The House on the Corner

I

There was not a child in Woodstown who passed by the Hackett House without first crossing to the other side of the street, and for good reason"the Hackett House was notorious for killing children. 

It was not only the children who were unsettled by the house, adults too were afraid of it. They may have used the sidewalk in front of the house, pretending as if they were not unnerved, but they hastened their steps when they reached the patch of sidewalk that ran along the lot where the house stood. Most would simply start their trek on the other side of the street so they would not have to overtly cross to the other side when approaching the Hackett House. 

Merely looking at the house caused chills to pass down spines and hair to raise on necks. It was not just that it was an eyesore, or that the yard was unkept, or that it was old and empty and dark. It was that the house actually exuded an aura of menace. It was as if the house was constantly under a cloud, even on the sunniest of days, and that the night was just a little darker on the corner where it stood. But more than that, the house seemed to hurl threats at those who dared to pass by"threats that crowded onto the sidewalk and pushed their way into the street.

II

James Dean once owned a Porsche 550 Spyder, nicknamed “Little B*****d.” Immediately after buying Little B*****d, he began to show it off to his Hollywood friends. Almost to the person, everyone who saw the car expressed a sense of foreboding and dread when they looked at it. Ertha Kitt is reported to have begged Dean not to drive the car"ever"and encouraged him to sell it as quickly as possible. Ursula Andress refused to accept Dean’s invitation to “go for a spin.” Alec Guinness, famously prophesied that Dean would die in the car, telling him that the car looked sinister, and adding something to the effect that Dean would be dead within a week of getting into the car. 

As it turned out, it was less than a week. Dean was driving Little B*****d to Salinas to compete in a race and was hit head on by a driver who crossed into his lane. James Dean died on September 30, 1955, somewhere between being placed in an ambulance and arriving at the hospital. He was only twenty-four years old.

Ironically, Little B*****d was not his first choice of car. The car that he originally wanted was delayed and James Dean was impatient, eager to start racing again after the completion of the film Giant. He bought Little B*****d as a second choice. A second irony is that James Dean had not originally intended to drive Little B*****d to Salinas. He changed his mind at the last moment because he decided that he needed to familiarize himself with the car before he raced it. But this is not the end of the story. 

The legend that was James Dean died on that September day, but the legend that is Little B*****d was just beginning. Many people believe that Little B*****d was cursed right down to its individual parts. This is not an empty claim. There is plenty of evidence to support it. After all, Dean himself is “Exhibit A.” He found himself in possession of a vehicle that made everyone who came in contact with it feel uneasy. Dean ignored the uneasiness of his friends, regardless of whatever uneasiness he himself may have felt. His friends sensed something about Little B*****d. They tried to warn him, but he refused to be warned and it led to his death. If the story just ended there, it would be strange. But it does not end there. It continues with a man named George Barris.

Barris customized Little B*****d for Dean. After Dean died, he bought the wrecked car to sell for parts. As Little B*****d was being loaded onto a trailer for transport, it slipped and landed on a mechanic’s leg, breaking it. Barris then sold the engine to a physician named Troy McHenry. He sold the drive-train to another physician named William Eschrid. Both physicians enjoyed racing. McHenry lost control of his car during a race, smashed into a tree, and died instantly. Eschrid’s vehicle flipped over and rolled while maneuvering through a curve, causing him serious injury. Barris also sold two of Little B*****d’s tires which were undamaged in the crash that killed Dean. The two tires were placed on a new car and they simultaneously blew out, wounding the driver when his car spun off of the road. A little later, a young thief attempted to steal the steering wheel of Little B*****d. In the process, he severely sliced his arm on a jagged piece of metal. A short time after that, a man decided to steal the car’s bloody seat only to leave with injury.

