Christopher Cadra

The House of Vanity

 

 

Teddy’s father was a well-off man. He had a rather large two-story home, a family of four, and a time-share place he’d visit, sometimes with his family, sometimes with young women, sometimes with others. But he always had an itch.

 

Though he’d gone from a simple repairman to a small business owner, to a young retiree (after selling his small business) who spent his days on the links and his nights as he pleased, he still had that itch. His house was the second biggest on the block, his yard the nicest, and his classic car was the envy of all who had an eye for such things. Yet that itch never went away. He always had that itch.

 

It was getting near dusk when his father dropped him off. His father not getting out but rather leaving the moment Teddy shut the passenger side door.

 

Humidity causing his shirt to stick, Teddy stood still for a long moment, looking at the house. The house: on an old, decaying, better yet dead, street belonging to an old woman. The first thing he noticed when he walked to the edge of the lawn and stood before the house, besides its immensity, was that the shutters were closed.

 

“That house must be at least 200 years old,” he was told, but he wasn’t really sure what that meant. All that meant to him was the house was anywhere between 200 years old and forever. And from the look of it, the place was closer to forever.

 

Teddy studied the house from the street, the street that, save the house, had no longer been a street for thirty or more years. The street now just a dirt path with weeds and fragments of a history that wasn’t worth recording. There had been four other houses, and they’d been torn down with little evidence of their ever existing.

 

This house, the last left standing, had a lawn grown up like Teddy had since the last and only time he visited, which, though told by his father was something he’d done, was something he’d no recollection of doing. The lawn was like a relative he hadn’t seen or heard from since infancy, unfamiliar in appearance, but immediately familiar in some intangible way inside.

 

However, the lawn didn’t make him feel warm or comfortable, or anything like that like a relative might. It wasn’t like a cousin, aunt, or uncle with whom he could catch up and all else. It was like a sickly grandparent. The grass more yellow than green, more brown than yellow, more dead than anything.

 

And it made sense to make the connection between the grass and a grandparent because that’s what he was doing there, seeing a grandparent. A great-grandparent. One he had forgotten about until reminded of only just recently. He overheard his father saying something about a will and reminding her of it through Teddy. Teddy wasn’t sure what that meant, and when he asked his father, his father told him to forget it and instead remember what family means, how important family is.

 

Teddy approached the home.

 

When he reached the door and prepared to knock, he found the door slightly ajar. He could see there was light inside, soft, probably candlelight. He knew if he knocked on the door, his knock would open it anyway, and so he opened it and tried to call out, “Great-grandma?” but ended up speechless because he, unable to recall even what she looked like, didn’t have a name for her.

 

Inside was somewhat like he expected, though much grander. Candles uncountable made up the sole light, and though Teddy could see up to ten feet all around him, that was about all he could see. He couldn’t see the walls or ceiling, except for directly around the light of each candle. And his great-grandmother’s exclamation of, “Teddy! I’m in here! Follow my voice!” scared him a bit, but also lead him to her as if he were not in control. As if her voice held sway over his movement, which it did.

 

After a bit of navigation through the darkness, using her voice as a compass, he found her in a mostly empty room that was large enough to host a party. She was sitting in a big, old chair half-turned to face an identical, though empty, chair. In between the chairs was a table that was clear, save a dozen big candles.

 

“Take a seat,” she said, smiling, glowing both by the candle and of her own self-made light. Teddy did as she spoke. When he had done so, he was, with the aid of the candles and her own little glow, able to make out her face.

 

Her face was so wrapped in wrinkles that it made her look like a relic from long ago. She had a simple shoestring necklace with a teal gemstone hanging off it. Her eyes matched the gemstone in color but surpassed it in depth. Those eyes were endless. And she wore a gypsy style dress.

 

“Oh, Teddy. Teddy, right? I haven’t seen you since you were a babe. But I remember well. I can tell it’s you by your nose.” Teddy became self-conscious and reached for his nose. His great-grandmother laughed. “I was just making fun, Teddy. I knew you were coming before you arrived.” She paused briefly to smile at him and take him in. “Sorry for all the candles and lack of real light, there hasn’t been any electricity in this place for more time than I care to count.” She paused. “Counting time is a bad habit, anyway. It’s something one should try to avoid.” Without speaking a word to her, Teddy, who had grown a bit apprehensive, was already beginning to feel safe and comfortable in his great-grandmother’s presence.

