described as having wispy strands of raggedy bleached cotton extending at random intervals. His sallow skin clung to an arthritic skeleton like a stretched leather glove over your hands on a frightfully cold winter night.
“You don’t look like much,” was all the man said when his yellowed eyes acknowledged the boy’s presence.
Jamie felt as if he should be insulted by the comment, but never really got to that particular emotion. In the moment, he just took it as an awkward introduction by an old man who had not left his home in several years.
“Sit, boy,” the man commanded, in the manner of old men who are used to people obeying them. “Name’s Zahn. This is my house you’re in. Now that I’ve told you my truth, what’s your truth?”
“My truth?” Jamie repeated somewhat idiotically.
Zahn wouldn’t acknowledge the boy’s question. He just sat staring face forward waiting for an actual answer.
“It was on a dare,” Jamie confessed after a short period of hesitant resistance. “I mean, it was a dare, but not really my dare. It was someone else’s dare. I’m just new in town and I haven’t really made any friends yet, and I was kinda hoping that if I came in here and spent a few minutes, that I could make friends with these other kids I met outside. They didn’t even make me come in here. We were getting along fine. We probably could have left and gone to play ball or something and been just fine, but I thought it would be a way to really get in there with them, you know?”
Jamie had revealed his entire motivation for trespassing in almost a single breath. By the time he was done, Jamie had to huff and puff until his breathing returned to normal a minute later.
“That is the truth, then, isn’t it?” Old Man Zahn nodded as he grinned. “I know you weren’t expecting to find me in this old house, were you? What did you think you’d find in here?”
Jamie rather sheepishly avoided answering the question for as long as he could, until he awkwardly answered, “Maybe some bones. Or a body.”
Zahn’s roaring laughter set Jamie into a state of unease, where he now squirmed for reasons other than his own awkwardness.
“A body, eh?” the man said between fits of uncontrollable, raucous laughter. “Well, I guess you’re not all wrong. I’ve got a body, after all. I guess it’s just too bad for you that there’s still a soul attached to it, huh?”
Zahn had a unique way of creating and erasing discomfort in his guest. At one moment, Jamie felt like Zahn was slathering over the young boy’s presence. At the next, stars filled Jamie’s eyes and all he saw was the genial presence of a lonely old man who spoke sweetly and warmed the room, much like anyone’s grandfather might.
“It’s a nice house you’ve got here,” Jamie offered, hoping to turn the conversation to something other than talk of bodies and spirits. “Maybe a little dark, though.”
As Jamie looked around, straining to see whatever he could, the boy noticed that every single lightbulb in the living room was shattered. No wonder the man never turned any lights on. It wouldn’t make much of a difference if he did.
“Eggh,” Zahn groaned dismissively, swatting his hand as if he were relieving himself the annoyance of an invisible fly. “I’m an old man, you know. I don’t care how dark it is, you can see that, can’t you? These eyes don’t work quite the way they ought to. Wasn’t much use in having lights when I ain’t using them.”
“So you just live in this big house all by yourself, but you stay in one room the whole time?” Jamie asked. “Why not move?”
“Why should I move? Until you, nobody much bothered me here,” Zahn bit back, then showed a full set of possibly false teeth with a smile that was slightly too wide for the boy’s comfort. “Besides. I’ve lived here so long...you could almost say my life is tied to this place.”
“Okay,” was all Jamie said. “Well...it’s time for me to get going. I think I’ve been in here long enough to impress the guys.”
“You’ve stayed in here long enough to impress me, that’s for sure,” Zahn replied. “You’re welcome to come back tomorrow evening. If you’d like.”
Jamie’s vacillating discomfort simultaneously swung both ways. Zahn’s offer appeared genuine, there was no question of that. The only doubt that Jamie had was the why. Why was it such a genuine welcome?
Either way, Jamie stood from a chair he didn’t recall sitting in and turned to leave until he was caught by the wrist. He tried to free his arm from the old man’s grip, which was shockingly strong, until his arm automatically stopped resisting.
“When you come back,” Zahn paused, his yellow-aged eyes level with Jamie’s, “make sure to invite your friends in, too.”
Jamie nodded wordlessly as Zahn released his hold. Now that he was free, Jamie escaped the abyssal seating area and proceeded automatically to the door. Upon exiting, Jamie felt the fading sunlight warm his face. He fought to shake off a fog that had overcome him, probably from the musty darkness and the typical “old man” feel of the house, Jamie told himself. Not even staring directly at the sun helped Jamie crack the stupor that Zahn’s house had left him in.
In the time inside, Jamie had forgotten how noisy the boards on the front porch and the steps were. Before he had even moved three feet from the exit, Jamie could hear a commotion rising from the others.
“Hey, he’s back!” Squid cried.
“I told you he wasn’t gonna die,” Orson squealed.
“I didn’t say he was gonna die!”
“Yeah, but you said he’d be super old or something. He looks fine to me,” Fred shot back.
“That’s just what my dad always said about Old Zahn’s house,” Squid added.
