I work in restoration. Your house or business floods? My crew comes in, dries everything up, cleans the baseboards, preps the place, tosses the ruined stuff into a dumpster and hauls it away. We leave the place clean and ready for a fresh coat of paint. I’m usually pretty proud of the work me and my crew does. We do it all too. Mostly we have to do flood damage, but there are times when we get called to rich folks houses to remove stains from stone and concrete structures. I’ve had a museum call for the same. I’ve made a name for myself in being able to get just about any stain out of any stone. You think it’s easy, or that you can just scrub away a stain, but folks forget that marble isn’t solid material. It’s porous, and it sucks in liquid. That’s why polish and maintenance are important. I’m not naive though. Plenty of times I get called in for “Red Wine” - yeah, okay I get it. You were partying with the hooker, she OD’d cracked her coked out head on a coffee table and suddenly there’s a pool of blood on the marble floor of your penthouse and you can’t get the stain out. Worse? The Wife’s home next week. I’ve done the clean-up enough times to know a few things
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You don’t ask stupid questions. Hell half the time the hooker’s fine or would have OD’d anyway with or without the expensive John. So no skin off my nose. And if you’re cleaning up the scene before the cops can show up, honestly, that’s on them. I have a job to do, and I do it.
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Don’t remember these people. I’m not some guy who’s going to get brought in on some indictment hearing or some stupid tabloid media circus all because I decided to suddenly have a good memory. I do a job like this, I get your address, I show up, I shake your hand, I call you “Mr. Smith”, and then I leave, I delete your address, and I carry on with my life. The less I know the safer I am.
That being said, I don’t get the blood cleanup very often. It’s normally innocent stuff, Wine, Sewage, Flood Water, sometimes human feces (you think it’s gross but it’s easier than anything else to clean.)
The weirdest request?
I need to give you context on weird. I had a call to clean up a place after something called a “Luna Party” which somehow involved a whole lot of menstrual blood and dancing in it. (Next time bring a tarp…) That’s not my weirdest call.
It was a Friday, I don’t know why that mattered when I got a call. The secretary was out for lunch as was the rest of the crew, rather than let it go to voicemail, I took the phone call. This was my first mistake.
“M & C Restoration Inc. Fred speaking.” Yeah, I’m Fred.
There was a pause and then a guy’s voice comes over, kind of timid. “Yes, Hello. I understand from your ad you can remove stains from all sorts of stone. Marble as well?”
“Kind of our specialty.” I boast, “What sort of stains are you talking about?”
“Blood.”
I never had someone just out and out say it. I get all the pussyfooting around, sure. “Wine”, “Salsa”, “Sangria” - Sangria was my favorite considering that ‘Blood’ is in the name. But this guy just out and said it, plainly. “How large an area?”
Another pause, “I’d say about… maybe 10000 square foot?”
“Not the property,” I tried to clarify, “Just the stain.”
“Yes, I know.”
“…You need 10,000 square feet of marble, which is stained in blood… cleaned?”
“Yes.”
This time I had to take a moment. How many gallons was that? I thought back to that ‘Lunar Party’ thing, or whatever, but even that as only a single floor.
“I’m sorry, some context is probably needed.” the voice on the other end continued, “My name is Timothy. I work in antiquities. A curator friend of mine referred me to you after you managed to clear her museum steps of some blood that apparently occurred after someone took a nasty fall.”
I cleared my throat, “Right… okay. Yes. I’m just still trying to process, 10,000 square feet of stained tile.”
“Is it too much?”
I was still a bit dumbfounded.
“Let me be Frank; this site was the location of a rather bloody massacre some time ago. My colleagues and I have already examined the site in its entirety and we’re looking to begin restoration.”
At this point, my concern got overridden by cash. Antiquities? Historical site? This sounded like a fat government contract! Christmas came early to ol’ Freddy! “What’s the budget for this project of yours?”
“Time is more of the essence than anything else. We need the site cleaned in preparation for other restoration efforts. So as soon as possible would be preferred. Your fee is, essentially, yours to name. You’re literally the only one who I can call on for this task.”
Haggling wasn’t this guy’s strong suit, sounded to me like he needs to read The Art of The Deal.
“You’re talking a whole lot of space to clear, 10,000 square feet is a whole lot of floor.”
“It’s not all floor. A good portion of it is on the walls and ceiling.”
“How high is the ceiling?”
“About 50 feet.”
I was silent again, I was going to need to rent a scissor lift for that. I thought for a moment and cleared my throat, “I’m going to need a whole lot of equipment, materials, and at least five guys if you want this job done right and fast.”
“Of course.”
“How long has the marble been stained?”
There was a moment of silence, “By the current timeline? Oh, well maybe 200… wait, What’s the current year again?”
I wasn’t too sure why he was asking but I figured I shouldn’t sound stupid, “It’s 2018.”
“350 years… roughly.”