 

It was about this time that Barris determined that there was something strange about the car and decided to lock it away. The California Highway Patrol (CHP), however, convinced Barris to loan out Little B*****d to be used in a traveling safety exhibition. The garage that the CHP used to house Little B*****d unexpededly burned to the ground, destroying everything in it except Little B*****d, which was virtually unharmed by the fire. The CHP then displayed the car at a high school in Sacramento. The car fell from its stand and broke a student’s hip. The driver of a truck transporting Little B*****d to an exhibit in Salinas lost control of his vehicle. The driver was thrown from the cab, only to have Little B*****d crush him as it flew off the back of the transport. The car was also reported to have “jumped” off of two other trucks during transport, causing damage to other vehicles, but no injuries. These and other happenings surrounding Little B*****d convinced Barris to lock up the car and store it where it would not come in contact with anyone ever again. Little B*****d was crated up and placed on a truck for transport to Los Angeles. Little B*****d mysteriously vanished en route. Nobody knows what happened to the car and it has yet to emerge to this very day.

 

Now, I only mention James Dean and Little B*****d to make a point: there are indeed strange things and unlikely events that co-exist within our neatly defined, scientific, rational world. So if the story that I am about to tell seems implausible, then I ask you to refer back to Little B*****d, which is equally implausible. The orderly, scientific world in which we live is founded upon empirical evidence; and yet, we often ignore empirical evidence that refutes orderliness and rationality. Nevertheless, empiricism suggests, nay it declares, that in spite of all our attempts to demythologize events and objects, in spite of all of our scientific and technological breakthroughs, in spite of all of our victories in the systematic extermination of ghosts and goblins, we are, if we are truly honest with ourselves and the evidence, living in a world that houses such things as inanimate objects, which possess neither will, nor breath, nor spirit, but which also appear to be, for lack of a better term, “ill"tempered.”

 

    And all this raises a simple question: If a simple thing as a brand new car can threaten, maim, and kill so many people within a five year period before mysteriously disappearing, what sort of damage can something like a house cause? What can a house which has stood for two-and-a-half centuries do to the people who dwell within? What sort of distemper can arise in such a structure over such a long duration of years? Surely any house that was possessed by the same ill-temper that possessed Little B*****d would, after two-and-a-half centuries be nothing less than evil, twisted, and homicidal.

III

The Hackett House was older than America itself. It was built in 1743"built before the Seven Years’ War, which would ultimately lead to colonial unrest and the American Revolution. The house endured governance under the Articles of Confederation, and the quiet summer revolt of 1787, in which a few delegates met in Philadelphia and drafted a Constitution for a new nation, which came into being in 1789.

 

It comes as no surprise that personal records from the period are spotty and hard to come by. Most of what is commonly “known” about the house is nothing more than a collection of rumors and legends about the Hackett family, the builders, and original inhabitants of the house. These rumors and legends have circulated throughout the centuries. 

It is said that Mother Hackett practiced witchcraft. It has also been said" albeit by later generations"that she sacrificed some of her own children to the devil in exchange for the vast wealth that the family acquired. Stories about Old Man Hackett, her husband, range from his ruthless participation and devotion to his wife’s involvement in the black arts, to him being a completely befuddled fool, who had no idea that he married a witch, making him a tragic figure who was doomed to a sorrowful existence of mourning the death of beloved children, forever unaware that his sorrow was caused by his own wife sacrificing his children.

 

Others will tell you that the stories about the Hacketts are untrue, instead blaming a certain Zachary Miller. Mr. Miller lived in the house from 1786 until his death in 1803. As the story goes, Miller never married, had no family, and hated people, especially children. Shortly before his death some children were playing in his yard. He chased them off his property, cursing the children and any child who dared to play in his yard ever again. This curse was his last public discourse. No one saw him alive again and it is said that his curse is still in effect as long as both the house and yard exist. Miller is said to still walk the grounds of his home, inside and out, threatening those who dare to approach his home too closely and harming those who would venture inside. This is why, they assert, people feel so “threatened” while passing the house"Miller is actually there threatening them and chasing them away. Even if he cannot be actually seen and heard, his presence can be felt in that sense of foreboding anxiety one feels.

 

Then there are others who tell a different tale altogether. They say that Old Man Hackett, or some other inhabitant, through some act of carelessness, killed a Lenape child. He then callously buried her in the plot of land on which the house was later built. It is unclear whether the angry spirit of the Indian girl terrorizes the children of the house, or if the native people put a curse on the house and the land.