“Your dad also said there were only eight planets,” Greg teased, continuing the pattern of abuses that had likely continued unabated in Jamie’s short absence.
“So what happened? What was it like?” Fred asked
As Jamie walked closer, he had to rattle his head as if waking from an afternoon nap.
“I don’t know. He was nice, I guess,” Jamie said without thinking, still trying to shed the confusion that clogged his mind.
The jaw on each boy standing around and staring at him expectantly dropped to reveal a gaping mouth deep enough for free-swinging tonsils to get a little fresh air. None of them were quite sure that they heard Jamie correctly.
“Hold up. What?” Greg shouted.
“You’re telling me that Old Man Zahn still lives here?” Squid screamed. “Like...he’s still alive!?”
“Yeah, he was nice, really. We talked for a little bit,” Jamie acknowledged.
“And he didn’t try to eat you?” Squid wondered aloud, still suffering from a severe case of disbelief.
“No, Squid, he didn’t try to eat me,” Jamie responded, falling in line with the tone expected of one rebuking Squid’s absurdity. The tone clearly didn’t sit well with Squid as he shrunk back, looking more wounded than angry. “But he did invite us all in tomorrow night.”
If the boys had been stunned to hear that old Zahn was still alive, they were overjoyed at the prospect of meeting him. It was as if a big celebrity knew them by name.
Most of them, at least.
Fred, who had been quietly watching Jamie with concerned eyes, spoke in defiance of the new plan.
“You guys can’t be for real right now. We’ve all heard the stories. All we’ve heard our whole lives is that this guy eats kids or kills kids or does something really bad to kids,” Fred pleaded, hoping that reason would sway them. “I’m as glad as anyone that Jamie here made it out, but what does that mean? It doesn’t mean anything! What if we all go in there tomorrow and this guy takes an axe and chops us up into little pieces and puts us in his freezer for cold storage?”
As the de facto leader of the group, Fred was used to having his opinion taken for fact. Today, though, nothing he could say would be enough to sway the determined young fools.
The crowd had turned on Fred to the point that they even started laughing at Squid’s verbal assaults at his expense. It was useless. They had each made up their mind to step foot into the house tomorrow evening to see the old man they had feared for so long, and each one made sure to let Fred know that they had no fear or respect for his concerns.
Each one, that was, except Jamie. While the rest laughed at Fred and had their fun, Jamie simply stood and watched. He wanted to absorb their momentary adoration, he wanted to appreciate his newfound celebrity within the tight-knit group, but all he could do was pity Fred’s new status. Had it really been just a few minutes ago that Fred was the one who urged the others to welcome Jamie into the circle? And now, as if there had been some kind of unspoken coup, Jamie’s lone suggestion had supplanted Fred as the figurehead.
The boys all wandered off towards their respective homes while the gently fading autumn sky gave way to a cover of stars above. While the whining streetlamp kicked on above their heads, Jamie and Fred were the last two remnants of the conference still holding session in the street.
“I’m sorry,” Jamie offered, his face parallel to the ground.
Fred graciously accepted the apology with a shrug. “It really isn’t your fault. When they get it into their head that they’re going to do something stupid, they do it,” Fred explained, failing to hold in a chuckle. “You…you really should’ve been here the night they decided to try belly sledding down Hill Street last January. It was about 20 degrees out that night and Squid got the bright idea to turn his dad’s water hose on at the top of the hill. After the street froze over, well…we all took our shirts off and tried to sled down the hill on our stomachs.”
Jamie looked on in horror as Fred doubled over in uncontrollable laughter.
“Oh, it hurt so bad. You can’t imagine. But it was the best night we’ve had in a long time,” Fred concluded when he finally caught his breath. “Our parents were pretty peeved at us, though, because nobody could get their cars off the street for three days, it was so iced over.”
Photo by Thomas Stephan on Unsplash
While Fred lost himself in reminiscing, Jamie’s mind wandered in the darkness to another place entirely. His eyes swam in the blackness above, evading the pinpricks of starlight at cosmic distances apart, while his perspective drifted through eons in a flash. Then, all at once, he snapped back to his own mind and shook his head violently, as if waking up.
By this time, Fred had recognized Jamie’s wandering mind and started to stare.
“Hey, man. You okay?” Fred asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jamie instinctively answered, no particular intonation in his voice. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Listen, Jamie. I, uh…I realize I just met you and all, but you don’t seem okay. I mean, you don’t seem like you did before,” Fred tried to explain.
“Before? Before what?”
“Before you went in that house. You seem different,” Fred confessed, his hand resting on Jamie’s shoulder while he ducked his eyes to try and look into Jamie’s wandering expression.
“I promise, I’m fine,” he reassured his new friend. “It’s just…it’s getting late and I should probably get home.”
“Okay, sure,” Fred relented, “but promise me you won’t go back in that house tomorrow. I don’t feel right about this, man.”
“It’s gonna be fine,” Jamie firmly rebutted, convincing himself alone in the process. “Nothing to worry about.”
