The Blue House of 1478 (1) (Patreon)

Summary:

The story in which Theodore Eldory promotes himself from incompetent newspaper boy to arch-nemesis of Sleepy Birch's brooding new tenant in a total of three minutes.  He thinks this is a record.

—

Every coastal town has a hermit, and a hermit is, of course, always more interesting than the stretching humidity, the worn paint of every building, and the distinct smell of fish near the hatchery.

In a very small town full of those who know too much about one another, the hermit is the one resident that no one seems to know and no one ever seems to see.

We have plenty of oddballs here, in Sleepy Birch, and meaningless gossip that's just special enough, but only two quiet mysteries: a string of under-publicized disappearances nearly thirty years ago, and now, the tenant of 1478.

The tenant of 1478 is a fresher dilemma and much less unpleasant to discuss over morning coffee, so the elderly cling to the wonder tied to the gloomy little home — now, more than ever.

Given, their interest occasionally strays.

There are the odd few locals that hang glass bottles from the trees or have a loose gate that creaks open with the ocean wind, and some have a black cat with eyes more yellow than green.

Periodically, rumors of new leads for crimes long passed, a tree in the town center that never seems to grow leaves during the spring, and Mr. Gove's grandson that was born with an eerily similar birthmark to his own, threaten to steal the blue house's thunder.

Nevertheless, the most incredible peculiarity, at the end of the day, remains the last house on the right, at the end of Sunny Plaza —

Only because no one has seen the owner since they moved in six months ago.

Six months is a very long time not to buy groceries, I think.  And, unfortunately for me, local paper route boy number six, armed with my sister's pink taser and a keychain-sized mace, I have also seen every pet and every neighbor —

All except the mystery resident.

I tell myself, this isn't that bizarre, but I visit the home near daily.  I started to think that conceivably, the house is actually just empty, and perhaps we'd all just imagined the moving van out front last winter...

But the lights come on at night, and sometimes I hear music playing.  The hedges are trimmed, and the windows are cleaned, and a little truck with its bed full of bags of dirt is parked right outside.

Sometimes the dirt changes.  Occasionally — there are seeds, hoses, gardening gloves, and pots.

It's not the modest little home it used to be, not after the death of the elderly Edgar Blue, but it's someone's home.

Whose exactly? I haven't the slightest idea.  There are the rumors, though, the sharp imagination of a bored town, and I've heard it all.

Mrs. Dembroski says that she's confident she's spotted the new owner.  According to her, he has a glass eye, skin so pale it's grey, and a hunched right shoulder.  I've listened to Lionel Wells speak of perpetual darkness covering the lawn whenever the occupant passes the threshold of their creaking front porch.

I've even heard, in line at Hobson's sandwich shop, that they speak in riddles if someone dares to cross their path, but others huffed and declared that,

No, they rock slowly in their porch chair, shrouded in the shadow of daybreak.

Those are the sorts of rumors one hears in a ghost town, a town like Sleepy Birch, that says a memory stays for much too long and a spirit even longer.  Maybe, with all those glass bottles, some hope to catch one.

Not me, though.

The thought of a potentially haunted home spooks me. I've read one too many mystery novels of the paranormal variety, and none of them have ended very happily.  I rarely muster the courage to pull myself off my bike each morning before tossing the rolled-up Sleepy Birch Chronicle as hard as I can towards the cottage-like abode.

I don't want a rumor to spread over coffee.

I want a quiet life.  One that isn't haunted.  There's something oddly sinister about a ghost that isn't my own.  I don't know a ghost that isn't mine, so I can't put it to rest.

It doesn't stop me from coming back or from removing the spectral-resident from my route entirely.  I've wondered if maybe it's some sort of thrill-seeking behavior, if Sleepy Birch really is just boring enough to cause me to actively seek out a near panic attack at 4 am, three days a week.

Maybe I just don't want them to go newspaper-less.  They don't leave their house much, so they must be dying of boredom.

If they're alive, that is.

I tell myself that that's what a step above minimum wage and the chance to write a five-hundred-word column every two weeks will do to a man, especially one as desperate to write as me.

Today, though, I'm late.  Forty-five minutes late, to be exact.

