Chapter 1 - Moving Day.

“Where should I put this, Brian?” Michael asked, huffing and puffing as he tried to see around the extra large box he’d just lugged up the driveway into the garage of his best friend’s new country house.

“Just dump it anywhere, Mikey,” Brian answered, setting down his own box full of personal possessions in the only empty spot he could find on the garage floor.

Brian straightened up, rubbing at the small of his sore back as he surveyed the chaos that was his new home. The garage, where they were now standing, was chock-full of piles of old storage boxes, mounds of newspapers, stacks of magazines, garbage bags full of aluminum cans, old milk crates full of random, rusting metal parts, and a wide assortment of other junk that Brian didn’t even recognize. He sighed. It was a fucking mess. And now it was all HIS mess.

“Shit, Brian. This place is a total fucking dump,” Michael echoed Brian’s thoughts as the smaller man came to stand beside him, brushing at his shoulder to remove the smut and cobwebs that he’d accumulated as he climbed through the mess. “Are you sure buying this place was a good idea? I know you didn’t pay all that much for it, but if the rest of the place is as bad as this, I think you got ripped off.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Brian wasn’t sure that Michael wasn’t right, but he didn’t have many options at this point. “When you buy a house at auction, you get what you get, Mikey. They make you sign a big waiver saying you accept the property ‘AS IS’. And it’s not like I was allowed a chance to even look inside beforehand. All I WAS able to do was have my contractor look it over from the outside and examine it for major structural defects and stuff. He said it was a good buy, and I trust his judgment, so I just went for it.” Brian kicked his way through a fallen pile of newspapers so he could walk a few more meters in. “All this crap doesn’t really matter, though. It’ll be a bitch to clean it up, but it should be worth it in the end. As soon as I can cart all of this out of here and can get started on the renovations I have planned for this place, it’ll be great.”

Brian shoved aside another towering stack of boxes, clearing a path to the back wall where he could just see the lightswitch and the door that should lead from the garage into the main part of the basement. He made his way through the maze of junk, flipped the switch and was gratified to see that the light actually worked. He’d had the electricity switched back on that morning. He hoped that the water was on too, since he planned to stay there that night, and if the plumbing wasn’t working he’d be forced to crash at Michael’s for yet another night - not a prospect he savored.

“I just don’t get it, Brian,” Michael groused, unable to let the matter go. “Why the fuck did you decide to buy a rundown piece of crap house all the way out here in the middle of Nowhere, West Virginia, anyway? This is fucking nuts, if you ask me.”

“For the ten thousandth time, Mikey . . .” Brian huffed as he found himself explaining his plans once more. “I’m taking a year’s sabbatical from the hustle and bustle of the advertising world so I can write the great American novel.” Michael didn’t look impressed by Brian’s plans, which wasn’t a surprise since he’d already tried a dozen times to talk Brian out of what he considered a thoroughly crazy idea. “Please don’t start, Mikey. I’m doing this and nothing you are going to say will change my mind. It’s too late, anyway. Yesterday was my last day at Ryder’s and the lease for the new tenant in the loft isn’t up till August of next year, so it’s either move in here or be homeless.”

Brian turned to the basement door, rattling the handle and tugging a little till it finally creaked open and revealed a basement almost as full of junk as the garage was.

“I get that you’re burned out and want to take a break from Advertising,” Michael nagged on. “Fine. Take a break. Do some writing. Whatever. But why the fuck do you have to do it out here in Bum-Fucked, West Virginia? And why, in the name of all that’s sane, do you have to do it in a house that’s fucking falling apart and full of some dead hoarder’s shitload of crap?”

“Because, Mikey,” Brian replied, his voice evidencing the aggravation he felt at his friend’s continued disparagement of his well thought out plans. “Even though I’m taking the year off to write, I don’t plan to just sit on my ass without any income at all for the entire time. I can write AND work on renovating this place at the same time. Then, when the year’s over, I can flip the place and make a fucking mint. So, even if nothing comes of my book, I’ll still have made money despite my year off.”