Maybe the house reflects its inhabitants"psychologically and emotionally unstable people have lived in the house, projecting that instability onto the house, so that the house over decades and centuries, has absorbed the personalities of those who have dwelled within. But more than that, the house has become a concentrated form of that instability, attracting other unstable people, who in turn add to the instability within the house, so that the house has become the collective, full-strength-intensity of anger, fear, rage, and all the other emotional and psychological symptoms of the various illnesses of those who have fed it through the years. In that case, the house is just very “sick.” Maybe that is all “haunted” is"haunted people create haunted houses, who in tern attract haunted people.

 

Then again, maybe it has nothing to do with any one person or incident, but the house itself could simply be a product of the time in which the house was built. It was built during a period of near constant warfare and political unrest. Psychologist talk about how events, especially tragic ones, during the first few years of childhood can determine the behavior patterns for the rest of a person’s life. If it can happen with people, why not with houses? As crazy as it may sound, perhaps the house was infected with some kind of psychic stain from the zeitgeist of pre-Revolutionary America. It is nothing more than the irascible product of an irascible time. This would remove all traces of will, and intent, and malevolence from the equation; but then it fails to take into account why the house seems to hate children and ignores adults. 

 

Everyone in town had their own favorite legend, or reason, or origin story about the house. We used to tell them over and over again when we camped out in each other’s backyards as young children. Ghost stories around the campfire always got around to the Hackett House. As autumn arrived, summer campfires gave way to Halloween tales, reminding us of the ghostly house on Main street"a house I had to pass every day to get to school. In winter, when everything was cold and dead, the house looked colder and even more dead than the landscape around it. In spring, when everything returned to life, the House and yard seemed to die even more in contrast to its green and flowery surroundings. As far as we were all concerned, regardless of how the house became haunted, the house was haunted, and we all of us who lived in Woodstown were haunted by it.

IV

The Hackett House killed children"at least thirty-four children had died in the Hackett House from the time of its construction in 1743 until 1962. This much is documented. Records and names and information and causes of death are available for each of these children. The actual number may actually be higher due to the lack of available records the further back in time one looks. After 1962, the house remained vacant after the family that lived in it at the time suddenly moved out after the unexpected death of their five year old daughter. It is often told that they just left in the middle of the night, leaving behind their furniture, clothes, and everything else. They just piled in a car and were never seen again. 

Granted, thirty-four deaths may not seem that staggering of a figure over the course of two hundred nineteen years, but simple division reveals that, on average, on child died about every six years. That is nearly two deaths a decade, and it is four deaths every twenty-five years, coming to about sixteen children dying each century. Yet, even this math is misleading because there were long periods of time when children were not living in the house. So, if one were to count up the actual years that children inhabited the house and divide by the number of documented deaths, the number would move closer to a child dying every three of four years. That figure is most likely higher when the likelihood of undocumented deaths are taken into account as well. 

During the many long periods in which children did not live in the house, the adults who lived there seemed to go about their lives unscathed"at least physically. It is commonly said that the people who lived there for long periods of time without children were odd. If they did not appear to be eccentric before they moved in, they adopted a strange demeanor after years of dwelling within that house. Most who lived there for decades became rancorous and reclusive"even married couples. It seemed that all who lived there would after a few years begin to cut themselves off from the rest of the world. They were personable enough when they moved in, but after a few years, they stopped having people over; a few years after that, they would stop going out; shortly after that, they would hardly be seen. They simply locked themselves inside that giant, unwelcoming house, resenting visitors and solicitors who came to their door"especially children selling Girl Scout Cookies or other things for fundraisers.