Ms. Mitchel's tiny, satan-bred chihuahua chased me two blocks off course, so now here I am, without the defense of darkness, in front of house 1478.  The daylight is breaking across the lawn's dead grass, and the garden out front is beginning to bud with vines and buds.  Gardening equipment and fresh mulch are strewn nearby.

I've never been here in the daylight, I realize.  I was alway too afraid of making contact with the owner, but it looks, somehow, deceptively peaceful.

I blink.

It's fine, I think, trying to dig out a newspaper from my newspaper bag; they're probably dead asleep...

Unless they're undead.

Great.

I have both feet on the ground next to my bike, happy thoughts with my fingers in a panic — paper snagging against the zipper.

It's going to be fine.

But, as my luck would have it, it's decidedly not fine.

The motion-sensor light flickers on first, light pooling across the darker edges of the stone porch. Then the screen door is pushing open, slow, and foreboding.

And Jesus, why does a messenger bag need a zipper anyways?!

I'm in a natural sort of frenzy, eyes snapping up and to the dim, tungsten light emanating from the house. I can hear the glass bottles tapping each other in a strange sort of rhythm from where they hang on the willow beside me —

I can even hear that stupid groaning gate from across the street.

They'll leave it in my obituary,

Theo Eldory, not so beloved son, died delivering a shitty free newspaper for his shitty minimum wage job because he couldn't cope and flunked out of high school.

Or:

Youngest boy to three sisters — has done nothing worth noting but eat candied popcorn and make a boy-shaped imprint on his oldest sister's couch.

Excellent.

I hope they bury me somewhere nicer.

Somewhere with better memories.

When I look up, pink taser in one hand and keychain equipped in the other, I expect a tenant with foggy seer eyes and a lurching body, an eyepatch to boot.  Maybe someone who resembles a sixties witch doctor or a bloodied woman dressed in white.

Anything.

But I don't expect him.

I don't expect stormy grey eyes that reflect like dying embers. I don't expect the strength in his stance with his hand wrapped around the handle of the door, the way his eyebrows draw together slowly when his gaze lifts to me and then drops to my hands.

No, I don't expect it at all.

"Why the fuck do you have a taser?"

His voice is rough and deep, cuts through the morning like a straight shot of caffeine. It doesn't help my brain to mouth functionality, and I stand open-mouthed, saying nothing.

He sighs.  My heartbeat quickens.

"I'm sick of this town and all its side-show bullshit."  His stance is turning defensive, his hand on the door curling. "Are you going to answer me?"

He's tensing.  He looks distrustful.

Like I'm the crazy one.

"I —" I fumble over my words for the first time in my life, mouth opening and closing I'm a mortifying way, "I have a route,"

It's a given that I am on his front lawn, creeping in the barely-there stroke of dawn, with a very feminine weapon in hand. I can't seem to gather my words to explain myself, though, and instead try desperately to grab for the newspaper I'm delivering as some sort of proof instead.

But of course, that only leads to my unfortunate, graceless, sidestepping over my bike and my even less graceful plummet over the metal and to the ground beneath me.

If he was a ghost,

I think, staring up at the sky with my messenger bag strap halfway across my face, arms up above me; still clutching my sister's taser from where I'm sprawled on the gravel,

I'd have put up a good fight.

I have half a mind to get up, pull myself from the dirt underneath me, but why do that? I'll save myself the embarrassment and wait for a car; maybe I'll be better roadkill than a paperboy.

Unfortunately, fate has other things planned for me.

The man's boots are near my head, surprisingly careful as they avoid crushing any of my body parts, only until he grabs my arms roughly and tugs me upwards in one swift jerk.

I recover from the overwhelming sense of vertigo and mortification in point five seconds, attempting to push back my rain jacket's hood with shaky fingers. His hands are still curled around the tops of my arms, maybe a little more tightly than necessary.  He holds the arm with the taser at a greater distance than the other.

Oh. I'm being restrained.   Wonderful.

"You're the worst burglar I have ever seen."

—

(A/N: Okay!  New and improved first chapter of The Blue House of 1478!  The changes to the tone and wording of events are just small enough, without actually being small, and I'm very happy with it!  I'm really excited to focus on the romance and characters developing earlier!)