Tim Meyer - The Switch House

“Is that true?” Angela asked, peering up at him.

“Of course, baby.” Terry kissed the crown of her head. “I never blamed you.”

“Even right after it happened?”

Terry paused, longer than he had on screen when Barry had asked him a similar question. “Things were so crazy. I can’t remember everything I felt. I remember feeling so… so goddamn numb all the time. During the entire investigation, I felt…”

“Empty?”

Terry nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s probably the best way to describe it. Like I was still in control of myself but also like I was watching myself through someone else’s eyes. Like my life was a movie and I was the only audience member.”

“Yeah, I felt that way, too.”

“In retrospect, I wish we had talked more during those days.”

“Yeah, me too.”

[Rosalyn Jeffries is sitting on their couch, where the Shepards sit now, watching her daily programs. We cut to her in the booth: “There is an emptiness in my heart since Carl passed. I spend a lot of time watching television, reading books, catching up on current events. Carl was my life, you see. We did everything together. And I do mean everything. Since we retired, not a minute had gone by that we weren’t at each other’s sides. We had no children, so… it was always that way.”

Off-screen, Barry asks: “Do you still talk to your husband, Rosalyn?”

She looks off camera as if Barry had just asked her to solve a quantum physics equation. She scoffs.“Of course. He visits me every single day.”]

“Creepy,” Terry said, wincing from the chill erecting the hair on his arms.

Angela shook off a serpentine shiver from her spine. “Super creepy.”

The show went on for another twenty minutes. It followed the standard season opener formula where the characters were introduced, shown engaging in mundane activities and daily chores, while intermittently speaking about why they were there, what their lives were about, and how they felt the switch could help them.

During Angela and Terry’s segment, they had traveled down the Vermont mountainside and into town where they had ended up at a small village of privately-owned shops. The shots brought back some pleasant memories and in that moment Angela smelled the sweet citrusy fragrance of fruit-scented candles. The scene cut back to Rosalyn driving down Route 9, into the heart of Red River. The roads had been congested as usual; it was a Friday night on the Jersey Shore and the traffic flowed with unpleasant southbound visitors. She had pulled into the Red River Mall parking lot, climbed out of her black Oldsmobile, and headed inside.

That was when the television began to flicker with intermittent static and—

[We’re back in the house. Rosalyn Jeffries is kneeling on the living room floor, praying in front of the television displaying only static. Her eyes are closed, her lips are moving, and her naked body is still. We’re looking at her from behind and only see the weathered, wrinkly skin of the old woman, her backside, her—”]

“What the hell?” Angela asked, launching herself from her husband’s side, nearly jumping off the couch.

[Rosalyn begins to chant. The words are indecipherable, but they sound ancient, fragments of a language that predated man. A language one might associate with some kind of ritual, maybe satanic, since that’s always the most popular association. On screen, static ripples down the picture, a minor interference. A low tone, like tinnitus, can be heard in the background, accompanying the woman’s ritualistic vocalization.]

“Terry, I don’t like this.”

“What is it, babe?”

[The woman rises up, tossing her hands in the air and throwing her head back. She’s shouting the words now, stamping her feet in some tribal dance. At the television, she begins to bark like a dog. Next, she folds her arms into wings and flaps them up and down, clucking like a chicken and jerking her head forward and backward in spastic fashion. The camera fades out so we can see more of the room and less of the naked woman and the television with no picture. The new shot reveals the walls and their new décor; ceremonial symbols have been engraved in all four, large shapes incorporating circles and triangles, hexagons and octagons, trapezoids and ellipses. They glow in the darkness like molten lava. They pulse along with the woman’s dance, burning bright with her movements and fluid gyrations, fading during those brief seconds of inactivity. We watch as the woman bends down, picks up a limp object, and holds it in front of the television. It’s a dead chicken. The woman takes the knife she also had staged on the floor, brings the metal to the chicken’s neck, digs the blade in, and begins to saw…]

“What the fuck, Terry?” Angela shouted, her voice cracking.

Terry jumped onto the couch as if the carpet beneath his feet had suddenly become hot coals. He checked his wife to see if she was okay, feeling her forehead for a fever. He corralled her close with both arms and, during his heroic reaction, he knocked over the bowl, spilling popcorn across the couch and onto the floor. “What is it, babe? What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean what’s wrong?” she screamed so loud her vocal cords burned. Eyes locking onto the disturbed picture, she pointed at the insanity unfolding before her. “Don’t you see what she’s doing? Don’t you see what she did in our house?”

Terry opened his mouth to speak, but

[Blood rains from the chicken’s opened neck, torrents of black syrupy liquid splashing the carpet. The woman looks back at us, craning her neck slowly as if she isn’t sure what’s behind her, unsure if she should look back and confront the possibility of some unspeakable terror, some unnamed thing that has taken the house under its spell, its power, flashing its unlimited control…]

“God, what did she do in our house?” Angela cried, tears spilling over the rims of her eyes.

“Angela, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he replied, rubbing her back. They were on the floor. Angela knelt on all fours, glancing up at the television. Terry bent on one knee beside her, comforting her with his left hand, parading his fingers down her spine. “Calm down, you’re freaking me out.”

“Freaking you out?” she squawked. “A goddamn ritual sacrifice took place in our home and you want me to calm the fuck down?”

Terry’s hand stopped halfway up her back. She stared into his eyes and saw something there that induced more shivers than the unfolding events captured on camera; her husband was absolutely clueless. He hadn’t seen what she saw.

“Angela,” he said, surprisingly serene. Sweat dripped off the end of his nose. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

[The woman turns and faces the camera. Her eyes are whited out like small marble orbs. A messy tangle of hair, thick as yarn, hides most of her facial features. Her lumpy breasts droop like half-empty sacks of laundry. Her stomach folds in three rolls, the bottom covering the top of her pubic hair. Moles the size of quarters pepper her doughy, dimpled flesh. With pure white eyes, she stares at the camera, at us, the audience, and in a harsh, long-time-smoker voice she says, “Stay out of this house.”]

Angela couldn’t breathe as the words left the woman’s mouth; feeling like an invisible claw reached down her throat and punctured her lungs. Nothing involving her body seemed to work except her bladder. The warmth of fresh urine spilled down her leg, tickling her flesh.

“Oh, Jesus,” Terry said, immediately smelling the bodily waste. Panic infiltrated his voice. “Oh, honey. What the… what the hell is happening to you?”