Brian came to a halt halfway through his explanation and his basement, when he found his path completely blocked by a stack of broken and dusty wooden benches that looked like they might once have been pews in a church. Michael, who hadn’t noticed that Brian was stopping, bumped into him and subsequently toppled over onto his ass. The commotion caused another nearby pile of boxes, topped by an overfilled box that had burst its seams, to topple to the ground, the impact causing a cloud of dust to mushroom up all around them. Both men coughed and sneezed for the next two minutes.

“Fuck, Brian. I STILL think you’ve lost your fucking mind here,” Michael insisted as soon as his friend helped him back to his feet.

“Well, you’re wrong. I’m perfectly sane. And do you have any idea how much money I could make off this place?” Brian asserted as he turned to once again make his way through the junk maze towards the stairs that he could just make out on the far side of the basement. “I only paid $12,000 at the county tax auction for this entire place. That includes not only the house but all five acres of land too. And, despite appearances, my buddy the contractor says the house is basically in decent shape. Granted, it needs cleaned up and some serious repairs, but the foundations are good and the bones of the structure are great. Even if I spend another $50,000 on remodeling, I should still be able to turn it around for a couple of hundred thou profit. So, shut your yapping and quit denigrating my beautiful country manor, here, Mikey.”

“Well . . . If you say so, Brian.” Michael continued to look around himself at the piles of junk that apparently came along with the house and didn’t look convinced. “Maybe there’s something in all these boxes that you can sell to make a little extra on top, too. I mean, it’s all yours, right?”

Brian nodded but didn’t slow down as he continued to wade through the mess. “Yep. I own everything here, lock, stock and barrell. As is, where is - that’s what the deed says. If it’s on the property, it’s all mine.” Brian finally made it to the foot of the stairs and started up them. “And that’s not a bad idea, Mikey. I’d probably better take some time to go through all these boxes instead of just hauling them off to the dump. There might just be something good in a few of them. Who knows, right? They said the guy that owned this place died and didn’t have any relatives, so there just might be something of actual value hidden in a box or two. A hoarder like this,” Brian swept his hand out, indicating all the accumulated mess, “might just have a million dollars stashed around here somewhere, along with his great-grandmother’s silver and maybe even a spare, long-lost nephew or two.”

Both men laughed at that prediction. Considering the poor state of most of the crap they’d seen so far during their tour, it seemed highly unlikely that there was anything here worth saving. But you never knew, right? Stranger things had happened. And this house felt like the kind of mysterious, secretive place where something crazy like that might occur.

“Come on, Mikey,” Brian encouraged his friend as they finally made it to the top of the stairs and the door that presumably led into the main part of the house. “Let’s see what other treasures lurk in the heart of my new home.”

“I’m not sure about treasures . . .” Michael replied, turning his head to look behind him once before following Brian. “Rats are more likely. Did you hear that?”

“What?” Brian hesitated, trying to see whatever it was that his friend was looking at.

“I don’t know. I heard a noise and I think there was something moving over there.” Michael pointed to the furthest, darkest corner of the room where all Brian could see was yet another pile of boxes and broken furniture.

“I fucking hope there aren’t any damned rats.” Brian shuddered. “If there are, I hope to hell they stay down here in the basement. Fuck.”

“Come on, Brian. We better go check out the rest of the place and see if you really do want to risk staying here tonight after all.”

Brian sighed, nodded his agreement with that plan and then led the way into the unknown, hoping that Michael was wrong and he hadn’t bit off way more than he could chew with this new plan of his.

Brian and Michael actually made a lot of progress on the clearing out of the upper floors of the house. There weren’t any further signs of any rodents, so Brian was feeling much better about that side of things. Plus, he was very, very pleased with the overall state of the house itself. There was still a lot of junk in the rest of the building, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the basement and garage had been. And he was thrilled with the overall layout and structure of the house. There were so many possibilities for renovation. He could already see in his mind’s eye how it would look when he was done with it. This old, falling-down, shack of a house might turn out to be amazing by the time he was through. He could almost smell all the money he’d make when he finally flipped it. So, yeah, Brian was more than pleased with his purchase by the time they’d finished surveying the entirety of the place.

