"Eviction Notice," Joshua Grasso

Today on Midwest Weird: “Eviction Notice” by Joshua Grasso.

Joshua Grasso (he/him) is a professor of English at East Central University, where he’s taught since getting his PhD in 2006. He teaches courses in writing, Shakespeare, world literature, and when he can, comic books. His works have appeared most recently in the anthology The Speculative Teachers Lounge, and magazines such as On Spec, Androids & Dragons, and Allegory.

Midwest Weird is an audio literary magazine from Broads and Books Productions. We’re the home of weird fiction and nonfiction by Midwestern writers.

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Episode Transcript:

This is Midwest Weird, an audio literary magazine from Broads and Books Productions.

We’re the home of weird fiction and nonfiction by Midwestern writers.

Today’s episode: “Eviction Notice,” by Joshua Grasso. Read by the Midwest Weird team.

Freddy began his pre-dinner routine of vacuuming up the roaches that squirmed out of the cracks between the wall and the oven; anything over 350 and they came running. It was easy to catch the small ones that scurried out in blind, delirious circles, but eventually a real beast would pop out with wings and flailing antennae. Those were too big suck up with the mini-vac, so he would trap them in a glass and hurl them outside, where they would scurry off into the grass to join their displaced brethren. 

“All hail the patron saint of cockroaches,” Maia said, pushing past him with the laundry.

“Hell, you know I can’t kill anything. My father, remember? He used to torture bugs, pull their legs off right in front of me. It fucked me up.”  

“How long till they start pulling our legs off?” she asked, fading away.

“I mean, I did set those poison traps. Those at least kill them slowly, without, you know, bashing them to death or something. I’ll call the bug people again next week.”

Maia didn’t respond, as he could hear her wrestling with the laundry machine. Something was wrong, since she kept opening and closing the washing machine door with increasing vigor. Freddy didn’t want to admit he had made a mistake with the house. After all, he was the one who pushed for it, even when Maia had misgivings, felt the kitchen was too small, the neighborhood too isolated. That everything felt ‘off’ somehow, especially the trees perched on every side of the house like watchdogs. He felt it too, but called it ‘cold feet’ after so many years of apartment living.

Still, it was the best option for what they could afford, and their kids needed more room to grow, a yard to play in. The agent picked up on their indecision and said that it was a great “starter home,” suggesting—with a look at their children—that they were behind the curve. Besides, if they needed more room or if other kids came (no pressure!), they could always sell it for a tidy profit (it’s a seller’s market!) with no regrets.

But could they? Things he had never noticed during their brief tour of the house became alarmingly apparent after the first three months. Patches of black mold that seemed to bloom after every shower. Delicate, spidery cracks in the ceiling that spun ever-widening webs. Vines that attached themselves to the side of the house with a sticky film that took minutes to wash off. Strange noises that would sometimes wake him up at night, though Maia never heard them. And of course all the roaches.

But his kids didn’t see any of this; they just loved it. Tristan would get lost in the back yard, climbing the tall trees and hiding his figures in the dense undergrowth which defied even the most round-the-clock mowing. And Abby adored her room, which was larger than their entire bedroom in the old apartment. She had decorated it to the nines, taping Disney posters over almost every inch of the wall, though they would fall off every few days because of the humidity.

Even now, if he just ignored the roaches and the washing machine and the leaky showerhead, he felt a glorious, deep-seated content. He had made it. A homeowner. A place for his kids to grow up. The life he had always promised Maia, when they were hustling in college and didn’t think they could scrounge up a future between them.

“Great, now there’s mold on the laundry room ceiling,” Maia said, looking flushed. “Whenever my back is turned, a new spot creeps up—and I do mean creeps. Sometimes, I think it’s actually moving, crawling around up there.”

“I think it’s just the climate,” he shrugged. “We’ll have to buy another dehumidifier. Especially for the kids’ rooms.”

Maia shook her head and let it fall against his shoulder, sighing with mock exhaustion (or was it real?). He tousled her hair and kissed it, still in love with the smell of her, reminding her of their earliest days, the first time he leaned in close enough to kiss her. And just like then, she pulled away when he tried to nibble her ear.

“Ugh, don’t—I’m a mess!” she said, with a laugh. “And you’re not much better, covered in roaches.”