The Hackett House remained vacant between 1962 and 1978. It just stood there on the corner of W. Grant and Main. It did not take teens long to figure out that they could break into the house and use it as a place to drink. Every once in a while one of these teens would get hurt fooling around in the abandoned house. In 1968, the teens got permission to have a Halloween Party in the house. They decorated the house, gave out candy to Trick-or-Treaters, and had a party. During the party, a sixteen year old girl fell down the steps, breaking arm and hurting her neck. She said she felt like she was pushed, but she had been drinking so most people dismissed her claim. In addition to her, another teen nearly choked to death on a peanut. The other teens assumed he was fooling around until he turned blue. Someone gave him the Heimlich and saved him. A third teen, standing in a circle of other teens, all who swear to the same story, suffered severe lacerations on his hand and face when his beer bottle exploded in his hand. He, and the teens around him, say that while they were talking, the bottle began to emit a high-pitch squeak. He raised the bottle up closer to his ear to listen when it shattered, flying apart, cutting his face and his hand. There was some theory about the bottle being defective and the pressure from the beer causing it to explode, but most teens, and many adults, blamed the incidents on the Hackett House curse. 

After that party, very few people entered into the house, or even dared to step on its grounds. We would not even touch the fence that separated the yard from the sidewalk. The house seemed to fall into a state of disrepair and the yard was overgrown. The backyard had so much growth that you could not even look into it. It was like a thick jungle. There were many times when I walked past the yard that I expected, or would not have been surprised if, if something came rushing after me from out of that thick dark growth. 

The Hackett House was now owned by a little old lady, who may have even owned it back when the teens were using it as a party place. She owned it when I moved to Woodstown in 1975. The little old lady puttered around the house during the daylight hours, but left the house before sunset, retiring to another house where she spent her nights. We were all convinced that she was a witch. Who else but a witch would spend her time in such a place, at least during the day. Even the witch lady seemed to be afraid of being in the house at night"that made the house seem even more terrifying than it already was.

 

In 1978, the old witch lady sold the house the Quintly family, who gutted the place, rebuilt it, and tamed the yard. The transformation was amazing. It was hard to remember how scary the house once appeared. It was now beautiful and refurbished, with a nice big plaque with the words “THE HACKETT HOUSE"1743.” Later the year, the Quintlys sold the house to the Robbins family, who migrated to Woodstown from another state. They knew nothing of the history of their new home and moved in without a care or worry. The family was made up of Mr. and Mrs. Robbins, Josh, who was my age, Jake, who was about fifteen, and Janet, who was seventeen.

V

I met Joshua Robbins in August of 1978. Summer was rapidly drawing to an end, and it was a little less than two weeks before school began. I was ten years old, about to begin fifth grade. The end of summer always presented me with mixed emotions"one the one hand, I was not eager to start school, but on the other hand, summer had become long and boring. My parents were working class, so summers were not vacations and thrills. We never even made it to the shore. I awoke early, made myself breakfast, rode my bike to the community pool where I had swimming lessons, take a nap that afternoon while watching a rerun of F Troop, maybe play some baseball with other kids in the neighborhood, watch the Phillies, dinner, tv and bed. Every once in a while, my mother took me into the restaurant my grandmother owned. My grandmother would pay a couple of dollars to bus tables for a few hours in the morning. It was 1978 and I was ten, so $2.50 seemed like a lot of money"candy bars were still fifteen cents at the time, so I made enough to cover my habit.

Candy was how I came to meet Josh that August afternoon. I was bored one afternoon, so I took the money I had, along with some change I had scrounged up from the sofa cushions and various other places and decided to walk downtown to the Five and Ten Store to see if there were some new toys worth buying. I knew there would not be because I had done the same thing the day before. Nevertheless, the whole second floor was devoted to toys and model and games, so I liked to look around. It was a hot afternoon and I decided to not go all the way into town, and instead just stop in the Cumberland Farms and get some candy. 

I lived on Lee Street, and in those days, there were woods behind the houses on the street. The woods were knocked down a few years later for a housing development"but in those days, the woods were still there. There was also a path that ran through woods that came out in a field behind the Quaker Church on Main Street. This path served as a shortcut to get downtown. The parking lot of the Quaker church had a couple of basketball hoops. It was also about a quarter of a mile down the road from the Hackett House.

