Well.

I'm a little unable to put up a blog post today. I was, of course, going to write about my deep and wild excitement about the fact that we not only have a new president who is NOT George W. Bush, but that we have a new president that's not Bush who is a really awesome guy. But I'm feeling a little disenchanted at the moment, since I was planning to watch the inaugural ceremonies streaming live on my computer at work, and instead was treated to chopped up sound bites and frozen pictures on my screen, no matter what website I tried to use. Seriously, throughout the ceremonies, when everyone I work with was crowded around a TV twenty feet away from me and behind a door, I was trying MSNBC, CBS, Huffington Post, Wonkette, New York One, and Hulu in succession to see if any of them would work on my ancient and grumpy computer. But none did. So I got a few good screenshots of Obama talking, each of which stuck on my monitor for a good fifteen seconds before getting replaced with a snapshot of some random person in the crowd waving a flag and two seconds of confusing noise. Ugh.

So I'm a little disappointed and way less excited than I was this morning. I'm going to wait to go home to try watching it again, this time on a better connection and faster computer. And then maybe tomorrow I'll have something to blog about.

Stupid work computer. Interfering with my experience of historical moments. Grumble.

Crap

Well I just realized I haven't blogged in two days but I have absolutely no ideas about what to write. But I only have ten minutes left of work and nothing else to do so it seems like I should write something. I really need to pick a theme for this blog and stick to it, it would narrow the field of options considerably. But that seems so limiting... Hm...

I've been surfing the interwebs all day looking at random things in between bouts of frantic copy-writing for one of the magazines I freelance for, and I've realized something. The internet, in most of its blog and list and funny pictures areas at least, is a vast wasteland populated almost entirely by people like me. People who are gainfully employed in a manner that puts them in front of a computer for at least eight hours a day, but who still have absolutely nothing to do. It's amazing. How much manpower is being wasted in this world by losers who have learned the entire LOLdictionary by heart? They make Photoshop masterpieces and post them on all sorts of sites, and then write comments about them, sometimes inventing whole new personas from which to create debate, which creates interest, which brings in more hits to their site, which... is... self-aggrandizement at its finest.

I watched the music video for Rammstein's song "Amerika," which was sent to me by a friend, and which is hilarious. Of course I'm sure they meant it as a very serious political statement about how American stupidity is taking over the world, but Rammstein as a band takes itself so seriously that one can't help but laugh at it or risk brain-explodey. But the comments! Oh, the comments! These are the people who have no creative talent with which to make things to post and then comment upon. They write things like: "whatever. britan i dont think is the best cause thats the whole reason why america exists. the whole world isnt perfect."

...

And Rammstein's point is proved!

...That really had no point to it, but it's interesting food for thought. And now my ten minutes are up and I must venture out into the Arctic Tundra that is New York City in January. Wish me luck!

Love Potion Number One

An article published today in the New York Times cites another article, recently published in Nature, about the chemical and evolutionary nature of the human experience of love. According to both articles, love as we know it - that rush of euphoria, infatuation, obsession, lust and intense emotional connection that we experience at certain times for certain people - has developed in human beings as a way to strengthen pair bonds between mother and child, and between mated pairs in order to keep them together for the sake of that child.

I've done a lot of reading on this subject and have heard many theories, but none of them counter this very basic idea that love is not so much a mystical force caused by the cataclysmic connection of two souls as by the chemicals that evolution (or God, if that's how you look at it) has placed in us to keep our species going. That may be an unromantic way of looking at things, but as far as I'm concerned, knowing this doesn't reduce the experience of love - nothing really can. Love is one of the defining characteristics of the experience of being human. Even if it is just a bunch of drug-like chemistry pumping through our bodies, it is still the thing that drives people to perform amazing feats, to feel and experience the world and what it means to be alive as perhaps no other species can. And this, no matter what causes it, is transcendant.

But leave it to scientists, of whom many of you may already know I am deeply suspicious, to treat something that borders on magical with the same amount of levity as they would any other natural phenomenon, which is to say, as if it were nothing at all.

While the Larry Young, the author of the Nature article, doesn't cite any specific plans just yet, he mentions that "it won’t be long before an unscrupulous suitor could sneak a pharmaceutical love potion into your drink." John Tierney of the New York Times then goes on to speculate that perhaps what we need more than a real "love potion" would be an "anti-love potion, a vaccine preventing you from making an infatuated ass of yourself."

Tierney makes some good points about how, if used correctly and at the right times, an love vaccine could prevent people from performing some of the stupider acts that human beings have been wont to perform over the ages - running off with someone else's spouse, falling for a complete loser that all our friends say is bad news, committing criminal acts in the name of love, and so on. Certainly it could be a much bigger boon to humanity than a love potion, which would be used in all the wrong ways, to force people into relationships they didn't want if used on others, and to fool ourselves even more about people who aren't right or even good for us if used on ourselves. But I see problems inherent in both these ideas, and not just small problems. Love, whether it's being enhanced or muffled, isn't something to be taken lightly. Love is a force that, as some have said, can move mountains, and conquer all, and is more or less something we shouldn't fuck with. At least as far as I can tell.

Whether we like it or not, and no matter what name we put on the hands that have sculpted us as we are, evolution or God or what-have-you made us capable of experiencing love for a reason. It has helped us get this far, to the point where no other species on earth can come close to shutting us down. We have beaten the odds and we have gotten as far as this because whatever it is that made us gave us the ability to love. It also gave us the ability to walk upright, and while other species might have been rolling on the ground laughing at us when we started, it hasn't backfired on us yet. Love, just like walking, ultimately came into our genetic code for a reason, and a reason that has served us well so far.

Of course there are times when love hurts us, and when we wish it had never happened, but to cheapen that experience by bottling it just seems... dangerous. What kind of messes could we get ourselves into by taking some anti-love potion and going out on a Saturday night, ending up accidentally with someone who had taken a love potion, or vice versa? Morning-after experiences can be embarassing enough without a whole new cocktail of chemical enhancements to be dealt with, as recreational drugs have proven for centuries already. Add to those already tried-and-true drugs a substance that could literally make one fall head over heels in love and suddenly the possibilities of violence, stalking, jealousy, anger, and regret - among other things - multiplies exponentially. Can you imagine a college dormitory full of 'potioned-up' students, half having even more and more libidinous sex than they currently do while in the throes of the 'anti-love potion's' no-strings-attached high, while the other half fight each other and sigh and moan and wail over their 'soul mates' who they met in line for the unisex bathroom at the club?

Chaos.

Some people, as both articles mention, are born less receptive to the chemicals that cause "love" in the first place, making them less likely to feel the urge to "settle down" or "find someone," while being able to lead less conventional but still very full lives. What's wrong with that? Probably many of our greatest scientists and even artists suffered from lack of desire to love, and ended up making breakthroughs that affected the rest of us for years. But often these "loners" end up convinced by our culture that they "must" find someone and "must" settle down to be normal. Meanwhile, others of us seem hardwired to enter into torrid love affairs with every likely candidate to come along, getting themselves into relationship after relationship with people who hurt, abuse, and devalue them, while friends tell them they need to "cool down" and learn to appreciate being alone.

