The House On Lake Hill

                   

 by Maureen Power

                                             

"There's something up there."
"No there isn't," says the mother.
The child tightens her arms around the mother's neck, knowing she is lying.

                             :::::::::::::::::         

         It’s a grey day, and I mean grey. 

      

         Sky the color of cigarette ash, dark charcoal denuded trees, slate colored asphalt road being slicked down by a silvery rain that sheeted the air - yup, a typical November day in a small town on the outskirts of Portland, Maine. 
         Did I live here? God, no. But I used to. Right there, in that two family (you guessed it) grey house, with the silver chain link fence holding in the weeds, and the front screened in porch where we used to play, my sister and I.   

        She didn't want to come today. Too scared.Too many reminders of bad things that put a dent in a little girl's psyche that can't be pounded out by any number of head shrinkers. She knows. She tried.

         I, on the other hand, have to know.

         

         For years, I’ve been putting all the high strangeness of my time in the house on Lake Hill in a box labeled “Childhood Imagination”, but now that Mom is gone, I think I owe it to my sister and me to find out once and for all. Mom made me promise and I’ve got to keep that promise. You see, she was part of it as well, and in her final days, confessions were made and secrets came out into the daylight to show their hungry faces.

         
         So I'm parked in my sedan, heat blasting through the vents, trying to get my courage up to go to that front door and knock. I consider turning around and going home, but then I see some movement. The front door opens, and a beautiful young woman stoops down to pick something up. It's the mail. As she straightens, I see she is quite far along in her pregnancy. Not good. So was Mom when she lost the baby.
        

         I walk over and introduce myself as she’s rifling through the mail.

         "Hi there." She looks up, puzzled.
         "I hope I'm not bothering you, but I was in the neighborhood and took a chance that someone would be home." Now she looks suspicious. She places her hand on her belly, protecting it. Does she know?
         "I grew up in this house. Lots of memories. Thirteen years at Thirteen Lake Hill," I chuckle. She softens.

         “Would you like to see some I.D.?” I say, pulling out my license. “I know this sounds crazy but I would love to peek inside.”

         If I had been an imposing six foot male, she probably would have thought twice, but the grays starting to show on the sides of my head that is only five feet and a bit from the ground, probably convinced her I was harmless. She opens the door.

         I can’t believe I’m in here. Is there a vibe? I scan my senses. Blackness and want. I feel it above me and seeping through from the back of the house. Just like before.

         I ask her the due date.

            “November 1st,” she says rubbing her tummy.

         That’s the day Mom’s baby was due, fifty years ago. Day of the Dead. I smile on the outside, but my thoughts are racing.

         “How long have you been here?” I say as I walk into the dining room, snapping pictures. I remember sneaking under the big table to watch The Outer Limits after I was supposed to be in bed. The small black and white TV flickering in the adjoining living room planted seeds of spooks and monsters in my head. Have they ever left?

         “Just a few months,” she says. “Come see the nursery. We just finished it!”

         I pass the bathroom …where my grandmother died…, expecting to see – what? Then I look into my old bedroom, now an expectant nursery, all pale greens and yellows. That’s where Mom told me ghost stories before she tucked me in. That’s where, deep in the darkness, the voices and the crying could be heard. It was unnerving, mournful, hungry and on the nights it came, it would disappear just when the dawn broke.

          Childhood Imagination

         

         “How do you like it here? Bellevue’s such a nice town.”


         “We love it,” she says, relaxing and opening up a bit.


         “The landlord put tons of money into refurbishing the apartment. And the rent’s a steal. Six hundred, do you believe it? Every place else on this street’s at least twelve.”


         I nod, then she leads me into the kitchen, all shiny and new. I notice the door to the back hallway that opens to the porch is slightly open.

         “Still keep the fridge in there,” I say, pointing to the grey slit.

         “I guess it’s the logical place. The kitchen’s just not big enough. But it gets cold in there. I hate having to go out so many times a day. And the steps into the cellar are right across from it. Kind of freaks me out, sometimes.” Why?