“It’s just growing pains, we’ll get through this. Every house has problems. It’s like a breaking-in period.”

“But who’s going to break first?” she asked, shaking her head.

#

After dinner as Freddy was washing the dishes (the dishwasher didn’t work, naturally) he watched his neighbor weed-eating along their shared fence. The grass had already sprouted up through the cracks in the fence and seemed to be probing for weak spots. His neighbor was red-faced and sweating, his old college T-shirt already pit and grass-stained. Freddy knew he had mowed alongside the fence two or three days ago, and it hadn’t rained a drop since then. So why all the weeds?

As he finished the final plate, Freddy turned off the water and decided to diagnose the problem with a beer. He made a gesture to Maia, who was busy with the kids at the table, scribbling and coloring. She gave him a quick nod, while leaning over Abby’s picture with a crayon. Once outside, he approached his neighbor, whose weed-eater seemed to have malfunctioned; he was struggling to open the spool retainer, though his fingers kept slipping off.

“Hey, neighbor! Looks like you could use one,” Freddy asked, raising the can.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, thanks,” he said, accepting it. “This damn thing. Every other time I use it, the feed stops advancing. And lookit, I’m only halfway done.”

“It seems like we’re always mowing out here, and it’s barely even summer,” Freddy said, opening a can. “Is it always like this? Where I’m from, mowing is something you can almost forget to do.”

“Yeah, well, welcome to hell,” he said, with a laugh. “I’ve lived all over the state, but nothing’s like here, this neighborhood. Grass won’t stop growing, even in winter. Damn bugs everywhere: ants, roaches, spiders. And the trees…guess you already know about them.”

Freddy looked up at them suspiciously. What about the trees? He didn’t know a thing about them, other than the way they seemed to look down disapprovingly on their house and lives. His neighbor noticed Freddy’s blank expression and smirked, as if anxious to reveal a trade secret.

“They move. Seriously, don’t laugh. They’re always moving, rustling, groaning. Even when there’s no wind, especially in the dead of night. I swear I’ve seen a few of them change positions, just a quarter of an inch this way or that. I don’t let my kids near ‘em, and I would keep yours well away from them, too.”

Freddy didn’t know how to respond to this, so he merely gave a timid laugh, waiting for the punch line. His neighbor took another sip of his beer, letting the weed-eater rest against the fence, triumphant. 

“Er, anything else I should know?” Freddy asked.

“Don’t drink the tap water. Not without one of those fancy water filtration systems...we got one installed a few years ago. It doesn’t taste right. A few kids got sick some years back. Not that anyone traced it back to the water, but still…I wouldn’t.”

“Wait—the water’s contaminated?”

“I only know what I was told by Harry, who lives a few houses down,” he said, with a lazy gesture. “His wife’s brother came down once, and didn’t like how the water tasted. He’s a scientist, works for the EPA. Anyway, he took samples of the water there, and even in a few other homes. Said it was off the charts bad. Like, ten times what the state allows.”

“Jesus!” Freddy said, thinking of the water he used for his coffee this morning. “What, like nitrates or something?”

“I don’t speak science,” he laughed. “But, I mean, that was a few years ago, and he reported it, and the state sent some people down to test the water themselves, install some purifiers, I don’t know what. We got a letter in the mail a while back. Said it was all under control.”

“And you believe them?”

“Like I said, I don’t drink the water directly,” he shrugged.

Freddy must have turned stark-white, since his neighbor laughed and gave him a playful nudge.

“Oh, don’t take it too hard; still beats living in the city,” the neighbor grimaced. “I should get back to it. But thanks for the beer. Oh...and you probably know about the local wildlife. Just keep inside after ten, and lock your doors. Some raccoons can open doors, and if you have dogs, don’t let them outside. The coyotes...well, they’re not shy about hopping fences.”  

  #

After they put the kids to bed, Freddy collapsed on the couch, the TV off, his phone discarded, and just stared into space. He felt wave after wave of stupidity suck him under. What the hell did he know about buying houses? What did either of them know about choosing a neighborhood or know about water quality and local wildlife? And now his kids were in danger. They were all in danger.

“What’s eating you?” Maia said, plopping beside him. “You were like a space cadet all night. Is it work?”

“Oh, no, I’m fine…it’s just, maybe we jumped the gun on this house? Or maybe I did. Maia…what if I fucked up?”