A love potion and anti-love potion, respectively, could perhaps help these people, but if these 'potions' were to be marketed and developed like any other pharmaceutical, would we then have to label these already-troubled individuals (troubled only because of what society tells them they should be or do, mind you) as "diseased"? Must we now make the desire to be left alone or to be loved as "syndromes" or "disorders"?


I appreciate that biologists and drug manufacturers are trying to help us, but I wish they'd think about it a bit first.

Cop out

I am way too sick and full of mildly psychotropic medicines that are supposedly combatting my illness to write a blog that comes close to making sense today. And, given that last time I tried to make sense I ended up talking about Bowie Child vs. Robots in the future, I thought making an attempt in my current state would be a mistake. Perhaps hilarious, but it would get nobody anywhere in the long run.

So instead, I'm taking the opportunity that having my sinuses feel as if they're going to pop my eyeballs out of my head and my lungs hurt with each breath I draw to do what some of my favorite other bloggers do, and guide anyone who reads this to some other interesting websites. I get a lot of ideas and inspiration from some of these, so I thought maybe others would, too.

1) Firstly, on a somber note. If you like seafood, which I know most of you do, or sushi, or anything from the ocean, you should be aware that most of our fish stocks worldwide are being overfished and fish in really destructive manners. I just watched a British documentary last night called "Deep Trouble" about how badly depleted our once-thriving ocean is becoming, and how it's our responsibility as consumers to find out how the fish we eat was caught and where it comes from. But it's hard to make responsible decisions about what we purchase without first knowing what's ok and what's not. So,here is a link to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch Guide . The people here keep a close watch on fish stocks in the wild and on fishing practices world-wide, and keep their site up to date on what types of fish are ok to eat and which are not in the area where you live. I'm sure their info isn't 100% accurate, because depending on where you're buying, you could be getting fish from any number of fisheries and markets and so on, but it's a good start. You can even order a wallet-sized card with a guide appropriate to you region on it, so you can keep a list of what's ok and what's not with you at all times, making spur-of-the-moment sushi forays less morally confusing!.

2) On a more entertaining note, NPH hosted SNL on Saturday! Hooray for initials, and the for the internet making it completely ok for me to use them and expect people to understand what I'm saying! I was really considering getting up at 4:00 am to wait in line for ticktes, but I got drunk instead and ended up sick from a cold too, AND Had to be at work at 10:00 am, so I didn't make it. But go to Hulu for some good clips.

3) Any of you who are responsible YouTube watchers or internet trollers have no doubt already seen Drunk History , but if you haven't yet, go check it out. It's entertaining and yet slightly disgusting in a perfect balance. There are a lot of homehade ripoffs out there, though, that ARE gross, so try to be prudent with your link-clicking.

4) Of course, if we're going to venture into YouTube territory, there has to be an obligatory Cute Animal installment. I used to be quite against the Cut Animals on the Internets phenomenon, but as the days here at the gallery have dragged ever onward and I have gotten more and more bored, I've become ok with. Animals are funny. Especially the ninja cat .

5) And, to make your day a little brighter, there's scientific proof (or at least a study showing that perhaps it's true) that fat butts are an indication of good health! True story!

Two posts in one!

Ok, the most important issue of the day today, obviously, is:

1) IT'S DAVID BOWIE'S BIRTHDAY!! He is 62 years old. As most of you probably know, I have a serious obsession with the man. I can't explain why or how it developed, but I think it has something to do with my love of the movie Labyrinth from a very early age, which introduced me to his sparkly nature, his awesomely sexy accent, and the gigantic... er... talent... that is displayed when he wears very tight pants. As I got older I started to listen to his music and realized that he does indeed rock my world in every possible way. The man has been ten years ahead of the curve musically since the late sixties, pioneered the glam rock movement, and I'm pretty sure actually is an alien living among us. He married supermodel Iman, who I think is also an alien, and their super-perfect babies will rule the earth someday, I'm sure.

He is older than my parents. But I would still say yes if he asked me to marry him, or spend the night with him, or let him eat sushi off my body, or... well... anything. That would be after I either wet myself or just made a fool of myself generally by blathering stupidly about the weather for twenty minutes or some-such, just because he had spoken to me. Yes, I may have a problem, but at least I am honest about it.

So, everyone, please go home tonight and listen to your favorite Bowie song, and lift a glass to the man that has had more influence on modern music than most of us realize, who was sexy enough to be probably the only man ever caught naked in bed with Mick Jagger, who can wear tights and sparkly eye makeup and still be sexy, and who could probably turn you into a bowl full of jelly with one piercing, two-toned look from his creepy/sexy eyes, and who, weirdly enough, has not yet made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Madonna has, and although I like Madonna, I think she should have told them she refused to accept her spot there until they put him in. Cause, I mean, she'd be nowhere without him... But that's another blog.)


2) And the second thing I want to bring up here is not quite as important to me at the moment, but will probably be a bigger eveny than Bowie's 62nd birthday in the long run. The iPod people will soon market the iBreath. A breathalyzer for your iPod. (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-idrunk19-2008dec19,0,3073178.story)
This seems like a good idea on a very, very altruistic level. The guy who thought up the idea, Don Bassler, calls it a safety device that "may save lives." He told the LA times that "the hope is that the iPod's cool factor will take away some of the stigma of acting responsibly and using a breathalyzer," which is all well and good. But...

Well...

Let's be honest with ourselves here. Who uses iPods the most? Who are the most tech-savvy people out there? What group of people finds out about new gadgets and must have them as soon as possible? And who goes to parties and follows peer pressure to drink heavily to the point of critical intoxication? Who are generally inexperienced and naive enough to think that they can handle anything and that nothing bad can ever happen to them? The answer to all these questions is the same: image-conscious high school and college students who have lots of their parents' money to spend.

Given what we know about the implied target demographic for the iBreath, then, what is the likelihood of that demographic using this device for good instead of for getting as wasted as possible? Sure, there will undoubtedly be a few responsible honor students out there who keep the iBreath safely in their pockets or by their steering wheels, but the majority of drunken high school and college students I've known in my day would be much, MUCH more likely to sit in a circle chugging jungle juice and seeing who can blow the highest reading before passing out, vomiting, or having their stomachs pumped. (For an in-depth description of the evils of hand-held breathalyzer devices in the past, please refer to Tucker Maxx and his "Famous Sushi Pants" story: http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/the_famous_sushi_pants_story.phtml)

Thank goodness others have followed the same reasoning as myself: "Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said she worried that young people would use the breathalyzer for drinking games." I'm not alone in my fears, then, but when was the last time that MADD actually had an effect on the youth drinking culture?

All I can say is, I'm worried, people. As if the iPod and the iPhone weren't already sinister first waves of a frightening trend away from human interaction and the use of the brain that will inevitably lead to our downfall when robots take over the world with their superior ability to follow orders unscrupulously and their inability to make errors (so what if I'm conservative about technology?), now we're all going to become DRUNKEN drooling morons who can't leave the house without being plugged in to fifteen gadgets. We're making ourselves easier targets for the robots here, people.

That is, of course, unless we allow the Bowie Alien Child to rule us all, in which case I'm sure we'll be in good hands. Judging from the formidable might of the Bowie-Iman alliance already, their offspring will probably have the necessary technology and genius, and of course the sparkles, necessary to defeat the robots.

