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Bad Energy

Peter Bernstein

    We were in the market for a new house. We had three kids and a fourth was on the way, so it had to be a big house. My wife was very particular. The house couldn’t be on a busy road, in case the kids should wander out into the street. It had to be set back. It needed a spacious yard, where my wife could plant vegetables. A house with at least a little forest was preferable, so the kids could go out and make forts. There were more than a few specifications and particulars which my wife had in mind. But there was a special requirement which was inscrutable and unnamable, an impalpable something that my wife was looking for. I suppose you could call it energy. The house needed positive energy. How my wife discerned whether a house had good energy or not was a mystery to me. When she entered a prospective house, she would feel around like a blind woman, running her hands along the surface of things, the windowsills, the kitchen counter, the walls. She was feeling for something. I had always chalked up this habit of looking for positive energy as just one of my wife’s numerous oddities, and lived with it, but when we found the perfect house, with all the right specifications, and she deemed it unlivable because of the energy, I became obstinate, unindulgent, and tried to convince her otherwise.
    When we walked into the perfect house, she said, “I like the energy here.”
    She wandered into the living room. Rather, I should say, she felt her way into the living room. “Very spacious,” she said.
    The realtor followed us around, wearing a blue suit jacket with a clipboard in his hands. My wife, Lacy, asked him, “This house has five bedrooms, am I correct?”
    “That’s correct,” he said, “four upstairs and one downstairs.”
    “Let’s go into the kitchen,” Lacy said. She went into the kitchen and ran her hand along the tiles on the counter. She turned the faucet on and off. “This house has a lot of history,” she said. “So many dinners made in this kitchen. This house is deep in memories. Let’s keep walking around.”
    She didn’t speak a lot as we roamed around the house. She was too deep in whatever secret faculty she used to discern good energy. “I like the feeling of this bedroom,” she said, as we entered one of the bedrooms. “I have the feeling that somebody had very positive experiences in this bedroom.”
    “There’s a spacious yard,” the realtor said, “with an adjacent forest and a small stream that runs through the forest. Salmon and other fish swim the stream.”
    “This is everything we’ve been looking for,” I said. “Let’s go outside and look at the yard and forest.”
    We went out to the back yard. Strolling its perimeter, we followed a walking trail through the forest and down to the stream. It was a small stream, and there was a little wooden footbridge that spanned its width.
    “The kids will love it back here,” I said. “Plenty of room for make believe.”
    “I like it,” Lacy said, “but let’s go back into the house again. I still want to feel things out.”
    We went back into the house. When we were in the master bedroom upstairs, Lacy said, “Can you tell us something of the house’s prior inhabitants?”
    “Well, that’s the one blight on this house,” the realtor said.
    “What do you mean?” Lacy said.
    “As a realtor, it’s part of my ethic to answer all questions truthfully. It’s our ethic. If you want to know, the prior inhabitants of the house died of foul play.”
    “Foul play?”
    “Yes,” the realtor said. “A married couple used to live here without any children. Regretfully, the husband shot his wife in the head with a 357 magnum, and then shot himself. It was a murder-suicide case.”
    My wife gasped. She had thought the house had good energy.
    “Where?” Lacy asked.
    “In this room. The master bedroom.”
    Lacy shook her head and said abruptly, “I’m sorry, we can’t buy this house.”
    “Lacy,” I said.
    “I’m sorry,” she continued, “it’s impossible for us to live here.”
    “Lacy, you’re being irrational,” I said.
    The realtor was watching us closely. I saw drops of sweat on his forehead. I felt like my wife was making me speak in an awkward manner. I said to the realtor, “Will you excuse us for a moment, I need to talk to my wife privately.”
    We left the realtor in the master bedroom and went down the hall into one of the other bedrooms, then closed the door.
    “Lacy,” I said, “this house is everything we’ve dreamed of. We’re not going to find a house like this again. It’s perfect. You’re being irrational.”
    “I’m sorry, Tye,” she said, “I can’t sleep in a bedroom where murder was committed.”
    I spoke to her in a vehement whisper so the realtor couldn’t hear. “But that was the past,” I said. “It’s gone. No more. The blood has all been cleaned up. There’s no trace of the murder.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Great evil was committed in this house.”
    “Great evil has been committed everywhere,” I said. “What if we were living in Europe, in a city like Rome, where there were slaves and gladiators, or a city like Berlin, where the Jews were forcibly removed from their homes? You wouldn’t be able to get away from the evil. It’s everywhere. It’s part of life.”
    “You talk like you don’t have any sense of good and evil,” she said. She started to speak in the same vehement whisper. “I thought you were a Christian. If you were visiting a concentration camp, you wouldn’t make crude jokes to your friends and laugh where people had been gassed. You’d have respect for what was done in the past.”
    “The existence of a concentration camp has wider repercussions than what was committed at the actual spot. It represents human injustice and cruelty. It’s not the spot that matters, but the remembrance of what people are capable of.”
    “You don’t seem to be thinking like a Christian,” she said.
    “What does Christianity have to do with it?”
    “Because a Christian knows that we have souls—we have spirits—and sometimes a spirit doesn’t leave the place where it has died, especially in cases where grave sin was committed.”
    I put my hand to my forehead, exasperated. At that moment, she sounded like a madwoman.
    “Are you talking about ghosts?” I said.
    “All I’m saying, Tye, is that there is a spiritual realm that interconnects with the physical, and if you were more receptive, you’d feel it.”
    “Then you are talking about ghosts,” I said.
    “I’m not. It’s more than that. It’s energy. Negative energy. I can’t live here.”
    There was no reasoning with her. We stood in the empty bedroom, facing each other, and I could hear the tick of a fly against the window. What could I do or say? I certainly couldn’t force her into living where she didn’t want to live.
    “Can’t you just not think about it?” I said plaintively.
    “I can’t not think about it.”
    “Because, I’m telling you, sweetheart. . . .” I trailed off, calming myself down, trying to grasp at words of reason. I continued, “I’m telling you, sweetheart, that if you don’t think about it, it won’t exist. It won’t be there. It’s in your mind.”
    She shook her head. “You’re just not receptive enough,” she told me.
    I tried her line of reasoning: “The souls of those people who died in there have been taken to heaven or hell.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “Damn it,” I muttered. I walked over to the window and looked out. I could see the beautiful yard leading into the forest. I thought of sitting by the creek with my boys, our fishing poles out, catching salmon. What could I say, I was married to an odd woman.
    I came back from the window. “All right,” I said. “We’ll do it your way, but I’m telling you, we’re not going to find a spot like this again.”
    “I can live with that,” she said.
    We exited the room and entered the master bedroom, where the realtor was waiting for us.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, “we can’t buy this house.”
    The realtor nodded. We left the house and got back into the car. It was a quiet drive home. I wish my wife wasn’t so superstitious, but I loved her, anyway. Even if we ended up living in a ratty house on a busy street, I would still love her, despite her oddities, and I guess, in the end, that’s all that matters.

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