Restoration Project by Mark Orr

Mark Orr has placed a few dozen short stories, essays, poems and reviews in various online and small press periodicals and anthologies. He has lived in or near Nashville for most of his life, with time out to obtain a B.A. in history from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He currently works as a vocational rehabilitation counselor for the State of Tennessee. Mark and his wife of almost 28 years live in the same house with three daughters, one granddaughter, 10,000 books and too many cats.

Everett's accountant warned him it would take a fortune to restore the old Sullivan house. Everett didn't mind. He had several fortunes, and he planned to dedicate at least one to the city that had been so kind as to elect him its mayor.

"This burg grew up all around this old house. It's only right she be fixed up as nicely as the city that she spawned," Everett told his architect as they surveyed to ravaged building set amidst the few skyscrapers the town boasted.

Jack Reynolds was an expert in historic restorations, but he had a few issues with Everett's plans. "You do know, Mr. Everett, that there are a number of problems we're going to run into. The original structure is buried under cheap siding, the original roof's been leveled, the fixtures and decorative moldings were stripped years ago and used in other buildings all over town."

"Not a problem, Jack. I'll track down every molecule that should go in or on this house, and rid her of anything that shouldn't."

"Well, that's fine, Mr. Everett, if you can find them all."

"Already in the works, Jack. Got my top people on it. Any other objections?"

The architect cleared his throat. "Well, there is that matter of the bad reputation the house had before its parts were scattered and its walls covered over."

"What reputation is that, Jack?"

"Mr. Everett, you didn't grow up here. You're a Yankee..."

"According to some folks down here, I'm a Damnyankee. A Yankee comes to visit, while a Damnyankee stays. Isn't that how it goes?"

"Uh, so I've heard. Anyhow, I am from here. All my life, I've been hearing tales about what went on in this old house, during and after the Civil War."

"Yes, yes," Everett said. "I know all about the satanic rituals and human sacrifice that happened back around 1900 or so. That was a long time ago, Jack. I think a century must've scrubbed some of that stain off."

Jack didn't look convinced. "I'm not sure, Mr. Everett. Yankee soldiers tortured the Sullivan family to death when this town was occupied back in 1864. By the time Lee surrendered at Appomattox, every Union soldier who'd been involved in the atrocity had died in combat or in an accident or something. The locals, including my grandmothers, still talk about the ghosts of the poor civilians who were massacred living on in that house, and how the ghosts of the Yankees came back after the war to serve them."

"Oh, puh-lease, Jack. I don't believe in ghosts. I believe in real estate and regentrification. This house, once restored, will be a showcase that will make the rest of the country sit up and take notice of our town."

Reynolds continued, "Then there's all that stuff in the twenties, when the Sullivan house was a speakeasy. One night Lloyd Tarpley locked the doors with a full house inside, then opened up on his clients with a Thompson sub-machine gun. Killed over forty violators of the Volstead Act, some of them prominent citizens. After that he went upstairs and slit the throats of every one of the hookers working for him."

"Great! You can't get better publicity than a whole slew of ghastly murders. I'll have companies begging to move their headquarters here. We'll even have A&E down to do one of those haunted house shows they're always running."

"Mr. Everett, there's more. A lot more. During the Depression, the house was used to house WPA workers who were doing murals for the main post office. One night they all disappeared. Every one of them, just gone. They were never seen again."

"Oh, they probably just took off and hit the hobo trail. So many people did that back then."

"Then why were none of them ever heard from again? A couple of them had been fairly well known artists before the Crash. Surely they would have kept working, wherever they went to. But not a single work by any artist living in that house dated after 1936 has ever turned up anywhere in the world."

Everett regarded the architect. "You sound like you've done some homework, Jack."

"You bet I have. During World War II, a bunch of German sympathizers used the house as headquarters while they plotted to blow up the plant outside town that was producing windows for our bombers. They never got a chance to complete their plot. When the FBI raided the house, they didn't find enough parts to make a complete body. Something had dismembered them all.

"Then there was that hippie commune in the sixties. Aside from sex, drugs and rock and roll, they were into kidnapping babies and boiling them down for soup."

"Jesus, Jack." Everett placed a manicured hand on Reynolds' shoulder. "That was all a very long time ago. It had nothing to do with the house itself. Every big city in the country, hell, in the world, has places where lots of nasty stuff went on. You should've seen the police blotter on the chateau I used to own in France. Christ, the list of dead bodies the Surete's taken out of that house over the years is longer than a whale's dick. And yet, here I stand, perfectly fine, even after having lived in that chateau for five years.