As Fred and Jamie finally broke conclave and headed in their separate directions, though, Jamie still found his mind drifting through the night to faraway places and times. An incomparable exhaustion fell upon him as he strolled through the night, but Jamie did well to convince himself that these feelings were just a result of the earlier darkness of autumn. Or perhaps it was from the distinct “old man” presence of Zahn’s house. After all, he often felt tired when he left his grandparents’ house. They always kept it too dark and too warm for his liking, and it made him sleepy. Zahn’s house fit the bill perfectly, so maybe that’s all it was.
When Jamie got home, he barely spoke a word to his parents about the new boys he’d met or the daring activity he had undertaken that night. He wouldn’t even stop to eat dinner. He just wandered up to his room and into bed.
To say that Jamie dreamed that night would be misleading. His unconscious self was plagued by visions too bizarre to explain. He watched floating shapes of unknown origin glide in and out of existence, as if slipping between planes of reality. At times he felt that his own sight could follow these otherworldly figures into their own realm, and at other times he felt that he was being dragged headlong behind them without a conscious effort. When Jamie woke the next morning, his exhaustion the night before had been replaced by a weary stupor. His limbs weighed a ton as he tried to roll out of bed. His head was an anchor. And yet, he found himself filled with life at the thought of getting back inside Old Man Zahn’s house.
Jamie’s lessons rolled off of him like melted butter on a Teflon pan that entire day. His mother had waited to enroll him in the local schools until after she had been able to tour the facility and speak to some teachers.
“I want to make sure it’s a good fit for you,” she kept repeating to Jamie every time he asked about entering the regular school where the other boys were. She was so concerned about enrolling Jamie in school that she had made sure to consider calling the principal’s office at least twice since moving into the area.
Until she was able to ascertain the appropriateness of the public school’s environment for her precious boy, Jamie’s mother insisted that he complete a homeschooling program she had found. Every day when Jamie sat down to read through his lessons and practice his problems, he felt nothing but isolation. In Jamie’s mind, he was the only homeschooled child in the world. Everyone else was getting this vital experience he wanted so desperately, and here he was, the only kid in his class.
For the first few weeks, the sense of separation had been easier to bear. He never knew what it was he was isolated from. Now that he knew the boys at the school, now that he knew the experience he had been ripped away from, the isolation tore at Jamie’s soul and gnawed his calm. Had his mother been remotely attentive to his studies that morning, Jamie may well have shot her a couple of unwise quips in anger. As it was, he sat by himself in a wooden desk by the upstairs window and stared down the street at the dark house. Even in the unimpeded light of an October morning, Zahn’s house sat in shadow.
Yet, that shadow proved promising. For Jamie, the house in the dark would be his gateway to a friendship. This was what he needed. He was sure of it. Jamie had been the neighborhood legend. He was the one who wandered into the “haunted house” on the block and returned unscathed. And this afternoon, after his mom said he was done with lessons and his new friends were done with school, Jamie would be the hero who introduced his friends to Old Man Zahn and who made them legends, too.
In Jamie’s mind, no other eventuality was even worth considering. This was the one reality that existed laid out before him. As clear as reading a map of the highway, with one unobtruded pathway to the city, Jamie saw how his life was going to proceed once he could escape the tragedy of homeschooling.
Still...there was a discomfort. There was an internal sway that warned Jamie he should run far from that house. There was a sting in his gut that picked away at the outward confidence he exuded regarding this particular decision. Jamie’s conflict distracted him, but it could not dissuade him.
The sun was not quite as low as it had been the day before when Jamie managed to escape the confines of his house. By the time he reached the street corner on Lucius where Zahn’s bleak mausoleum rested, the rest of the boys were standing at attention and eagerly anticipating his arrival.
“Where have you been, newbie?” Squid squeaked.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was finishing up my homework,” Jamie answered, somewhat ashamed.
“You’re homeschooled. Isn’t it all homework?” Greg challenged, pulling laughter from the other guys, which did nothing to ease Jamie’s embarrassment.
“Listen, alright? My mom wouldn’t let me leave...”
“His mommy!” they all laughed.
“You walked into Old Man Zahn’s but you can’t say no to Mommy?” Squid teased.
“Shut up, Squid. You wore the same pink sweater every day for a month because your mom told you it looked cute,” Orson uncharacteristically piped up.
Squid tried to defend his honor by proclaiming how his grandmother had hand-knitted the sweater a week before she died and how she had spent months putting it together, but everybody was too busy laughing at him to hear such passionate pleas. With the spotlight of prepubescent ridicule once again firmly placed on Squid, Jamie breathed easier.
“Hey. Is Fred not coming?” Jamie asked.
“No,” Greg said. “All day at school, he swore up and down that he wasn’t coming with us tonight. Said it was the stupidest idea he’s ever heard.”
Jamie’s eyes noticeably dropped when Fred’s absence was confirmed. Even though it looked like the rest of the group had welcomed Jamie in without their leader’s endorsement, Fred had been the first one to really embrace Jamie the day before. In their short time knowing each other, Jamie had latched on to Fred rather strongly. Going into this new experience without Fred seemed wrong. Seemed more foolish, somehow.
