Two Latino guys in their early 20s, one heavyset, the other thin, are sitting on a stoop, staring at the two-story house across the street.
“Who told you that, man?”
“Nobody’s gone in there that I know. Just the people that live there.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The house across the street is wooden and rickety. It sits 50 feet back from the street on a deep lot near the corner of Chestnut and Ashland, and it has a backyard and a run-down coach house. Virginia Zaraza and her brother Mitchell live there. Twenty-one years ago Mitchell set out to transform the house, and the gawking has never ceased.
The yard and house look impenetrable. Barbed wire covers the backyard fence, and its gates are nailed shut. A series of doors and gates, chained and padlocked, guard the front door, the steps to which bear the names of Mickey Rooney, Mark Anthony, Cleopatra, and Tim McCoy, one on each step. Others honored on walls and crosses, some more than once, include Tyrone Power, Zorro, Tarzan, Chicago Queen Jane M. Byrne, Sabu, Boots, Merlin, Galahad, Guinevere, Zygmund, Doris Day, and Anne Baxter. One plaque reads “Alligator Love.” The crosses and plaques creep behind the house, into the yard, and onto the coach house, then dribble toward the back alley. On the front of the coach house, barely visible from the street, is the largest cross of all. It’s red, with gold letters that read “EXCALIBUR.”
An old woman wearing a T-shirt appears in an open window. She looks tired. “What?”
“Yeah, we found him.”
