Creepiest ever

It seemed like a normal estate sale on paper. A "Years of collecting...H&H items....depression glass...vintage hats" type of affair, but upon arrival I knew it was different than all the others.

The neighborhood was a typical suburban microcosm with winding, ranch house lined avenues. There were a number of vehicles in the shady driveway and even more parked along the sides of the road. We stopped the car and pulled our children from their child restraints, then walked toward the house.

My initial impression of the house was the same as the others in that neighborhood. They all appeared to have been built between the late 40s and early 60s and had a minimalist tidiness about them with sparsely landscaped lawns. As I approached the teetering, doorless mailbox I glanced at the ground and stepped over a large, dead blacksnake. The snake was in the level area of the edge of the yard where people were trailing in; smack in the middle of the walkway. I momentarily considered it odd that neither the owners nor the estate liquidation company bothered moving the carcass before customers arrived.
Jason and I figured the snake was hibernating in the house and then got unpacked, and then got dead.
It was freezing cold so we hurried up the slick, moss covered and railing-less front steps and into the house.
Every surface was covered with relics and dust. The floor was spongy beneath my feet and the olive colored carpet was emitting the musty odor of moist decay. Old people were sitting in filthy wingback chairs eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts and wiping their finger tips on the threadbare damask. Discussions of blood sugar and cholesterol levels weighed heavily in the cramped livingroom. For fear of something in that environment mingling into my person I was scarcely breathing through mouth; How the hell were these people eating in that place?
The contents of most estate sales I go to are "mid-century vintage" heavy; probably people who married in the 1960s, started families in the 70s. Lot's of Herb Alpert albums, melamine and golden amber tones. This sale could best be described as "post war". Everything was a wavering hue of brown, and there wasn't a single plastic item anywhere. Crocks, churns, enameled pots, dippers, wooden pipes, a ventriloquist's dummy, an art deco cash register that must of weighed two hundred pounds, four fire place bellows, two cases of flatware, dishes, furniture..
The house was was absolutely packed before any customers showed up, so the scene was a crammed spectrum of all sorts of uncomfortable people.

It was soon obvious that there was nothing we needed in this house. Fox and I were looking at the oldest vacuum cleaner I had ever seen when Jason and Rainer popped into the back bedroom. We were crammed in there with a dozen other people and when they arrived Fox and I were attempting to exit the room. I picked Fox up to facilitate our retreat and as I glanced over at my husband he exclaimed,

"NO SHIT! Look at that!! Crows picking a dead deer carcass RIGHT THERE in this creepy-ass place!! This place is TOO WEIRD!!"

His expression was one of rejoice and pure satisfaction; as if he had won a long sought contest of wits. Just outside the picture window of that bedroom was, in fact a large buck, collapsed in the initial stages of decomposition, covered in crows. A murder of crows, tugging, jerking, slinging, and flapping in the frenzy of feeding.




People tend to behave as if they were in a library while at estate sales. Whispering and tip-toeing, careful foot wiping upon entry, and appreciative courtesies when leaving are not uncommon. When Jason saw the biology in action outside, he forgot these conditions and his words were j-u-s-t short of yelling. Every person in the room stopped perusing and focused on Jason, then looked to the subject of his declaration outside, then looked back at him in utter disgust.

"THAT IS AWESOME! Let's go look at it! Come on Fox!!"
Jason exclaimed as he hustled our 10 month old daughter through the crowd and gestured at my son and I by tossing his head. Eyes rolled. Heads shook. Old ladies sent disapproving looks of pity towards my little family as we rushed out.
As we burst out the front door, Fox reeled as he stumbled towards the edge of the landing and yelled something about there not being a "handle slide thing", and I pulled him to safety before he fell into a murky mound of leaf litter.

Slipping between a moldy mini van and a holly bush we found our way around the side of the house. Passing an open cellar door we continued through a thicket, and climbed up a small bank to the back yard.
We approached the broken carcass and the black birds reluctantly relocated. Fox was quiet (for once) while Jason and I pondered the scenario.

