A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven (14 page)

In the dark we all experience that same brief sense of panic before sleep takes us into its arms. There is something underneath our skin where the ancient bits of our minds still have purchase that always keeps a watchful eye when we are alone and vulnerable. It could be that is the bit that still has the eyes for this sort of phenomena. Call it what you want—fight or flight, predation sensory, sixth sense, paranoia—it is all the same thing at the end of the day: a hyperactive itch that warns us if there is trouble brewing in our general area. This could be one of the faculties that keeps us on our toes and wary when it comes to things like spirits and poltergeists. It also could be the very perception that confuses our minds and lets us see something that might not be there. However this slice of our conscious and unconscious mind works, its strange ways will keep us searching through the mysteries of this world—and the next. Maybe we will never know if these things are real or not. But the human mind will continue its quest for answers long after the questions become small enough to wrap our heads around.

So much for pathos . . .

Foster Manor

O
NE
NIGHT
IN
2005 my son Griffin called me into his room in the old house we were living in at the time. He had just turned three, but he was still very adamant that when I was home, he wanted me to stay in his room with him. I knew he would eventually have to grow out of this, so one night I asked him why he wanted me to sleep in his room with him all the time. He said, very solemnly, “Well, because when you are in here, the Shadow Man stops keeping me awake.”

That sentence gives me goose pimples to this day.

Over ten years ago I did not know any of this was going to happen. All I knew was that I had a son on the way and I had to find a family home that was also a decent investment for my hard-earned money; all I had done so far was wipe my ass on rent for a two-bedroom apartment in a renovated split-level that sat between the mayor of Des Moines’ house and a certified crack den. I know what you are thinking: “But Corey, that sounds like the perfect mix of hearth and home to affix said family to for all eternity!” May I remind you that, one, no one talks like that, and two, even if they did, that still would not make that vile line of drivel true.

I wanted to buy a house, but not just any house. I wanted a fucking manor house. I wanted something that would give Bruce Wayne a giant envy boner on a bitterly cold Christmas night. I wanted a construct of abnormal proportions that would cause those who beheld it to freeze in their tracks and wonder who lived there. I wanted a compound of such amazing stature that I could walk outside and feel like a Bond villain on his day off, stroking some sort of white cat and trying in vain to keep my crappy monocle in my eye, even though I really did not need it. When I was younger I had always had a fantasy about living in a deconsecrated church like a superhero. Now that I was older, my tastes had become more advanced and realistic; I knew superheroes did not have to live in abandoned churches. I just needed a house that looked like a superhero lived there.

So we scoured the real estate ads like madmen on a mission. Nothing seemed to fit my “reasonable” criteria, but I was undeterred. Meanwhile the bridge near the apartment I was living in had been blown to bits for reconstruction. Unfortunately, I forgot all about the planned blasting, and it knocked the shit out of the living room, throwing Spiderman wall mounts and family pictures every which way. That was the nail in the coffin lid for me. But my resolve was beginning to fade—at one point I thought we would never find the right house and we would have to settle for less. After a seemingly fruitless search, however, a listing caught my eye that was too good to be true, both for the asking price and the neighborhood in which it was ensconced.

There is a district in Des Moines known as South of Grand. For decades this suburb was the seat of wealth and the well-to-do in town. All my life, friends of mine have driven through that neighborhood, gazing on the illustrious houses and beautifully manicured yards, and they would pontificate about owning one of these mansions, living a life of luxury and opulence. Most of the time they were high as shit and had Doritos cheese dust on their fingers and pants, but you could see in their eyes this was a real hope, a true dream that if they ever got the chance to realize it, they would be in hog heaven. I am not ashamed to say I was one of those dreamers. The houses in that burg are wondrous little capsules of history. You can imagine my excitement when I found myself in the mix to own a house in that very area.

It was a three-story, four-bedroom, three-and-one-half bathroom brick colonial house on Foster Drive, built in 1905 and smack dab where all the elitist heads of commerce used to live throughout Des Moines’ years in industry. It also had a basement, a two-car garage, a pool, a hot tub, and a nice big yard with a rolling hill. It fulfilled two separate ideals for me: it was South of Grand and it seemed like a perfect place to raise a son. It was listed for what they refer to as a song, and even though the amenities were not what you would call “modern” (it had last been remodeled in the 1980s), it was the obvious choice for me to expend a good amount of my portion of the coin of the realm. A one-hundred-year-old mansion in the most prestigious neighborhood in town? Where the fuck do I sign? I bid on it, we got it, and we moved in shortly before Griffin was born.

Trouble kicked up dust before we had even moved a scrap of furniture. A very nice lady from the Des Moines Register (our local paper) called me to do a “little interview for the Real Estate section.” I obliged and babbled for a few minutes. She thanked me for my time and hung up the phone. Two days later the front page of the newspaper read, “Slipknot Singer Buys House in Historical District.” It went on to show a photo of the house and gave the fucking address. It also quoted me as saying, “Besides the blood sacrifices on Thursdays, it would be a relatively quiet life in the neighborhood,” which is really the way to cultivate new friendships in an area full of people who most certainly will be scared to death of the big bad rock star moving in. I was livid. I called the newspaper, and the nice lady I had done the interview with said that her editor had decided to make it a front-page story. No one considered the fact that I would have to deal with hundreds of fans just stopping by to say hello or bug me for an autograph, which they did. I was in the driveway one day when the same car full of drunken idiots drove by ten times screaming, “SLIPKNOT! YEAH!” My neighbors were less than enthused.

