The Man in the 20th Century House
=================================

"Stop. What was that?"

"I said, I know it's your birthday tomorrow and I'm sorry but I didn't get you
anything." Lexa kept walking at a brisk pace.

Nom dismissed her words with an flick of his hand. "No. I said, Stop; listen."

She turned and stared at him. He was standing stock-still. After a minute she
asked, "What are --" 

"Shhh. Come back here a sec."

She hesitated, then took the few steps back toward him.

"No, no. Walk like you did just now. Go back over there, then come back as if
you were going to keep on going past me."

"Nom?"

"Lexa." She did as he said, and on the last two steps before she passed Nom, he
was sure the sound of her heel striking the ground resonated more than it should
have. "Hear that?"

"What, the walking?"

"The ground."

"I dunno, what's it supposed to sound like?"

"Not like this. I know my yard."

"Every inch of it?"

He got down on his haunches. "Apparently not."

                                     * * *

Phenom Anderson had been a piece of wishful thinking, but it wasn't that much of
a stretch. Left to their own devices, his parents would probably never have
opted for gene refinement -- his mother in particular hadn't been at all sure
about the idea -- but a group of friends had pitched in for a gift certificate,
and his father had said it would be a shame to let it go to waste. They'd gone
with the package popularly known as the 2V, short for double varsity. But the
Andersons hadn't counted on Jen-e-Teck being overwhelmed by the winter holiday
rush, or an exhausted technician dozing off at the wrong moment during a routine
splice.

All things considered, Phenom had been fortunate. By some miracle he suffered no
serious adverse effects from his mangled DNA, although far from being the
picture of rugged athleticism, he barely cleared six foot -- and that was when
he favored his left leg, which was an half an inch longer than his right and
caused him to walk with a slight limp. His parents won a malpractice suit
against Jen-e-Teck and were awarded a generous settlement, enabling them to move
into a sparkling new house of violent glass. It was the cutting edge in home
security at the time: mutually assured destruction for the private residence.
After a training period during which the house got to know its masters, if it
detected anything amiss the entire building would explode, the shards of itself
becoming lethal to any would-be intruders. "Best money I never spent," his
father had been known to call their ill-fated brush with genetic manipulation.

On Phenom's eighteenth birthday (though by then he was already going by Nom),
the three of them packed a picnic and spent the day at a park by the river. It
had been one of those luminous days; the light came off the water just right,
making it appear to glow like acacia honey. By the time they got home it was
almost dusk, and as his parents walked hand in hand up to the front door, Nom
lingered for a moment taking in the shifting colors of the sky.

When the house blew, he was reaching to take the picnic basket out of the car
and escaped the full force of the blast. Later, it was discovered that a brief
blackout while they were away had partially reset the house defense system and
it had reacted aggressively to his parents' approach. The utility swore that
power was only out for a minute, but one minute of failure was all it took. Had
it been much longer, the house would probably have shut down completely, or
rebooted back into training mode. Nom was knocked backward; the car's windows
shattered but -- being made of the normal passive glass -- inflicted relatively
few injuries. That's not right, he remembered the thought flashing across his
mind as he fell and brightly colored fragments cascaded all around him, catching
the last light of the day like the insides of a kaleidoscope. It's my birthday.
It can't be right.

                                     * * *

It came as no surprise to Lexa, who grew up next door to the Andersons, when Nom
ended up becoming a cultural historian. After grad school he landed the job of
resident caretaker of an old house from the twentieth century, set on acres of
its own land outside of town. These days he was more resident than caretaker.
Some thought he was drawn to the Hulver Estate because it was suited to someone
of his size -- he didn't have to watch his head when walking through doors --
but really, Nom just wanted to live in a house that didn't try to think for
itself.

He wasn't sure how he felt about the hidden door on the grounds, literally in
the ground, he had just discovered.

Lexa stood patiently watching him pace in a clockwise circle. Her titanium hair
fanned out in the wind under her broad-brimmed hat. She looked like a seven-foot
dandelion whose fuzz was about to fly away in the breeze. At last Nom stopped
pacing and looked at her.

"What do you think?"

"I think if you keep this up the sun's going to set in a couple hours." She
shook her head to keep her blowing hair out of her face.

"But the hole in the ground."

She met his gaze. "Ed Hulver?"

One of the many legends surrounding the Estate told of an eccentric brother 
of one of the Hulver patriarchs who had disappeared under mysterious circum-
stances. The family records made little mention of him after his childhood
and none after his early thirties. When his name did show up, "paranoid" was a
word often connected with it. "Obsession" was another. Later, the clan gradually
died out, or its members all moved away, and the house was abandoned until it
was adopted by the historical society.

"You think he went underground?"

"That's what the stories say, isn't it?"

"Not literally. It's a figure of speech."

Lexa shrugged. "So what do you think it is? In your expert caretaker opinion."

