Haunting House, Part II

Note: This is the second half of a story begun here, last week.

This situation led to the sale of curiosities such as a wooden bed frame that makes men impotent, a mirror that transforms into narcissistic harridans any woman whom gazes into it and a grandfather clock that strikes “13” between midnight and 1 a.m. but only where it will be heard by someone no one believes.

People who frequented antique shops and examined, say, this glass door knob or that brass light fixture or perhaps a bit of cast iron decoration never realized they may well have been better off fondling a radioactive isotope.

A pair of civil servants, both of whom were well meaning and well respected, installed the kitchen counter into a community’s senior center. The health department closed the facility and both the facility’s manager and the volunteer cook serve life sentences in the state prison. Like most everyone else in prison, they deny the crimes for which they were convicted, even if the evidence that they deliberately spread necrotizing fasciitis among a lonesome group of septuagenarians remains legally unimpeachable.

The senior’s center itself remains closed and the county commission is deliberating demolishing the place and selling off what they can.

* * *

Ah gazebo was put together from tha frame an’ some of tha wall paneling of tha place. This gazebo was put up in the city park. Ah park attendant told me once, when he came into my shop, that no one in tha parks department can figure out why little kids, birds an’ even spiders seem to avoid tha white painted thing.

That same park attendant bought ah pair of wooden doors which had been in it. The house I mean, not the gazebo. When we got tha place, all those doorsways seemed like too many mouths for just one head. I read in tha newspaper later, after tha murder, that his wife said them doors just refused to stay shut. Tha man’s widow said she had shut tha doors, heard tha locks catch, turned tha bolt an’ then found one or the other of them doors standing ah little open. The widow said this happened ah couple of times. She said these doors just looked safe an’ secure, right up ‘til you turned your back on them. She also said she thought that it must have drawn that fellah, tha escaped prisoner who killed her husband. Her husband was the guy who worked in the park and bought the doors in the first place. Tha prisoner himself didn’t have ah history of violent crime. At least not ‘till he opened that door.

* * *

Carpenters employed the wood harvested from the exterior of the First House to assemble bookshelves and desks. This furniture subtly reedits children’s books placed in them.

Other items crafted from the house include such necessary luxuries as a toy box for children. One proud and hardworking man, who served in the role of single father for his two children until such time as his wife returned from military service on another continent, purchased one such handsome toy box from a flea market.

Later, the man’s son told the father in somber tones that the lid of the toy chest slammed down on the sister’s fingers. The father did not believe the son then – and he did not believe the son a week later, when the son, again in somber tones, told the father that the daughter disappeared inside the chest, vanishing into parts unknown when the lid closed with a definite thud.

The father believed his little girl was somewhere else and this is indeed true, though he is not capable of accurately guessing her location. In any event, the daughter was not at hand to comfort either of the parents when the father called the mother to inform her of the family situation.

* * *

If tha doors had seemed like too many mouths, then tha windows were like too many eyes for ah single, sensible head. We sold those too. Some windows we sold straight outta our shop, an’ some to other shops.

I sold an ornate pair to ah mother who installed them into her children’s bedroom in this old house she an’ her husband owned. Later, they took her away as tha TV cameras rolled. Tha men from the ambulance couldn’t get ah good hold on her cause blood is slick. In tha background of tha camera shot, you could just see one of her kids walking back an’ forth across tha grassy yard, right under them windows. He said he was looking for his momma’s thumb.

Tha TV news followed her story for ah while, an’ she told folks she kept seeing things through those windows. She said she saw skinless men an’ people in piles like they didn’t have bones an’ what looked like burnt-up corpses of angels walking around. An’ they had to walk, you see, ‘cause their wings were too burnt to fly. She saw all this, ah bit at ah time. At first she could just see this stuff through tha windows out of tha corners of her eyes. But they crept up on her. So, one night, after she finished reading her kids bedtime stories, she just, calm as you please, started smashing tha windows with her bare hands.

Tha boy never found his momma’s thumb. Last I heard, she’s still in tha state mental hospital.

* * *

So a dead house haunts the lives of the living. Sometimes these people sit on chairs from, or perhaps made of, the First House, a house whose hate never died, and these people discuss how things go wrong in their lives in a futile effort to find the cause of their troubles and to correct the issue even as the chairs take delight in giving them cancer.

* * *

Just last week this old lady came into my shop. We got to talking. An’ she told me ah story about how once, years before, she an’ her husband were having this old house moved from tha city to some plot in tha country. But before that was done, someone stole tha house, tha trailer an’ tha truck.

She said she likes it that way. I just smiled an’ nodded.

I sold her an antique tool box. It was tha last bit I had of that place, that bad place. She told me she was gonna give it to her son. As a birthday present. Said he was working on some building project or another.

It, that house, was right about one thing. They’ve all got it coming, all those people. An’ anyhow, you know what they say about buying somethin’. Buyer beware.

* * *

So, there remains a lot of this or that bit of the First House in circulation.

That is alright. After all, I always come back. Sooner or later.