 

After a moment, “Certain spirits are telling me, ‘Beware of avarice! Beware of avarice!’ Avarice, which of course is begat of vanity, you ask me at least, but really, neither you nor I need a spirit, let alone a multitude of spirits, to tell us to beware of avarice. Ain’t that a fact? Hah!” she said it as if she were declaiming mystic knowledge, moving her body with her words, swaying her whole self, back and forth, in the candlelight, as if she herself were the candlelight, before stopping movement abruptly with her speech.

 

“Spirits?” Teddy replied, a bit confused, wondering if his great-grandmother was maybe so old that something was wrong with her.

 

“Spirits abound in this house, child. I’m surprised you can’t feel them, being kin of mine and all.” She was steady in both speech and movement, having noticed the effect the previous speech, its theatrics had had on Teddy.

 

“What’s avarice?”

 

“You don’t know?”

 

“No. I don’t know that word.”

 

“That’s ok, honey. That’s ok. You’ll find out. Your daddy knows what it is. And I’m sure you’ll either inherit it from him unconsciously… or consciously… or maybe you’ll see it in him and see it creeping into yourself and unlearn it.

 

“See, there’s a middle ground around your age where you’re right in the learning stage and you can either learn something or unlearn it, but to unlearn it, you must be conscious of it, but either way, it’s already in you, at least partially, and so you got to do one or the other, learn it or unlearn it. And even if you learn to unlearn it, it’ll still grab at you and try to teach you now and again.

 

“Learning to unlearn things is one of the most difficult things to learn how to do because it’s a paradox, see? Not really though, almost a paradox, but not really, because you can put it to use, and I’ve seen it put to use, and if it were a genuine paradox, it would not be able to be put to use, I believe. And beyond that, it’s not only something nice to know about and ponder, no, it’s something every good man must know and practice unless he’s born and raised in a monastery, or in a gal’s case, a convent. Unless you don’t have anything you need to be unlearned, is what I’m saying, which I don’t believe I’ve ever met someone who didn’t or doesn’t possess anything that needs to be unlearned.

 

“And I say there’s a middle ground around your age because you can learn to unlearn things whatever your age may be, but the older you get, the harder it is to learn, and to unlearn, and to learn to unlearn.” She continued to ramble for quite a while. In the dark, only lit up by the innumerable candles that seemed to flow with a breeze that simply was not there.

 

The candles seemed to brighten when she did and darken when she did. Not that she was in control of them, but that she was a part of them, they her, and all the house, all one. All one, except for Teddy. Teddy was like a stranger in a foreign land, an alien on an unknown planet. And he felt like it too. Everything was hazy, seen through sea glass.

 

And it wasn’t just his vision either. He felt detached, like he was floating. Not in a good way, but not in a bad way either. In a foreign way.

 

She rose from the table without a word and seemed to float away. Left alone, Teddy felt empty-headed, dull. As though if you asked him what his name was, he’d be liable to get the answer wrong. When his great-grandmother returned, floating back the way she left, she had two cups of tea. Teddy couldn’t make out the tea’s color, beyond ‘dark,’ because of the lack of light. He drank it anyway. It was good. But it didn’t taste like tea.

 

She took a sip of her tea and smiled at her great-grandchild before once again speaking. “I was a famous clairvoyant in my day, you know. Well, locally famous anyway. I liked it that way. I was known as the ‘clandestine clairvoyant’. I always liked that nickname.” She grinned a bit at this. “As if ‘clairvoyant’ didn’t already have ghostly connotations, you throw in ‘clandestine.’” At this she chuckled, not devilishly at all, but lighthearted.

 

“You know, I happened to give myself that little moniker, though not on purpose. And it’s ironic, well I guess it’s not, knowing how people talk and how things get around, but the week or month or so after people started calling me the ‘clandestine clairvoyant,’ I never had before or since had so many people knocking at my door to do a reading. People I never even knew lived in these parts, and some who didn’t live in these parts.”

 

There was a pause. Teddy wasn’t sure if she was expecting him to react to what she said, ask a question, or what, but he did and said nothing but take another sip of his tea. If there was any sort of awkwardness, he didn’t really notice, or at least he didn’t really mind because he could tell she didn’t mind either.

 

Eventually, she continued. “Mostly businessmen would come see me, rich men, who’d want to try and get me to tell them how to get richer, whether or not their wives were cheating on them, those sorts of things, things I could never tell. And also, their wives would come too, try and get me to find out for them whether or not their husbands were cheating on them.

 

“I told them all, both the men and their wives, you don’t need me to figure out whether or not your spouses are cheating on you, you just need eyes. That never satisfied them, though, not a single one. I personally think they liked to live in the dark. It gave them something to think about, something to do.” She paused.