Oh my GOD. I just re-read what I've been writing. I'll stop now.

It hurts me when I look at pictures of the reservation.

Pictures of my time there, and visits back, my one and only visit back, bring me a lot of real physical pain. I feel I wasn't there long enough to establish the connection from myself outward to the community and the children that I wanted to forge, even though the experience of living there and all that came with it has taken up residence in my heart and will never leave. I feel that I used the reservation for my own purposes, that the people there saw me for what I inevitably was: a tourist with time to kill. But in my deepest parts I know that my time there was immeasurably more than that - I simply have no way to assert it. Were I to go back to visit now there would few who would remember me - I was too shy and too confused to know how to become a part of them all, while they became a part of me forever.
A one-sided love affair. I hope someday I can change that and go back. God I need a sweat.

THe Old House by the Highway, pt. 6

We left the hospital the next morning around seven. I was in a full leg cast and had been given crutches, which would take me a while to figure out. I had been given a strong dose of serious pain medication and was grateful for the fog of indifference it had lowered over me regarding the night's evens. Monica hadn't said much beyond asking what had happened. I'd told her I'd fallen through the banister and had seen the goat again, and that seemed to be as much as she needed to hear. She'd just nodded and said, “I knew it,” then turned back to her magazine as the doctor came in. I was glad she'd let the issue go for the time being – I was in too much pain to have explained much more. I knew she would have believed me, but I think my silence told her just as much as the whole story could have.

We pulled up to the house and I started to ready my crutches. “No,” she said, putting a hand lightly on my arm. “I'll just be a minute. Stay here and rest.”

I just nodded and let her go, too drugged to care much and relieved in my own cloudy way that I didn't have to go into the house. I may have fallen asleep, but it didn't seem very long before Monica emerged from the house with two duffel bags. She threw them into the backseat of the car, then dug into her pocket. She pulled out the hoof we'd found in the garden and had been keeping on the mantel. It seemed like years ago that we'd found it.

I watched her as she walked down to the highway, waited a few minutes, then ran across the four lanes in one dash. She stopped for a moment, looking at the hoof she held in her hand, then threw it far out into the river.

She came back to the car. “I've been wanting to get rid of that thing ever since we brought it in,” she said. “Gave me the creeps.”

She turned around and unzipped one of the pockets on the duffel bag behind her, then turned back around with a business card in hand. I craned my neck to look at it, but gave up when a nerve went shooting down my neck toward my leg. She tucked it into the dashboard in front of the odometer. “You get some more rest,” she said, and turned the car back on.

“Where are we going?” I mumbled.

“To get some answers,” she said. “Then to a hotel.”

I just nodded and let myself fall back into a blissfully dreamless sleep.

When I woke up again, we were parked outside an unfamiliar ranch style house. A large van sat next to us in the driveway. “J&J Plumbing,” it read along the side. The wording rang a distant bell, but my medication didn't really let me recognize it.

Monica was at my door, opening it and helping me onto my crutches. I got myself upright somehow and began the slow process of moving myself forward, following her up a slight incline toward a well-maintained yard. As I got going, though, some of the painkiller-and-sleep haze started to wear off and the name on the truck struck a chord in me. “We're at Justin's?” I asked blearily.

Monica nodded. “This sonofabitch knows more than he's telling. I'm asking him about the goats.”

She helped me hobble my way up the front walk, then rang the doorbell. There was no immediate answer, so Monica – always the insistent one – knocked on the door. It took a few minutes, but finally Justin, clad in morning stubble and a bathrobe, with a cup of coffee in his hand, answered the door. He looked at us through the screen door, puzzlement and wariness mixing on his face. “Well hi, folks. Didn't think I'd be seeing you again so soon. What can I do for you?”

Monica smiled, but her voice was hard. “Can we come in, please, Justin? We need to talk to you about last night.”

He hesitated, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “Last night? I… uh... Was I drunker than I remember?”

Monica smiled again and opened the screen door. “No, not at all. Nothing like that. But we do need to talk.”

He looked over his shoulder again, then shrugged and opened the door for us. Monica thanked him and as I hobbled by I smiled resignedly. Justin’s eyebrows rose as he realized I was on crutches. “Oh my god, I'm sorry,” he said as I passed into the well-kept living room. “I didn't see that... Are you ok there, Ed? What the hell happened to you?”

Monica closed the door behind her. “That's what we're here to talk about. Could we sit down somewhere?”

“Sure, sure,” he said, his bemusement growing as he looked from her to me and back. “Why don't we go into the kitchen and I'll get you two some coffee. You look like you've had a long night.”

He led the way and I settled into a roomy wicker-backed chair at a large kitchen table. The room was decorated with pictures and ornaments of chickens. I was vaguely grateful they weren't some other barnyard animal. The sound of a running shower came from somewhere down the hall.

Ed settled into the chair at the head of the table after handing us two brimming cups of delicious smelling coffee. The scent of it kicked my brain another gear toward functionality. I took a sip.

Monica looked at hers for a moment, then straight at Justin. “Justin,” she said sternly. “Ed fell down the basement stairs last night when the banister broke. He landed on a pipe and broke his leg.”

Justin nodded soberly. “Well I'm mighty sorry to hear that,” he said, shaking his head. “Those stairs are tricky, I’ll give you that.” I could hear that he meant it, but there was an edge to his voice. I think he was afraid we'd ask him to compensate us for the medical expenses, since he'd installed the banister.

Monica smiled. “Well we’re certainly not blaming you,” she said warmly. “It could have happened to anyone. But we do need you to be honest with us about something.”

Ed looked down into his coffee, as if he knew what was coming.

“What happened in that basement, Justin? There is something not right happening down there and we need to know what it is. It’s not just the smell anymore and I think you know what we mean.” When he was silent for a moment, she continued: “Ed wouldn’t have been going down there in the first place if it was just the smell bothering him.”

Justin nodded, gathering himself before he looked up and spoke directly to me. “I should've told you folks, I suppose,” he began slowly. “But, frankly, I'm something of a skeptic, and I guess I was just hoping it wouldn't ever become... an issue.” He looked at Monica, then took a sip.

“My father,” he continued, “was real eccentric, like I told you last night. And, like I said, as he got older, he started keeping animals as pets that should never have been let in that house. He had pigeon roosts and chicken coops inside, some wallows for pot-bellied pigs out back. I told you about his fox. He had a donkey or two out there from time to time, even some giant godawful lizards. I don't even know what all he had most of the time ‘cause the place smelled awful, and with my allergies I could hardly be there ten minutes without sneezing my head off.”

He took another sip.

“Well, one day I went over there and he had a new 'pet.' A big old billy goat he called Rex. He was just in love with that thing, Lord knows why. The animal smelled terrible, just crapped anywhere it felt like it, and chewed on everything in the house. Just a lousy animal. But Dad had a soft spot for it. Kept it at his side all the damn time. Let it go anywhere it wanted.” He shook his head. “The next time I went over there was a few months later, and, well, he'd started up a whole herd of goats! A whole damn flock of 'em. Must have ten, fifteen goats roaming through his house.” He chuckled derisively, then looked at me.

