I putzed around the center plaza of my hometown one sweltering summer afternoon. I hadn’t realized it yet, but I was dying. I had neither a girlfriend nor a job, so I felt about as useless as the little green lizards that darted around me on the sizzling pavement searching for shade, bodies slowly desiccating as the seconds clunked by on the looming clock tower. In the distance, heat waves rising from the black asphalt distorted the visage of the town’s old soda jerk/pharmacy. I hoped it would be my salvation or a pleasant hallucination, at least. I jogged across the street and went inside. To the right of the entrance, the HVAC unit blasted a cool gust every few minutes. I had timed my approach perfectly as the AC groaned and belched its blessedly icy air over me. Sticky beads of sweat were sliding across my skin like baby slugs, when a handwritten flyer, pinned neatly to the nearby bulletin board, caught my eye. It was nearly completely smothered beneath a stack of pleas for part time babysitters and dog walkers posted by the other backwater townies with whom I was forced to share space. The peculiar note stuck out like an ostrich among hippos.
Please! An old woman needs help moving furniture. Are there any decent men still out there? Will pay top dollar! Please! — Gertrude Waverly.
Several of the tabs with contact information had been pulled from the other flyers around it, but Mrs. Waverly’s was untouched. Despite being fully aware of Mrs. Waverly’s checkered reputation, I couldn’t help but pity the lonely flyer. As I tore a tab off, I sensed unseen eyes probing me, bearing down on the back of my head.
“You’d better not be stirring up any trouble now, Edgar,” Mr. Johnson, the shopkeeper, tutted.
“What’s so wrong about helping an old lady?” I asked.
“You know damn well what I’m talkin’ about,” he replied.
“What?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the silly little campfire stories too? Black magic rituals? Abducted children? Really?”
“Oh, Lord. Edgar, why do you have to be such a little –“
” — No? Well, surely it must be one of the other many ludicrous rumors?” I said, cutting him off. I had a bad habit of doing that, yet I continued. “Or it is more likely that Mrs. Waverly committed the unforgivable sin of not conforming to this town’s inane, straight-edge standards?”
“I swear your generation is keyed up to ten all the time,” Mr. Johnson huffed and shook his head. “I’m just asking that you be careful and don’t go stirring up –”
The brass bell above the door tinkled as I stormed out with a head full of steam back into the heat, fitfully rubbing the slip of paper between my fingers.
The following Saturday, I drove about a half hour north of town until I turned off the highway onto the long, winding road that led to Mrs. Waverly’s estate. The imperious Victorian mansion was encircled by a deteriorating wrought-iron fence adorned with wickedly sharp spikes that spanned across acres upon acres of verdant hills without a neighbor in sight. A gust of wind rolled through the pastoral landscape, swirling the long, flowing grass. I was struck by an image of a gorgeous woman’s hair billowing in the breeze. She was faceless, yet the image seemed so clear that I was compelled to reach out and caress her, but my hand grasped nothing but the air whipping past my car window. The daydream distracted me from realizing I was closer to Mrs. Waverly’s manor than I or any kid in town had dared to go before.
Once I arrived, I buzzed the call box and, after a moment, the gate groaned open. For the first time since I had taken the flyer, trepidation wrapped its icy tentacles around me. I couldn’t help but imagine my childhood self screaming at me to turn tail and never return. But I willed myself forward, refusing to allow superstition to turn me into one of the stupid townies who feared Waverly Manor.
I approached the door, lifted the hefty knocker, and let it fall once. It landed like a dead bird, and a boom echoed inside the mansion, shaking its timbers. I waited a while, and right as my desire to flee was about to get the better of me, the door creaked open.
“Were you raised in a barn?!” Mrs. Waverly screeched.
“Hi, I’m Edgar,” I started. “I’m here to help –“
“Yes, yes, I know. We spoke on the phone,” Her words stumbled over themselves as they left her mouth. “With a house this old, you really must be careful! If you’re to assist me, no more slamming and clanging and banging! I suffer from intense headaches, so your words must land as softly as spring dew on a rose petal. Got it?”
