How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Author:Grady Hendrix [Hendrix, Grady]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

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“Welcome to Waffle House,” the waitress said, coming over to their back corner booth and stopping short. “Y’all okay?”

Louise sat hunched in the booth, hand back over her left eye, staring down at the table. Mark had found some sweatpants and flip-flops in his truck, but they were way too big and her T-shirt looked grimy and the collar was torn. Mark was cleaner but he looked like exactly the type of guy who’d go to a Waffle House at three in the morning after shooting a haunted puppet.

“Never better,” Mark said. “Louise?”

“I’m blind,” she croaked.

“Do y’all know what you’d like?” the waitress asked.

“Louise?” Mark prompted.

Louise stared at the table.

“She’ll have an American cheese omelet,” Mark said. “Whole wheat toast, scattered, smothered, and covered hash browns.”

It was the same order she’d given since she was nine.

“Steak and eggs for me,” Mark said. “Make that medium rare.”

“Any coffee?” the waitress asked.

“Two,” Mark said.

“I’m scared to look,” Louise said to the waitress, removing her hand. She tried to open her left eyelid but couldn’t make herself do it. “Is my eyeball still there?”

“Stop it,” Mark said.

The waitress almost said something, changed her mind, and headed back to the grill. It didn’t pay to ask questions past one in the morning at Waffle House.

“I need a doctor,” Louise repeated.

“Would you quit it?” Mark said. “Google says people get injections in their eyes all the time and they’re fine.”

“I’m not fine,” Louise said.

Mark leaned forward and used his fingers to pry open her left eyelid. “What do you see?”

Louise closed her left eye so nothing leaked out.

“Open your damn eye and tell me what you see,” Mark repeated.

Louise opened her eye. Light poured in. Her lid fluttered and felt bruised. She saw the laminated wooden table, the plastic menu with bright pictures of happy food, her knife and fork. Floaters flooded her vision, filling the Waffle House, drifting across the walls, but she wasn’t blind. She carefully raised her head and looked around, not wanting to dislodge her eyeball, not wanting to feel it run down her cheek.

Waffle House looked cheery and overlit, all yellow and black, and it smelled like hot grill and all-in-one sanitizing solution. The only other people eating were two middle-aged Black men who looked like they were going fishing. It all felt very present and very far away at the same time, like she’d tuned in to the Normal Channel on late-night cable.

“Right now,” Mark said, “what you need, for once in your life, is to listen to me.”

Louise watched the waitress give their order to the grill man and felt like an alien observing human behavior. She was having a nervous breakdown in Waffle House. Her brains had been scattered, smothered, and covered.

Louise started to giggle. She couldn’t help it. This nice, clean restaurant, everyone acting normal, Mark acting normal, but a puppet had tried to kill her and she wasn’t normal anymore. She laughed harder.

“Lulu,” Mark said, leaning across the table, “the way you’re laughing is actually really, really scary.

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