         
          My Mother tumbled down those stairs resulting in the miscarriage. She swears she was pushed.

        

         “You know what’s really great, though. The upstairs apartment is empty!”
         "Really?" I say.

        

          What I want to say is, “Oh, no it’s not. There’s something up there. It’s been there for who knows how long and will not leave until it gets your baby. It got my mother’s, with a fall down those back steps. It got my grandmother’s with a blow to the gut by her drunken husband and it’s gonna get yours. It’s hungry. It will wait as long as it needs to.

         “Yeah, never been anyone there. The landlord keeps it for storage. He’s in antiques.”


         “Wow, that’s great.” I say. “My grandparents and great grandmother used to live up there. It was pretty much a big family home. Lots of houses on the street were like that then. Extended families.”

         “Oh, that must have been nice. We’re from Ohio and don’t get to see the folks much. Let me show you the back.”

         I cringe. This will mean I have to go by the other set of back stairs that go up to the second floor, then to the attic. As I approach the stairs, the hair rises on my arms and a chill rushes through me.

         Childhood fantasies...

         
         Thankfully, I’m unable to look up those stairs because a solid, padlocked door blocks the view.

         “Boy, he must have some valuable things up there,” I say. She smiles and opens the screen door to the old back porch, which I see is now a deck. No upstairs porch to block the blue of the crystal clear sky. It’s lovely. Potted plants with bright flowers crowd one side and we sit at the table shaded from the sun by a big umbrella.

         I tell her stories of what the place used to look like and she seems interested. The large mahogany dining room table and sideboard, the asymmetrical, side less sectionals against the cabbage rose wallpaper in the living room.

         “I love all those old things,” she says. “Someday I’d like to get a peak upstairs to see what kind of treasures he’s got up there.”

         My heart freezes. Don’t. Live here in the light with your baby and your Ohio husband. Live downstairs so you can be happy.

         She offers me iced tea and I decline, saying I’ve got a long drive ahead of me. I thank her profusely for her accommodating manner. We say our goodbyes and I walk toward my car, then take a few more pictures of the house.        An older man takes notice and he steps off his stoop and approaches me.

         “Interesting house, isn’t it?” he says. I’m eager to talk, forcing my fears to disappeared into the past where they belong.

         “It certainly is. I used to live there as a child,” I say as if this fact would thrill him in some way. He raises his eyebrows, interested.

         “Upstairs?”


         “No, number thirteen, downstairs. My Grandparents lived upstairs.”


         “When?”


         “Oh, in the Sixties.”

         He seems like he’s calculating something inside his head. “When I moved here in ’73 the house was vacant,” he says.


         “Really.”


         “There was some renovation going on in the back. They were trying to rebuild the porch and one day the whole thing collapsed. Killed one of the workers. Guess the inside joists were so rotten, couldn’t support anything.” I held my breath. Rotten…black…hungry.

         “And the mold situation probably didn’t help,” he added.

 “What do you mean?”

         “There was some sort of slow leak in the upstairs bathroom."

          The stain appeared the day my grandmother died, bleeding her baby out for someone, something else to have possession of.

         
          "I guess the apartment was lousy with it. They almost condemned it, but because the downstairs wasn't touched, the owners thought they'd gut number fifteen and get a rental in there. I heard they got the place for a song, so it was worth it to them."
          

         “Well, that’s good,” I lie.


         “My money’s on that place still being contaminated.”


         “Why?” I ask, not wanting to know the answer.


         “There’ve been so many renters there that have broken their lease or sublet. It was like a revolving door.” He laughs and looks at me with searching eyes. “Then the guy with the antiques bought it and the upstairs’ been vacant ever since. Couple downstairs seems nice. They’re from Ohio.”


