Your Apocalypse is Overdue

Written By: J.W. Wood

I stared at the guy. Was he trying to control me? And how come he knew so much about my work? I’m here to rent a house – not tell him my life story.

“I thought you might write in this room.”

I hated talking to anyone about academia, so I ignored him. This wasn’t a job interview. 

Mr. Strathmore pushed open the attic door and I peered inside: olive green, bland carpet. Nothing that would frighten anyone. Strathmore tried again:

“I read your monograph on St. Paul, and wanted to congratulate you.” 

I stared at him. Anyone who read obscure patristic studies publications about syntactic variants between Greek and Hebrew versions of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians needed therapy. Especially if they weren’t getting paid. And I’d never seen this Strathmore at a conference.

When I first saw him ten minutes ago, I had him down as middle management at some suburban business: Harrison’s Tyre Emporium. Dalziel Farm Equipment. A clip-on tie and bottle of Scotch in the drawer for when shit days got worse. He had rounded shoulders and the mottled complexion that comes from diligent attention to the bottle. Pale blue eyes and sandy hair spoke to his Scottish roots. 

“Now the kids have grown up, I’m free to devote myself to the Lord.” 

Strathmore gave another crinkly grin by way of appealing to me. My first degree in theology, chosen as the easiest way to get into Columbia, had prepared me for very little other than further study. I was no God-botherer. 

“Leah and I intend to run tours to the Holy Land. We want to show young people His physical truth. Here is the manger where He was born. There’s where He suffered. It’s just an expansion of our existing business, bringing young people to Christ.”

Then right on cue, his businessman’s side kicked in:

“I think we said two thousand eight hundred a month plus utilities? Also, we want to keep some things in the house.”

I told him that was no problem. I just needed a rental before Caroline crucified me. So to speak. 

“Thank you. I’ll keep the two cupboards in this room locked in that case. I’d also like to keep a bedroom locked. OK?”

I said OK, despite $2800 being hella steep for two thirds of a house in an unremarkable neighbourhood. Strathmore beamed. 

“The Lord has brought us together. Let’s pray together downstairs? I’ll have the contract e-mailed before 5PM, if that works.”

I nodded, dumbfounded anyone still asked a stranger to pray. We descended the croaking staircase. Someone had insulated a door frame with wire wool … not great. In the pine-floored lounge, a solitary photo of his children adorned the cedar dresser. Apart from that, this house was a personality-free outline.

Strathmore grabbed my hands and fell to his knees with surprising speed for such a heavy guy. He prayed in monotone: 

“Father, we thank you that Dr. Biggins and his family will bless our house with their presence. May this home be filled with your peace. Amen.”

He hauled himself upright using the arm of an easy chair, puffing and groaning. 

“Thank you, Peter. God be praised.”

Strathmore shook my hand then led me towards the door. 

“By the way”, he said as if talking to a customer on his tyre lot, “We want our mail delivered here. You don’t mind forwarding it, do you? We’ll pay.” 

I said OK. I would have signed away my soul: the kids start school next week. Strathmore led me out onto the porch, breathing in the late summer air. 

“I hope your children enjoy this area: mine did.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Oh – because we can’t access our bank account from Israel, would you mind transferring the rent online? That way the money can be put to work for the Lord.” 

His lips arched against the grain of his skin. I agreed, wanting to get away fast. I jumped in my banged-up Ford Explorer, waved goodbye then stamped on the accelerator. Time to tell Caroline the good news.

***

“Of course, you realise the guy is rolling the tax people, right?”

Caroline stared across our tiny rental, corners of her mouth turned down. Our eldest, Tom, played video games on the couch while his sister Rebecca was upstairs talking about boys, braces and bitchy friends. 

“It’s a start. After a few months, if we find a place we like” –

“Hmmm… OK”, 

Caroline bent to the lentil soup on the stove. “I just hope we don’t end up as accessories to tax fraud. Just imagine how blessed we’d be then, eh, Peter?”

I asked one of the kids to yell when lunch was ready and disappeared to my office – a tiny nook behind the front door. A scribe’s slip of the quill in thirteenth-century Italy needed my attention.

***

A week later I was dragging boxes out of a U-Haul and in to Number 52 Rushmont Avenue.  We still had half a shipping container left in storage – more expense on top of that fat rent.

I pushed my way through the front door, arms weighed down with fifty pounds of Loeb’s Classics, to find a heap of mail had gathered in the week since I’d viewed the property with Strathmore. 

