And Another Thing

So, occasionally I have moments of extreme…um..psychicness? I guess that is the word for it. I cant predict when these patterns will increase, change or stop (as they have, sometimes for several months in a row). I cant control it and sometimes they are very, very uncomfortable. The past couple of weeks have been fairly queit, no ghosts, no dreams, no visions, no crap. Just normal brain stuff and work and laundry and driving of cars. I guess my brain was preparing for this weekend….
Yesterday, I went to a lunch at a friend’s new house. Her name is Una and she just moved here from Vinalhaven (an island just off the coast of Maine). I’ve known her since we were in seventh grade, we had a rocky friendship for a few years and then settled into appreciating that one of us was prettier (her) and one of us was smarter (me). Anyway, she moved away in the late nineties and just decided, on a whim, to move back. She bought an old Spanish ranch style home near the Mexican barrio in Logan Heights. I love the neighborhood; its full of botanicas and tamale carts, party stores with paper pinatas and dusty windowed shops where young girls buy their quinceanera dresses. I wanted to live here but I found my apartment first.
Her house is two stories, sagging and painted bright green. The lawn is over grown but healthy, which is uncommon is our dry pocket of desert. She was out front planting orange mums when I drove up. I felt immediate, sincere chills creep up my spine when I saw the house. Something about it pulled my bellybutton toward my back, a cramping sickness and increased when I saw something through the second-story window dash away. I told myself it was her cat. I hoped she even HAD a cat.
We made small talk, gushed about weight and hair and clothes, it has been so long, you look great, no YOU look great, jeans, tattoos, boyfriend? All of the feminine formalities. We stood on her lawn which was shaded by a fairly young pepper tree. I stared past Una’s head at the porch, which was a mess of breaking floor boards and Ikea rocking chairs. She mistook my stare for judgement and started with the excuses. I smiled politely and said yes, of course, when she asked me in.
Have you ever swallowed a piece of ice? The immediate panic because, holy shit, you just swallowed something the size of an Oreo cookie and should be choking, but the ice is melting so you just have to wait for it to disappear before you breathe? That was what walking into her house was like. It was clean, smelled of orange soap, and was full of light from the six windows. To me, it looked small, filthy and forgotten. It took me a moment to realize that it was just regular house. I tasted rust on the back of my tongue and had to squeeze my eyes shut to reset what I was seeing. We sat down on her brand-new chocolate brown sofa and ate corn ships and mango salsa.
"Did you get these next door?" I asked, referring to El Cazadores, the family-owned grocery store. She nodded.
"There’s some of those cherry cookies, too. Want me to get them?"
"Galleta de Azucar con cereza," I corrected.
"How the fuck do you know that? Do you speak Spanish?"
"Yeah, you live here long enough, you pick stuff up. Is it the one with pecans or without?"
"Without."
"Okay, I’ll have one."
While she was gone, I felt a trembling sensation that started at my feet and crept toward my knees. It took me a second to identify this as the first stages of utter panic. Something was not right in her house. Something felt sick and old, it was starting to give me a head ache, like smelling incense for too long.
Una came back a minute later with a proper brand-new plate loaded up with pastries. She had even bought the tacky sprinkled cake, the Galleta Por Ninos. If you have never enjoyed Mexican pastries, let this be a brief endorsement- go get some. They are delicious.
I stuffed a huge bite of the cookie into my mouth to avoid having to ask her the question that wanted to leap from my mouth- did you find a dead Indian in here, or something? I kept chewing and listened to her talk about how charming the neighborhood is, how nice the man next door is for helping her with the yard, how she didnt miss island life- I was amazed at how long she talked without actually needing a reply from me. I sat there, quietly, and sniffed out spirits.
Fifteen minutes and two cookies later, I couldn’t take it anymore.
"Una. Your house is fucking creepy."
"I know. I know, it is. I thought that if I just ignored it that it would go away, like maybe I was just scared about living alone."
"No. I felt it the second I parked outside. There is something really…off about this place."
"Something touched my hair in the shower this morning," she confessed, her eyes wide with the shock she felt.
"Seriously, this place makes me feel like Im about to yarf and shit my pants at the same time. What are you going to do?"
"I don’t know. I keep trying to laugh it off, like maybe Im just being a kook? But you feel it too, so thats something."
We decided that the best thing to do was walk to the liquor store and get some beer, maybe some cigarettes. On the way there, I asked her if anything else had happened besides the shower touching. She said no, that i was just a general sense of dread, a thick feeling over the house, some noises at night. Nothing solid enough to convince anyone about it but enough to be radically uncomfortable.
The man a the liquor store carded Una for the Negro Modelo. She fumbled and got her Maine driver’s license out, slightly flattered. The man, who was about nine thousand years old, asked her if she just moved into the neighborhood. She said yes, and explained which house was hers. Then, like something out of a movie, the man flinched.
"Very bad, that house."
She and I just looked at each other.
"Why is that?" I asked. I hate to admit it but I glanced around to check for hidden cameras or Ashton Kutcher lurking behind a pork rhind display.
"Very bad. My wife no go there, not for nothing. Old lady live there very bad, kill our dog, bad, bad things."
I almost laughed, it was seriously like something you would see on teevee.
He fumbled around behind the counter and pulled a leather satchel to his lap. He fished out his own cigarettes, a cell phone and then a small green bag.
"Take this. No charge, my present for you. You live there, make it nice now. No more bad things."
He handed Una a small metal charm strung with seed beads. She thanked him, grabbed the paper bag of beer and we walked out.
"What. The. Fuck."
"I know, it was weird…let me see what he gave you?" I asked. She handed the medallion to me. I recognized it, had seen tons of them in New Orleans and Miami.
"Its voodoo or Santeria," I explained. "Probably Santeria since it has Saint Peter, San Pedro on it. Thats Ogun, you know? In voodoo they call him Oguon. He’s a protector and it makes sense that he’s on this, he is associated with metal."
"Are you crazy?

When did you pick this up?"
I shrugged. Between books and traveling and the internet, I knew all kinds of things. "Around, I guess."
"You are creeping me out."
"Look, Una. Your house is creepy. Your yard is creepy. Your shower is creepy. How can a little surface knowledge of religion be creepier than that?"
"What am I supposed to do with this thing?" she asked.
"I would hang it up someplace, if I remember right, Ogun likes red and black and rum. Maybe, just for fun, hang this over your door and leave a bottle of rum and a cigar on your porch. It cant hurt and you see much weirder shit in this area of town."
Again, she just looked at me.
"I have rum,"  she said, quietly.
"Sounds good, I mean…you never know. Just give it a shot?"
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