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