He stared at the spot on the ground. "Ed Hulver."

                                     * * *

They went back the following morning with tools, got the door open, and climbed
down the ladder that led into the ground. Nom jumped from the bottom rung onto
the floor and turned on his flashlight. It was a room the size of his bedroom in
the house. His flashlight swept across walls of a uniform late-twentieth-century
industrial grey, lined with shelves on two sides. "It's some kind of emergency
shelter. Bigger than I expected."

Lexa stepped off the ladder and looked around for herself. "It's not that big."
Standing on the floor, she could reach up and place her hand flat on the
ceiling. 

Nom was inspecting the shelves next to him; they were stacked several layers
deep with supplies. "Look at all this food."

Lexa picked up a can. "You call this food?" She held it out, showing the label.

"People used to eat peanuts."

"People who wanted to die?"

"Look." He pointed the flashlight at the logo on the can. "Why the top hat and
cane, do you think? 'Cause the bogeyman likes to look good for a night on the
town? Oooh, scary." He shook the can in her face.

She took the can and put it back on the shelf. "Well that smile's pretty creepy.
Hey, if this is a shelter, where are you supposed to sleep?"

"Good question." There was no furniture of any kind. Nom worked his way along
the bare walls, looking for anything that might fold out to a bed or even a
seat.

Lexa started on the wall furthest from the house. "Maybe it's in the next room,"
she said after a minute. "There's a door here."

Nom crossed over to where she was standing, put his hand on the door knob, and
tried it cautiously. It was a little stiff, but it turned. He glanced at Lexa.
She looked back at him and flicked her eyes to the door as if to say, "what else
are we here for?"

He pushed the door open gently, and it flew right out of his hands, banging
against the wall on the other side. "What the hell?" a shout echoed from the
other side. Out of reflex, Nom leaped into the hallway to grab the door and slam
it shut, but not before the voice cried, "Hey!"

"Does this thing lock?"

"Not that I can see."

"Great." Nom shined the flashlight at the ladder, but there was no time for them
to get all the way up. He backed away from the door, pulling Lexa with him, but
that was the extent of his plan.

"Maybe they're friendly?"

"Maybe." But Nom was seized with the certainty that nothing good was about to
happen. "Lexa, get back up the ladder. Take the rungs two at a time. Close the
door behind you."

"But --"

Nom silenced her with a glare.

"Happy birthday, Nom."

"Go!"

                                     * * *

When at last the voice reached the door, it was angry. Nom tensed, standing at
the base of the ladder, gripping the flashlight in one hand.

"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" The door banged open again and the voice roared as its
owner stormed through, then flinched away from the light. In his astonishment,
Nom let the hand holding the light fall to his side. The figure was only four
feet tall, four-six at the most.

"Nom Anderson." His voice felt thick. Cold air seemed to flood in from the
hallway. The stranger had backed though the door again but was still watching
him. "Are you -- Ed Hulver?" Nom asked, though he knew that wasn't possible.

"Whaddyu know about Ed Hulver?"

"Nothing, just ... I'm the caretaker at the Estate."

"How did you get in here?" the voice snarled, but the sound of Lexa slamming the
door above answered the question. Without the sunlight, the only illumination
came from the small circle cast by Nom's flashlight, which chose this moment to
flicker and die.

"Story of my fucking life," Nom muttered.

Emboldened, the stranger advanced. "What was that? You trying to let the birds
in?"

"No, what ..." Nom felt eyes taking him in inch by inch.

"You came from up there. How did you survive?"

"I --" I was lucky, Nom thought. I was getting the picnic basket. It was
twenty-two years ago. Then he realized the stranger knew nothing about that day.
"Survive what?" 

There was no answer. He heard footsteps pacing the room for what seemed like
minutes. Nom couldn't stand it anymore. "How long have you been down here? Why
all these stockpiles of food --" a thought occurred to him "-- that are barely
even touched? You've got a metric Warhol of soup here --"

"That?" A can struck Nom in the chest. "It's chicken, isn't it?"

Nom couldn't read the label in the dark, but he did seem to remember a lot of
cream of chicken. "So?"

"The flu! Fucking Bird Flu! And peanuts --" another can, larger and more squat,
was flung at Nom "-- some sadistic motherfucker stocked this place. How do you
survive a worldwide pandemic in a shelter where all the food is poison? Eh? Well
I figured it out. I figured it out and I've lived for over a hundred years." The
man was worked up in a frenzy.

Nom's eyes were almost adjusted to the dark. "So, you're --"

A hand grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him to his knees. "Ed
Hulver. And I will outlive you all."

The flash of teeth was the last thing Nom saw. As he lay on the floor bleeding,
he remembered the sound of Lexa's voice wishing him a happy birthday. It just
figures, he thought before he blacked out for good, today would be the day I run
into a midget vampire.