Once the oh-so-crucial PlayStation and TV were set up in the lounge and the kids settled, Caroline and I sat down to go through the heap of mail. Who gets so much post in the digital era?

Junk mail. Tax demands – of course. Overdue this, pay that. But not one of them was addressed to the Strathmores. Some names sounded Spanish, others Asian or African – but they all apparently lived at 52, Rushmont Avenue. We sat at the kitchen table like dwarves surrounded by humungous stacks of mail. It was after eleven and Caroline had to be at work early. Plus the kids had their new school.

“Sending these on will cost us hundreds. Peter, what have you got us into?”

***

“It’s classic behaviour – my uncle Antonio did it all his life. Your landlord is screwing the Taxman.”

I looked across the table at Guiseppe (“call me Bill”) Lombardi as he crammed a a forkful of pasta between fleshy lips. Bill asked me to give a seminar on Aquinas and his followers. It must have gone OK because he invited me to lunch at the faculty restaurant.

I finished my chicken parm and reached for my coffee.

“My wife also thinks he’s playing the Feds.”

“Smart woman, your Caroline. Only thing she did wrong was marry you.”

Bill’s pale blue eyes crinkled behind Lennon glasses, shaven head haloed with stubble. I didn’t take the bait.

“Tell me: how does having half the world’s mail posted to him save Strathmore tax?”

Bill rolled his eyes. 

“For Chrissakes, Peter. He’s been renting the house out and secretly living in Israel.”

“What? He said he’d never rented it before.”

“Ever heard the word “falsehood”, mi amico? A lie? Poor Peter. You could be an accessory to tax evasion.”

I sipped my coffee as Bill finished his pasta, then continued:

“He takes money off the local municipalities, parents and whoever else for these tours to Israel. Then he spends it over there, where he’s not liable for tax cos he says he’s tax registered in the States. Meanwhile, he rents this place out to you. But you know the best bit?”

I shook my head. Bill dropped a sugar cube in his coffee cup and stirred.

“The tax people think he lives in Rushmont Avenue as a religious devotee with zero income. Meanwhile, he’s in Tel Aviv eating Felafel and making bank like a pusher.”

Bill raised his coffee. “Salute. The conniving spirit of fourteenth-century Florence is not dead, non e ver’, Peter?”

He winked and downed the sugary coffee in a single swallow.

***

By the time I got back, the sun was setting across the front yard. The detritus of an autumn day – bikes and buggies strewn over porches, leaves piled on sidewalks – welcomed me. I pushed the front door open and stepped inside. The kids were eating a takeaway. 

Caroline had her worried face on, fingers tugging at her fringe. I said hello to the kids, who grunted back, faces deep in Chow Mein boxes. I kissed Caro, who seemed more interested in her glass of white wine than me.

Six fifteen. Was she pissed because I was fifteen minutes late?

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

“How was your day at work?”

“Fine.” 

Caro stared at me. 

“So Tom had an interesting day. And Rebecca.”

“What happened?”

“You know what? I’ll let them tell you. Kids, show Dad what you found.”

A scraping of chairs. For a change, both children put their take-away boxes in the recycling. Wow. Something must be wrong. 

“C’mon, Dad. Check it.”

The kids shot up to the first floor, the one I’d hardly bothered to scan during the walk-round. Tom led me into the back bedroom, then threw open the cupboard doors. At first I saw the usual stuff people leave in closets – coat-hangers, empty boxes. Then it hit me. 

Someone had painted a young man with a pentangle behind his head on the back wall of the closet. He wore a robe and pointed to a star falling from heaven. To his left, a broken cross lay on the ground. To his right, a voluptuous woman on a blanket with a sword pointing at her. What I recognised as Hebrew characters were written above; Christ’s name in Greek, Χριστός, was painted below the scene. 

“Did you do this?”

“Are you kidding, Dad? I thought you did it, with the Greek and all that. Fucken weird. Go see what Becky found also.”

We stepped into the other bedroom. Another painting on the back wall of the closet. This time, I knew what it meant: the alphabet at the top; the words OUI and NON in French in the middle, and numbers 0 to 9 at the bottom. A ouija board, last seen in 1970s student dorms.

“A Ouija board. One of their kids was having fun. So what?”

“I’m not happy about it is what.”

Caro stood in the doorway like a sentinel. She took a long swig from her glass of white.

“Me neither, Dad”, said Becky. “This place smells. I want to leave.”

“Rebecca. Calm down. You’re hallucinating”, I implored.

“No she ain’t”, Tom half-shouted. “It stinks like baked dog-turd!”