         “Keep an eye out for them, would you?” I say and he nods as if he knows. I get in the car and pull out my camera to look at the pictures. I press review and the first picture comes into view. I scroll through them. I feel like there’s a vice around my chest. My heart is pumping ice. I look up at the house. Sun drenched, happy. The pictures tell another story.

         The windows in the top attic floor are pitch black. They look like eyes staring out at me. A huge black stain on the outside of the house runs from the upstairs bathroom window down to the baby’s room. And staring out from the windows in the apartment above the expectant couple, Fifteen Lake Hill, are the hollow eyes of little children, babies, really. Wanting to get out.

        

                                                                 THE END

Dan The Fabulous - A Ghost Story

     HAPPY HALLOWEEN DEAR READERS!  

Herein lies a story of wanting. Unable to escape the sadness of a recent tragedy, a woman struggles to keep her sanity when ghosts from the past refuse to leave.

              "DAN THE FABULOUS"

                               

                     by Maureen Power

            I asked him to never leave me. He has kept his promise. He sits on a rocking horse that catches the light streaming in diagonally through lace curtains. The wooden pony is in my bedroom now, gently rocking as if being nudged by an invisible hand. That and his little sterling silver spoon are the only things we keep that belonged to him. The rest of his material life lies in the attic of the Summer House under a soft blanket woven of dust and sad memories.

            Philip keeps urging me to go back and make a fresh start but I find comfort in my roomy mahogany bed, the cool percale sheets rustling as I move, and his cherubic smile greeting me each morning from his perch on ‘Dan the Fabulous’, the absurdly expensive antique rocking horse we purchased on a whim, two weeks before his fourth birthday.

            We laughed so, when he declared his steed’s name, little hands on hips that carried toy six shooters, a straw cowboy hat angled in his white blond curls.

            I long to touch those soft curls in which the light falls through like liquid through a sieve, to trace the tiny pink birthmark on his left cheek that is in the shape of a heart, but I must be satisfied with the experience of sight alone. It is enough.

           

            These days of remembrance pass gently from late winter into Spring, and soon I offer one foot to be followed by another, small steps, as his were, to the green carpet of our back garden, Philip beside me. I lift my face to the sun, then turn my head back to the house and see him through the window on Dan. His little hand goes up, and he waves.

            Philip shows me a robin’s nest in the mulberry tree, the purple crocuses emerging from winter’s mulch, an early forsythia. I know he does this to remind me of the continuing stream of life but melancholy dulls my senses. I manage a smile for him, he has been so very patient, then ask to be returned to my room and he indulges me.

    

            As the days pass, my expeditions outside become more frequent and I linger in the sun, its rays becoming stronger with the coming summer season. My body is gaining back its strength from the vicious intruder that weakened its defenses last year and Phillip insists that a trip to the lake to open the Summerhouse is just what I need.  I am hesitant but finally agree as long as we can bring Dan and his rider, unseen to all but me. Philip thinks he understands my attachment and we place Dan in the back of the Packard Convertible and start the twenty mile drive to Lotus Lake.

            At first, I am bothered by the wind tugging at my bonnet, then teasing tendrils out, but when I look back to make sure that Dan is secure, I see my darling Freddie’s curls bouncing in the breeze, his face alight with laughter. I feel more confident that I can survive the return to the place where we last parted.

            We pull into the driveway, the white pebbles crunching under the tires and I look up to the window of his bedroom. Phillip helps me out, scoops me up in his arms and dashes up the stairs with a surprising whoop of joy at the return to his beloved Summer House. He has traveled with time, not against it as I have.

            I insist that he bring Dan in before we do anything else, and he complies, carrying the horse up to the second floor. We then remove the linens covering all the furniture and open the French doors to the back porch, which overlooks the lake. The water’s surface sparkles with a million diamonds of sunlight scattered over its calm surface.

            I feel my heart open a bit, and as if Phillip senses this slight shift in my emotions, he tilts my face upward to his, and kisses me softly, then again with more urgency. He lays me on the divan. It has been so long since we have shared such a moment of physical intimacy and I thrill to it.