I noticed his family moving into the Hackett House earlier that summer. It was a small town"it still is, but it was much smaller then, or so it seemed. Not much escaped the notice of anyone living in Woodstown. Woodstown is a square mile in size, and was home to two bars, two restaurants, a pizzeria, some stores, a movie theater, and a swimming pool, so there were plenty of places to gossip. So when a family had bought the Hackett House, it was the topic of the week. When the family actually moved in, it did not go unnoticed. Me and some friends rode our bikes down to the Ice and Coal where there was a soda machine, which caused us to pass by the house where we saw the family moving in. I saw Josh that day, but I kept my distance. He was moving into a haunted house and I was satisfied with the amount of friends I had on Lee Street and around the Manor, so I did not feel I had to venture that far down the road for friendship.. 

I ignored Josh as I walked past him on my way downtown. I could tell he was lonely, but I did not see why that was my problem. I fixed my eyes straight ahead, quickly passing by, offering him no invitation to engage me in any way. I can still remember how quiet it was that day. The only sounds that encroached upon the silence were the squeaky breaks of the occasional car that slowed as it turned round the huge bend at that spot on North Main Street, and then the sound of its engine accelerating slightly once the car cleared the bend, mixed with the sound of my feet, steadily pounding against the concrete sidewalk, and the diminishing sound of a basketball bouncing on the pavement of the parking lot behind me.

On my way back from the store, I was weighted down with candy. I saw that Josh was still shooting baskets and I debated whether to take the long way home (which would mean passing by the Harrison House), or continue home the way I came, taking the path through the woods. I decided that I could ignore him as easily a second time, so I opted for the path through the woods.

“Do you want to take a shot?” he said as I was passing by.

I was startled by the question, but I quickly recovered. My immediate answer was a simple “No,” without breaking the rhythm of my stride. 

“Please,” he implored. He said it in a manner that nearly tripped me. At the tender age of ten I understood the tone of desperation and loneliness. I had been a stranger to Woodstown three years before. I suddenly remembered what it was like to move to a new place, leaving everyone I ever knew behind, and being forced to make friends with new people who were not so eager for new friends.

“Okay,” I replied, “but only for a few minutes. I have to get home.” which was a lie.

  I ended up staying longer than a few minutes. We shared the candy I had bought. The chocolate was melting in the late August heat, ending up on our faces, our hands, our clothes, and on the basketball. I’m sure that before we were finished chocolate had found its way onto the backboard and rim. By the time that I walked home that afternoon, Josh and I had become friends, but given the history of the Hackett House, I wondered if it was going to be a short friendship.

VI

It was about two weeks into the school year before I actually stepped foot inside the Hackett House. I surprised by how welcoming it was on the inside and how comfortable it felt. Before that time, I had never even ventured onto the yard, or up to the door. Josh had invited me inside a few times, but I always decline the invitation. But before the halfway mark in September, Josh and his home all started to take on a aura of normalcy.

The last couple weeks of the summer were much like the rest of the summer had been"the only exception was that Josh was now a part of it. He would ride his bike with me to the pool in the morning, and that is where we would spend most of the day until sometime in the afternoon. We rode our bikes around the Manor, and he joined in the baseball games. He quickly fell into the routine. By Labor Day, he had become a permanent fixture at my side. We even had the same teacher in fifth grade. I had to pass by his house on the way to school, so he would wait out on the sidewalk for group that I walked to school with to come by and then he would walk to school with us.

So there I was, sitting in the kitchen of the Hackett House, along with Ray and Jesse, who walked home with us. I was a little nervous about going inside, but once inside, I soon discovered that it was no different than any of the other homes that any of my other friends lived in. It was just a kitchen in a house. So the four of us sat around the kitchen table being silly and eating snacks and drinking soda. For the first time since I had moved to Woodstown, I was tempted to believe that all those stories about the house were just that"stories.

My parents had told me on many occasions that the legend of the Hackett House were just tall tales, but they were not from Woodstown; they did not grow up with the house and the stories, so it was easier for them to be skeptical. My friends’ parents who had lived in Woodstown their whole lives occasionally tried to tell us that the stories about the Hackett House were not true, but they were never very convincing, often betraying the fact that deep down, they believed the stories too.