“I mean, can you imagine? An old man, in his seventies, living in a house with a pack of goats! And the damn things are dumb as a box of nails – can't walk down stairs but they can damn well walk up 'em. And here's my old man, who thinks they're the be-all, end-all of domestic pets, and he’s carrying eighty, ninety-pound animals down flights of stairs when they get themselves stuck at the top.” He took a long sip. “I told him, I said, 'Dad, you can't keep doing this. Those animals would be better served living outside where there ain't any stairs.’ I said, ‘You're gonna fall down one of these days and break your damn neck.' I offered to build a shed outside for them to sleep in, but he wouldn't hear of it. Said something about how his babies were worth the risk. I just left. Couldn't stomach the thought of my father living like that. Had to get away, you know?”

He looked down into his coffee again, as if the scene were playing out on its surface, then started speaking again, softly. “Well,” he said, “it didn't take long for the locals to give him that nickname I told you about, and damned if I didn't join in. Some things are tough to face like a man. I should've gone over there and built him a shack for the damn things whether he liked it or not, forced him to listen to me, but it seemed like his dignity was already near gone. I didn't want to go bossing him around, taking the last of it away, you know?”

I nodded when he looked up, but he looked away again, out through the glass doors onto a patio where a large grill shone in the morning light. “After a few weeks I went back over there to check on the old man, and... I couldn't find him anywhere. Him and his goats, just nowhere to be found. The chickens were there, and the dogs and the cats sniffing at 'em like they hadn't been fed in ages. But no goats and no ‘Old Goat Man.’ But his old station wagon was there. I let myself into the house and... well... you know that smell you were telling me about. I hope to hell it ain't ever been as bad for you folks as it was when I walked in there. Smelled like animals and their shit and something rotten. I went down there and...”

He sighed and looked back at us, his eyes filled with sorrow. “There was my old man, dead in the corner. His leg was broken.” He nodded at me. “Just like yours. The bone was sticking up through his skin and all that. And he was... he was gone, must have fallen down there and couldn't get back up and wasted away, or maybe hit his head, too. Probably carrying a goddamn goat down there for something. And all those goddamn goats were down there with him. Stupid bastards followed him down the stairs, except of course they can't walk down stairs. So they' all fell. And they all broke their damn legs, too, falling down the stairs. So none of 'em could get the hell back up! And they...” He shut his eyes against the tears. “By the time I got there they'd started...”

I held up my hand to stop him. I knew what he was about to say and I didn’t need to hear it. But he shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “They’d already gotten to eating him. My old man. Goats'll eat just about anything if they get the notion... and not just that, but they got the taste of meat and it looked like they started going after each other down there, too.” He opened his eyes again. “It was like something out of a horror movie, I tell you. All these dead goats laying around, and my old man, stripped down to bones in some places, with the live ones mostly limping around like zombies, all covered in blood...”

He stopped talking and swallowed, then took a few bracing gulps of his coffee. He looked back at Monica and me. “I should've known better, really, than to try to cover it up. I had a closed-casket funeral for him, told everyone he'd died in a farming accident and left it at that. Nobody except me and the coroner and undertaker knew what'd happened. I got all those goats and carcasses out of there, and I just hoped if I fixed the place up, there'd be no need to tell anyone. Just get it off my hands, you know. It's a nice house, structurally, and all.” He paused. “I should've known something like that would leave a mark on a place. You can't expect that kind of thing to just go away. But I've never been one to believe in ghost stories and all, so I just hoped... I should have at least put a new basement in, with a decent floor and lighting, but I just... I couldn't bring myself to go down there any more than I had to. I just left it.”

He looked right at me. “I'm awfully sorry, Ed,” he said. “I should've known better.”

I just nodded. It all made so much sense when it was said aloud. I'd been right all along but hadn't been able to voice it. Monica put her hand over mine on the table.

* * *

We sold the house shortly thereafter and were able to negotiate to be released from the mortgage. We moved back to the city, our experience with rural life having scarred us both for good.

We never found out if he told the next buyers about what had happened to his father or to us, but when we came back to check that everything was out, a cement floor had been poured in the basement and a new wall was being put up over the old stones.

It still smelled terrible.


THE END!

The Old House by the Highway, pt. 5

I froze, my mind hitting a brick wall of terror for a moment before I closed my eyes and tried to breathe evenly, willing myself to calm down and for the animal to disappear along with my fear. It probably was all in my head, I remember thinking over and over. Not real. Not real. But when I opened my eyes again, it hadn't moved, and it hadn't disappeared. In the darkness, I saw its short, tufted tail flick from side to side as it tilted its head and sniffed at me. The stink was overwhelming. A piece of flesh fell to the ground, fur coated in charnel.

Suddenly my brain snapped into action, propelling me forward down the stairs in a quick change of heart. I was suddenly furious. This four-footed tyrant had been ruling my life in my own damn house, and I didn’t care whether he was really there or not. “You son of a bitch!” I shouted, hurtling myself down the stairs with one arm raised, fist pumping. “You goddamn goat! Get the hell out of my house!” In my rage I misjudged the distance to the next step and slipped. I found myself falling backward, twisting as I fell, and then landed hard on my butt on the stairs. I grimaced, turning my face away from the goat for just and an instant as I tried leverage myself up using the banister. There was a splintering sound, and the banister gave way beneath my hand as I realized in horror that I was going with it. Into the darkness and the stench and the sinister sounds of movement with no source. I heard the goat on the stairs bleat, and then my vision went white with pain as my shin landed on something hard that did not give way beneath my weight. My right foot went numb while the rest of my leg exploded in agony. I yelped and struggled to push myself into a sitting position. My leg was throbbing, screaming in pain, I was seeing a succession of stars and fireworks with each heartbeat. I touched the shin lightly with my hand, which came away wet with blood. I retched but stopped myself from vomiting, and tried to move my foot but felt nothing below the searing pain in my shin. It seemed I had broken my leg.

I sat still for a while, the pain and shock finally receding to a point from which I could try to get my bearings. I could see the light from the kitchen far away overhead and the outline of the staircase below it; I'd fallen almost straight down from the steps and landed directly to the right of the staircase. From memory I realized there was some metal piping running along the side of the staircase over here – I must have landed on it with my now-shattered shin. I'd have to get myself around to the bottom of the stairs and drag myself using the remaining intact banister. I didn't want to call Monica – if that goat was still around here somewhere she might very well pass out at the sight of it and fall down the stairs herself. I'd wait till I'd gotten myself up to the first floor.

Just then I felt something touch me gently on the shoulder. I whipped my head around in the darkness, my eyes finally adjusting, and came face to face with the goat. I felt my heart jump into my mouth, but somehow stifled a scream that would have brought Monica running. I tried to scramble away, but my leg reminded me in no uncertain terms that I was not going anywhere just yet. The goat balked at my movement and let loose a frightened “Baa,” but didn’t move away from me. He was literally only inches from my face, those bizarre eyes staring intensely into mine, his rotten breath fanning my face around his bloody prize. I stared back, my mind racing but unable to think of any escape over the agony in my leg.