***

Back downstairs, our kids spread across the beat-up couch, all teenage limbs and attitude. 

“It’s nothing”, I said. “Just pictures.”

“Yeah right”, snorted Becky, checking her text messages. 

Caro sighed, headed for the kitchen to top up her wine. I told the kids the drawings didn’t mean anything and that we weren’t here forever. I also committed to find out what was causing the “weird smell” – which I hadn’t noticed – by checking the drains. And finally, I promised that if they still hated this place, we’d move before Christmas.

Placated, the kids went to bed: when I checked on them they were both asleep, gangly bodies tangled in quilts. I found Caro in our room, an empty wine-glass on her night-stand. She perched on her side of the bed, arms round her knees. When I came in she looked up. 

“So you think those drawings mean nothing, Peter?” she asked. 

I nodded. “I’m sure of it. The Strathmores allowed their kids to express” –

“Then explain this”, she snapped, jumping from the bed and flinging open our wardrobe. Two drawings were carved into the wooden insides of the doors. On the left, a Tower crumbling as it got hit by lightning; on the right, an upside-down hanged man. 

“I guess the Strathmores like self-expression too, huh? What we gonna find if we open the locked rooms? A god-damn Psychic fayre?” She lay on the bed. “I mean, Jesus, Peter. Couldn’t you have looked more carefully? We’ve rented from God-squadding, occult-obsessed tax criminals!”

That night, the bed felt like a chasm between us. Mercifully, no-one awoke to the sounds of a Satanic ritual coming from that locked room. Tomorrow morning, I’d investigate this “smell”, and everything would be fine. 

***

The kids headed out for school on time, shepherded by their mother in our mini-van. Swigging my second coffee, even I thought I smelled something in the kitchen: a kind of sickly-sweet air. 

After coffee I headed down to the basement for the first time since my tour with Strathmore. I half-expected to find leather face masks and satanic paraphenalia. Instead I found that brown couch that folded out to a bed, a grey carpet and dresser: same as I’d seen before. Only now I guessed Strathmore had rented the basement as a separate unit for even more cash, tax free. That would explain all those letters demanding debt repayments from people who no longer lived here.

I checked the basement bathroom and found nothing. Even the laundry room was empty, though that smell was stronger. Pushing past the boxes of religious literature with titles like YOU CAN FIND GOD and MAKING THE LOVE OF JESUS, I went to examine the washing machine and dryer. The smell, I told myself, had to have something to do with the drains. 

As I stood facing the washer-dryer I noticed a half-height door in the corner behind the aging white machine. About three feet square, it was stopped with a latch rather than a lock. The door caught my attention because it was something you would find in a European house, like something out of the seventeenth century. And the smell got stronger, passing through scent to stink: a mouldy, sweet, rancid odour.

I shoved the washing machine six inches to the right by putting my body between it and the wall, then l leaned down and opened the latch, hoping I’d find a way to the main drain through this cubbyhole. As soon as I pulled the door open, the stink got worse. A black plastic garbage bag fell out. 

I noticed the scrawled image of a lamb and a crown carved into the inside of the square door, and the words STIPENDIUM PECCATI written in what looked like kids’ crayon underneath the carvings. Stipendium Peccati - the wages of sin. Then I noticed other words below the first two: Stipendium Peccati Mors Est - “The wages of sin are death.” 

I saw garbage bags filled to bursting racked up on top of each other inside. They stretched back as far as I could see. The smell was unbearable, I was gagging and about to throw up. I picked up the bag that had fallen out and took it to the basement bathroom. The contents felt mushy and firm all at once.

I put the bag in the bathtub and leaned over the toilet in the corner to retch, but nothing came. I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath, then grabbed a pair of plastic gloves next to the sink and opened the garbage bag. 

It took me a little while to recognise the rotting human hand that lay in front of me. Then I threw up properly into the toilet until I was dry-retching and tears were streaming from my eyes. I staggered upstairs to dial 911. Those letters we’d found in the hallway addressed to people who’d come to rent this house? Now I knew they’d always go unanswered.

J.W. Wood is the British/Canadian author of six books of poems and a novel. He has reviewed for The Times (UK), National Post (Canada) and others. Individual stories in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Thriller Magazine, Pulp Press USA, Crimeucopia (UK), many more. Awards: Canada Council for the Arts (2022), Strands International Fiction Award (2024), British Columbia Arts Council (2018). First book of stories published March 2025 (hardback) by AN Editions (UK), paperback Nov. 25. His second thriller will appear in late 2027.

jwwoodwriter.net