“Forget that loser,” Squid inserted. “Are we gonna do this or not?”
Jamie had to shake himself back to consciousness after a lapsing moment.
“Sure, yeah. Yeah, of course. We’re gonna go on up there,” Jamie asserted. “Let’s go!”
His initial excitement around entering the house had abated some, but not from the warnings in his chest. Jamie simply regretted undertaking this grand experience without his friend.
Nervous excitement shook through each of the boys as they took their first step towards the house. For so long, they had simply stood at the corner and watched the presumed empty house, never daring to inch toward the door. Today they would finally shatter whatever impenetrable barrier their parents and their own suburban psyches had built up around the forbidden place.
Jamie’s footsteps caused the same creaking on the front steps that they had made a day earlier. Unlike yesterday, though, the front door was fully closed and locked. Latched shut from the inside. Jamie knocked and waited as the rest of the boys joined him on the porch, causing the beams at their feet to bow ever so slightly.
Each one shuffled behind Jamie, shoving their neighbor out of the way so they could stand comfortably in such a small space while they waited impatiently.
“What’s the holdup, Jamie?” one kid asked.
“Yeah, is he coming?” they urged as a crowd.
Jamie’s nervousness shifted entirely. He had previously feared what might happen when they went inside. Now the fears that concerned him most were the ones regarding what might happen if they were unable to go inside.
“Mr. Zahn?” Jamie shouted while knocking again. “It’s Jamie. We met yesterday.”
“You didn’t meet anybody,” Squid taunted under his breath, causing Jamie to wheel on him.
“Say that again,” Jamie fought back, showing more spine than normal.
“I’m saying you lied! You never met anyone. You came up here and stood on the porch where we couldn’t see you, then you came waltzing back talking about meeting Old Man Zahn,” Squid argued. “You never met him! You just figured we’d be too scared to call you on it, but I’m calling you on it! I am calling you on all your---”
When the front door opened to reveal a ghostly, haggard old man with taut skin highlighting the outline of his bones, all of the boys except for one took a wild step backwards. Orson fell off the porch and landed on his backside, he stepped so far back. Nobody noticed.
“What are you yelling about, boy? I can’t hardly hear you to begin with, but I certainly don’t need you screaming at me out here,” Zahn growled. “I told you I’d let you in, so I’m letting you in.”
“Yes, sir. I’m really sorry about that,” Jamie bowed in apology.
“Well. You boys Jamie’s friends?” he said, sounding somewhat unimpressed.
Each one nodded silently, still dumbstruck that they were finally meeting the object of their terror. And, aside from the initial ghoulish appearance, they were so far still alive.
“Not sure what you fool kids want to see this old place for,” Zahn continued as he led the boys inside, gesturing gently with his outswept left arm while his right held fast to the side of the open front door. “Ain’t anything here worth seeing. Just an old house with an old man, and we’re both resting on old bones.”
One by one, the boys followed Jamie and Zahn inside. Much like Jamie had done a day before, they moved slowly while their eyes adjusted to the darkness. Piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit, the menagerie of aged artifacts revealed itself to the boys. Wondrous objects from various eras, all covered in a thick padding of dust, hung carelessly from the walls. Orson’s keen eyes latched on to a couple of bizarre placards with unusual symbols that rested beside one another. It struck him that these two lacquered enamel remnants of a vile past were the only two objects that had been cleared of dust recently. And yet, he walked on.
Each one crowded into the living room, listening to the crackling radio playing a local jazz station and murmuring about the things they noticed along the walls. In their excitement and steady din, nobody noticed the thud of the door closing and latching shut.
“Here, Jamie. You mind coming downstairs with me? I think I’ve got a box of candles down there somewhere,” Zahn suggested. “There’s too dang many people in here to not have any light. These boys are liable to bump into something or somebody, we’ve gotten so packed in here.”
In his slow, intentional style of walking, Zahn eased himself toward a door in the wall that would open to reveal a cellar staircase. Jamie followed dutifully, making sure to keep his eyes tight on the old man’s back in the fading daylight that seeped through. As they jostled down the steps, Jamie started to worry for the old man. Zahn picked up speed with each successive step and Jamie wondered how he could move those old bones at such a pace. He never lost control, though, and in an instant Zahn had reached the bottom of the steps and whirled out of sight. Not that hiding was difficult in a black cellar.
“Mr. Zahn?” Jamie called out when he reached the bottom, feeling his way around in the blackness. “Mr. Zahn, I’m down here. Where are you?”
Soft, reverberating sounds abounded in the echoing cellar space. Each shuffle of Jamie’s unseen feet created a chaotic ripple of vibrations in the air, making it sound as if an angry gang were rounding him. Gentle whooshes and scrapes, like the sound of sandpaper against itself, escaped a nearby corner of the room. Or, at least Jamie thought it was a corner.
