Honeysuckle House

Everyone in Tilly knows the stories of the Malaprops house. At the end of Tarpon Drive, there’s a squat pink bungalow. In the 1970’s, Granddaddy added a second room above the carport for the vacationers to rent out in the hot months. A set of decaying stairs run awkwardly into the driveway. That’s where we are, in the add-on above the carport. Looking out the big window at the water, at the inlet and the island that sits just across it. There’s the house, tested in the trees of the island, honeysuckle and creeping Jenny gobbling up the wood siding. The tide is in, hugging close to the rocks. If we look down we can see the water foaming against the black, jagged rocks that the house is perched above.

The Jefferson’s moved to Tilly a few weeks ago. Ms. Jefferson married a lifer who lives on the other side of the golf courses and in the intercostal waterways, away from the shore. Most people come to Tilly for a new start; our website has some good pictures that look lovely. Bright, pretty houses. Palm trees and glasses of iced tea with striped straws. I think I’d move here, if I didn’t know what was going on. The palms and the bungalows and the clubhouses and golf courses and the deer roaming over the whole island make good distractions. Ms. Jefferson can see the house from her bedroom window and wants it taken down. “It’s an eyesore,” the Jefferson boys parroted when I pointed across the inlet to show them the house.

I imagine them tearing it down. Waiting for the water to rush out of the inlet and driving bulldozers across the narrow road and smashing the house. It’s covered in honeysuckle and Creeping Jenny. I can see it, right there—look. The sweet flowers and bright green leaves, the vines, smashed into the sand. I lick my lips and taste the honeysuckle.

The people of Tilly don’t like talking about the house covered in honeysuckle, or the island, or the vanishing road. Most are happy to forget it. If you don’t look directly at something, it’s not real, right? It’s always been here, though; at the end of Tarpon Drive. There’s a thicket of bushes at the end of the cul-de-sac that the pink bungalow sits on. Amid the golf courses where deer graze. Pastel polo’s and khakis shorts. The bleached, bumped hair and tanned, leather-skin and the deep southern accent. At the end of the picturesque street with the squat bungalows in bright blue, green, pink, and yellow, there’s a hole in the bushes. Crawl through the hole. Be careful and don’t scrape your knees or elbows because Mama will see and she’ll know where you’ve been. Mama crawled through the same space when she was young. On the other side of the bright green bushes, there are toppling rocks that fall into the ocean. When the water goes out of the inlet at low tide, the road appears. High tide comes, the road sinks into the water.

Parents, like Mama, ignore the road. An epidemic in the 80’s caused their lips to seal tight, afraid or ashamed to open. You can look up police records, though. They’re free. They say a few kids went missing and didn’t turn back up. Blaming the Malaprops family was easy because no one knows them; no one ever sees them.

I watched the deer while I waited for the others. They pecked at the ground, not shy or sheepish. Tilly is home to these deer; they’re on our WELCOME TO TILLY! Sign when you cross the bridge from mainland. I assume they were here even before the Malaprops, though Granddaddy thinks the deer came from them. They aren’t afraid of us, but none of the elders go near them. The deer make them uneasy. There’s something off about the deer, they tell us. “Be careful,” he said. “Something’s not quite right with their eyes.” Or maybe it’s the way they walk. Doesn’t matter. They’re the ones that took Daddy. Mama said that, anyway. They used to eat our lemons from the trees in the side yard. Daddy wandered outside in the middle of the night; grew antlers and hooves and they took him away into the woods. Mama feeds them now. I think she hopes she’ll recognize Daddy’s eyes inside one of their skulls.

We lit candles, and settled into our sleeping bags; we made sure Mama opened her bottle pinot before we shut off the lights in the add-on; opened the popcorn and grape soda. I poured mine in one of Mama’s stolen stemware. One of her shell necklaces is around my throat, now. I look like her, I think.

One of the Jefferson boys is flattening his bangs to his greasy forehead. Ms. Jefferson has heard some stories, whispered at another table during brunch, about the house but hadn’t let the boys hear a peep of the gossip. I was about to peep.

Granddaddy used to tell us stories about the honeysuckle house. Before he died or Mama stopped letting him around us, we spent weekend with him while Mama was on mainland for work. When he knew that she was out of Tilly, off the island, he would tell us stories.

“They come over at night,” I tell The Boys. “When the witching hour comes at night, the tide goes out to sea, and there’s the road.” The candles shake inside of The Boys’ eyes. “They walk in the moonlight across the stone road to the beach. Crawl up the rocks and through the bushes.” We tell them, Look, over there. “Those bushes,” I say. That space right there. I point out the window; you can see the little hole in the streetlight. “That’s how they get from their island to ours. That’s how they get into Tilly.”