After a few minutes, however, my brain slowly came around to observing the goat I was staring at. It was not the same goat. It was much smaller – its eyes were on a level with mine as I sat, panting, on the floor. And it wasn't spotted. I couldn't tell its color in the dark, but I could tell that there were no horns on its narrow head, and its fur was dark. Its nostrils flared as we regarded each other, then it turned abruptly and trotted off into the darkness. 2 goats. God, they were in cahoots down here. I shivered with pain and fear as I peered into the blackness where the second goat had disappeared.

I followed its vague form in the darkness until it moved through the rectangle of light falling from the open door at the top of the staircase, then gagged as I saw a gaping wound in the animal's side, near its hind leg. A huge red gash was hanging open, tattered flesh flapping around its glistening edges. Its sides and legs were smeared with blood. And, I realized as it moved back into the shadows, the thing was only using three of its legs... its back left leg hung useless from an obvious break just below the knee... had it fallen down the stairs too?

I continued to watch it as it made its way to a dark corner where, as my eyes adjusted, I realized with horror that there were more goats lurking back there, all in a group as if they were huddled around something. Their tails were twitching and their heads lowered, as if around a trough of food. I peered into the darkness, knowing instinctively that I didn't want to discover what they were doing, but I was unable to look away. The returning member of the group shoved its way into the fray, pushing out several others, which stood back and stared at each other stupidly, then turned slowly toward me with vague curiosity.

Through the gloom I could see that their hides were ripped open as well, in different spots and to different degrees, but even in the dark I could see blood and gore spilling from holes in their sides, necks, even faces. They all carried pieces of flesh in their mouth, their muzzles covered in blood, and many some had broken legs. I felt my brain getting fuzzy, approaching a state of fear and sensory overload – a scream was rising up my throat and I was hardly feeling any pain from my leg, so great was my desire to run. I forced myself to look away from the slowly limping goats, focusing as well as I could on getting up the stairs. I didn't want to know what they were all crowding around in that corner or why they were all bleeding. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Knowing I should try to find a way to brace my leg, but too terrified to look around for the broken piece of banister or take the time to rip up my shirt, I began frantically dragging myself backward toward the base of the stairs. The pain was overwhelming as my leg trailed behind me, every clot of dirt or bump in the floor sending me into new reaches of agony, but I kept moving. I was trying to keep my head turned to look over my shoulder and avoid another unexpected run-in with an animal, but in my peripheral vision, the sight of the churning, twitching mass of bloodied goats in the corner drove me onward. The few that had turned toward me seemed to have lost interest and turned back toward the fray, and I could only hope that I could get to the stairs without attracting their attention again.

I had almost reached the stairs when I dragged my leg over an unexpected stone in the dirt floor. It bumped directly against my wound and I let out an involuntary gasp, then stopped still. They'd heard me, and for some reason this time they were interested. All motion in the corner stopped for a split second, then the bodies of the animals all seemed to turn in one motion, broken legs and open wounds all pushing into one another, smearing blood on fur, ears flopping, hooves stamping. This time I couldn't hold back a cry of fear, no longer caring what Monica saw if she could only get me out of the basement. With an act of sheer will, I flipped myself over, my leg sending splinters of white-hot pain through my body, and pulled myself up onto the fist step with my arms.

A few of the large, more curious goats stepped forward tentatively, their muzzles dripping gore from whatever poor thing they were eating. In the background I saw a large, horned animal whirl suddenly around on a smaller one and bite it hard, then pull away and actually rip a piece of its ear off before stepping toward me, chewing contentedly as the other stood strangely still and kept silent. There were at least six of them moving slowly toward me, nostrils flaring and lips twitching, dripping blood from their wounded hides and hideous mouths alike, all quietly breathing out that horrible stinking breath.

I closed my eyes and pulled myself up to the second step, exhausted but determined. The largest of the goats stepped onto the first step a few feet below me, dragging one broken back leg behind it in a limping, zombie-like motion. It belched, then sniffed at my left shoe lazily. I scrambled backward, the step above me grinding into my back as I tried to force myself up. I realized I was talking out loud as the goat slowly and casually followed my broken leg, which was still mostly on the ground as I struggled slowly upward. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod...” I was repeating.

The goat began to nibble at the laces of my shoe and I felt my mind buckle. I let loose and screamed, praying silently for Monica to come rescue me. If I had been able to move my foot I would have kicked the animals away, but I was immobile and the blood dripping down my leg seemed to draw the animal on. I finally got myself to the third stair and saw my foot start to rise above the ground level. From somewhere very far away I heard Monica's footsteps coming down the stairs from the second floor.

The first goat was following me steadily, gnawing on my shoelace, and its friends were following it, two on the stair behind it sniffing the air. They moved slowly and steadily, my foot out of their reach at last. I grasped onto the frantic thought that maybe, with their broken legs, they wouldn’t be able to mount the stairs to follow me. I was still talking: “Ooooohmygodohmygodohmygod....” I tried to look away from the gore-covered animals, into the darkness of the basement, but immediately regretted the decision. They had all finally moved away from what they had been eating, enough that I could make out a vague shape in the dark corner. It was a human form there in the darkness, glistening with blood, quiet and still in the dark. It had to be...

I felt my head begin to swim, and the stars of pain I'd been seeing became clumps. I tried to pull myself up another step, but knew I was too weak. My vision began to fail and I realized vaguely that I was passing out from terror and loss of blood. The biggest goat jumped forward somehow onto the stairs and began to sniff the dribble of blood on my shin. My head dropped back onto the step behind it...

And then there was Monica behind me, her arms wrapping themselves around my chest. She was talking but I just let myself fall into her embrace. Somehow she got me up the stairs and closed the door behind us.

The Old House by the Highway, pt. 4

We were greeted heartily by the crowd of regulars we'd met the last time we'd been at the Almanac. We had a nice meal – I got a steak that beat anything I'd had in the city, and Monica had a salad the size of her torso – and a few drinks, and slowly felt ourselves unwinding. It was a load off to be away from the house, the smell, the creepy feeling the goat had left, and it was amazing to realize just how anxious we had been as the anxiety slipped away into the evening. Midway through our meal, I saw Justin, the son of our house's previous owner, walk in. We'd met with him a few times over the course of the buying process; he'd helped the realtor do the walk-through of the house and had negotiated a lot of the terms with us. I made a mental note to talk to him about the smell in the basement when we finished eating, to see if he'd heard anything about it in the past and had any hints. I thought of asking if he'd heard of anyone nearby missing a goat, but thought better of it. If I had been imagining it, everyone up at the bar would either think I was crazy or drunk.

When we'd finished and paid for our meal, Monica went to the bathroom and I headed up to the bar. I clapped my hand on Justin's back and said hi. He looked excited to see me, maybe a little sloshed. I hadn't been watching him, but he must have been sucking his lagers down pretty fast while we'd been eating.

“Hey, Ed!” he grabbed my hand and shook it energetically with both of his calloused hands. “Good to see you! How's Dad's old place treating you two? Is Monica here?”

“Yeah, she's in the bathroom. The house is great – as beautiful as ever.”

“Fantastic,” he said, slapping me heartily on the back. “Hey, let me get you a beer! What are you drinking tonight? And your lady, let me get her one, too.”