“Oh, baby, I’m just blowing off steam,” she said, kissing his shoulder. “I know I complain, and it is a lot to handle at times, but really, I love it here. We all do. Don’t second-guess things like that. We came here for a reason.”

“Will you stay up with me a bit tonight? To listen to those sounds I heard? And see if we can, I don’t know, hear anything else?” he asked.

She just stared at him for a moment, her mouth on the edge of laughter, only to realize he wasn’t joking. Her eyes and face softened and she reached out to him, nodding slowly.

“Oh, my poor Freddy, you really are worried, aren’t you? I’m telling you, it’s nothing; like you said, just cold feet. But yes, I’ll stay up with you all night, just like we used to, cramming for exams, writing papers. Remember that? And how you used to take away my laptop and hide it all around the apartment? Leaving me to come up with sneaky ways to make you reveal its location...? ”

She leaned in and began kissing his neck, her hand sliding down his chest. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t in the mood (for once) and that they really needed to keep alert and pay attention, but that only lasted a few seconds. I mean, it was just a house. What was he so worried about? As long as they were here, together, their kids safely snoring upstairs, without a care in the world, far beyond the reach of the most intrepid raccoons and coyotes...

Abby let out a terrible scream, an indistinct cry that was beyond language. They both shot up, staring at each other, waiting to see if she did it again, if it was just a bad dream.

“Mommy!” she shrieked.

Maia ran up the stairs and was taking them two at a time as Freddy stumbled after her. They barged into the room, which was glowing red from the night light; there Abby was framed in silhouette, sitting up, the covers bunched around her chest. Maia ran to her side and clutched her protectively, feeling her head, her face. Freddy froze a foot or two from the bed, looking around, half-expecting to come face to face with a coyote or something worse.

“What, baby? What is it? What’s wrong?” Maia asked, kissing her cheek.

“The walls…they’re moving,” she said, in a whisper.

“Moving? Moving how?”

“Just like back and forth. And all over.”

Maia nudged her head at Freddy. He looked at the far wall, which was too dark to really see anything clearly. In fact, it looked darker than it should for some reason, particularly since he could see the door quite clearly. He walked slowly to the light switch and after a moment of hesitation, flipped it on.

The walls were alive with spiders. Dozens of small, jet-black creatures crawling over one another, spiraling out over the ceiling. He could even see them inside the glass light fixture, their shadows enlarged against the floor, shimmering over Abby’s toys and bed.

“Holy fuck!” Maia said, eyes wide.

“Get her out of here! Downstairs!” he said.

Maia scooped her up while Freddy backed out, his eyes fixed on the rapidly blacked-out ceiling. He slammed the door behind them and felt for the rail, steadying himself, ready to sink to his knees.

“Tristan! Get Tristan!” she cried.

It took him a half-second to remember who Tristan even was. Then he burst into action, stumbling down the hallway to Tristan’s room, where he found him sound asleep, his Solar System blanket pulled tight to his chin. Freddy stooped down to wake him up, trying to rouse him, when he felt something sharp against his neck. He flinched, grabbing blindly behind him, only to feel it against his nose and cheek. Water.

He looked up, and could dimly make out raindrops falling all over his head, the sheets, the floor.

“Daddy?” Tristan said, sitting up. “Why am I wet?”

Freddy flailed for the desk lamp and after knocking it down twice, managed to turn it on. A gigantic swell of mold spread over the ceiling, bulging with moisture. Water seeped through the cracks and rained down on the room, creating small puddles in his shoes and an upturned Frisbee. He grabbed Tristan and pulled him out of bed, trying awkwardly to carry him to the door; he finally dropped him, because Tristan was squirming and screaming something he couldn’t understand.

“What? What’s wrong?” he shouted.

“Daddy! Frogs!”   

Freddy followed his son’s arm to the window, where every inch of the glass was covered with tiny pulsating frogs. He tried to understand how frogs that small, or any frogs, could have scaled the walls to his son’s second-story window.

“Freddy!” Maia cried from downstairs.

He took Tristan’s arm and hauled him downstairs, where they all collapsed in a pile on the couch, his wife sobbing, Abby rubbing her eyes, Tristan covering his head with a pillow. Freddy embraced Maia who eagerly dug her face into his chest, coughing.

