A Matter of Fax by Susan Rooke

Rumor had it the house was haunted. A silly notion, but you know how people are. That didn’t stop me from buying it, of course. The acreage, the gatehouse? The acoustically ideal conservatory large enough to accommodate the Fazioli and the Bösendorfer? It was perfect for me. And after all the work I’d put into my concert and recording career—the hours of practice, the constant traveling—I deserved it.

Then came the relatives I hadn’t seen for years, pestering my caretaker and his wife with nosy questions, peering through my windows, tracking mud on my flagstone terraces, tossing their cigarette butts and gum wrappers into my azaleas. Once I even caught several of them in the pool.

I tried to be polite. Gritting my teeth, I would ask them in, thinking they’d leave after I offered them something to drink and played them a request or two. What do you think they asked for? Sweet tea and “Für Elise.” Every time. I think it’s the only piano composition they knew. And then I still would have to shoo them out the door.

Fortunately I’d outlived most of them, but even so, the handful that remained made themselves a nuisance. When they persisted in bothering me, I decided to use my home’s reputation. I invited them to stay the night.

“You mustn’t mind anything you hear,” I’d caution them. “Old houses like this sometimes make strange noises at night.” Then I would bid them goodnight and close their bedroom door. The next morning they were up at dawn. When they asked, I claimed I’d heard nothing. “I sleep like the dead,” I’d say. They seldom stayed for breakfast.

I was less than truthful, though. Of course I heard the noises! Who do you think made them? But I felt it was justified. Why allow them to impose, treating my home as their five-star resort and helping themselves to the hard-earned pleasures of my retirement?

I’d wait till 3 a.m., then start up the chorus of electronic chirps and tweets. The answering machine, my old Dictaphone, the fax machine. The telephone, roused by my cell for half a ring, then falling dead. An hour later, the smoke alarm’s sly beep. Just as my guests would be dropping off to sleep again.

It was a bit of trouble, but well worth it. I only regretted not having the idea sooner. After a time—though longer than I would have liked—the influx of unwelcome visitors stopped, leaving me in peace. Now I could look forward to the holiday season. No one would barge in on me this year with an afterthought hostess gift of cheap domestic champagne, expecting me to feed them a stringy roasted bird with sliced cranberry sauce on the side. Never again!

But one afternoon soon after a delightfully quiet Thanksgiving, I was resting in the living room when I was stunned to hear voices in the front hall. I silently moved to the doorway to listen. It was my great-nephew Myron and his fat, brassy wife, Shelly. How on earth did they get in? Naturally, Myron was complaining about something.

“Why didn’t Aunt Myra ever have the trees trimmed? The house is so dark.”

Yes. His late parents named Myron after me. Blatant flattery. For several million crisp, green, blatant reasons.

“Don’t focus on that,” Shelly scolded. “We’ll call a tree service. What I need you to do is help me measure the bedrooms and figure out where our furniture goes.”

Furniture? What was she nattering on about?

“Honey, are we really doing this?” Myron grumbled. “After what happened the last time we spent the night?”

I smiled to myself, but my good humor vanished with his next words.

“I nearly got electrocuted when I used her extension cord to plug in my laptop. The damn thing about blasted me across the room. Can’t we just sell the place?”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Shelly snapped. “Aunt Myra’s house is much nicer than ours. I’m sure she’d want us to live here.”

What? I certainly wouldn’t! The nerve of these two! It was time to intervene. But still I listened, unable to help myself.

“Besides,” Shelly said, “you’re the closest relative she had left.”

“She told us she was donating it to the music school, though,” Myron said.

“Then she should’ve made a will.” I could hear the shrug in Shelly’s voice.

“But the electrical problems! Nothing in the house worked right, especially at night. You have to admit it was weird.”

“That’s because her spoiled rotten cat chewed the electrical cords. Didn’t you ever see him? I’d bet money that extension cord had tooth marks on it.”

The meanspirited tone of this absurd characterization shocked me. Rumbletum was not spoiled. He did such things only because he wanted my attention.

“But if it bothers you,” Shelly continued, “we’ll have an electrician out tomorrow to check the wiring. That’ll take care of it.”

“Meow.”

I looked down. Rumbletum was at my feet. When I bent to stroke him, an imperfect recollection began to take shape in my mind. Something involving Rumbletum and . . . Oh, what was it?

Then I heard my great-nephew say, “Okay, but we’re getting rid of her fax machine. I don’t care what the cat did to the cord. That’s what killed her and it’s got to go. The thing’s an antique, anyway.”

At these words I sensed an unexpected current of memory jangle through me, like a mild jolt of electricity. I snatched my hand off the cat, even as I felt his thunderous purr vibrating beneath my fingers.

Rumbletum lifted his whiskered face to look at me. “Meow,” he said again.

His voice had an odd, disembodied quality. It sounded faint, as if he were calling from a distant part of the house. Or as if he had no lungs, no flesh to give it force.

Perhaps I had imagined the purr.

—

Susan Rooke is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of the Space Between fantasy series. Her work has appeared in such publications as inkscrawl, Eye to the Telescope, The Twilight Zone Magazine and The Christian Science Monitor, among many others. She lives with a husband and cows in rural Central Texas, and when she’s not writing speculative fiction and poetry, she blogs fortnightly about real life, food and cocktails at http://susanrooke.net.