“Mr. Zahn?” Jamie repeated, the question in his voice more obvious this time. “Mr. Zahn, I really need to know where you are.”
The only sound that met Jamie’s ears was the continuous scratching coming from somewhere in the black.
“Mr. Zahn! Please, Mr. Zahn, I’m scared!” his voice quavered while he begged for a reply. “Please, Mr. Zahn, where are you?”
“I’m here,” came the whisper over Jamie’s shoulder before the crashing of a pipe on the back of his head sent Jamie crumpling to the floor.
Photo by Saskia van Manen on Unsplash
When he awoke a short minute or two later, Jamie tried desperately to move his limbs. There was an inexplicable sensation that followed, almost like he was a tangled marionette. As Jamie tugged on his right arm, his left leg would move. Trying to wriggle his right leg meant that he pulled his left arm nearly out of socket. Jamie struggled and fought for a moment, but then gave up the ghost as he recognized a silhouette in faint candlelight.
“I wouldn’t bother tugging on those ropes, boy,” the smooth voice instructed. “I’ve gotten quite good at tying knots over the many, many years.”
When the figure turned to face Jamie, it was nothing like the taut, sallow face that had been there in the dim light above. Perhaps the soft candle played more favorably with gentle shadows covering for Zahn’s age, Jamie convinced himself, because the effect was rather uncanny. There was no way that this virile, lithe figure of youthful maturity was the same as the wrinkled and destitute monolith of fallen eons who had initially drawn Jamie down the stairs. And yet, it was certainly the same man.
The velvet in his throat replaced the gravel that the former Zahn had spoken with. Where there had been a surly, yet welcoming seniority about him, now there was simply a disdainful menace. The Zahn who towered over Jamie now had woven a trap and the hapless boy fell right into it.
“Do you pay power bills, kid?” Zahn asked, not bothering to wait for a reply. It was only when he failed to speak that Jamie realized he had also been fully gagged. “Of course, you don’t. You’re just a stupid kid. Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to keep a house running?”
Zahn’s eyes wandered upwards, taking in the hidden majesty he imagined his abode must display.
“I know, I know. It’s all just so shocking,” Zahn mocked. “I guess you could say that all these young souls hanging around just...give me life.”
The rejuvenated Zahn gathered up candles while Jamie remained motionless on the ground, reserving his strength for a better opportunity should one arise. Not that he had much strength to spare. Jamie didn’t think he’d been hit that hard in the head, just enough to render him unconscious for a brief spell, but he felt incredibly weak. As if whatever energy he had left was being siphoned off by the minute.
“I wasn’t kidding when I told you my life was tied to this house yesterday. I just wasn’t being very clear,” Zahn hinted, his face now pulled quite near to Jamie’s. “Intentionally, so. But don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. Yet. Your friends upstairs aren’t as lucky, but I need you to help me out. How do you feel about being my slave for the next few decades?”
Zahn laughed at his own dark humor as he turned back towards the stairs. As he went up each one, Zahn’s speed wilted. As he strode up the steps, Zahn’s youthful self dissipated. The color in his opulent, full hair vanished and gave way to the scraggly white twine that had existed before, all while his muscle definition sagged under the unchanging ratty clothing.
“Phew,” Zahn huffed, reeling from the deleterious effect of his most recent untransformation, “these stairs have always taken it out of me.”
Jamie could hear Zahn speaking to the boys for a second while the door swung open, telling them that he had some candles and that their friend would be back up in a minute with more. Such a lie might just buy Zahn a few seconds, or it might buy him all night. After all, this crew wasn’t exactly accustomed to Jamie being around. Why would they recognize his absence when his presence had only mildly been established a day before?
In a matter of minutes, Zahn would have the other boys trapped or hypnotized or somehow otherwise subdued. In his advanced age, he likely wouldn’t be able to go around one-by-one bashing them all upside the head, so he must have another trick up his sleeves, Jamie assumed. No matter what the method, the end result would be the same. Zahn would have each one of Jamie’s new friends absorbed into his soul, or something like that, and it would be all Jamie’s fault.
Jamie was struck with a thought at that moment, though, that filled him with something akin to hope. He realized that not all of his friends would fall victim to Zahn’s wickedness. Freddy would go on living. Freddy would be free, and that thought was all Jamie needed to let his consciousness drift away. Perhaps Freddy would remember them, would be able to inform someone official that this evil man had kidnapped a bunch of neighborhood boys. Freddy would be the lone survivor who saw to their vengeance, whether that vengeance took the form of an arrest or arson, and that was the thought that accompanied Jamie as he let go and gave himself over to sleep.
Shortly after being struck with a thought, Jamie was instead struck with a spotlight shining through the narrow cellar window several feet up. The beam had interrupted his rest, though Jamie had no concept of whether he had been out for a few seconds or a few hours. He first dismissed the blinding light as Heaven’s glow, then as a continuation of a dream when he saw the face that had last been in his memory before sleep took hold.
It took some convincing for Jamie to realize that this was no dream and that Freddy really was standing just outside the glass pane with a Maglite he’d stolen from his dad’s car.
