Mandio Profesani walked into the home of Lisa and Furth Parnisse on a sweltering afternoon in late July. The oddly curt man did not mince words. He told the couple he had something for them, essential to their lives, especially if they intended to live to see tomorrow. They laughed, both did, Lisa and Furth, together.
Mandio did not shift. I’m serious, he said. Ok, what is it, they asked. From his large leather satchel, a good deal wider than himself, he removed what appeared to be two gears connected by a single rod. He walked over to their door and hung it from a nail that had always been there, perhaps at some point to hold a picture, but never while Lisa and Furth lived there. Why they hadn’t removed it, they didn’t know. It was on a long list of little things to do around the house, but very much on the bottom when ordered by priority.
Stern expression on his wide, taut face, Mandio hung the device, or whatever it was, and walked a few feet back. Then his gaze went from the metal thing to the couple, back and forth, with a look that said, “See?” The couple only shrugged, returned his with one that made it clear they thought he was mentally unwell.
“Alright. Thanks. Think it’s time for you to go,” Furth said, standing. “You don’t understand. How can I? Hm. Fine, do it this way. Promise to leave this here for at least one hour. If nothing happens, you can remove it. Deal?” Furth and Lisa eyed each other quickly. “Yeah, sure,” said Lisa. Mandio squinted, then relaxed into a defeated posture. “You either will or you won’t. I’ve done what I can do,” he said, then swung the door open methodically and stepped out.
The couple laughed a good long while after that. What a strange man! If they hadn’t been so exhausted by the heat and their broken air conditioner, which had just broken hours before Mandio arrived, whose name they’d since learned from a card he left on their counter, they wouldn’t have allowed him in, that’s for sure. “Poor guy,” Lisa said while taking a closer look at the metal ornament he’d left them, “probably think this controls the universe or something.” She flicked it a little and the larger of the two gears spun. There were no sparks, no strange noises, nothing to indicate it had any power source whatsoever. She was disappointed. She thought at the very least it might be an interesting trinket. Still, she decided not to pull it down, as had been her intention when she first walked toward it. At the very least it was a reminder of their funny encounter, and it was also finally making use of that nail they’d neglected for so long.
So much of the house hadn’t been quite tidied, despite moving in to it years earlier. They were grateful to be able to get a house at all, as so few of their peers could. Both of their parents helped them out, of course. That was the only way it could be remotely possible. Even still, a massive loan had to be taken out, though the interest rates were a bit better than the historical average, recent history anyway. The basement, which they’d said they’d turn into a sort of rec room or office, remained mostly a storage space, though the exercise bike and television made it feel like something a bit more than that. The rooms which felt the most homey were the ones used most frequently: the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen. The living room felt the most lived in, as it was in fact the room in which they spent the most time, outside of the bedroom of course. They ate their meals there, entertained friends, the few they had in their newish neighborhood, sometimes even made love and slept on the worn couch they’d purchased together so many years prior, and with which they just couldn’t manage to part.
As they sat on that very couch, zoning out with some television series being cast onto the wide screen mounted on the wall, they heard a faint knock at the front door. “You think it’s him again?” Furth asked with a trace of anxiety in his voice. They were both on the same page about him. A harmless kook is fine, but if he turns out to be an obsessive, they might end up needing to call someone to help him. They also couldn’t help but feel a bit of fear in the back of their minds, as their house was more isolated than their apartments in the city had been, and anything that happened to them would not be discovered for some time by their neighbors. Still, they weren’t exactly out in the middle of nowhere. For all they knew, someone on the block had already called the police about the strange man. Maybe he’d gone from house to house, bugging everybody for a while.
Yet that knock, so faint, made as if not fully wanting to be heard, was not a cop’s knock. Lisa got up and looked through the peephole. It was not Mandio she saw in its fisheye warp. This was a shorter, even stranger looking person. They were wearing a grayish seersucker suit with a straw hat. They were holding a handle attached to a wheeled trunk of some kind. “Evening, ma’am,” the person said, “I was wondering if I might just have a moment of your time?” Lisa recoiled. But how did they know it was me? You can’t see that clearly through these little lenses, can you?