After the appropriate hemming and hawing over who should pay for whose drinks, Monica returned from the bathroom and we settled down next to Justin for a few rounds. He told us about his job and family. He seemed like a really decent sort of person, a “gentleman farmer,” I guess. He owned a plumbing company that had taken off in recent years, so he'd started raising some crops on the land he'd bought with the revenue from our house sale. He seemed happy.

I finally decided it was time to bring up my gripes, and to see if I could press him for more information on the house. If there was anything to the weird problems we’d been having, I thought he might be drunk enough to reveal it without thinking I was out of my mind. “Hey, Justin,” I asked as the bartender set another round before us. “I have to ask you something. You ever hear your dad tell of a nasty smell coming up from the basement of that old place? We love the house, but there's something foul down there that just makes it reek when the weather's warm.”

He paused, looking into his cup for a little while. Maybe a little longer than he should have. But he was pretty far gone. “Well, Ed,” he looked up at me. His eyes were wide. He looked like a cornered animal. “That's a... that's a real old foundation you've got under that house, you know. You knew that when you moved in. Lots of weird old smells in a dirt floor basement like that, in any house. Especially—“ he burped quietly “—especially near the river like that.”

“Oh, yeah, we know. It’s just pretty foul down there sometimes. We’re going to get a floor put in down there, but in the meantime, it'd be great if we had some advice on how to keep the smell down. Any tips?”

“Sure, sure,” he smiled broadly, relief evident on his face as if he’d dodged a very touchy subject. “Well, you know, that old place is bound to have its issues, you know. There could be a plumbing problem, of course, but honestly I don't think much of the piping runs down there. It's mostly outside into the septic...” He took a swig. “It might be more just the age of the place and the dank air, down there, you know. And yeah, the guy who built it was a butcher, you know. All those creepy meat-hooks in the basement. There are bound to be some unpleasant things hanging around after all that, even if it's just a bit of a stink...”

His eyes opened a bit wider as he said it and he turned back to his beer, very much in the manner of someone who had said too much. “I'd be happy to send some guys over there to look at the plumbing if you want,” he mumbled into his beer, then back at me with a wide, open smile. “Free of charge!”

“Oh, Justin, you don't have to do that,” Monica joined in. “We just thought it'd be worth asking about. If your dad had every mentioned the smell or what he did to keep it down, you know. We'll figure it out.” She laid a hand on my leg. When I looked at her, she gave me a piercing stare. She was suspicious of him, I could tell. Something about his behavior was more erratic than the beers he was downing could explain. I nodded.

“It sure is an old place,” I turned to back to Justin. “I love being somewhere with so much history. You don't get much of that in the city where everything's built over so fast.”

He nodded enthusiastically, happy about the change of subject. “Sure does have some history,” he said. “Hell, my dad used to tell me all kinds of stories about that place. Never sure I believed them, though. He was an eccentric guy, and I never spent a whole lot of time in there, what with all the animals.”

I felt Monica's grip on my leg tighten. “Animals?” I said as lightly as I could, my heartbeat picking up. “He had a lot of pets, huh?”

“Sure did,” Justin replied, shaking his head a little. “He was like Noah over there. I always had real bad allergies as a kid, so we never had pets even though Dad was a real animal lover. So when we were all grown up and he bought that place, he just went crazy. He had every kind of animal you can imagine at one time or another. Hell, I think he had a fox or something once. No idea where he got it.”

“A fox! What a thing to have for a pet!” I laughed, feeling Monica’s hand squeeze on my leg again. We were on to something here. “Did he keep it in the house?”

“Well, yes, and no,” he answered. “Most of the critters he had over there came and went as they liked. He had a big fence around the place so they didn't run off, but the door to the house itself was usually open so the animals could come and go as they pleased. He was like Dr. Doolittle over there.” He drank the rest of his beer in several gulps. I ordered him another.

“What a hoot,” I smiled at him. “I'm glad you rehabbed the place before we moved in! I love animals and all, but not in the house!”

He laughed as his next beer was set before him. “I hear you! I mean, if I didn't have allergies I'd be fine with having a dog or a cat inside, you know? But I could never have lived like that, will all kinds of animals in my house.” His face fell a bit, as his memories seemed to take on a more somber note. “Yeah, it was a real zoo. And I hate to say it – I mean I don’t want to be disrespectful to his memory – but by the time Dad passed on, he'd gotten a little strange with the animals. Had them everywhere, only one room of the house to himself and that was his bedroom. People round here...” he looked up and down the bar, then dropped his voice so the other patrons wouldn’t hear him. “They used to call him the ‘Old Goat Man.’”

I clamped my jaw shut to avoid looking too excited. “Really? ‘Goat Man,’ huh?” I goaded him on.

Justin nodded. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “He had so many of them. We tried to convince him to get rid of some of them, but he loved them like they were his own children. Like most people would love a cat or a dog. After a while, well, the damn goats nearly took the place over... Dad wasn't really all there at that point.”

I saw Monica straighten up on the other side of me, her eyes wide. Justin took a long drink, looking forlorn. Trying to salvage the conversation, I smiled again and held my glass up in a toast. “Hey, man,” I said, “at least he did things his own way. Not many people can say that, right?”

Justin looked up at me blearily and clinked his glass to mine, a smile spreading over his face. “You know, Ed, you're right. He did things his way. Here's to The Old Goat Man.”

“Cheers!” Monica and I shared a meaningful glance over our mugs as we toasted the Old Goat Man.

* * *

Monica and I drove home in silence, our thoughts obviously following the same trail as we wound our way back to the house over the country roads. None of the information we were mulling over had explained or helped our situation, and yet there it was, ringing in our ears. “The Old Goat Man. He had so many of them.” My brain was screaming at me that somewhere in Justin’s drunken intimations was an explanation. Maybe one of the goats had stayed in the woods nearby and come to visit its old home, that something logical had to come of this. But logic seemed to fail me every time I thought I’d explained it. My intuition was pushing away all my trains of thought, trying to force something else through: an explanation that wasn't even an explanation. Just a weird idea. Just nonsense. But it wouldn't go away.

When we pulled up to the house, Monica turned to me. “Ed,” she said seriously, “let's pretend, for now, that that conversation with Justin didn't happen. I just want to sleep and not think about it.” Her eyes were a mirror of my thoughts: confused and serious and tired.

I agreed. We went inside and, while Monica got ready for bed, I made myself a little snack of chips and salsa in the kitchen. “The damn goats nearly took the place over...” The words echoed in my head, and I shook it, refusing to let my thoughts continue down the path they were on. Instead I moseyed over to the basement door to let some of the reeking air from the basement out overnight. The door swung open, squeaking just a little. The smell hit me harder than I'd ever experienced it, sending me reeling away, gagging. My hyperactive brain tried to label it – decay, or droppings, or ... death. I shook my head again and forced the thoughts away once again, heading back to the kitchen.

No longer hungry with that smell following me into the room, I stared at my salsa, feeling nauseous. The house was almost silent, except for Monica's small noises from upstairs, but there was a murmur from the basement. I almost sensed it rather than actually hearing it – quiet movement, as if many feet were moving around on the dirt floor, shuffling. I couldn't be sure if I was really hearing anything or just letting my imagination run away with – No. No, that wasn't my imagination. That was a sound. Maybe the fetid air escaping upward. Or maybe…

Bullshit. I was making myself crazy over the drunken ramblings of a plumber whose dad had gone crazy and goat-happy. Mere coincidence, and I damn well knew it, even though my stomach was flopping around like a fish out of water with apprehension. I’d have to show my stomach who was boss and go down there, take a look around. Show it, and my growing fear, that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on here. Teach the hair on my neck to lie back down.

