The Descent X

My father left us a little money. He wanted me to buy a house with it or use it as a down payment, so that’s what I did. The kids and I started looking at houses, but nothing seemed right. The first real estate agent actually got frustrated at one point and said something sarcastic to me. I fired him on the spot and found another one. We liked the new one. She was an older lady who seemed to have infinite patience.

Eventually we bought a house in a rural subdivision. It wasn’t super fancy, but it had four bedrooms and it would be brand new. There was something about moving into a house another family had lived in that didn’t work for us. Maybe we could feel their energy or sense whatever had happened there before we arrived. They didn’t feel like happy places. I might have been able to compromise, but my daughter couldn’t. She was highly sensitive to it.

We had to wait for the new house to be built, which took about nine months. In the meantime, I was trying all sorts of things with myself. One night I sat on a yoga mat reciting ancient mantras I couldn’t pronounce. I had written them on a whiteboard. Night after night I sat there with incense burning and candles lit, chanting and hoping something would happen, something would change what I felt inside, but nothing did. I went back to my breathing sessions. There was more inside of me, but what it was, I had no idea. The only way I could describe my life was as some kind of living hell.

My mother came to visit us with her new boyfriend. I had made up with her for the time being because I needed a mother, or so I thought. We went out to dinner, which she paid for. I tried my best to be friendly, but I wasn’t feeling the love, not really. I was on my own now, I figured, so she had to be nice if she wanted to be in my life. Even so, when she saw the house we had rented, I felt like she thought it was too good for us, like I should have gotten an apartment or something cheaper. I always felt like I was somehow unrealistic or wanted more than I should have when she was around. I always felt a kind of disapproval in her presence, but I ignored it and the visit went well.

It was expensive for what I was bringing home in tips, but somehow we always got by. I even took my daughter to a concert on her 13th birthday, which was five hours away in another city. I also bought her a puppy, not a mutt but a purebred goldendoodle. The puppy turned out to be a nightmare. If you weren’t holding it, it would cry all night. It would pee all over the house. No matter how we tried to teach it to go outside, it wouldn’t do it. Eventually I had to send it away for a month to a private dog trainer, which was another big expense, but it worked. She turned into the dog of our dreams after that.

To say I was still under a lot of stress would be an understatement. My comfort, if I had any, was that I now had a washer and dryer in the house, a dishwasher, and I didn’t have to search for parking every night coming home from work.

One night I couldn’t sleep, so I grabbed my glasses and a Jed book. I had just sat down on the living room couch and turned on the lamp on the table next to me when, to my horror, something huge flew across the room in front of me. I practically flipped myself over the couch and ran screaming down the hall, even though it was past two in the morning. At first I thought it was a bird, maybe some kind of eagle. The wingspan had to be more than six feet long.

It wasn’t. It was a bat, and it flew back and forth across the room for hours.

Since it was the middle of the night, my landlord didn’t pick up. We all stayed in our bedrooms. I tried to stay awake, but eventually I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it was gone. I looked everywhere for it. I even had a guy from work come over to help me look, but we came up empty. Luckily, a guy who had been hired to paint the outside shutters was there. I asked him to look with me after I told him what had happened, so he came inside, and then it dawned on me.

There was a mock fireplace in the living room. Above it was an ornamental overhang that stuck out from the wall about six inches, so you couldn’t see what was behind it.

The bat was hanging upside down right there.

It looked tiny. How it went from being a flying monster to a six-inch, bird-like form, I still don’t know. I had to call animal control, and they came out to get it. When they disturbed it, it started flying across the room again, but the guy who came was like a crocodile dundee type and just reached out and grabbed its wing like it didn’t bother him at all. He showed it to us, then put it in a bag and left.

Why do I tell you this story? I’m not sure. Was it coincidence, or something else? I don’t know. I’m not sure I ever will.

Later, years later, I would read that bats are a sign of transformation, the beginning of a death and rebirth cycle. Because they thrive in darkness, it’s said they signal that you are beginning to see through the veil of ignorance that clouds your vision. Was it just a coincidence that one got into the house I was living in? I’m not sure I’ll ever know, but the events that were already in motion seemed to suggest otherwise.

Shortly before our house was done, I became dissatisfied with my job. A few other dealers were leaving to go to another casino across town that was just adding craps to their list of live games, and at the last minute I decided to apply as well. I got in. I was the last new hire.

It immediately felt different at the new job. Everyone was so friendly. It didn’t even feel like work. It felt more like going to hang out with friends, but the money was double what I had been making, and that made me happy too. I think I was finally starting to feel at home in at least one place.

But it wouldn’t last.

I might have fit in if I had wanted to. I think that sometimes. But I didn’t. I didn’t want whatever they had. The camaraderie and friendships I saw being formed there were lost on me. Whatever world they lived in wasn’t mine, and I had no reason to make it mine. Even so, oddly enough, I made a few friends, and the kids and I would occasionally spend time with them. I liked everyone I worked with very much, even if in my mind we lived worlds apart.

Little did I know at the time, my life was about to get even stranger.