Furnace
                 This Old Weird House
                  by Clayton Emery
Okay. I've got gaping holes in my house, I have to buy the
neighbors a new dog, the FAA and FBI have cordoned off the
neighborhood, television crews have blocked the road, my wife is
screaming and -- the last straw -- the noise woke the kids.
It's my own fault. I broke Homeowner's Rule #1.
Leave well-enough alone.
                        &&&&&-----&&&&&
It all started because we weren't burning much heating oil.
None, in fact.
Now you expect a few quirks in an old house. And this house was
older than most. So old that not even the Hysterical Society knows
when it was built. And of course, with an old house, you expect to
make a few repairs. (Same as a new one.) Owning a house is
actually a race to see if you or the mortgage dies first, and before
the sills collapse, the roof falls in, the water main implodes, etc.
Except we were saving money in one tiny spot, which was, we
weren't burning any heating oil. Not a drop. In a winter when
people wondered whether to sell the children or simply sign the
deed over to the oil company. According to my neighbors, I saved
so much money I could stuff it in the walls of the guest bedroom
instead of insulation, which amounts to the same thing.
Now I'll say right off, I am not an old house fan. My ideal house
would come shrinkwrapped with a pair of scissors and a green
concrete lawn. But my wife's family hails from so far back they
sneer at the DAR as if they were the homeless, so The Doll fell in
love with this heap right away. I've been married long enough to
say, "Yes, dear," right away to save time. Besides, this was my
chance to show up my two-condos-one-in-Florida-one-in-Virginia
father-in-law. So I bought this house and one each of Sears'
Craftsmen tools (they really do replace 'em if you break 'em,
although I'm testing the limit), and I became Mr Fixit.
And it's fun, in a way, if your idea of joy is digging a mouse nest
out of a live electrical socket on a wet wall while holding a
flashlight in your mouth so the spiders have an even chance to
explore your teeth. Then driving to the hardware store where all
the folks know your first name, and enjoy a good laugh at your
questions.
But weird things happen in old houses.
Like three months into this icy winter, we had yet to buy a gallon
of heating oil. I knew I had oil heat, because it said so on the Real
Estate Purchase & Sales Agreement, so presumably there was a
furnace in the cellar that burned oil. I could see outside, in back of
the tiger lilies under a few leaves (okay, a lot of leaves) that I had
an oil intake. And blue-and-orange oil trucks were thicker in my
neighborhood than yellow school buses. The Doll, who handles
the money, asked, Everyone else needs oil, honeybunch, so why
not us? Could I maybe Do Something About It?
I'll admit I was curious too, and thought, I'll just take a quick look.
Which hurts less, initially, than shooting yourself in the foot with a
revolver.
Now, any homeowner knows the three simple rules for going into
your cellar. 1) Don't go into your cellar. 2) If you must go, don't
take a flashlight. 3) If you do take a flashlight, don't turn it on. Or
you'll be sorry.
But I had to go into my cellar, so I took an expert along: Brian, my
neighbor. Bri is a carpenter, so shouldn't know anything about
furnaces, so after a peek, we can shrug off the little quirk, and say
we tried, then see how New England fares against Oakland with
peace of mind.
So, armed with a flashlight (What did I just say?), me and Brian
ventured into my cellar. I won't tell you what we saw along the
way, but figure H. P. Lovecraft probably owned an old house.
Many cobwebs deep, we found The Furnace.
It was rusty, of course, and huge, naturally, and it had pipes and
vents and wires and switches and manifolds and bivalves stuck all
over it. And a jacket of (rusty) white.
"Asbestos!" groaned Brian. "Yeah, I saw your house cited on a TV
special. The EPA asked Congress for a Superfund grant to clean it
up, or else wanted to unannex your property to declare it a
separate country. Man, we shouldn't even be breathing down
here!"
See? Brian has that professional serviceperson's touch, such as
helpfully prefacing all final estimates with, "I been in this business
thirty years, and I've never seen..."