 

“No one who ever seen me only saw me once but one man. He wanted a tarot card reading, and the second I saw him, I told him, ‘No.’ And he asked, ‘Why?’ and I said, ‘Because I already know it won’t be any good.’ And he said, ‘I’m not looking for good. I gave up on good a long time ago. I’m looking for bad. I’m just wondering how long it’ll take for the bad to arrive, and whether or not I’ll have to go chasing after it myself.’

 

“And so, I gave him a tarot card reading, and well…” She paused. “And that man died within 24 hours of leaving this place. And it was in the paper and everything. Not me, I wasn’t in the paper. As I said, though everyone knew me, I was the ‘clandestine clairvoyant’, and while anyone and everyone knew they could come see me, they didn’t talk about seeing me, and so the report in the paper just mentioned him only. Him and his death.”

 

A long silence occurred. The candles had dimmed considerably but were gaining a bit of brightness in the silence. The tea had had a strange yet soothing effect on Teddy. He cleared his throat before asking, “How’d he die?”

 

“Car crash,” she said in a flat, uncomfortable way. “But it’s what he wanted,” she said, suddenly animated, as if defending herself. “And anyway,” she continued, suddenly calm, as she had been throughout, “I never have been, am not currently, and never will be capable of changing the past, the present, or the future. I am simply able to receive transmissions that others aren’t, and I’m able to transmit information about the past, present, and future that others don’t have access to.

 

“That does not mean, and never has, that I’m able to alter anything. No one is. At least while living. And that’s just my opinion. But I stick to it. Have since I can remember.”

 

Teddy had not been aware of the raging storm that had enveloped the house until a deafening crack of thunder nearly shot him out of his seat and onto his feet.

 

“Don’t worry, child,” his great-grandmother said, as calm as could be. “I could sense this storm coming. You don’t have to worry none. I’ve set up a room for you. I’m not going to let your father drive out here in this storm.”

 

Teddy didn’t wonder how she knew the storm would come. He didn’t for a moment doubt his great-grandmother’s intuitions, or maybe better her premonitions, or maybe best her knowledge.

 

Teddy’s great-grandmother led him up a creaky set of stairs to the room she had prepared for him. There was a shut window, though the shutters were open. Rain beat against the window. When it struck, lightning lit up the room better than the dozen or so candles that had been lit who knows when.

 

“This bed has been slept in by many of your relatives, one being your father.” Teddy was getting groggy, and though he listened to what his great-grandma said, he couldn’t gather up enough steam for a response. He actually had to be hoisted onto the bed and into the covers by the clandestine clairvoyant, who had more strength than Teddy would’ve imagined possible if he were awake enough to imagine such things.

 

He was asleep before she even left the room.

 

***

 

Teddy was dragged out of sleep at some unknown AM hour by faint sounds of a party downstairs, coming from the large room he’d spent the evening in with his great-grandma. He slowly rose to a sitting position, wiping dry his eyes of sleep, in an attempt to better hear those murky sounds that pulled him out of his slumber.

 

He had wanted to go back to bed, he had wanted to lie back down and go back to sleep, but something unknown to him pulled him to his feet just as the sounds had pulled him out of sleep. He was drawn, unconsciously, though conscious, out of the bedroom and out into the hall.

 

The large room of the house now had electricity, bright lights. A chandelier that Teddy hadn’t noticed earlier in the candlelit dark was lit up, and it lit up the large room, bright enough to reveal an extravagance not seen in the candlelight. A wild party full of wild people doing wild things, like drinking, dancing, and things Teddy couldn’t understand. He was drawn down the steps into the midst of the party, him still half asleep, somnambulant.

 

The first thing he noticed was a small tribe of translucent musicians, playing so fast that if it weren’t for their still visible instruments and the fast, wild music produced by those instruments, Teddy probably wouldn’t have noticed them at all. After looking away from the musicians, he took in the rest of the scene.

 

There was a drunk, ragged preacher standing amongst the fray, quite out of place, but unnoticed entirely by all besides Teddy. He lacked eyes, and his empty sockets stretched out into deep darkness.

 

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! All is vanity!” the preacher screamed, swaying to and fro, in a drunken stupor. “Vanity of vanities…”

 

Bright, colorful dresses on the women, made up to put a clown to shame, and the men wore grease in their hair, and their hair was as hard as rocks. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, but Teddy couldn’t tell if they really were or not because they all, save the preacher, seemed to be in a trance. Outside of their minds, outside of their bodies, not really there, not really real.