            We wake and the sun is lower in the sky, turning the waves to liquid tangerine. I care not to linger and start for the kitchen to see if Agnes has set everything in order for our arrival.  Phillip’s hand playfully tugs at my skirt and it warms me to see him so happy.

            We manage a small supper of cold ham on brown bread slathered with Agnes’ famous mustard, and wash it down with sweet cider. Agnes has also been so kind as to leave a honey cake, dripping with apricot preserves in the icebox. A welcome back present, I would guess. She knows it is my very favorite and she has always been the kindest and most attentive of housekeepers.

            Sleepy from the meal and the excitement of our return, we make our way up the stairs to our bedroom at the back of the house. As we pass by his room, I stand aghast and see Dan stock still, a faded image of my boy astride him, sadness in the arms that reach out to me. I swoon and Phillip catches me as I cry out. Dan must be in our room, not his.

            The once happy nursery only holds bitter memories for me, memories of late last summer in the year of 1918.  It was then that we thought the world was safe from the Spanish Flu, but a second, more virulent strain emerged and it visited our household with death on its heels. Every third family suffered some loss, this time taking the young and healthy.

            Why I survived and my darling Freddie did not…I leave that to God, but I no longer look to that God for solace. I draw strength from Philip and his gentle assurances that this summer will be something better.

            After Phillip has retrieved the rocking horse from its gloomy place and carries it to our bedroom, I lock the nursery door. I will not enter that room again.

            We spend the next month in a gauzy happiness, each morning greeted by my Freddie on his horse and Agnes helping me dress after Phillip has risen. There are picnics by the shore and walks through the apple orchards, which have become quite a lucrative business for Phillip. The weather has been a perfect mix of sun and rain, producing a fine crop on the thirty acres we own. The cider and apple wine will be pressed and casked in the fall in a flurry of activity that will be so different from the previous year when we were preoccupied with a loss so heavy that it paralyzed us.

   

           One morning I wake and feel a flutter inside me, and looking towards the window, my Freddie is beaming with joy as he mimics a gallop on old Dan. I realize that my time of the month has come and gone and, could it be? I am not ready for this. I cannot stand the thought that another child may be asserting itself into Freddie’s place. Agnes hears me wail and runs in to ask what is the matter. She assures me that this is a wondrous thing, a gift from God, knowing how long it took us to conceive our only child. It is a gift from a God I no longer trust.

            I convince myself that this will only result in tragedy – a miscarriage or some deformity. God took my only child from me in what must have been punishment for something known only to him. Was I too selfish? Did I neglect my husband for the love of my child? Did I love Freddie too much?

            Surely I will be punished again. 

    

            We stay on at the Summer House until late August and then return to the Manor house for the rest of my confinement. I spend the following months trying to avoid my vague feelings of apprehension for the sake of Philip who is over the moon with joy. I am suspicious of every twinge, and when reminded of how well I have been and how radiant I look, I cringe inside, thinking this is the calm before the storm.

            As my time to be delivered nears and the white cover of winter melts away to reveal the tender blades of grass beneath, I notice Freddie’s image beginning to fade, and panic sets in. Has this mysterious thing inside of me pushed him away? Does he feel unwanted as if I am replacing him?  I can’t bear it and tears flow out of me unstoppable. My water breaking mimics this gush of tears, and I call to Agnes. She in turn rushes to Phillip, as he is leaving for Boston for the day.

            The doctor arrives and assures me that everything is progressing smoothly, thinking that the tears I cry are from physical pain. My pain is much deeper.

            I labor for five hours, a short time to bring a life into this world, and am presented with a baby boy, healthy and vocal. I turn my head away and refuse him. The doctor calls in Phillip to reassure me, and the doctor hands the child to him. Phillip sings softly and rocks his newborn son in his arms, then pauses, a puzzled look on his smiling face. He brings the boy to my bedside and pleads with me to take my hands from my face. He has something remarkable to show me. He gently pulls my arm to my side and places the infant there.

