I was just about to knock on the glass door when a fat little white terrier sprang from the couch and charged me, barking furiously. All teeth and chub. But at the door, it suddenly pulled up, stopped barking, and looked at me curiously. I looked back at it. It cocked its head to one side. I didn't cock my head.
Then it whimpered and dashed off.
As it did so, I heard more movement...the sound of someone getting out of a recliner, followed by Charlie Anderson's happy-go-lucky, round face.
He let me in, asking if I'd found the place okay. I assured him I had. Once inside, I could fully appreciate just how much crap Charlie had. And yet...I had a sneaking suspicion that Charlie knew exactly where all his junk was.
"Nice place you have here." I was speaking facetiously, and a little in awe, too.
But Charlie took it as a real compliment, bless his heart.
"Thanks, but it's just home. I used to worry about cleaning and stuff like that, but I figured what's the point? My friends call me a hoarder, but I just like junk. I think there's a difference."
"Sure," I said.
He looked at me eagerly. "So, you agree there's a difference?"
I could tell he wanted me to agree, to confirm that he didn't have a hoarding problem, that he was just another guy with thousands of glass jars stacked on a long shelf over his kitchen table. The jars, as far as I could tell, were filled with every conceivable nut and bolt known to man. Thank God they weren't filled with human hearts. I leaned over. The jar cloest to me was filled with - and I had to do a double take here - bent nails.
"Yes," I said. "There's a huge difference."
Charlie exhaled, relieved. I think we might have just bonded a little. "I think so, too," he said, nodding enthusiastically. "Would you like a Diet Pepsi?"
"I'm okay."
"Water?"
"I'm fine. Maybe you can show me where you kept the safe, Charlie?"
"Oh, yes. Right this way."
He led me through his many stacks of random junk. We even stepped around an old car fender. A fender. Seriously? Laying next to the fender was the upper half of a desk, the half with the doors that no one ever uses. There was no sign of the lower half anywhere. Just the upper. Seriously?
But there was more. So much more.
The junk seemed eternal. I already felt lost, consumed. How anyone could live like this, I didn't know. The junk almost seemed to take on a life of its own, as if it was the real inhabitant of the house, and we were the strangers, the trespassers. Indeed, I could even see the chaotic energy, bright and pulsating, swirling throughout the house. Crazy, frenetic energy that seemed trapped and still-connected to the many inanimate objects.
Energy, I knew, could attach to an object, especially an object of great importance, and so, really, I wasn't too surprised to see the spirit of the old woman hanging around an even older-looking piano. Granted, the piano itself was mostly covered in junk, but the old woman didn't seem to care much about that.
"Where did you get this piano?" I asked.
As I spoke, the old woman, who had mostly been ignoring us, turned and looked at me with some interest.
Charlie, who was about to lead the way down a narrow hallway, paused, and looked back. "My neighbor was throwing it out."
"Why?"
"He was moving. I guess it belonged to his mother, who was a music teacher, I think. She died a few years back. I shored up my floor with some extra jacks underneath and pushed it through the sliding glass door. It wasn't easy, but I got it in here."
"Do you play?" I asked.
"No."
"Have you ever, ah, heard it play before?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, have you ever heard it play on its own?"
He looked at me, seemed to think about, or, more accurately, decide how much he wanted to tell me, then finally nodded. "Yeah, sometimes. Just a few notes. I figure it's mice."
"Do you believe in ghosts?" I asked. As I did so, the old lady drifted up from the piano seat where she'd been sitting along with some stacks of automobile manuals.
"Why do you ask?"
The woman approached me carefully. She was composed of a thousands, if not millions of staticky, supernatural filaments of super-bright light. Sometimes the filaments dispersed a little. When they did, she grew less distinct. Sometimes they came together tightly, and when they did, she took on more form, more details. As she approached, I could see where light pulsated brightly at the side of her head, and knew that she had died of a brain aneurysm. She reached out a hand, which looked so bright and detailed that it could have been physical. I reached out my own and took hers, and as I did so, a shiver coursed through me.
In that moment, I had an image of a school, with many dozens of children playing this very piano.
"No reason," I said. "But, wouldn't you think this piano would do some kids some good? Maybe at an elementary school?"
Charlie blinked hard, thought about that. Giving up his junk, I knew, was a torturous act. He shrugged. "Yeah, I suppose."
"Would you do that for me?"
He shrugged again. "Sure. But why?"
The old woman, who was still holding my hand, had covered her face with her other hand. Shivers continued up and down my arm. "Seems the right thing to do, doesn't it?"
Charlie shrugged. "Yeah, I suppose so. I am sort of worried about the floor. Even with the extra jacks underneath. I'll do it tomorrow. I can check around with some schools."
"You're a good man, Charlie Brown."
He smiled and turned a little red. I released the old woman's hand, who smiled and drifted back to the piano. As I did so, I had a thought, "When did you acquire the piano?"
"Last week."
"Before or after the theft of the safe?"
"After. Why?"
Ghosts, I knew from firsthand experience, made for excellent witnesses. Unfortunately, the timing didn't line up here. "No reason," I said.
Charlie studied me, shrugged for the millionth time, and led me over to the furnace, which was located about halfway down the hallway. Once there, he removed the metal cover, set it down, and grabbed a flashlight from the nearby bathroom.
"I kept the safe in here," he said, and shined the light at an empty space above the furnace. "I just set it in there."
"It wasn't bolted in?"
"No. It's heavy, but so's the furnace. The safe just sat right where the old blower used to be. The thing broke ages ago. That's it right over there."
He pointed the flashlight over to a dome-shaped, metal-encased fan. Surrounding the fan were a lot of old baggies full of random screws and washers. One of the baggies even had baggies in it. Hoarding at its purest.