This feeling that the house was just a normal house remained with me for about a month. During the weeks that followed that first afternoon in the kitchen, we found ourselves spending more time at Josh’s house. He had a huge backyard, the house itself was huge and fun to explore, there was even a bomb shelter in the basement. It was a very cool house to be a kid in"or so we thought.

It was nearing the end of October. It was a sunny autumn Saturday afternoon. There was a slight breeze in the air that day, and it was neither warm, nor cold. The breeze carried that warning of the approaching winter; yet, even though the wind whispered of the coming cold, it also declared in the same breath “But not today!” We had been riding our bikes around town and we found a huge sheet of wood in the yard of a house that was being renovated. We took it back to Josh’s backyard and leaned it on some cinder blocks we had found to make a ramp. Then we rode our bikes over it. After a couple of “jumps” we added a few more blocks to make it higher. I was terrified, but I did not want anyone else to know about, so I volunteered to go first. I rode as fast as I could, hit the ramp and found myself a few feet off the ground before my bike tires slammed hard against the ground. “It kills your crotch!” I warned the others. Then one by one, each boy took his turn.

When Josh’s turn came, he started as far back as he could, peddled hard, and was moving faster than any of the rest of us had during our jump. When he hit the ramp, the wood split, his bike fell through, crashing against the cinder blocks, flipping over. Josh was thrown a few feet, landing hard on his head. He tumbled a couple of times. He was motionless. We rushed to him. He looked like he was dead.

I ran to the house and banged on the kitchen door. “Josh fell and he’s hurt!” I yelled to his mother. She peered into the backyard and saw him lying there with the other boys hovering over him. She yelled at Jake to call an ambulance and she ran into the yard. She fell to her knees, cradling Josh in her arms, slapping his face lightly and calling his name. This was the scene for a few minutes. She asked us how this happened. We told her about the ramp and how it split while he was jumping. We could hear the ambulance was on its way.

Josh suddenly opened his eyes. He looked confused. He sat up a bit and looked around. “Where did the children go?”

“Your friends are right here,” his mother assured him.

“No, not them. The children. Where did they go?”

“What children?”

“I fell off my bike and there were a bunch of children. They said they wanted me to come play with them. They told me to stay with them and play.”

“You were dreaming, honey. You were unconscious.”

“No. I was here. They were here. They said I would play with them soon.”

The men from the ambulance had arrived and started examining Josh. His mother was reassured that he seemed to be okay, but he should go to the hospital and get checked out. Mrs. Robbins, Josh, and Jake piled into their car and drove off to the Salem Hospital. The rest of us stood in the yard for a bit, looking at each other.

The mention of children made us all feel uneasy. The stories about the house suddenly flooded my mind. One by one, we silently picked up our bikes and rode to our homes. As it turned out, that was the last afternoon that the house would ever seem like a normal house.

 

VII

The following week, I was sitting in Josh’s kitchen with his family assembled. Mrs. Robbins was making dinner. Jake was scribbling some notes down as part of his homework. Janet had a part-time job, so she was not there. Mr. Robbins was at the table, asking us what we learned in school that day. 

“Jake, get your homework off the table, honey,” Mrs. Robbins said.  Dinner will be ready in a few minutes. Would you like to stay for dinner?” she asked me.

“Can I use your phone and ask?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

I called home. My mother answered. I asked if I could eat with Josh’s family. Actually, to be honest, I asked her what she was making for dinner, and then compared her answer against what Mrs. Robbins was making, and realizing that Mrs. Robbins was making the better dinner, I then asked if I could eat at Josh’s. I was given permission and all of us began preparing the table for dinner.

Sometime during dinner, Jake blurted out, “You know, last night I woke up and heard whispering in my room. Like someone was talking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.”

“I hear that all the time!” Josh declared. 

“It’s the heating pipes,” Mr. Robbins asserted. 

“No, this was a voice,” Jake insisted.

“It is a voice,” Josh added, “I hear it almost every night. Sometimes it comes from my closet. Sometimes it comes from outside the door. Sometimes it sounds like it’s right next to my bed.”

“It’s the pipes. This is an old house. The heat makes strange noises. It hisses. That’s all you’re hearing.”

“Why would it move? Why would it come from my closet?”