“What are you doing napping in the basement?” Freddy seemed to shout, his voice muffled through the glass.
Jamie’s attempt at response through a rope gag that cut his cheeks was muffled far worse.
“I’ll be right down. Give me a sec,” Freddy reassured before disappearing.
A moment later, Jamie heard a loud crash behind him somewhere as dim moonlight glided along the cellar floor. Shortly thereafter, he heard the thud of Freddy’s feet hitting the floor and then noticed his bonds grow loose with a slice.
“The cellar door outside was unlocked. I guess Zahn’s not too worried about keeping people out. Just in. What the heck happened here?” Freddy asked, untying the gag around Jamie’s mouth.
Rather than answer the question, Jamie threw himself in Freddy’s arms and embraced his friend with a deathgrip of a hug that was extremely uncharacteristic of young male friendships. While Freddy was somewhat confused, he accepted the hug and returned the sentiment, understanding that Jamie needed this at the moment.
Jamie had to fight to keep his tears from falling, experiencing pure euphoria and relief at the sensation of his arms and legs untied. He wasn’t afraid to cry in front of Freddy. The guy had saved his life, for goodness’ sake. Jamie just knew that he had more important things to do than cry right then and there. Tears would come later.
“We’ve got to save the others,” Jamie finally blurted out, only breaking off his hug long after the period of embrace had grown uncomfortable. “This Zahn guy is seriously evil.”
“Yeah,” Freddy answered, in a thoroughly unsurprised voice. “I know. That’s why I’m here.”
“Wha- you knew? How did you...”
“I grew up with all the same stories as these other idiots. I guess I just actually believed them,” Freddy explained. “But now that we know the stories are for real, what’s this guy’s deal?”
“I don’t know,” Jamie, extremely flustered, answered back.
“You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? I just found you tied up in his basement. Clearly you know something,” Freddy accused.
“Look. None of it makes any sense, alright. First he was old, then he was young, then he was old again. He told me that his life was tied to the house and that our ‘young souls gave him life.’ So if you can make sense of that, go for it. But my head still hurts from where he beat me with an antique candlestick or something, and I’m probably gonna have to repeat the fifth grade,” Jamie rolled off in a panicked rant.
“There’s no light,” Freddy said under his breath, looking down at the ground as if their solution was written in chalk somewhere.
“Huh?”
“There’s no light!” Freddy repeated. “Think hard, now. Have you seen any lightbulbs or anything like that around the house?”
“The radio clicked on after I walked in yesterday, but...no. No, I don’t think so. All the lightbulbs are burned out. Why?”
“Not all of them!” Freddy yelled as he started to run up the stairs.
“Wait! Where are you going?” Jamie hollered back at him.
“I’m going to save the others. You need to find that last light and destroy it!” Freddy instructed.
The welt on the back of Jamie’s head throbbed as he tried to process Freddy’s half-explained theory. If Jamie understood his portion of the story, then it certainly explained Old Man Zahn’s obsession with electricity bills and energy costs. But the cost Zahn had been concerned with was not monetary. It was the energy it cost him to stay alive.
Jamie first wanted to have a target, a destination, before he burst forth from the concealment of the cellar. For all Zahn knew, Jamie was still tied up and immobilized down here. To escape the concealment of the dark would likely place a limit on the amount of time he had to discover whatever crucial secret he was supposed to find. And it meant opening himself up further to Zahn’s leeching.
He had seen precious little of the house between the two days he stepped a short distance inside, but Jamie tried to recreate his paths in his mind. He tried to imagine or recreate whatever details he could, hoping to see a glimmer of a hot filament somewhere in the background. The darkness had been so deep, though, that he knew nothing of the sort existed. If there was a solitary bulb, it must be hidden away elsewhere, in a location Jamie had not yet been.
A vain hope caused Jamie to search the current room for a light glow, a soft gleaming, but none presented itself. He knew he would have to venture forth without a plan, then hope to spot the single point of brightness, the single sliver of light, hidden in the dark.
As Jamie climbed the cellar stairs, his heart pounding and his breath catching, he had a thought: “Up...stairs.” It was a simple concept, but it was one that proved essential. Jamie’s mind raced backwards, replaying every single moment of the last day and a half, looking for the indexed tab that stuck out somewhere in a lost memory.
Stairs. Going up the stairs. To the top. Jamie pushed open the cellar door and barely made out the figure of the stairs to his left. He bound upwards, ignoring the screeching like that of an owl that each step created. As he surpassed the second level and kept flying up, he heard a commotion off to the side through one of the great wooden doors. He feared that Zahn would fly through and snatch him up at any moment, until he realized that the horrific yell he heard was indeed Zahn shrieking in pain. Freddy had found them after all, and he was doing his best to delay the inevitable horrors that would befall each one if Jamie failed. Freddy was a strong kid, but fists and feet were not going to prevent Zahn’s victory. Freddy had figured out that a supernatural intervention was necessary, and that was the task entrusted to Jamie.