I took a deep breath and walked to the open doorway, holding my breath against the stench from below. I flicked the light switch on the wall. Nothing happened. The old bulb hanging from the ceiling down there must have blown out. Perfect timing. I took a deep breath through my mouth to avoid smelling the air, and took a few steps down before stopping to let my eyes adjust.

There were faint stirring sounds coming from below as before. Probably rats or bugs, I told myself. I peered downward, my hand tight on the railing and my every hair standing on end. My stomach flipped particularly violently and, then – there it was. That same goat. Standing a few steps below me. Chewing on the same piece of flesh and staring at me.

The Old HOuse by the Highway, pt. 3

I tip-toed in and approached Monica tenderly. “Babe,” I said softly, shaking her, “wake up, I need your help.”

She bolted up, eyes wide. She hadn't fallen back asleep, it seemed. “What happened?” she whispered frantically. “Are you ok? Where's the gun?”

I realized she was shaking, her eyes huge and her hands gripping the sheets white-knuckled. I put a hand on her shoulder. “Everything's fine,” I smiled. “There wasn't anybody out there. ...Kind of.”

“Kind of? What do you mean kind of?” She dropped the sheet to her lap.

“Well, there was something there, but it wasn't an intruder.” I felt ludicrous saying this. “It was... It was a goat.”

Her shoulders, which had been up at her ears in anxiety, dropped, and her frightened look was replaced by one of annoyance. “A what?”

I shrugged. “I don't know how it got in here, honey, but there's a goat in our spare room. You heard him clopping up the stairs. Not a burglar.”

She just looked at me for a while, probably trying to determine if I was lying. I just shrugged again. Finally she looked away. “Stupid farm country. I should've known this would happen eventually. Move to the country, get broken into by a barnyard animal. Ridiculous.” She shook her head and laid back down.

I touched her shoulder again. “No, honey, don't go back to sleep. He's still in there and we've got to figure out how to get him down the stairs.”

She rolled over to look at me with contempt. “I don't know how to do that,” she said.

“I know, but neither do I. He's pretty big. This is going to take two of us.”

She made a disgusted noise and threw back the covers. “Oh, for Christ sake. Fine, show me the goddamn goat.”

We headed across the landing together, with me silently praying that the animal had put down the bloody flesh.

I stopped at the doorway and looked back at her, motioning to keep quiet. “My plan is to stay quiet so he doesn't take off running,” I whispered. “Then we'll have to grab him, maybe by the horns, and pull him to the stairs. And we'll just go from there. I'll go around this pile of boxes to the right, you go left. We'll come at him both ways.”

She nodded wearily.

We slipped into the room and separated. I got that same apprehensive feeling I'd had the first time. The hair prickled on the back of my neck and my forearms as I moved slowly around the room, listening for any sounds from the animal, but all I heard were Monica's feet shuffling around the stacked boxes from the other side. I heard no clopping, no snuffling, no chewing. He must be holding still, waiting for us somewhere in the dark. Suddenly I caught a flash of movement from the corner of my eye and jumped around a corner to find myself facing Monica again. I whirled back around, thinking maybe I had overlooked him, but I knew that if neither of us had seen him in our circuits of the room, he must not be there. He was too big to miss. Maybe he had left while I was getting Monica, although I hadn't heard his hoofs clattering down the hallway to the spare bedroom.

“He must have gone somewhere I else,” I said, shrugging. Monica's face was pale, her eyes wide. She must have shared my unexplainable unease. Even if the intruder was an animal, I supposed, it was still unsettling to know it had gotten into your house while you were asleep. Especially if the intruder was a carnivorous, blood-covered quadruped.

“Let's check the other rooms,” I instructed, trying to ignore the flipping of my stomach. “You take our bedroom, although I doubt he could have gotten in there without us noticing. I'll take the other spare room. Shout if you find him, and close the door till I get there.” She nodded slowly, the ridiculousness of the situation weighing on her, and we went to check our respective rooms. I shut the door to the store room firmly to be sure the goat wouldn't re-enter.

I went to the other bedroom, which we'd fitted up with a bed and dressers for guests. Tiptoeing in, fully expecting to find the bastard chewing on our 300-count sheets, I scanned the dark room for signs of the beast. It was difficult to see in the shadows, but I didn't sense any movement except my own breathing and pounding heart. I felt my hair begin to stand up again, though, and my stomach somersault in the now-familiar apprehension of the animal's presence. I switched on the light and squinted, and simultaneously felt the goat brush by my leg on its way out the door. I spun around and leaned into the darkened hallway, my eyes scrambling to adjust, but saw nothing except moonlight streaming in from the window on the landing and the open bedroom door. Had it just been an air-pressure change, or my own hyped-up senses fooling me? I looked back into the spare room. Nothing. My blood was rushing in my ears, but still I was sure I'd have heard the clopping of its hooves on the hardwood floors if it had been there.

Shakily, I closed the door and made my way to the master bedroom, where I found Monica looking confused, as well. “It's not in here,” she said from the edge of the bed where she sat. “It's weird, though. I'm like... terrified right now. I feel like I just got in line for a rollercoaster or something. I’m kind of freaked out.”

I sat down beside her and put an arm around her. “Me too,” I admitted. “It's weird to think that an animal could just wander in. I guess we'll have to be more careful from now on.” She leaned on me and I felt her heartbeat racing, her chest heaving, like my own. I patted her on the shoulder. “Well, it's got to be here somewhere and we've got to get it out before it breaks something, or eats something. I hear goats will eat anything-” I got a snapshot vision of that piece of flesh dripping blood and clotted fur onto the floorboards. I shook my head again to get the vision out, my breath catching as I did so. I set my shoulders and stood up, helping Monica to her feet. “It must have gone downstairs.”

We searched every room in the house, twice. Even the basement, which had started to reek of whatever-it-was again, musty and unexplainable and disgusting. We turned on all the lights and looked in every corner, went back upstairs to double check, and shone a flashlight around the attic. But the animal was nowhere to be found. My heart was in my throat the entire time, the memory of the bloodied chunk of meat and those unsettling yellow eyes on mine keeping my adrenaline pumping. Even more unsettling than the animal's conspicuous absence was the fact that both our front door and the side door were closed and locked. The doorknobs themselves were locked and the deadbolts drawn. Even if the goat had had opposable thumbs, he couldn't have gotten into the house. Unless we had been so drunk that we had let a blood-smeared quadruped into our house when we walked in – which we had definitely not been – there was no way to explain its presence.

Maybe I had still been asleep when I'd seen it – maybe I had had a waking dream. But I couldn't forget the distinct feeling I'd had of its presence, the hairs on my neck prickling, the flips of my stomach. I knew the difference between dreams and reality. That thing had been real. I couldn't explain it. But I told Monica it must have been a dream, that I must have thought I saw something that wasn't there. I'm not sure she believed me, but the alternative explanations for what had happened were so bizarre that we both allowed ourselves to believe it, at least enough to go back to sleep.