Around lunchtime, just as he and Michael were hauling out the old bedstead and disgusting, stained mattress they’d found in the master bedroom, their friends, Emmett and Ted, drove up. Michael was grateful for the excuse to take a break, sure that Brian would have just kept on going forever, or at least until Michael collapsed from exhaustion, if it hadn’t been for the new arrivals. Even better, Em had brought them all lunch.

Brian ushered his new guests in through the wide open garage doors, swiped everything that had been resting there off the top of one of the larger cardboard boxes and then urged them all to pull up a seat at his make-shift table. They all laughed at what Emmett called the ‘lovely accommodations’ but, using smaller boxes, chairs or, in Brian’s case, an oil drum he’d found in the corner, they all made themselves at home.

Emmett’s spread was delicious, which was only right seeing as he was becoming one of the most sought after caterers in Pittsburgh these days. Brian even felt a little bad at the way he was scarfing down the food, thinking he should slow down and enjoy it a little more, but he was so hungry after all his hard work that morning that he just couldn’t. Michael was just as bad, stuffing one mini-sandwich after another into his maw. At least Ted was properly restrained and took the time to thank his friend for the wonderful repast.

Even in the midst of their lunch though, Michael continued to gripe about Brian’s new circumstances. “You should see it upstairs, though. It’s not quite as bad as this,” Michael used his latest sandwich to gesture at the confusion surrounding them. “But there’s still a shitload of crap up there. Brian’s going to be digging himself out of this junk for months. I still don’t see why the hell you’re putting yourself through all this, Brian.”

“Are you kidding me?” Ted spoke up immediately, surveying the chaos around them with a more appreciative eye than Michael had. “This place is a fucking gold mine. I’m so jealous of you, Brian.” Michael looked at his accountant friend with obvious skepticism. “I’m serious, Michael. This was a genius move. I still can’t believe you got this place for such a pittance, Bri. Hell, at $12,000, even if you just razed the house completely and resold the land alone, you’d make a profit. If you can renovate the house and upgrade it a bit, you’re going to make a killing.” Brian beamed at Ted, nodding in agreement. “Shit, if I wasn’t completely useless around power tools, I’d probably follow Brian’s example. But, alas, I’m allergic to manual labor, so I guess I’ll have to find a different way to make my millions.”

They all laughed at Ted’s self-deprecating assessment of the situation. Brian did feel a little reassured hearing his accountant’s enthusiastic approval. He wasn’t as turned off by the idea of hard work as Ted, though, and figured he had enough experience from all those summers in college when he’d worked construction that he could do a good portion of the work himself. Besides, it would not only be a great opportunity to make some money - he thought he’d enjoy working with his hands and not just his mind for a change. Not that his mind wouldn’t be busy - the novel he had already outlined should take care of that - but he also looked forward to doing something more concrete and hands on for the next few months.

“Fine. But I still don’t get why Brian had to buy THIS dump,” Michael said, refusing to back down. “I mean, couldn’t you have bought a dump back in town? I'm sure there are plenty of fixer-uppers within the city limits of Pittsburgh. This place is so far away. It’s fucking West Virginia, for fuck’s sake. What the hell are you going to do, living in West Virginia, Brian?”

“I’m going to enjoy the peace and quiet, Mikey,” Brian insisted, again. “Look, Mikey, this place is perfect for what I need, okay? I’m going to be busy writing, and I can’t do that back in the Pitts at my loft. It would be too distracting to try and write there. Out here, I’ve got nothing to do BUT write and work on the house, so I should get a hell of a lot more done. Besides, it’s not THAT far from the city. It’s not like I moved to Timbuktu or anything. I can get from here to Liberty Avenue in only about forty-five minutes, provided there’s no traffic.”

“That’s pretty fucking far, if you ask me,” Michael grumbled, finishing off the last of his most recent sandwich and washing it down with his second diet pepsi.