“Freddy, what the fuck? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know…there must be a leak somewhere in the roof,” he said, dubiously. “And maybe there was a nest of spiders up there, and the leak washed them into her room, which explains why they were so disorientated, climbing all over the place.”

“Did you see the frogs, mommy?” Tristan asked, his voice muffled.

“Frogs? What frogs? There’s frogs?”  

“Just a few, probably fell off the trees or something. Look, why don’t you guys hunker down here tonight, try to get some sleep. I’ll go see what I can do upstairs.”

“You’re going up there alone?” she asked, horrified. “Screw that, let’s just go to a hotel. We’ll come back in the morning.” 

It was a tempting thought, but Freddy tried to keep things in perspective. A leak, that’s all it was. Spiders in the attic. A few frogs. They were new homeowners, so it seemed much worse than it was. Probably everyone dealt with something like this eventually, especially in this state; his neighbor as good as said so. Besides, he was the father, the husband, and he had to occasionally act as such, even if he only had the vaguest notion of what the job entailed.

“We’d have to get their clothes, anyway, so let me root around upstairs. Inspect the damage. I’ll bring down some stuff, anything else you want. Give me ten, twenty minutes. Just stay with the kids.”

She nodded miserably and made him promise to be careful. He promised and turned to say something to the kids, but they were already half-asleep. Soon he would be, too, and this would all be a bad dream, a story to tell each other years from now, in another house, another life.

He crept up the stairs and paused at the top, listening. He could still hear the water dripping in Tristan’s room, but nothing else, no sound of creeping spiders or croaking frogs. Maybe it had all been a trick of the light? Ten spiders could easily look like a hundred in the shadows. He would go inside and look at it calmly, not like a timid apartment-dweller but a seasoned suburbanite. Hand on the knob, he slowly opened the door and peered inside, his heart racing, feet poised to flee.

The room was empty. Whatever spiders were here had fled into the cracks and corners, maybe even under the bed. After a minute or two he had sufficient courage to step inside and poke around. He moved bookshelves, dressers, the toy box, the bed. Not a single spider in sight. Freddy made a second and a third sweep before he convinced himself that the room was clean. He even opened drawers, taking a handful of clothes for Abby, without the expected jump-scare.

With a sigh of relief, he went outside and walked more confidently to Tristan’s room, where even the frogs had dispersed. No spiders there, either, or anything to disturb the sleep of a seven year-old boy and his high-strung parents. Thank God. He snagged more clothes and held them to his nose, breathing in the rich, heady aroma of Spring Meadow Tide-pods.

He was about to return downstairs and declare the upstairs safe for habitation when he heard a noise. Not one of the rumbling, creaking sounds he always heard at night around two in the morning. This one was different, and he felt in his gut, much worse. A low thrumming, almost a buzzing sound, but at the lowest frequencies. He tip-toed around the hallway trying to trace its origin, as it led away from the kids’ rooms and towards his own bedroom.

“Freddy?” Maia called, from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you done yet?”

“Almost. Just checking our room,” he called back.

When he reached the door the sound intensified, though remained a steady, rumbling drone. Maybe they left a window open, and the wind was blowing through the screen, making it vibrate? He nudged open the door and felt for the light switch, which turned on and then made a terrific pop! Darkness swept over him. Still, the blinds were open and the light of the neighborhood was enough to mark out the bed and end table. He eased inside, ready to be assaulted by whatever parasite had crept through the walls or bled through the attic.

The humming increased, vibrating through the floor like the roar of distant road work. But it didn’t sound mechanical in the same way. It sounded like scattered, muffled conversations in other rooms. He reached the bed and crept along the edges, looking at the walls and corners. Something was there, a large mass that became blacker the longer he looked. His foot kicked the castle night-light they used whenever Abby crawled into their bed with bad dreams. He knelt down and plugged it into the nearest socket, watching the turrets go pinkish-orange. The room took on a sinister glow, which seemed all the more menacing without Maia and Abby beside him.

The ‘something’ became much clearer now, though he still couldn’t make sense of it. He wanted to say it looked like a gigantic hive, but for what, he couldn’t explain. It was too large even for a thousand wasps to construct, since it took up the entire wall and seemed to burrow through the ceiling as well. If anything, it reminded him of a brain, dark and bulbous, with veins shooting off in odd directions. But something was clearly busy inside, either burrowing deeper or trying to chew its way out; he couldn’t decide which one was worse.