We shone the flashlight around (I'll never learn) and saw the whole
History of Home Heating piled around us. Like Indiana Jones on
amphetamines, Brian gave a running commentary on the
archeology. "Okay, so it looks like this monster originally burned
coal, because there's your coal chute and coal breakers. Then
they converted to oil, 'cause there's the first, second, and third
replacement burners. And over there looks like nine thousand
dollars' worth of special pressurized fittings they sliced off with a
hacksaw: that's when they tried to convert to natural gas. Oh, and
here they cut through the floor for the woodstove conversion.
And, jeez, that oil tank looks like it lost a war..."
He was being kind. The tank, which could hold several million
gallons, or maybe thirty oil trucks' worth, was rusty (of course),
with pipes and tubes and glass things you couldn't see through. I
rubbed the glass gauge. Gothic letters read EMPTY. Underfoot I
found a half-inch tube twisted off. So they'd disconnected the oil
service just as they'd disconnected every other method of heating
except setting fire to the walls.
"Funny," Brian noted, "you got an oil tank and an oil furnace, but
you don't burn no oil. That is weird, even for an old house."
Yet the furnace was warm. In fact, hot.
The furnace had a big (rusty) iron door. An insulated switch read
FURNACE ON/OFF. A little brown wire ran up to the ceiling,
presumably to the thermostat, or maybe Radio Free Europe. I
asked, "Should we turn off the furnace and look inside? Maybe we
can see what it does burn."
Brian looked as if I'd asked for a French kiss. "You're a --
whatd'theycallit -- first-time homeowner, aren't you? Trust an old
hand. Leave well-enough alone."
Does anyone take advice, even when they ask for it?
I flicked off the switch -- no need to burn off my eyebrows just for
curiosity -- and opened the furnace door with a dirty stick.
Inside, bolted to stanchions, sat a silver jetpack.
Another brown wire ran from the switch box to the pack.
Brian and I looked at each other.
I flipped the switch.
The jetpack whooshed into life. Blue-white flames roared out to
heat the old radiator coils around the furnace.
I flipped off the switch. "Whatdya make of that?"
Brian pushed back his Porky Pig Celtics baseball hat. "Offhand, I'd
say it's a rocket pack. What's it say on the side?"
I shone the light on a label. "Buck Rogers Model 2410."
Brian nodded absently and took the flashlight. In a corner of the
cellar, he found some oily black straps connected by a metal disc.
He scraped the disk. Fast-looking letters spelled GALACTIC
RANGERS. "I missed this version of your conversions. Look,
genuine leather." He tossed the straps back on the junk. "Who'd'ja
say were the previous owners?"
I didn't know. I flipped the switch a few more times. The jetpack
warmed the house just fine. "What powers it?"
Brian squatted and pointed. Between the twin tubes on the pack
sat a small glass bubble, and inside was a jot of white. Brian
borrowed the flashlight and stuck his head halfway into the
furnace. "Ah! `Caution: Black Hole Fuel Cell. Keep out of reach of
children.' I'll buy that. I'd hate to think what my kids could do with
a black hole. Anyway, there's your answer." He straightened up.
"So whatdy'say?"
I closed the furnace door with the stick, flicked the switch, heard a
muffled whoosh. "Well, we found out why we don't burn oil, and
the furnace works. S'good enough for me."
"Me too," Brian nodded. "Why ask for trouble?"
As we stomped upstairs for an appointment with the Patseys and
some Pabst, Brian said, "See? That was easy!"
The fateful words. I should have known better.
                           &&&&&-----&&&&&
About three o'clock in the morning -- most house emergencies
happen then -- I heard the neighbor's dog barking.
Down in my living room.
I groped in my dresser for my secret, hidden flashlight, the one
the kids don't dare drain the batteries of too low. The Doll pulled
on her bathrobe. "What do you think it is, Honey? It's not a rat, is
it?"
"No, dear." Raccoons and coyotes eat our rats, but I didn't need
to tell her. "I'll go see."
Halfway down the stairs, I felt cold air swirl around my ankles.
Someone had left a window open.
No, left the wall open.