“Come on, Michael,” Em chided him gently. “It’s not that bad. I kind of like the house. It’s huge and spooky. It’ll be a great place for Brian to write that Mystery novel he’s been talking about.”

“That’s my point, exactly,” Michael pointed out as he shoved his box/chair away from the box/table and stood up. “This place is fucking creepy and I think you’re insane to move all the way out here, Brian.”

The argument might have continued, seeing as Michael was nothing if not adamant once he’d taken up a position on any subject, but they were propitiously interrupted at that point by the advent of a large, and rather loud, panel van turning off the main road and rumbling up Brian’s driveway.

“Shit!” Brian got to his feet as well, abandoning what was left of his own lunch, and started to jog down the drive to meet the truck. “The movers weren't supposed to be here till after three. Where the hell are we going to put everything? The rooms upstairs aren't even cleaned out yet.”

It took the entire gang another two hours to oversee the unloading of the moving van and the distribution of all of Brian's stuff. Luckily, he hadn’t brought too much. He didn't want to start furnishing the place until he was done with the construction, of course, so he only had the bare minimum as far as furniture was concerned: a bed, a small table for the kitchen, a desk that would fit in the corner of the bedroom and  a small sofa for relaxing on. That stuff hadn't taken the movers long to unload. It was the removal of all the junk and the crappy, used and broken furniture that had been left in the rooms he planned to live in, that took the most time. As soon as the bedroom, kitchen and living room areas had been emptied of the detritus left by the house’s former owners, though, it was fairly straightforward work to bring in the rest of Brian's personal possessions. Lucky for him he had all his friends there to help with the job.

“Damn! Who knew Brian had so much stuff,” Emmett complained as he shuffled tiredly back down the walk to where he'd left his stuff in the garage. “The way he had the loft decorated with that minimalist look, I never suspected he'd have so much shit to move.”

“Tell me about it,” Michael agreed, moving even slower than Emmett as he made his way over to a box he could flop onto. “I've never seen him use half of that crap. And, seriously, have you ever met anyone who has that many clothes?”

“Nope. Never. And that says a lot coming from a style queen like myself,” Emmett agreed with a laugh. “And, Honey, did you get a load of him hovering over those wardrobe boxes as the movers were carting them in? *Hahaha* It was like he was guarding the crown jewels or something. I thought that one mover was gonna deck him when he warned them for the third time to be careful with that box.” They both broke out laughing at Brian's overprotective behavior when it came to his clothes. “Oh well, once a label queen, always a label queen, I suppose. I'm just glad it's done so I can hobble home and soak away all these sore muscles in a nice hot bubble bath.”

“There's still a shitload to do,” Michael said, looking around disdainfully at all the stuff crammed, literally, to the rafters of the garage.

“True, but that's not our problem, is it?” Em insisted, standing and brushing off his hands on the seat of his pants. “You heard Brian - he WANTS to be all he-man handy and fix this place up all by himself. So I say, we should let him have at it. More power to him. But I'm done for today, Sweetie.”

“Yeah. I'm pretty pooped too,” Michael agreed with his friend. “I've already been here since nine, and Brian's had me carrying shit since the minute we arrived. I'm tired and hungry and definitely ready to leave Brian to his fun.”

“Well, I can't help with the tired part, but I can with the hungry.” Emmett turned around, looking towards another stack of boxes sitting off to the side where he'd left the bags he'd used to transport all the food he'd brought for lunch. “Your mother sent along some lemon bars for dessert. They should be just right to . . .” He paused when he got to the spot, looked into the shopping bag and found it completely empty. “Hmmm. It looks like somebody else got to the lemon bars already. That's strange. The whole Tupperware container is gone.”

“Damn. I could have used a treat after all that work.”

“I guess Brian or Ted must have found them and decided not to share,” Emmett surmised. “That's a bit rude. There was more than enough for all of us.” Em started to gather up the rest of his stuff, picking up the insulated cooler bag that had held the sandwiches and noting it was unzipped and had toppled onto its side. “Damn, whoever it was took the leftover sandwiches too. I was going to leave those for Brian so he'd have something for dinner tonight. I didn't see anybody down here eating, though. Do you think maybe the movers snuck in and stole it all?”

