I'm thinking I might have left out too many details about my Tucson experience.
To slow things down a bit when we arrived in Tucson, my wife was the one that went to finalize our details for our condo while I was dropped off at my new job. It was less than two hours at my new job when my wife called and told me about the Environmental Agency guy and all these people all over the house and yard spraying stuff and the guy from the Environmental Safety Agency saying that it was not a safe place for my wife and my kids to move into because there were some serious Environmental issues with the house.
After two days of this, I had no choice. The Creative Director was not there so I asked the owner for some time off to help my family... And she said...go...go...take care of your family.
When I got there, my wife was standing outside with my kids and incredibly stressed and said: "The Environmental Agency guy just left and said we can't move in." There were people everywhere in our condo. I won't spend a lot of time with dialogue. But simply put, my family and I spent the next two days in a hotel.
Once we got the clearance to move in, from the outside, our new home looked very nice. In fact even on the inside it looked nice. Spanish south western architecture on the outside, white walls and very nice tan carpeting throughout. But it still felt as if something was wrong. When we walked in, there were still a lot of people working on the inside of the house. There were people polishing the kitchen tile floor with a circular rotor buff. There were people scrubbing the window edges, the bathroom, and the hallways with vacuum steam cleaners. He told us that the previous owners were heavy smokers and they were trying to clear out the stench. I was a smoker at that time, and I don't remember my house smelling like this house. Then again...LOL...many of us can't smell our own breath...
All humor aside. I went down the hall to our bedrooms. I'm a big believer in checking out where you're going to sleep and pee. As I passed the main hallway bathroom, there was an old Mexican lady scrubbing the shower floor. I said hi... And she said... Mucho plante anga or something. A lot of old...yeah...whatever...a lot of explanations for that. But the real weird part for me is when I opened the arcadia door from our bedroom to the patio and felt this incredible negative energy. I felt it really strong... I thought... This is real weird... What are all these dirt holes in the desert landscaped patio?
When I went back through the house, I looked at our landlord and asked: "What are all those holes in the patio?"
He said: "They're just tortoise holes. They come back now and then expecting to find the rest of their family, which was my wife and I."
I asked: "Is your wife here? I mean like somewhere here?"
He said: "No, she died of cancer two years ago."
"Those tortoises' were her pets? And also the garden?" Which was completely dead by the way. All the cacti and other nice desert garden plants were all dead. The only things alive were weeds and crabgrass.
He said that he had plans to redo the patio garden. The previous owners never took care of the garden.
"How long were they here?"
"About 6 months."
I asked: "6 months, who else before that
He said no one after his wife passed away because he was very depressed and didn't want anything to do with the place. He abandoned it. He promised he would fix the patio. He never once approached the patio garden over the 30 days we were there. I'm sure everyone experiences settling down to a new home.
In the evenings, I would come home and help my wife unpack and put our bedrooms together and settle the kids. It was actually a very nice place. But over the next few weeks things progressively changed.
My wife and my kids fell asleep very early during those first days. While they slept, I would walk around and check the place out. There was still a musty smell lingering in the hallways. But the mustiness was stronger in the bathroom and the kitchen. But for some reason, I kept going back and looking out our arcadia door at the desert landscaped patio, and I just felt such a depressed and heavy feeling.
But I talked to myself. It's a new job; you packed your family up and moved here, it's a different world. But during the time I talked to myself, I studied the patio landscaping. This patio landscaping was not a little tiny piece of dirt that most people in condos have outside their bedroom. This patio was bigger than most people's back yards. A dysfunctional rock water fountain in one corner. Dead cacti everywhere and a small shed in a corner. I decided, next chance I have, I'm going to check out that shed.
Other issues began happening with my family when I went to work.
Less than a week passed when I got a call from my wife. She and my kids were in the emergency room at the hospital. My oldest son was running a fever over 104 degrees.
One night while I was shaving, I heard a loud clunk from the shower. When I looked, the metal soap dish had fallen out of the wall and landed on the tile in our shower. I picked it up and looked at the back, and it was black with fungus. When I looked at the slot of the shower it had fallen from, the entire hole was completely covered with black mold. I thought nothing of it.
We had a wonderful time on Christmas Eve... Even with my son all puffy eyed he still looked very happy. He actually looked like the Michelin tire guy and we laughed about it. But it was still a beautiful Christmas, as Christmases can be without all the BS. We exchanged pretend presents from our kids and listened to Christmas music and had an incredible dinner.
After my kids went to bed, my wife and I cleaned the kitchen. But during that entire time of cleaning, the musty smell never left. The fish smell diminished, but the musty smell got stronger.
The first thing I did before going to work the next Monday was to empty every trash can in the house and pay attention when I came home to see if the smell went away. It not only got stronger, but the fungus stains seemed to be spreading. Not only were they spreading. The stains on the tile and the bathroom walls went into the hallway leading to our bedroom. They became more apparent every day. When I went into the shed, I found cans and cans of antifungal spray and air fresheners. It seemed everything in our new world was going bad. I never heard any moaning... Strange sounds in the night... Nor any visions. You have to understand something. Not all ghosts or entities are like "The Amityville Horror." I hate Hollywood's depiction of entities. They make a mockery of the real experiences so many people have with entities.
That night, I talked to my wife. And as much as I think I have an extra sense, I asked her: "Shall we go home?"
She said: "Let's get the hell out of here."
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