A huge glob of shimmering slime with lumps and spouts and
vacules all over -- sort of an organic version of my furnace -- had
dissolved the wall and oozed through. The bottom half of my
six-over-nine antique ripple-glass windows dripped like icicles. I'd
just reglazed and painted that window last Thanksgiving.
The alien was dissolving the carpet, half a chair, and millions of
Legos. My neighbor's dog, Otis, followed steadily, barking like a
rock band trapped in a dumpster.
"Well," I told The Doll, "it's not a rat."
The thing slithered across the floor. Most of the carpet was gone,
but my in-laws had given us that. When the alien sizzled onto the
floors, I flipped out. "Hey! Those are twenty-four inch pine planks!
They're in the National Historic Register!"
The thing made a beeline, or slugline, for my furnace. The Doll
said, "It must want that rocket pack you mentioned! I told you to
let well-enough alone!"
"No, dear, you told me to find out -- Never mind." Toggling the
switch must have sent a signal, and someone had come looking
for their missing property. I wondered again about the previous
owners, tried to remember if the furnace had been listed in the
Truth & Disclosure statement.
The Doll looked out the bathroom window. "There's a silver
spaceship in the back yard!"
"Great," I muttered, "it's probably caved in the septic system."
I watched the alien dissolve my cellar door. Otis got a little too
close. The monster humped in the middle and flailed out a pod.
The dog yelped once and got sucked into its body. Hell. Even if he
did dump on my roses, I'd have to buy the neighbors another dog.
That'd be easy: replacing the damned ripple glass was next to
impossible.
The thing placidly oozed through my cellar door and down the
stairs, single-minded as a building inspector.
The Doll asked, "Should I call 911?"
I thought about it. Which was worse? To have an alien destroy the
house and feed us to little alienettes or carry us off to slavery in
some fetid hellhole across the stars? Or to walk into Brinkley's
Market for the Globe every day for the rest of my life and hear
neighbors yell, "Hey, found any aliens in your living room lately?"
"No, I'll handle this. Where's the baseball bat?"
"Uh... In the back hall closet?"
"The junk closet? Never mind. I think I left the flatbar on the
toilet."
I found it, sixteen inches of lethal blue steel with a little beaver in a
hardhat on the label, and carefully inched down what was left of
my cellar stairs.
The thing blubbered against the front of my furnace. It scoured off
rust, but the iron slowed it down. I wondered why it wanted the
jetpack, whether it had a grudge against the previous owners.
Hell, maybe this character installed it and never got paid, yet
another mechanic's lien.
Standing in the cellar doorway, I thumped the alien on the rump
with my flatbar. "Hey! Whatever your beef, I own that jetpack, me
and several banks! So --"
The thing humped in the middle, but I'd seen that trick before. I
ducked. The pod whapped the wall, dissolved a patina of rust and
dust. It returned to slobbering on my furnace door.
"Okay, have it your way." Inching along the wall, I circled the
furnace, reached with a long arm, unlatched the door, and swung
it open.
Sure enough, just like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, the alien
oozed inside the furnace -- I told you it was huge -- and began to
slobber on the jetpack. When most of it was inside, I whapped
what hung outside with the flatbar. The bulk snapped out, then
recoiled, and I boosted all of it inside.
I slammed the furnace door with a clang! and toggled the switch.
The jetpack went whoosh! The alien made a more complicated
sound, but not for long.
The furnace seemed to run fine. I should have opened the door,
just to check, but I'd learned my lesson. I retired upstairs.
"Is it gone?" asked The Doll. "What about that spaceship?"
I peeked out the window at winking lights. "That's an outdoor job.
It waits till spring." In best homeowner fashion, I added, "Just
ignore it; maybe it'll go away."
I stomped around in the barn, kicked up leaves and dust, found
some plywood to cover the hole in the wall, and went to bed.
Laying back in the warmth, I felt that satisfaction that only a
homeowner can feel when they've gotten a fix right.
Then I blew it. "That was easy."
Sure enough, it wasn't. In the morning, the spaceship was gone.
But it had caved in the septic system.
                                END