Furth rose and joined her a few feet from the door, put her hand on her arm, brought her in close. “You’ve been visited by someone recently. A con man. He’s got something hanging by the door, hasn’t he? That’s not helping you, I’m sorry to say. It’s hurting you. I’m trying to let everyone know. He’s been to every house on the block and I’ve gotten through most of the others. You’re pretty much my last stop.” “Hurting us how?” Furth asked, hardly believing he was engaging with the second nut to visit them in one day. “It’s inviting things to your home. Attracting them. Calling out to them. Bad things. Harmful things. Pests, really. They’ll overrun you when they find you.” He paused, as if running lines with a scene partner, knowing it was their turn to talk.
“We’re fine, thanks,” is all Lisa could think to say. “Why don’t you let me so I can explain it further? I know this all must sound so strange. But it’s just that there’s so little time. Can you at least open the door so I can see who I’m helping?” After a long, silent deliberation, Furth opened the door, just the inner one, leaving the screen shut and locked. The person in front of them was short, stout, and androgynous. From moment to moment, they looked like completely different people. “Name’s Troder, my friends,” they said, taking their hat off and revealing wiry red hair. “Now, I won’t pretend to be otherwise than I am. I’m a salesperson, by trade. I do sincerely enjoy helping people out, but I don’t give anything away for free. But when I explain how I can help you, I’m sure you’ll believe the small price is worth it.”
Troder knelt down and unlatched the trunk, which they flattened onto the porch. From the trunk, they removed some long, crystal-like cylinder with a wire loop at the top of it. “Now this, this can really help you,” said Troder. “That thing you’ve got just now, that’s doing the opposite of that this does. This says, ‘Stay away,’ loud and clear. That thing says, ‘Come on in.’ You get me?” “We don’t,” said Lisa. “Are you guys a team? Is this your grift? One person drops off this thing, then you sell them this thing? We thought we’d run into grifters less moving out here.” “Are you a landlord too?” asked Lisa dryly.
“I can understand you thinking that. Really, I can. I get it a lot actually. But no, no. I’ve got no connection to that huckster. He’s caused a lot of people a lot of trouble over the years. I won’t lie to you, however, I saw a market opportunity cleaning up his messes, and I took it.” “So this thing here is supposedly a beacon for monsters?” Furth said, flicking the gear. Troder winced at that. “Please don’t do that again,” Troder said, nearly a whisper. “Why?” “It’s very dangerous. It looks simple, sure, but that’s part of its camouflage. It’s meant to look like nothing at all. But god, it can generate so much misery for anyone near it.” “Yeah? How?” Furth said. “I don’t know how, to be honest with you. I’ve just seen what it can do. Mine on the other hand, I can tell you how it works. Bet he didn’t explain how his thing worked at all, did he? No, I supposed not.”
Troder held the crystal thing higher and took a stance that was clearly practiced. They launched into a rehearsed pitch then, which was filled with pseudoscientific sounding nonsense, as Lisa and Furth both expected. Something about a certain molecular compound that produced an unpleasant feeling in “the pests,” which were mentioned frequently, not dissimilar from scented candles warding off mosquitoes, though in this case, Troder assured them, these pests were far more dangerous than even the worst mosquitoes out there. “How much?” Lisa asked. “Oh, you’ll laugh. All I want is that thing you’ve got hanging right there.” “Yeah? Why?” Furth asked. “Well, I’m nothing if not honest. The metal is worth a few hundred dollars. Probably shouldn’t have told you that. But seeing how you got it for free, and that it’s causing you trouble, and further, that to melt it and sell it off would be an expensive and tedious process for you, I think it sounds like a fair deal.” “This? What kind of metal is it made out of?” “I don’t profess to know that,” Troder said, “only that when I melt it down and sell it in a nice block of it, it fetches a few hundred dollars.”
Lisa and Furth both looked up close at that simple device, as if they might discern its true value if they only looked close enough. “I don’t know,” said Furth. “I think I speak for the both of us when I say we’ve had our fill of whatever this is. We’ll take our chances. Right, Leese?” “Yeah. We don’t have the energy to play this game any longer. It’s been interesting though.” Troder saw they were closing the door and took a startling leap forward, pressing his face against the screen. “Please! I’m sorry to frighten you. I always try to keep things calm at first, but I see a different tact is required of me here. I must stress the seriousness and urgency of this matter. You two are in real danger. I… I didn’t make it to your neighbors’ house in time. Something horrible’s already happened to them.” “Which one?” asked Furth. “The ones on the corner there.” “The Lerders, right?” Lisa said to Furth. “Call them. We have their number, don’t we?”