* * *

The next few weeks passed quickly. I was busy at work and had been spending long hours at the office. Monica, upset by the goat incident, had been spending a lot of time out of the house as well, running errands and gardening during the day. Her unease in the house was compounded by the smell from the basement, which seemed to be getting worse every day. It was midsummer, and the days were hot and humid, so smells were magnified. Especially so close to the river where the ground was damp and the air more humid than elsewhere, it made sense, but understanding why it smelled so bad didn't make being in the house any more pleasant. We called a local flooring company about pouring cement down there, but we had a month-long wait until they could come out to the house.

One day I came home late from work to find Monica sitting on the porch with a stricken look on her face. She was dirty as if she’d been in the garden, her gloves beside her on the floorboards as she wrung her hands. She looked like she had been crying. I settled beside her on the porch without saying a word, and she clung to me, shaking, then burst into tears.

“Monica, Monica, hey, what happened?” I stroked her hair as she heaved giant sobs into my shoulder.

“The.... the goat -” she gasped. I felt a chill go through me. Not this again. “It – it got back in... into the house! It's in there! I – I saw it!” A giant sob wracked her shoulders. “And... I tried to get it out. I tr-tried to get in, b-b-but it locked the door! It l-locked the damn dd-oor and...” Another sob. “I've b-been out here f-for hours! And... and I'm scared!”

“Woah, woah, woah,” I patted her back and held her to me. “What do you mean, you saw it? Where did you see it? How did it lock you out?”

She sobbed a few more times. I knew she was probably getting tears and snot all over my work shirt. “I heard a n-noise, like... like a noise a goat would make, you know?” She seemed to be collecting herself. “A-and I was in the garden. And I looked at the house and I saw it. A-at the window in the spare bedroom, just looking right back at me!” She sniffled and sat up, wiping at her face with the back of her hands. She squared with me and continued, the sobbing subsiding. “So I ran to the door and it was locked. And my keys are inside! So I've just been sitting here and waiting. And I haven't seen it again, or heard anything from inside. But... but I saw it up there. I know it's in there, probably eating things, and breaking things, and... and I don't know why, but it's just like last time, I'm scared of it. How did it get in there?”

She leaned against me, done crying, but still drawing in giant breaths. I rubbed my hand along her arm. “I'm sure there's some explanation, babe,” I said, knowing in my head that I couldn't think of a single one. “Don't worry, I have my keys, and we'll go in and look around.”

She looked up at me, tears welling back up in her eyes. “B-but what if... what if it's like last time and we can't find it? I'm just... I don't know what to think... I don't think I can take that again.”

I nodded. “I don't know what will happen, but I bet we'll find him in there somewhere. A big goat like that can't disappear twice, right?”

She nodded, but the look in her eyes must have mirrored my own. We were both nervous. We took a few deep breaths, then I unlocked the door and we entered quietly, locking the door behind us to block the animal's escape route. We separated like we had before, our hearts both beating fast and our senses running on high. I have to admit, I was on edge. The animal's presence was so unexplained and unsettling. I’m the kind of person who likes knowing how and why things happen, especially in my own house, and yet this goat thing was totally beyond me. It was possible that I had been half-asleep when I thought I saw it the first time, and that maybe my story had upset Monica so badly that she'd locked herself out and imagined she had seen it, too. But something rang false with that explanation, and that same something made the idea of it seeing it again unsettling.

We searched the entire house, and to neither of our surprise, we found nothing. No traces of an animal having been there, and certainly no goat. Nothing was out of place or chewed up or broken. In fact, nothing even hinted that a large hoofed animal might have passed through. Monica and I finally reconvened in the kitchen, where I cracked open two beers to help us calm our nerves.

She looked at me earnestly from across the kitchen table while I took a long gulp. “Ed, I don't like this,” she said. “Something's not right here.”

I stopped myself from nodding. “Well, let's face it,” I replied. “We've both had a bad scare. What happened that night was bizarre, and we've both been on edge because of the basement smelling. Our eyes and our brains must be playing tricks on us. There's no reason to be so upset. I'm sure things like this happen all the time.”

She shook her head. “I know what I saw, Ed. There was a goat upstairs.”

I sipped my beer. “Well, I thought I knew what I saw, too. But it just can't be what actually happened. It's impossible for an animal that size to be prowling our house without us finding it, or at least some evidence of it, Monica.”

She crossed her arms and stared at me.

“Well,” I pushed on, “think of it this way. We've just made a giant transition in our life together, you know? We're both a little scared of being out in the country for the first time. And I mean, if you put it all together, the night I thought I saw it, we'd just come back from the bar, where the locals were telling us about all the farms in the area. I mean, it's perfectly logical that our nerves were more on edge than we realized and we just kind of freaked out together. And I know you were upset by it... maybe we're just feeding off each other's fears. Maybe we need to just calm down a little.”

She was shaking her head between sips of beer. I stumbled on: “Who knows, maybe this smell from the basement is some sort of gas that’s interfering with our brains somehow. Radon, or whatever it’s called. We’ll get it checked out. I bet that once this flooring gets put in and we're more settled, this will all go away, and we'll laugh at ourselves for it.” Even as I heard myself talking, I didn't quite believe it.

Monica was quiet for a minute, thoughtfully peeling the label off her beer bottle. “Ok,” she finally said, leveling a piercing look at me. “Here’s a question: What did the goat you saw look like?”

The image of the beast, grizzly scrap dangling from its maw, its face and body streaked in blood, popped into my head so clearly I almost choked on my mouthful. But I pretended to have to think about it for Monica's benefit. “Wow, it's getting kind of fuzzy now, like a dream or something...” I sipped my beer and peeked at Monica. She did not look convinced. “Well,” I said, wiping my mouth, “I guess it was pretty big, at least up to my waist. And it had horns... not big curly ones or anything, but pretty serious horns. And floppy ears. And it was black and white, not spotted, but blotchy, almost like a cow. You know, just a normal goat.”

Monica waited while I avoided her eye, her stance assuring me that she was about to say something I found unpleasant. When I was finally looking her in the eye, she said slowly and distinctly: “That's exactly what I saw. It was the same goat.”

I shrugged, “Well that makes sense, I mean if we're both unsettled by all this, of course you'd imagine seeing what I saw, right?”

She picked up her beer. “But Ed, you never told me what you saw. We didn’t talk about what it looked like.” She threw back her head and took a few big swallows.

I wanted to argue, but I knew she was right. I'd never described the animal to her. She'd never asked. We stood in silence for a few minutes, nursing our beers. I didn't know what to say, and she knew that she'd made her point.

Finally I put my empty bottle down. “Hey, why don't we go to the Almanac and have dinner and a few drinks? Just get out of here and relax, and see some of our new bar buddies. I bet it'll get our minds off the goat, and that's exactly what we need.”

She looked as if she wanted to argue, but there really was no point. We weren’t going to get anywhere by debating who saw what. So she agreed and headed upstairs to take a shower while I tried to figure out what could be happening with the mystery goat. By the time she was ready to go 45 minutes later, I had still not come up with an answer.