Jamie had assumed that once he reached the top of the stairs, his answer would become apparent. That the solution would gleam like the morning sun after a bleak night. However, the upper-most floor was still as black as pitch. Not even a hint of light eked through the cracks under the doors. Still, Jamie flung open every door, trying to shut out the sound of a horrific struggle beneath him.
His heart dropped when his fear was validated. No light in any of the three bedrooms nor the mostly empty study he found on the third floor. What if this mythical light didn’t exist? What if it were hidden in the room where Zahn and Freddy battled for the souls of the young boys?
All along, the mental recording of the recent events had been rolling back in Jamie’s mind. It so happened that, just as he had given up hope that he would find this hidden light, Squid’s blabbering proved useful. Like an acorn falling out of the tree in late autumn, a brief, otherwise inconsequential memory plopped out of the sky and into the forefront. What was it Squid had said?
No. Not Squid. Squid had started the story, but Greg provided the crucial detail.
The last light anyone remembered seeing was the one in the attic.
Jamie would have to climb to the attic.
The first thing Jamie noticed was that there was no cord to pull down the attic door. The second thing he noticed was that the tattered end of what used to be a cord had been hastily cut, so Jamie knew he would have to counteract a clever saboteur. Even in the dim view, though, he had noticed a large chair in one of the bedrooms he briefly examined. Jamie bolted for the chair, blasting his knee squarely on the corner of an ornate four-poster bed and letting loose a raucous yelp. He limped back out with the chair and mounted the cushions, struggling to get his fingers under the rim of the attic door.
Jamie’s fingers worked and pried, until suddenly the attic door dropped down on top of him with the tell-tale crashing of wood and the painful squeaking of decades-old springs. That cacophonous explosion had been loud enough to grab Zahn’s attention over the skirmish he was presently engaged with, and the somewhat younger fellow, now looking more like a recent retiree than a walking corpse, slammed the door to his library open. Zahn’s vicious eyes met with Jamie’s horrified gaze, hinting that there indeed was something of value up that ramshackle ladder.
Before Zahn could get free, Freddy threw his hands around Zahn’s ankles and tripped the man up. Zahn bloodied his face on the stairs as Freddy and the others dragged him back into the room, leaving Jamie free to complete his essential task.
He had rebounded from the attic door slamming him in the face, and from the shock of seeing Zahn’s mutated face burning with such infernal rage, in order to make the rapid climb.
Jamie had assumed that he would see a bright light immediately upon throwing open the board that covered the entry to the attic, but it was not to be. That’s not to say that no bulb had been hanging, but it was burnt out like the rest.
Patience was difficult for Jamie at this moment, knowing what his friends were facing below, but a thought occurred to him. He could stand in one spot in the middle of the attic and stare briefly into different corners. If there was any kind of light emanating from a hidden place in this room, it would show itself in due time.
Jamie slowly turned, allowing each corner and crevice of the room to show itself in full, unlit splendor. It took a second revolution before he spotted it, a slit in a box that revealed the faintest glow of a burning filament.
He rolled through the boxes and stacks of old papers that stood between him and their salvation, tossing each item aside like a rhinoceros pummeling foliage in a jungle as it tracked a poacher. At last, Jamie reached the fateful box to find the strangest sight. It was indeed a dim bulb on a makeshift fixture, connected to the rest of the house by a single cord running unseen through stacks of junk.
Photo by Vladislav Nikonov on Unsplash
Transfixed by the first real point of light he had seen in the whole house, Jamie forgot his ultimate purpose at first. That was until he heard the most unholy roar emanate from downstairs, impossibly bellowed by the inhuman man known as Zahn. Simultaneously, the light in the box grew with intensity until Jamie could no longer stand to stare at it. Blazing white filled the attic, bleeding through to the rest of the house, as Jamie gathered himself.
In an instant, Jamie threw his hands to an old wooden coatrack that stood next to him and smashed the brittle bulb.
Jamie had expected darkness, perhaps some sparks when the bulb was smashed. What he had not expected was the haunting wail that filled the house, as if a lost soul cried out in anguish from every direction. Rather than ceasing all at once, the brilliant, sickly white light from Zahn’s final bulb swirled through the attic until it disappeared slowly, evaporating into nothing, never to return.
Exhausted from his encounter with this darkest of evils, Jamie fell to the worm-eaten attic floor, his chest heaving. For the moment, he felt that the horror was over.
“Jamie! Jamie, get down here!” he faintly heard Squid shouting below.
For the second time that night, Jamie was yanked from rest by an unexpected turn. And this one was far less hopeful than the first.
As fast as he had climbed the ladder, Jamie returned to the floors below and ran to the library where an unknown battle against eternal wickedness had been won. But this battle had come at a cost.
“Jamie, something’s wrong with Freddy. He’s not waking up,” Orson squealed.
“What happened? What happened!?” Jamie begged to know, trying to decipher the situation through the various sides of the story being screamed at him.
“It was that old man!”
“Yeah, but he stopped being old!”