            Then a familiar coo startles me, a scent that has lingered in my memory for so long. I turn to the child’s face and see the smallest strawberry colored heart upon his cheek. His blue eyes meet mine and I can see eternity in them.

            He has kept his promise and will ride Dan the Fabulous once more.

DAY OF THE DEAD? The story of a truly haunted house

This is the story of my stay in a truly strange house. I have not been very specific, to preserve the identity of the house because it still exists and is inhabited. 

I was originally going to post this on Halloween, Sawhain, Trick or Treat night, what have you, but because of a power outage due to the gigantic snow storm we had, have had to post from a "Safe House" with blessed heat and light on a different shore of Massachusetts than where the house of which I write was located. So on All Souls Day, the story will be told.

I also mysteriously lost the file for a few days and have had to compose this story twice because of it's disappearance. 

DOESN'T IT WANT ANYONE TO KNOW?

Part One

Well....It was quite a while ago when my husband and I, with our 7 year old son and lab mutt were moving back to Massachusetts from our 3 year sojourn in Vermont. We had been living in an old farmhouse we rented in the middle of nowhere and my husband taught at the local HS. I was teaching part time and also singing at clubs and bars in Montpelier to pick up extra cash. Our lives were VERY rural, bake bread, chop wood, carry water. We had goats and a huge garden.

To make the transition from country to city less traumatic, we were looking for someplace with wide open spaces and figured the ocean was as wide open as we'd get in eastern Mass. Found a pretty cheap house for rent in an old fishing port on the South Shore and it was just for the school year Sept-June. We figured by the time the lease ended, we'd know where my husband would be working and could move to wherever that was going to be.

We were psyched about the house. It was a really old 18th century Garrison right across the street from a famous foot bridge that crossed a cove to another village. Fog would frequently roll in across the cove and huge wind gusts that tunneled in from the Atlantic, would occasionally pummel us. Loving all things spooky, I thought the atmosphere of the place would be great fun. The first night we moved in, something terrible happened.