But that did not stop me from thoroughly loving the place. The house was wonderful. The basement was finished, with an old-time brass bar. The first floor consisted of a mudroom walkway, which opened to the dining room; kitchen just off of the dining room and the main hall; the living room to your left; and off of that was the solarium, an enclosed and heated patio added fifty years after the house was originally built. The second floor had the four bedrooms, of which the master bedroom had a door that opened to a sort of veranda on top of the solarium. The third floor was a finished attic, replete with a bathroom of its own. In fact, all the floors had bathrooms. It seems since 1905 people have always needed easy access to a place to leave a shit. The attic gnawed at me. I never felt comfortable there. It was always either completely cold or horrendously hot. I chalked it up to a one-hundred-year-old house and its many idiosyncrasies.

I had not lived there very long before a presence made it frustratingly clear we were roommates, not out-and-out owners.

I was putting dishes away in the kitchen. The sun was pouring through the windows, and I had a good CD in the old boom box. You guys remember what a boom box is, right? A boom box is a ghetto blaster. Fuck’s sake, you have no idea what a ghetto blaster is either? A ghetto blaster was the original thing you played music on, when music came on things like cassette tapes and CDs as opposed to megabytes and downloads. You played these ancient bits of entertainment on a CD player of some sort, not a computer. These CD players—and I might just blow your mind on this one—were either components for a home stereo system or portable radios that also had the ability to play CDs. The latter is what is known as a boom box or ghetto blaster. That is what was in my kitchen that day playing music. If you feel like doing some research on these now-defunct relics of industry, Google “stuff before you were born.” Or better yet, Google “modes of playing music back when music was worth listening to.” An even better search would be “how you listened to music when there was no possible way to fucking steal it and spread it to the rest of your thieving dick-stain friends.”

Sorry—I am a bitter old man who does not care about your feelings. Suck it.

As I was saying, I was putting stuff away in the kitchen. Mind you, at the time, I was not one for domesticity. I was usually the one who would pull up a bucket of chicken and veg on the couch for a month or seven. But I was excited—I had never had my own home before. Yes, I had my own apartment and had lived on my own for a long time. I had even spent a long time living on the streets. But I had never been a homeowner. I never even thought that would be an option. Here I was, putting dishes away in a house that had my name on it. This was my house. This was my castle. I felt great. That feeling diminished slightly when a vase was shoved off a counter not five feet away from where I was standing. That sort of thing tends to knock the sugar off of your doughnut. It scared the everlasting out of me. My heart crawled back into my chest after plummeting into my asshole temporarily. I cleaned up the shattered glass and went back to what I was doing, with a watchful eye for something else to happen.

I settled into a nice routine of balancing growing pains with the self-fulfilling prophecy of home ownership. South of Grand is a stone’s throw away from the urbane of the urban city, but it was set against an expanse of forest that stretched clear back past where the last bit of property ended. As a result of this, packs of crazy deer ran through the front yard all the fucking time. It became a bizarre version of Logan’s Run whenever it was time to put the trash out on the curb. I remember someone running the canisters down to the street, turning around slowly, and finding him or herself surrounded by eight or nine of these wild cocksuckers. It was apparently chilly that night, because these deer were snorting out foggy breath through their flaring nostrils in an intimidating manner. There was a tense moment when a buck with huge antlers bent his head like he would lash out, but a car happened to drive by and they split up, running into the night like a bunch of four-legged burglars looking for another score. Since then, I do not fuck around with wildlife—I just keep my bat close by.

The paranormal action stayed mundane for some time—that is, if you can call “unseen hands pushing heavy crystal vessels off of high places” mundane in the first place. What is more, it was random—nothing would happen for a few days, and then doors would slam off and on for twenty-four hours. Friends would come over for dinner only to have their hair pulled later while sitting and talking. I would hear running up and down the stairs at all hours night and day. Then it would stop . . . nothing. The lapse would last long enough that I would forget about these things, only for the strangeness to return tenfold.

For the most part, however, the activity seemed to be consigned to the third floor. I would hear pacing, slow and steady, treading the floors of the attic above. But the real testimony came from the people who stayed on that third floor. Things were just very wrong on that level of the house. Whether they were just staying overnight or they were living in the attic for an extended period of time, guests would hear voices in the early hours when no one else was awake. They would see out of the corner of their eyes dark shapes moving in the peripheral spaces. Worse yet, they were being physically assaulted in their sleep. One friend woke up with long, thin welts up and down her legs. It looked like someone had taken a pen or a pencil, heated it up, and smacked the shit out of the skin. Another friend discovered welts in the shapes of strange letters and writing. One of the other troubling factors was that everyone who slept on the third floor looked pale and drawn, white as a sheet and unrested. They all seemed like they had a vitamin or iron deficiency, floating slowly through the house like ghosts themselves. I was horrified—what in the sheer, silky fuck was going on up in that damn room?

To be fair, my attention was in other places. Griffin was a handful as a baby, and I spent most of my time feeding him, singing to him so he would take a nap, or keeping him from crawling off a ledge once he became mobile. Remember, I was in and out of town on tour a lot—in fact, I had to leave for the first Stone Sour tour only ten days after he was born. So I was with him every chance I could get. I would get up with him for his nightly feedings, putting on a movie downstairs and placing my son on a pillow so I could prop him on my lap and give him his bottle. I cannot tell you how many times I let that poor kid watch Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn while I fell asleep with a bottle in his mouth. That could be one of the reasons he is so crazy today, so maybe it was a good thing. I was trying to be a good dad, or what I thought constituted being a good dad, seeing as I had no practice of my own and no basis for comparison because I had no father growing up. Because of that, my son and I developed a bond that has thankfully lasted to this day. He is My Boy, and he makes me proud.