“It was like he was eating Freddy’s face, but he wasn’t eating him,” Squid shouted again.
“Yeah, it was like he ate the light out of him,” Greg added.
Jamie ran over and sat on top of Freddy’s chest, slapping him in the face. With each unsuccessful slap, Jamie shouted louder and louder.
“Wake up, Freddy! Wake up!” Jamie screamed. “You’ve got to wake up!”
Freddy’s body was cold and limp. Though Jamie’s weight would have made it a challenge to begin with, Freddy’s chest would not rise or fall. It was as if his body was suddenly empty, just like this cursed house was without Zahn in it.
“Get him out of the house,” Jamie thought, pulling an idea from the atmosphere, much like Freddy had done before.
“What?”
“You heard me! We’re going to pick him up and carry his body out of this house!” Jamie ordered.
The other boys, too stunned by everything they had witnessed to argue, quickly took an arm or a leg or something and began hoisting Freddy up on their shoulders. It took them a solid few minutes to navigate the winding stairs down, but they at last had Freddy out of the house and on the grass by the streetlight on the corner.
“You can come back now, Freddy. Come back!” Jamie urged.
Each of the boys wept openly, even Jamie, at the sight of their beloved leader laying lifeless on the ground. They had secretly hoped, they had believed for a brief moment, that Jamie’s plan would have some merit. And yet, after a span of 30 seconds that felt infinitely longer, nothing had changed. Freddy was no longer.
“You are not leaving us here, Freddy! Come back now!” Jamie screamed again, and he rammed a violent fist down at the center of Freddy’s chest.
Whatever meager spark of life had been present yet had been enough to snap back a portion of Freddy that was thought to be long gone. His eyes bolted open, revealing a fully black iris where there had once been blue. Freddy did not react to the pain, he did not acknowledge Jamie or the others. Freddy laid where he was and shook, with a cold sweat appearing on his face and all over his body.
Even Jamie jumped back as Freddy started to seize, his friend’s flesh trying desperately to force a soul back inside unwillingly. Some kind of tenuous connection must have been forged, though, as Freddy at last showed the faintest awareness. He doubled over, screaming in severe agony, while the others watched uncertainly.
Porch lights flicked on around the neighborhood. People opened their front curtains to see what the matter was. And through it all, Freddy whimpered pitifully in between bouts of horrific shouting. When he had at last yelped his last, exhausting his lung capacity completely, Freddy looked up to Jamie with tears streaming down from his face.
“Why did you bring me back?” Freddy cried. “I saw it. Jamie, I...I saw it.”
Freddy passed out after his revelation, not waking again until two days later in a hospital bed. The boys would never speak of that moment again, though they all had theories. Some of them believed that Freddy had actually seen Heaven. That he had been welcomed by glorious light, only for Jamie to yank him back to a dreadful Earth.
Others silently believed that Freddy was delirious, that, like the rest of them, he failed to grasp any kind of reality from that impossible night. Squid and Orson, especially, never let themselves believe that any of it was genuine. It was a dark fantasy that embedded itself in their nightmares. Even when others around town would breathe utterances of the legend of Zahn, the two of them simply scoffed.
Jamie, though, was the only one who had really seen the terror in Freddy’s eyes. He would never tell Jamie exactly what he saw, as Freddy would never again let himself acknowledge the events of that night, but there was no doubt in Jamie’s mind that Freddy saw something...elsewhere. And what he saw was a terror beyond explanation.
Whether it was the unspoken image he brought back with him or something else, Freddy was never really himself after that day. He would pretend to be mindful of his situation, he would play at presence, but he was never really there. That tenebrous connection between his soul and his body only kept him grounded enough to exist. Anything much beyond that just exhausted him.
The boys drifted apart over the years, as boys are wont to do, but Jamie and Freddy tried to stay close. Even through college, Jamie would drive back to his former hometown to visit Freddy and share a coffee and a silent reunion.
Photo by Trevin Rudy on Unsplash
The last time they all got together was a bright, cool August morning around a plot of dew-beaded grass. Jamie had been the only one to make the funeral, but the others arrived a day later to visit once more. Shortly before what would have been his 24th birthday, Freddy let his weary soul free. Or whatever had been left of it.
Each of the boys, now grown, some even with children and families of their own, stood around Freddy one last time, sharing stories and memories of their boyhood. But not a one dared to mention Old Man Zahn or the perpetually unlit house at the corner of Lucius Street.
Thanks for reading this short! I hope you enjoyed visiting “The House of Zahn” today. And guess what? If you enjoyed reading this particular new writing, I have some good news.
Happy Birthday to Me! And my birthday gift to you is that I am lowering the price of my books on Amazon for this weekend only. Black Star, my debut novel which normally sells for $17.99 on Amazon, is going to be just $12.99 for my birthday weekend while my collection of short stories, Call of the Mountains, is selling for just $9.99. So if you’ve been waiting to buy one or both of my books, there is no better time than now!
Aren’t I so generous? I’m giving you a gift for my birthday!