Perhaps the deer had been hit on the busy highway on the other side of the subdivision then finally collapsed here. Or maybe it starved in this thinning, once wooded area. One thing is certain, and that is that something had eaten the deer's hind quarters, and someone had sawed off it's antlers.
Fox made a circle around the body and quietly asked where the deer was. We asked him why he didn't think the deer was lying in front of us, and he mumbled something about the hunter and the deer's eyes. Jason asked Fox if he was ready to go deer hunting, shoot, kill then clean a deer, and Fox smiled and shook his head. We turned to check out the Saw-esque basement and Fox sang a farewell over his shoulder.

"Estate Sale", directed by David Lynch

I've gotten into going to estate sales.

Each weekend Jason and I check the paper and look for interesting, local sales and make a morning of it. We find excitement and wonder in rummaging through the belongings of the recently departed, and there's typically older living folks around to occupy Fox, my three year old son.

Last month on one such morning, Fox, Jason and I set out with a list of addresses of estate sales. We woke up early and wanted to get out as soon as we could because it had snowed a few inches and driving in the snow is so fun, but so rare.

The first sale was really crummy, and the next two didn't seem to be happening due to the snow. The last sale was in an area neither of us were very familiar with. I was navigating with the map, and when we arrived at the address it was a muddy, gravel drive ascending a small hill, topped with a broad, aging barn, surrounded by machinery, ladders and golf cart parts.

We figured it was the right place, though there were no other vehicles in the driveway, and the three of us approached the windowless door.

In an attempt to prevent a gust of cold air, we rushed in through the cracked door and pulled it shut in a single, fluid motion. A moment passed as our eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, and we realized that we were in a small corridor, not a vacuous expanse as we had all silently imagined.

The sound of muffled conversation and a fading, clinking noise was coming from the dark corner. Before us was a small, folding table covered with cups and statuettes with price tags attached. An old barrel-turned-wood stove blazed just inches away from the backs of our legs, so Fox naturally gravitated towards it. Jason and I exchanged looks of doubt, and we assessed the items on the table, as there were no other tables or display areas in sight. The objects were bizarre and obtusely overpriced; a leather bottle for eighty five bucks, two elephant bookends for forty five dollars each. Gourd drinking vessels painted with mineral paints, hand blown glass bottles shaped like a rainbow.... It was more like an exhibit of worldly artifacts than a Knoxville estate sale.

Suddenly, a woman with thin, white hair pulled onto the top of her head was upon us, and she greeted us in a mechanically high-pitched German accent.

"Good day to you, and this small boy who loves the fire" she said as she gestured towards Fox, quickly repositioning her hand behind the small of her back.

We said hello and introduced ourselves, then commended her table of antiques for their authenticity and quality. She willed her face to rearrange itself into a smile formation, then asked "What is it that interests you"?

Jason and I looked at each other blankly, and he blindly picked up something from the table and began asking questions about it's origins. I pretended to be concerned with Fox's proximity to the stove, and pardoned myself from the sales pitch.

As I knelt down to Fox's level I realized that there were two middle aged men sitting behind a plywood table, drinking whiskey. I smiled up at the men and asked how they were doing, Fox fully hypnotized by the dancing flames in the stove. The men smiled and asked about the roads, and I told them that they were fine and that no one much was out.

I heard the old German lady describing the Italian leather bottle to Jason, expressing her belief in it's superiority to any other vessel due to it's durability, unbreakability, and that it "WILL not leak, not EVER"

Awkwardly, I praised the strange stove's great dimensions, complaining about my own stove's size and it's need for short, little stumps of wood to feed it, while this stove could accommodate huge log sections.