“Yeah — I — I mean yes, ma’am,” I stammered.
“What?! I can barely hear you! Speak up!” She rasped. “Oh, never mind, let me show you around. People your age, I swear…”
She beckoned for me to follow as we began the hours-long tour of the palatial estate. The manor had seen better years, but even through the cobwebs and cracked paint, a glorious, if waning, opalescence shone like a flickering prism through a silk shade. Despite our rocky start, Mrs. Waverly’s charms soon became more evident, too. For such a cranky old woman, she was sharp and strangely charismatic, with a seemingly neverending supply of decisive energy. As we passed through the creaky hallways, her impressive life unfolded before me.
Despite how unbelievable it seemed, she, like all elderly people, was once young and vivacious. She and her husband, Frank, were a couple of party animals who had lived life to the fullest, galavanting around the world and commemorating each adventure with a life-sized, hand-painted portrait in each exotic location. The backdrops were gorgeous, but the thing that struck me most was the adoring sparkle in their eyes as they admired one other. Their romance seemed as grand and vast as their adventurous life, full of laughter and passion.
But their tale reached a tragic end as all great romances inevitably do: Frank Waverly had passed in immense pain and fear as pancreatic cancer withered his formidable presence into ash.
As I listened, two primal desires crystalized themselves within me. First, I realized that I wanted to be in love. Until then, I only thought about possessing a woman, as if she were a trophy, rather than someone with whom I could discover love. As if love itself were a precious mineral and we its amorous prospectors.
Secondly, I realized, as much as I don’t like to admit it, how desperately I desired to be rich.
At the end of the hallway hung a lone, dusty portrait unlike the others. It pictured a little girl in strangely anachronistic clothes, I reckoned from sometime in the mid-1800s. It stuck out from the other paintings, which had obviously been produced in the last half century.
“An ancestor of yours?” I asked.
“Oh. That…” she trailed off, wistfully. “That’s the first portrait. Something my parents insisted on when I was a little girl.”
“That’s you?!” I exclaimed. I examined it more closely and noticed the paint was cracked and chipped in a way that only comes with extreme age.
“Heh. One day you’ll be this old and understand,” she chuckled. “But not if you don’t take better care of yourself!” She rapped the bit of lower belly fat I had accumulated over the winter.
“Now!” she exclaimed. “Enough lollygagging! Let’s get to work!”
We descended into the basement of Waverly Manor, and I flicked on the lights, revealing a sea of ghosts. Or at least that’s what I first thought when I was confronted by the numerous, canvas-covered pieces of antique furniture lurking in Mrs. Waverly’s basement. I let out a deep sigh of relief.
“I hope you’re not tired yet,” Mrs. Waverly chided. “You haven’t even started!”
I began moving the furniture down the hall using a dolly, up a freight elevator, and into a waiting truck out front. From there, the furniture was whisked away to an auction house in town. Like clockwork, as one truck left, another returned ready to be refilled. The drivers never dared to leave their vehicles to help, so it was mostly a one-man show.
Hours ticked by, and the immense basement still seemed nearly as full as when I had started. Exhausted, I leaned against one of the pieces and accidentally knocked off its canvas covering, revealing a luxurious full-body mirror with ornate mahogany carvings around the edges. I instantly became transfixed by my reflection, unable to tear myself away. An eerie grin began to creep across my reflected face when, suddenly, Mrs. Waverly dashed across the room with surprising speed and threw the canvas like a cast net. For a brief moment, a visage of hopeless terror flashed across my face in the mirror.
“Not this one!” she gasped. She paused to catch her breath, before continuing. “You must promise me *gasp* that you’ll never ever *gasp* go near this mirror!”
“My reflection…” I mumbled, still in shock. “It was like it was moving on its own. Like it wasn’t me — As if –“
“Promise me! Or never return,” she insisted.
I agreed and with that pact made, we cemented our peculiar bond.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Part 2 will be out 4/10/26!
Millerwiller 
Killer beginning
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