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 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?”  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.  |