As if an animation button was pressed, the younger man rose and joined Fox and I on the small rug in front of the stove and began describing how he constructed the stove from the interior of an old water heater. He showed us the door mechanism, and the tubes and dampers he inserted into the base of the barrel for air. The man was absolutely thrilled to be discussing the stove, so we continued on topic for what seemed like forever.

Jason and the old woman had made their way through all of the items on the table and had began chatting with the other drinking man, who abruptly disappeared through a back door, then reappeared carrying a small, wooden truck. The man presented it to Fox who was quickly tiring of the fire, and I took a moment to explain to Fox that he wasn't to burn the truck, no matter what.

The man smiled and pointed towards the truck with his sweating, amber-toned drink and said "Old Ricky Melton's daddy used to make them trucks. He give me two or three an they jus been out here since".

His accent was so East Tennessee that I was almost pulled from the strange, German spell cast by the woman. The woman carefully made her way over to the man, stepping gingerly around Fox and I, and putting her arm around him murmured sternly into his ear, "Did you give that truck to the boy? That your friend has made?"

The man drunkenly shrugged and turned his face away from the woman. She continued pressing the question until it became louder and unavoidable to the rest of us.

Feeling an uncomfortable escalation in emotion, I nervously blurted, "Hey! We'll leave the truck here when we leave! We don't want to take it from you"

The two pairs of eyes seemed to snap up at me at the same moment, and the man said, "waail. I'll take five dollar for it", as if he were doing me a great favor.

There was no part of me that wanted to buy the truck. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but I knew that we would bring it home, then Fox would put it with the other million trucks he had and it would soon be forgotten.

"No, I couldn't! It's an heirloom from a family friend! I couldn't take it" I attempted.

"Five dollar's fine" He said without any trace of a smile.

I knew for a fact that we didn't have any money. Typically when you go to an estate sale it is held by an estate-handling company, and they are A-OK with accepting checks. We just don't take cash around much.

The more time elapsed the more I wanted to grab Fox and bolt, leaving the truck on the rug in front of the stove, but Jason began fishing around in his pocket. At that exact moment the barn door swung open and three college students sauntered in carrying suspicious-looking, "go vols orange" insulated cups.

The younger man stood up and welcomed the trio in, and one of the college kids asked about the golf carts he saw out front. Jovially, the man directed the student through the back door and I caught a glimpse of a john boat on a trailer, and another intact golf cart. The drunk man engaged the other two students, one male, one female about the game and who was winning.

I wanted to leave that place so badly. Jason knew it and he bent down to parley with Fox and I. He held out his hand showcasing three one dollar bills, three quarters, two dimes and four nickles. Hmmmmm. Will this be seen as an affront? I wondered. Will this be the gesture that turns this intoxicated man into a kidnapping, killing machine?

Jason sensed my concern, and as he squatted in the cramped area the seam in the seat of his pants tore. Loudly. Alarmed, I looked at him, then casually reclined myself to access the damage, then narrowly avoided a panic attack by visualizing myself back in my car, driving away, eating chocolate.

The two men burst forth through the back door, and Fox got a better look at the boat, then started harping about wanting to go look at it. Hoping for a distracted exit, I said no, but the younger man heard him and said "Aww! He can go take a look at that boat! Come on!" He reached over to direct Fox towards the door and I glanced at Jason, who simultaneously rose and followed, discreetly pulling his sweatshirt over the seat of his pants.

The college threesome were laughing riotously as they left the building, expressing thanks about something unknown.

Fox, Jason and the younger man reemerged from the back room where Fox was running and squealing, clearly over the scene and ready to move on. Jason had a few bills in his hand and explained our lack of funding to the man. The younger man smiled and looked at the other man and the old woman and said "He wants that wooden truck but all he's got is four dollars an fifteen cents"

The drunker man looked at the old woman with a thoughtful look, and she nodded with closed eyes and her lips pressed firmly together. Neither seemed pleased with the deal.

We gave them the wad of money, Fox grabbed the truck, and we got the hell out of that place.