"And there was my place in Bangkok that was home to one of the most ruthless criminal masterminds in Asian history. Drugs and death flowed from that place like sewerage for over fifty years, but when I was through with it, you'd never have known it was anything but a convent."

"Regardless," Jack said, "this project really makes me nervous. I've been doing historical restorations all over the South for ten years now, but I'm just not sure this one is such a good idea.

"If you'll look at the record, sir, you will notice that there have been no events of the sort the old house was infamous for since it was done over in the seventies. The hippies were the last to use this building for anything other than normal office space."

Everett clapped Jack on the shoulder. "Quit worrying, Jack. It'll all be good. You'll see, the fully restored Sullivan house will be my legacy to this city, and you'll get all the credit you deserve."

"Yeah. That's what scares the hell out of me."

* * *

It took five years to complete the restoration of the Sullivan house. A good deal of the roof had to be built new, as the original had been scrapped when the top was leveled off in the seventies. The trusses were incorporated into a row of tract houses out by the airport, so there was some of the roof available once those were bought and torn down, but it sported all new shingles.

The siding was taken away and the clapboard walls lovingly repaired, using contemporary wood where the original material was too far gone. As much as possible, whenever the restoration needed something that wasn't original, Everett sought out replacements from the time when the house was built.

Every doorknob, every cornice, every linear foot of copper pipe was wrenched from whatever house had possessed it since the diaspora of the artifacts involved. Some of the most elegant homes in town were stripped of mantles and sinks and crown moldings so the mayor's showcase could be completed. Everett spent all of one fortune and dipped heavily into a second.

Money greased the wheels of backwards progress, so that Everett was able to circumvent certain building codes enacted since the Civil War. Being mayor helped, but it was mostly the money Everett was willing to toss around like rice at a wedding that kept the codes administration quiet.

Then there were the furnishings to be recovered. Antique dealers from as far away as San Francisco and Honolulu and London and Hamburg scoured estates near and far, seeking out those articles first purchased by Ezekiel Sullivan back in the 1840's. Crates arrived via air every day, each containing a bed or a chair or a divan or a Jackson Press, all of which were carefully restored to their places of honor.

A year into Everett's second term, the house was ready. A dozen major corporations were considering establishing corporate or regional offices in town, and Everett invited the big wigs to his city for a ball celebrating the completion of his pet project.

As the soiree was underway, Everett stood on the veranda with Jack Reynolds. They turned their backs on the bustling city around them and gazed through watered glass at the revelers within.

"Well, Jack. It's done. Sure has been a long, strange trip, hasn't it?"

"Yes, it surely has. I'm still not sure I like it, but it was certainly an education, working with you on this."

Everett put an arm around the architect's shoulders. "Thank you for that, Jack. I've enjoyed our relationship tremendously. It's almost a shame it has to come to an end."

"Oh, there are plenty of other buildings needing restoration, Mr. Everett."

"Not like this one, Jack." There was an odd depth to the mayor's voice, as if he were speaking from a well. "This one is special. All that horror, all those years of pain and death and evil, soaked into every stick of furniture, every pipe and board and rafter, all that makes for one very special house. When you immerse a building in blood and blasphemy, Jack, it saturates the entire structure. Taking the house apart scattered all that monstrousness out, diluting it, making it weak, impotent. But now that the job is complete, now that all the parts are reassembled, the Sullivan house finally has its true spirit back. Now things can start happening here again."

"Ah, right, sir. Say, what's going on inside?"

"Why, I don't know, Jack. Sounds like screaming to me. What do you think it is?" The sound emanating from Everett's throat was hoarse and guttural.

"Jesus, look at the windows! Is that blood splashed all over them?"

"It is indeed." Everett turned to look at his architect. "You've done such amazing work," the husky voice that issued from the suddenly fanged mouth said, "that you deserve to join them."

Reynolds stared into the yellow eyes with the slit pupils. His bladder let go, drenching his tuxedo pants and patent-leather rented shoes with recycled champagne. "Oh, my God..."

"Hardly, Jack. Hardly Him at all." Everett's suddenly razor-sharp fingertips clamped down on Jack's shoulder, drawing blood as he frog-marched the architect across the veranda to the front door. "What say we go on in? This party won't last forever, and there's a house in Seattle I've had my eye on for a couple of months now. Pity you won't be there to help me with it, Jack."