I thought for a moment, thinking about how, this being the United States, there was no way for there to be a structure like he was talking about. I ignored him and assumed he had to be wrong. Anything over a decade is as set in as it’s going to be anyway. I took a breath, “I can’t do it for less than thirty grand.” I figured he’d work on needling the price down, but then he shocked me again.
“Understandable. I’m assuming I can ignore a number of taxes and paperwork if I provided a cash payment?”
I coughed in shock, nearly swallowed my cigarette, “Yes, certainly.” Cash? I’m going to have this job done and it was going to be tax-free? I felt like I just won the lotto.
So the job itself comes up. I’ve got my crew rolling to the address. The address has a huge rusted gate, chain on the front, typical of a site you’re not allowed to get to. I see a guy standing about six foot in a black trenchcoat, black sunglasses, gloves, black dress shoes and slacks, black hair and pretty pale. He doesn’t say a word, and unlocks the chain on the gate, pulled it off pretty quick. I thought it was a heavier gauge than he made it seem, but I was probably just mistaken, being in a huge truck and not too close to the gate.
The guy opens the gate up and walks up to the side of the truck.
“Fred, yes?” he says flatly.
I nod, reaching my hand out to him, “You’re Tim?”
“Timothy, yes.” he shakes my hand, firm handshake, and his hair is cut short, trim, proper.
“Military?” I ask.
He nods, stepping back and pointing down past the gate, motioning with his non-directing hand to move.
Definitely military, so I nod and drive up. I see a huge mansion, white and gray stone steps, old siding falling apart, boarded up windows, a messed up roof and the entire place looks to be knocked down. Rather, getting rebuilt was apparently on the docket for today, and I was getting paid to not care.
As we unload Timothy opens up the front doors and knocks them in place, he starts talking loudly, “The doors need to be open at all times while you work, there is no ventilation inside.” He has a pair of pretty heavy duty door stops on each door. From the outside, I cannot see anything inside. Nothing but pitch black. “You’re going to need lighting, so I hope you brought a generator.”
I laugh while my crew unloads the trucks and sets up two generators, pulling down some cans of gas, “This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“So it would seem,” says Timothy, and then he walks inside and vanishes into the blackness.
I motion for the crew to set-up the lights and the first place we go is on either side of the door. He wasn’t kidding about needing light, the boards were perfect and the inside was absolutely dark. Like the middle of a moonless night dark. I hear the generator kick on and the lights perk up a second later. That’s when I see a massive white face appear out of the dark with brown drips across it.
It’s an angelic woman carved expertly out of marble, I swear I can see the pores on her cheeks and the split ends of her long hair. There’s a second similar statute about thirty feet to the left and it’s covered in brown stains.
I hear one of my guys, Chavez, speak up. “My God.”
That’s about when I got the hint something wasn’t right.
Chavez spoke up again, “Hail Mary, our father protect us.”
I picked up Chavez from a day laborer site about one year ago and I’ve been paying him under the table ever since. He’s either from Mexico or Honduras, he was a good worker so I never bothered to care, and could never ask.
“This is too much, this place is cursed to high Hell, the blood’s all over those angel statues, what is this?” Chavez was rambling.
You see, the reason I never could ask Chavez where he came from was that Chavez doesn’t speak a God Damn word of English.
Timothy voice soon echoed across the room, walking over the solid marble in various states of stains and scrapes. “I trust this isn’t too much for you, or your men?”
I didn’t actually spot where he had come from, but I wasn’t paying attention before Chavez got a smack upside the head from one of my full-timers Pete.
“Since when the Hell can you speak English Chavez?”
“When the Hell did you learn Spanish Peter?” Chavez asked.
Timothy seemed agitated, “Gentlemen if we can begin the job now?” and he walked past us and outside.
I turned to both of my men, “Pete, Chavez, shut the fuck up the both of you. We do this job, go home, you all get a good paycheck, okay? No more questions, let’s get moving.”
“This place is cursed,” Chavez said before turning around and pulling in the pressure washers and detergent bottles.
I got up in Chavez face now, certain he can understand me, “Then the quicker we get started, the quicker we can get the Hell out of here. Understand?”
“Understood,” Chavez said, still looking confused.
Pete then spoke up, “Hey boss…” he focused a flashlight to a portion of the floor where the stain ended.
I looked over to where he was shining the light.
The brown stains were everywhere, as described, but toward where one large swath of brown ended was an impression on the floor in the stuff, much clearer. The impression was of a sword, which had to have been drenched in blood. The sword-shaped stain didn’t bother me. It’s what was apparently holding it. An outstretched arm shape, and then two massive wing-like stains on either side, with a human-like face profiled on the floor. Everything below the waist of the figure vanished in the larger stain across the floor. We each had an idea of what we were looking at, but we were too stunned at the sight.
Chavez was the first to break the silence, “Angels died here…”