“Maybe. I don't know,” Michael replied, looking around the garage area curiously, as if he thought he'd see the lunch thief hiding in the corner or something.

Before the two could speculate any further about their disappearing food, however, they heard Brian's voice calling from somewhere out on the front lawn.

“Michael? Em? Can you guys give us a hand here? I'm about to drop this fucking dresser on Ted’s toes. It weighs a fucking ton. Help!”

Emmett and Michael jumped to their feet and took off at a run. Luckily, they were in time to save Ted's toes. And by the time they were done with that task, the issue of the missing lunch had been completely forgotten.

Ted and Em begged off soon afterwards, with Michael making up a previously forgotten errand he needed to get back to town to do, giving him an excuse to abandon Brian to his own cleaning and moving from there on out. The three of them rushed to say their goodbyes and get away before Brian could come up with any other tasks for them to help with, leaving Brian with only their congratulations on his new house and well wishes for the future. The harried homeowner yelled his thanks to the retreating trio and waved to his friends as they drove away, chuckling all the while at everyone’s haste to escape.

As soon as the gang was gone, Brian looked around, surveying the scene and calculating everything that still needed to be done. He was pleased with the amount they'd accomplished so far, despite the fact that he hadn't actually planned on the inside of the house being quite as trashed as what he'd found. Yes, there was a hell of a lot of work to be done, but he had time. He didn't have anywhere else he had to be for the next twelve months, to be honest. And he was too proud of his newest project, and too filled with ideas about how he was going to proceed with the reno, to get discouraged by the mess.

Besides, he was now looking forward to going through the boxes and piles of stuff, per Mikey’s suggestion, looking for anything that might be valuable enough to sell. Who knew WHAT he might find amid the clutter? It was almost like going on a private scavenger hunt. And even if he didn't find anything worth any actual money, it should at least be fun to dig through the stuff. The prospect of turning up some priceless antique or lost work of art was entertaining, in and of itself. The thrill of possible discovery simply added to the mystery of the place. In Brian's mind, that made it worth all the extra effort.

Although, Brian noted as he pushed a few of the boxes that had been displaced in the move back inside the confines of the garage so that he could pull the door closed, there really WAS a fuckload of work to be done in here.

Just as he was reaching up to pull the garage door closed, Brian caught sight of the shiny blue insulated food carrier Emmett seemed to have forgotten. He figured he better not leave it down here, just in case there really were rats or something. He didn't want some critter or other to destroy the bag before he could get it back to Em. He stepped over an intervening pile of newspapers and stretched across another box to hook the strap of the carrier, using that to pick it up and causing a small Tupperware container that had been resting inside to drop to the concrete floor in the process. He quickly retrieved the small container, noting in passing that it seemed to have been recently rinsed out and was still wet, before he shoved it back in the larger bag.

Too bad both the bag and the little box were empty, though. Brian was starving and didn't relish the idea of trying to scrounge up dinner for himself after a full day of moving. He didn't think he'd find a Thai place out here in the wilds of West Virginia that delivered, either. Hmmm. Maybe Mikey did have a point about the wisdom of moving this far out of town after all?

Oh, well. It was too late to turn back at that point. Brian cursed the gang who’d left him there without food and walked back around the outside of the building to the front door.

It took him another fifteen minutes to locate the box that contained what passed for his cooking supplies. He dug through it, but the only thing edible in there were the three green apples he'd decided not to throw out when he'd packed up the last of his gear at the loft that morning.  He pulled out a slightly wizened apple and looked at it disdainfully for one long minute before he shrugged and headed up the stairs to his bedroom. It seemed that would have to suffice as his dinner for the night. He'd have to figure out where the closest grocery store was the next day. And maybe even learn to cook, if he didn't want to starve to death before the year was over.

So much for the mystery and romance of moving into a big, lonely, isolated old house in the country, huh?