His first and most immediate impulse was to flee. Close the door and let Orkin (or the National Guard) deal with it in the morning. But he remained rooted to the spot, desperate to creep closer, to see if he could make out the whispering sounds within, and even to touch the surface just long enough to know what it was made from. He wasted several seconds torn between both impulses, until his fear began to dissolve into the background, like the scattered impressions of a dream in the morning.

Freddy took a step closer. He began to feel like he was floating, and kept expecting his head to bump the ceiling; but whenever he looked up, it remained comfortably out of reach. Another step, and the humming dimmed, almost inviting him to touch it. He reached out. It felt papery, but rock-hard. Warm, like something that had recently come out of the oven, but already starting to cool. With his fingers pressed against it, he could feel faint movement inside, but not like crawling insects or nesting bees. Almost like a single being moving in the lethargy of sleep. Whatever it was, it was something real, something alive and invasive.

Freddy heard Maia call out for him, venturing halfway up the stairs. He knew he had to go. If only he could just know for sure what was in there, what was growing—for surely, it must have been growing all this time—and what would eventually emerge? He remembered something Maia had said days ago as a joke, not serious at all: with all the damn bugs and the rot it’s like this house is trying to give birth to something. His eyes grew wide as he caressed the hive...or was it a womb? Could a house give birth and create its own inhabitants? And if it chose to evict them in favor these new tenants, what could they say or do to stop it?

That’s really what a house was, after all: a desperate race to wall off the inevitable, to claim a space where nothing but humanity could grow. No grass, no bugs, no rot, no water, no wind, no earth. Just carpets and tile and dry walls and windows and flat-screen televisions. Nature was hermetically sealed off and confined to the sinks and the shower, and otherwise wiped clean with Clorox and Windex and Ortho Home Defense. But they were just buying time. Eventually Nature would win and reclaim its own. It would give birth over and over again until both houses and humanity were wiped clean from the earth.

“Freddy! What’s wrong?” Maia shouted, now at the top of the stairs. “Where are you?”

He understood now,  they could never return, that they had already lost the war. He stumbled out into the hallway and fell against her, and would have tumbled straight to the floor if she hadn’t caught him. She steadied him against the banister and looked him over, wiping the hair out of his face, alarmed.

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“I made a mistake, we shouldn’t have come here…I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“Come on, baby, you’re exhausted. We’ll figure this shit out in the morning.”

He slumped against her and she eased him downstairs, where the kids were now sleeping on the couch, Tristan filling the room with snores. They each cradled one of the children in their arms and walked gingerly to the car. As they laid them in the back seat, buckling them in, Freddy took a last look at the house. The trees were much closer to the house, their branches overtaking the roof. Vines were snaking up both sides and crawling over the living room windows. And on the second floor, the bedroom window flickered a few times before going dark.

“Freddy, get in already! I’ll drive. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

He numbly obeyed, as a minute later they pulled out of the driveway and were barreling down Pleasant Ave. toward the intersection. As he gazed out the window, he saw other houses with car alarms going off, flashing eyes that darted away in the bushes, downed power lines. In one of the last yards a bearded man stared back at him, wearing only a light bathrobe, his mouth open, while cradling something in his arms. It looked like a dog or a cat, but could have just as easily been a child. He couldn’t tell, and he quickly turned away, staring straight ahead as they reached the stop sign.

“Shit, I think I left the back door unlocked,” Maia said, panicked. “Should we go back?”

Freddy started to laugh, but the sound died in his throat. He finally coughed up, “Honey...I think we’ve been evicted.”

Her lips began forming “what?” when something moist smacked against the windshield, then scampered away. All around them, things were moving, groaning, shattering. He heard other cars starting up, their lights criss-crossing the cul de sac and picking out immense, shambling shadows.

The question died on her lips. With a final look in the rear-view mirror she hit the gas.

Joshua Grasso (he/him) is a professor of English at East Central University, where he’s taught since getting his PhD in 2006. He teaches courses in writing, Shakespeare, world literature, and when he can, comic books. His works have appeared most recently in the anthology The Speculative Teachers Lounge, and magazines such as On Spec, Androids & Dragons, and Allegory.

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