Part Two                                  We were exhausted from the move, three hours of driving from Vermont in a big rental truck and me in our VW Rabbit with the my seven year old son and the dog, then moving all the stuff in with the help of a couple of friends. We ate take-out and said goodbye and thank you to them, then made the beds and tucked my son in to his little single bed in a tiny room on the first floor.                      Well it was actually the second floor. The house was very unusual. It was built in to a hill, a sort of cliff, actually - lots of granite cliffs in that area (good conductors of electro magnetism?) - and the front of the house was right on the road with no embankment, not much of a buffer. So you entered the front of the house through a door that opened to the cellar. A set of steps immediately inside led you to the second floor which was the downstairs living area. Living room, dining room, kitchen and one tiny bedroom.                      Upstairs was a large bedroom, a smaller one with a rainbow painted on the floor and a tiny one that Jesse settled on. For some reason, he hated the "Rainbow Room" as we called it.                     The house was further divided vertically by a newer addition in which was the kitchen and our large upstairs bedroom. The rest of the rooms were in the original part. Sorry if this is confusing, but it matters in the telling.                     We finally settled down at 11:30 PM and put the TV on to watch Saturday Night Live. Our car was parked in a tiny space to the left of the house adjacent to the street. We were so happy, reclining on the couch,remarking on how great it was going to be living by the sea and how cool the quirkiness of the house was, squeaking floorboards and all.                 At precisely 12 o'clock, when the Rolling Stones started their first         song, we were jolted upright by an ear splitting bang from downstairs in the cellar. My husband got up, opened the door that led to the stairs down to the street and I followed. Our VW was smashed through the front door and into the bottom of the stairs.          It was a hit and run, never found the car that hit ours, and the logistics of it were crazy, almost nonsensical. It was as if the car had been pulled backwards down the road and then smashed at a right angle into the front of the house.         We had NO money and were at a loss as to how to get my husband to work in his new job. And how was I to get around? The house was fairly isolated, even though on a main Rd. and we knew no one and no one came forward to help. (My husband had to borrow his mother's car for three months and I took the bus to my job at a bookstore, many times with my son in tow.) We were rattled to the core.  Part 3        Our mood of happy anticipation turned to one of incredible stress in a very short time. We tried to settle in, then sadly, our dog Sadie got hit by a car. She’s buried there in the backyard, still.        My husband was away in unpaid training sessions for weeks at a time. Really worried about money, I finally got the job at the bookstore downtown. Thank Goodness it was part time because my son and I started to become plagued with mysterious illnesses that couldn’t be diagnosed and he missed school quite a bit. He was also crawling into bed with us at about 3 o’clock most mornings, saying he couldn’t sleep.        Strange bruises would pop up on me for no reason and my son and I began to have nightmares.        There was a room behind the living room that was constantly cold, no matter how hot the metal radiator got. And there was always a feeling of being off balance due to the floors being not quite level. Visitors noted these things and eventually diminished in frequency. I couldn’t blame them.                 We took many long walks across an historic foot bridge to a tiny village on the other side of a cove that was directly across the street from the house. Those walks provided me with some respite to what was becoming a toxic atmosphere in the house and would soon diminish in frequency because of the oncoming winter.                  I dreaded the thought of being trapped in the house. Part Four                                                                                                                                  In December, things started to escalate. The tension between the three members of our family was palpable. One night when my son begged to come into bed with us, I got very mad and demanded to know why he was acting like such a baby. The poor little guy looked up at me with terrified eyes and said, “Who is that man in my closet.” Saying I got shivers running down my spine was an understatement. It was more like a tornado had ripped through my skull.                                                                       My son had always been psychically sensitive. He and I would pay games on the bus, guessing numbers and colors that I would be thinking of. Ninety percent of the time, he got them right. So I trusted what he was saying.                                          He told me a man wearing a long black coat and a captain’s hat walked out of the closet and across his room, disappearing as he got to the window – a second story window that frequently had a cat sitting in it.                             We had no cat.                             Years later, he described both the cat and the man as looking like a hologram.                                          He slept in the bedroom with us from that time forward with no protests from us.                                          Shortly after that, a mirror in the bathroom fell off the wall while I was looking into it and then we had the living room incident.                         Part 5       One evening, I had settled down to watch TV in the tiny living room – all the rooms were tiny, actually. I sat on the couch and turned on the TV, which was to the right of a window that was directly opposite me. There was a little glare, so I got up and rolled down a bamboo shade to cover the window, which was all of maybe ten feet away from me. As soon as I sat down, I was startled by a huge crash of something coming through the window. It was a piece of plywood that somehow flew off the next door neighbor’s front porch, and made THREE 90 degree turns out of the porch, right turn to my house, right turn down a narrow alleyway separating our houses, right turn into my window with such force that it shattered the wooden framed window and landed in my living room.      