Toby Jefferson is pulling his sleeping bag over his eyes. We didn’t ask the other boys name, and he didn’t give it. Maybe he’s not Toby and the other one is, or the other way. Doesn’t matter.

“Granddaddy told us that when Mama was a kid, they took a bunch of them,” we say. “It was autumn, so the weather was turning and the skies didn’t look bright and blue like they do when the vacationers come into town. They’d all left. He says they found footprints in the sand-dust on the roads that lead into those bushes.” They listen. They’re small, I am not. My word is gospel. Little Nelly is crying, and I do hate it. But she does it so often. It’s tiring. We don’t acknowledge her tears.

I saw one, once. One of them. I don’t tell the others this, of course. I never will. Not one person knows, because I’m not sure if I did ever see one.

Look out the window; I’m down there on the rocks. Not near the bushes, but I can see it where I’m hidden. It’s night, the right time. The tide has gone out and the moon is fighting with the water, jittering off its surface in frantic patterns. I’ve been watching it for hours. Watching the water flow out of the inlet and the light jump and bounce around. The moon is bright and big. It’s vibrating, and I can see three of them crossing the narrow road.

It’s wet, glistening from the salt water. Their skin is soggy paper. Hair matted and dripping down their backs and over their shoulders. They blink. Their silhouettes shutter and jitter. One minute they’re there, translucent and slinking. The next they’re not. Appearing a moment later three, four feet from where they just were. I was frozen, too scared to move. Clinging to the rocks, I watched the crawl up the beach and the rocks and through the hole in the bushes and into our cul-de-sac. Heard the leaves rustling against them and their feet shuffling over the sand-dusted asphalt. Probably should’ve waited for them to come back and watch them again, make sure I had seen them. I didn’t.

“They get hungry, see?” I say. “The Malaprops gotta eat, just like you and me. Grape soda and fake cheese don’t cut it though. When people weren’t too afraid of going to their island, they used to fin bones and t-shirt scraps and tufts of mated hair. They say those kids ran away; Mama says her classmates ran away or moved away, even though I know all those kid’s parents still live here. I’ve been to their house myself. They didn’t leave; they can’t ever. And now their parents don’t want to leave, because what if their kids come back from the Malaprops?”

The Boys would like for me to stop telling my story. Now, please.

One day, those kids were snug in their beds. Their parents placed warm, safe kisses on their foreheads. The next day, they weren’t there anymore and there were footprints in the road outside the pink bungalow. Granddaddy swears he heard the leaves rustling.

I watch the water lap against the road. “We have to go now. It’s the right time.”

They follow me. Of course, they do. No one wants to be the pussy who cries and won’t go. No one wants to stay in the add-on alone with the popcorn. Down the stairs that fall. Into the sand-dusted cul-de-sac. No one wants to go first through the hole, so I go. We crawl in a train onto the rocks. “Don’t get a scratch,” we say, playing telephone. “Mama will know.”

The inlet is lit up, and “There’s the house.” Our eyes follow the finger pointing out across the inlet, parallel to the road. It’s risen out of the water, now. The house is shaking in the breeze. The vines and leaves shift and shutter and breathe. Pools are popping up in the sand in the inlet where the ocean used to be. Moonlight wiggles in the little pools. They’re alive.

“Don’t blink,” I whisper. “If you blink, you won’t see it.”

+ + +

This is me. Sitting on the black rocks. The tide is in, lapping at the jagged edges, splashing my toes. The salt tangles my hair and stings my eyes. I can’t see the house; this time of year the skies over the inlet are overcast and dewy, making the island across the stretch of water a shifting dark shape. The sun is rising, making the water coasting into the inlet soft and golden. The tide is in, now.

They’re all behind me, now. The kids. The others. Crawling thought the hole in the bushes. Four pairs of eyes, considering the cul-de-sac. We’ll need to get them back inside before Mama wakes up, especially Nelly. Mama doesn’t like for Nelly to be out of the house anymore, and I can see a few deer starting to gather around the lemon trees.

We crawl through the bushes. The skin on my knee tears and I leave a dribbled trail of blood behind me. Into the pink bungalow, into the drafty add-on above the carport. Everyone settles into their sleeping bags and tries to drift away for a little while before their parents show up to take them home. I sink into the sofa that is as old as I am and tuck my stories about the Malaprops into my pocket.

The other’s parent’s cars roll up, the kids tumble in. Drive away. It’s kind of sad, really, because Ms. Jefferson will have to take those matching, stick-figure boys off the back of her SUV.