Lisa walked to the kitchen, scrolled through her contacts and pressed LERDER (MITCH?). The phone rang. And rang. Then, someone picked up. No one spoke, but it the seconds advanced, indicating a call in progress. “Hello?” said Lisa. Still silent, though she thought she could hear something on the other end, a shifting of weight, maybe? “This is Lisa Parnisse from across the street. Are you there? Everything ok?” Then, weakly, a voice. “It’s bad here.” “What was that? Are you ok?” “It got bad here… She’s… I don’t know… It happened so fast…” “Mitch, uh, Mr. Lerder, you should call 9-1-1. Did you do that yet?” “I can’t… No fingers…” “Mr. Lerder, you should call, no, nevermind, I’ll call for you, ok? Just stay put. I’ll call 9-1-1 for you right now. It’s going to be ok.”
She did, and Furth joined her as she spoke to the operator, tried to discern what was going on without having to ask and interrupt, knew it wasn’t good. When Lisa was done, she looked shaken. “Something happened to them?” She nodded. “God… You think it was that guy from before? Or what?” “I don’t know. He wasn’t making any sense. Sounded really hurt though.” “Well, it’s a good thing you called. Did you tell them to come here too?” “No, I didn’t even think of that. Shit.” “It’s ok, I’ll do it. Let’s just stay away from the door for now.” “Did you lock it?” “I did.”
From the other room, they could hear a faint knock. “Please, you two! I’m trying to help you! I don’t want it to happen to you, but we’re running out of time!” “Just hang it up out there then!” Lisa shouted. She wasn’t sure what the hell she was saying. Panic was setting in and she felt a revolting mixture of fear and anger and confusion all melting together in the cast of her mind. “It won’t work out here! It’s got to be in there! It’s just how it works!” “Fuck off!” Furth shouted. “Or you can be here when the cops show up!” He hadn’t finished the back and forth with the dispatcher, but he thought it might hurry things along for them to hear that whatever danger they might be in, it was active, present, happening now. “They’re on their way, but who knows how long that’ll take,” he said after hanging up.
They both grabbed knives. They had no conscious sense of what they were doing, but they could both feel instinctually that danger was here, and that it would be better to defend themselves than not, even if they had no idea what they were defending themselves again. “Please! Please!” Troder shouted, rattling on the screen door. “I didn’t lock the door,” Furth said, suddenly. “What?!” “I just remembered now, I didn’t lock it.” Furth ran to the door then, but stopped short. Troder was not even trying the handle. Why shouldn’t he? Furth stared at the door for a second, his brain racing to catch up with itself. “You can’t get in, can you?” Furth said.
Lisa ran in, wide-eyed. “Lock the door!” she shouted. “He can’t get in.” She froze, then walked over to Furth’s side. They both looked at the device hung on the nail just then. The gears were in motion. They were spinning so fast, it looked as if they weren’t moving at all. But as they edged closer, they could hear the faintest whir, something like a hummingbird’s wings. “You can’t get in.” “You have to take that thing down! It’s a dangerous thing!” Whether or not this was all part of the scam or some shared delusion between these two visitors, they couldn’t say. What was unequivocally clear to them now was that the person on the outside of their door would not enter as long as that thing remained positioned where it was.
The rattling of the screen slowed, then stopped. “Have it your way then. You’ll regret it. I’m telling you,” Troder said, but they no longer sounded convincing. Lisa and Furth walked sideways to get a view of the porch from the nearby window. They saw Troder toss the crystal carelessly into the trunk, latch it back up, turn it up on its wheels. The seersucker suited figure then walked off, clearly irritated. “That’s alright,” Troder shouted over their shoulder, “got most of the neighborhood, anyway. Not too bad a day’s work. One suit I won’t have to wash, anyway.”
The couple watched Troder whistle down the block, opposite the Lerder’s house. It took many hours for the ambulance and police to arrive. It only took 10 minutes for more to arrive after what they found in the nearby houses. Lisa and Furth sat on their couch, which had seen them through so many trying times in their lives, and answered everyone’s questions as best they could. They never saw Mandio Profesani, that oddly curt gentleman, again. Nor did they ever remove that device he’d given them from its place just beside their front door.