If I hadn’t put that shade down, I would have been seriously injured. There was glass everywhere. My husband rushed in, shocked and said, “What the hell are we going to tell the landlord, this time?” Part Six      The winter howled in and by this time we were biding our time and just hoping we could get through to the spring without any other incidents. I spent as much time as I could away from the place, staying at friend’s houses or visiting my mother, an hour away.       The number 22 kept popping up all over the place. I would frequently wake up, look at the clock and it would be 2:22. Watching a TV show, the number of a house would be 22. The exit off of the highway to our place was number 22. I would make a purchase and it would be $22.22 etc. None of this made any sense to me except to jangle my already frayed nerves.      The last month we were there, the pipes froze and we had no water for a week until the landlords (who lived in another state) could get it fixed. Then one night the police knocked on our door asking to see my husband. He had NEVER been in trouble and we were puzzled by the flashing lights outside our window. They actually arrested him and PUT HIM IN JAIL because of an outstanding five dollar parking ticket from another town!!! Must have been a slow night.        They later found out the ticket HAD BEEN PAID and practically blackmailed him into signing a release absolving them of any wrong doing, before they would release him.        It was November 22nd. Eleven twenty two       The last thing that happened came on a very cold early spring morning. I woke up freezing and hearing the wind blowing through the house. It seemed to be coming from the rainbow room. I couldn’t figure it out. Then a piece of paper flew out of an open closet door and I knew that’s where it was coming from. It was in a child’s handwriting, a sort of alphabet primer, seemingly very old. I found a previously hidden (to me) trap door to the roof and realized the skylight had blown off. Even though I was afraid of heights, I climbed onto the roof and replaced it, rather than call the landlords one more time.       We moved out in May and noticed the neighbors across the street staring at us. They had never spoken to us before in the whole nine months we were there.         I approached them and the woman shook her head and said, “They’ll never sell that place,” as we watched a real estate agent put a ‘For Sale’ sign in the front. I asked why. “That place has been for sale so many times I can’t keep track. No one stays there for more than a year. It was built by an old Swedish sea Captain in the 1700’s. I guess it’s still unsettled. Noticed your car got smashed first night you moved in. That’s happened before.”       I felt like saying, thanks for the heads up 9 months too late but just wanted to get the hell out of there. Finally away from that place, I had no desire to ever go back again.       Until fifteen years later. Part 7      It was Halloween, and I got a strange feeling of being drawn to the house on the South Shore. What the heck. Maybe if I went there, some demons would be exorcised and I would see how normal the house was. The car accident probably messed with our minds so much that anxiety took over and we made up or over-exaggerated all the rest. My mind was trying to tell me that, but my heart knew the truth. Anyway, I got progressively more exited as the miles accumulated and finally arrived at the house. A “For Sale” sign was out front. I laughed.      Boy would I like to get inside that place again and see if it felt weird. Just then, I saw the front door open and a woman came out and looked around. She seemed pretty normal looking, a pleasant smile on her face. That was my cue. I went to the door and knocked.      When she opened it, I explained that I was in the neighborhood and used to live there fifteen years ago. With NO hesitation, she invited me in. How trusting and guiless. I could have been a serial killer or worse, an Avon Lady. She showed me around noting improvements she had made over the two years she had been there. YES, the house had been rented for that last thirteen years, I guessed.        We went to the rainbow room and it was exactly as it had been, though the rainbow on the floor was a little faded and worn. She said she didn’t use that room.       After chatting for a while, I got up the courage to ask her if anything strange had happened in the house. She looked surprised. What did I mean? Why, she loved the house! Well when she was in it. She and her partner were flight attendants and really didn’t spend too much time there. She hurried me out of the rainbow room and said, "Let me show you our latest improvement!"      I followed her through the kitchen to a new laundry room that opened out to a tiny cement parking spot in which their car was parked. Bushes were behind the car.      "Wow we never had a laundry room. Had to use the laundromat in town and take the bus as well. This is great!" I said.      "Well, actually, we put it in because of the accident," she said. I raised my eyebrows looking for an explanation but knowing what she was a bout to say.      "One night, around midnight, we heard a huge crash and found that the car had somehow plowed into the house and smashed everything to pieces. It was strange. Th concrete is absolutely flat and we always put the emergency brake on."      "The force of it must have been tremendous. Even if someone tried to push it from a parked position, you couldn't get the velocity to do so much damage. You'd need the Hulk for that," I said. I laughed. She did, too. I thanked her and left.      I sat in my car, which was parked across the street near the entrance to the foot bridge and looked at the house one last time.      "You devil, you old house," I thought. My mind was clear and my heart was very, very happy that I would never have to go there again.      I went home and watched the kids in town march in the Halloween parade down Main Street. It was called The Horribles Parade. I hoped none of the little witches and ghosts, pirates and princesses ever had to experience anything scarier than the thrill of making believe.