 

One of the women had on a bright dress and a smile revealing fake white teeth and a seething snake’s tongue that slithered out from behind the shut teeth. She was dancing with a man who was wearing shoes that made him look taller than he really was, and she lost her footing and bumped into someone else dancing, and she bumped into the man she was dancing with, the man with the shoes, and she fell down to the floor, and she shattered, and the pieces she shattered to were so small that no one even noticed, and they all danced on the pieces until they were so little that they weren’t even visible, and the man she had been dancing with didn’t even notice, he just grabbed the next single lady he saw and danced with her instead.

 

A little down the way, by a bar, a pair of couples were not dancing but drinking and talking, dressed in the finest attire. They were asking each other repeatedly who was wearing what, and who was wearing who, and they were all asking at the same time, and they didn’t know how to ask anything besides. The two women and the two men, they all had become so confused by the two or three questions, but none would admit it. They all started accusing each other of being confused, and they began to get angry. They tore at each other’s clothes until he was wearing she, she him, and eventually, nobody was wearing anybody, nobody was wearing anything at all. And when the last shred of clothing fell to the ground, Teddy saw, there was no one there at all.

 

Teddy saw a door ajar and was hoping it might lead to more pleasant company. He glided, not really of his own accord, into the room beyond the door. What he saw there, had he remembered it, would’ve murdered sleep.

 

She was young and beautiful. They had tied her to a chair. They had blindfolded her. They had covered her in honey. A crowd surrounded her. They were chanting, laughing. A tall, dark man with slicked-back hair and an expensive suit had a big bucket full of ants. He heaved the bucket back and toward and unleashed the ants onto her. The myriad ants hit her like a drop of water, like a delicate little ball in the air, dispersing violently the moment it hit surface. She was almost immediately a swarming, pulsating bulge of creeping, feeding ants.

 

They had all made bets with each other on whether or not she would pass out, and how long it would take for her to pass out, and there were over ten different bets to be made, and everybody was betting. And she screamed so loud. She who was blindfolded, naked, naked save the blindfold and the ants, the ants that covered her in blackness from head to toe.

 

And she screamed so loud that Teddy lost his hearing for a moment, and he was on the verge of losing his mind as well when he ran back into the large room. In the large room, he saw that everyone had stopped dancing, the musicians had stopped playing, even those by the bar had stopped drinking.

 

All were still. And all were staring at him. Their eyes black, all pupil. It was at this point that Teddy realized all the partygoers were dead, dead and rotten.

 

“This is a party that never ends,” said one.

 

“This is a party that never ends,” said another.

 

“This is a party that never ends,” said a pair.

 

“This is a party that never ends,” said more and more of them, all at once, chanting, chanting, “This is a party that never ends. This is a party that never ends...”

 

And somewhere underneath the chanting partygoers, Teddy could still hear faintly, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity! All is vanity!”

 

***

 

Teddy awoke with a shudder. He was covered in sweat. It was still dark out, but the storm had passed. He knew he had a nightmare by the tense feeling and the sweat and all. But he couldn’t remember anything from it besides a faint murmur of “Vanity of vanities… all is vanity… all is vanity…” He was back asleep within moments. He slept like a babe.

 

***

 

When Teddy woke next, the sun was bright and beaming through the open window right onto him, as if for him. He hopped out of bed and ran downstairs just about as fast as he could so he could see and talk to and listen to his great-grandmother.

 

In the large room, all the shutters had been opened, making the room bright. Teddy saw his great-grandmother in her seat. She was sitting there, and he saw in between the chairs on the little table a cup of tea. It was regular old black tea, and some assorted snacks laid out for him. He hopped onto the chair he had occupied the previous night, and he drank tea and ate snacks. He talked to his great-grandmother all morning. He had forgotten entirely about his nightmare the night before.

 

“Ah, my friend,” Teddy’s great-grandmother said to him as they both were beginning to sense that his visit was nearing its end, “you do not know, you do not know what life is, you who hold it in your hands,” she said, smiling but with her eyes getting watery. “You let it flow from you, you let it flow,” she paused, not speaking to Teddy anymore, but to his father, others, her smile fading, “and youth is cruel, and has no remorse,” she paused again, turning her attention back to Teddy, her smiling a bright, hopeful smile, “and smiles at situations which it cannot see.”

 

Teddy smiled, of course, oblivious, and went on drinking his tea.

Christopher Cadra is a writer and poet. He's been published in the Cimarron Review, Danse Macabre, and elsewhere. He's published criticism in Basalt, and a journal he edited, The Literati Quarterly. He's currently a senior editor at the brand new Gleam, which will focus on a new form of poetry he helped create with collaborators.