“It’s your imagination. It’s just the pipes. It’s not moving. You’re just imagining that it’s moving.”

“I guess it could be the pipes,” Jake thought out loud, “but it sounded like a voice.”

“It was. It was just the pipes. You’ve been listening to those stupid stories about the house, you woke up disoriented, heard the pipes, and your mind played a trick on you, causing you to believe it was a voice.”

“What stories?” Josh asked innocently.

“You haven’t heard?” Jake said with a large smile, “We live in an evil house.”

“That’s enough,” Mr. Robbins said firmly.

“What?” Josh asked surprised.

“Yeah,” Jake continued, “it doesn’t like children and eats them.”

“I said that’s enough!”

“Children? The children I saw? They said I was going to play with them!” Josh’s voice was rising steadily as he spoke.

“See what you did, Jake? Are you happy with yourself? You scared your brother!” Mrs. Robbins began speaking soothing words to Josh.

“But I saw children. Were they dead? Did they die hear?”

“You were dreaming,” Mr. Robbins said. “You were unconscious! You had a concussion! There were no children. No children spoke to you. It was just a dream. Okay?”

Josh exploded in a panic. Mr. Robbins began scolding Jake. Jake began apologizing over and over to both Josh and to his father. Mrs. Robbins moved from her chair and threw her arms around Josh and tried to comfort him. I just sat there"conspicuous, helpless, unsure if I should stay or leave. I was halfway through my meal, but it seemed clear that dinner was over.

“I won’t let anything happen to you, Josh. I promise,” Mr. Robbins stated calmly in a way that I believed him, but Josh was not so easily convinced. 

It was about that time that Mrs. Robbins noticed me and suggested that I should probably go home. She apologized for the abrupt ending to the dinner and hoped I would understand. I did understand. I understood that Josh was coming apart with fear. I understood that Jake was feeling remorseful for saying what he said. I understood that Mr. Robbins was both angry at his one son, and embarrassed by his other son. I understood that Mrs. Robbins was just trying to make everything okay. And I understood that as much as I wanted to be there for Josh, this was something his family had to address"and frankly, after hearing about the whispering, and knowing the stories, I wanted to get out of that house as quickly as I could. So when Mrs. Robbins suggested that it was time for me to go home, I was up and heading for the door before she finished the sentence.

The next day as we were walking to school, Josh said to me quietly, “I heard the whispering again last night. I finally could understand what it said.”

A chill ran through me. “What did it say?”

Josh stopped walking. He looked at me long and hard. The expression on his face was both concerned and lacking comprehension. He took a deep breath and said, “It said to me, 'I’m not the pipes.'”

VIII

Another week had passed. When you are ten, a week is a lifetime. It is amazing how easy it is to slip back into something that seems normal, no matter how crazy or chaotic it is. A week passes and it is ancient history. 

Josh and I walked home from school. When we arrived at his house, he begged me to go inside with him. Nobody was home and he did not want to be in the house alone. Jake was working for a dairy farmer, and since the time changed, it was becoming dark before his father came home from work. His mother was out as well. She worked, volunteered, participated in various “clubs” and was keeping busy. Janet was either working at her job or with friends. Josh was home a lot with no one else in the house. It was a dark, dreary day, which seemed even darker at Josh’s house. 

“It’s not too bad during the day,” Josh said as casually as if he were describing the weather, “but it’s getting worse after dark.” 

We walked through the kitchen door. That is the door that the family used. Visitors and guests came to the front door, but those of us who were either in the family, or knew the family well, came to the kitchen door around the backside of the house. As soon as we walked inside, I heard what sounded like a conversation. I could clearly hear voices. It sounded like a man and a woman talking loudly from one of the back rooms of the house.

The layout was something like this: from the kitchen door, the next room was the dining room. The dining room opened onto a hallway that ran along the stairs. The hallway led to a bathroom at the end of the hall. Before the bathroom, on each side of the hallway, there were two rooms. Each room was a living room"one was a living room for Mr. and Mrs. Robbins, the other was one for the kids. Each room had a television. The sound of the voices seemed to come from one of those back rooms.

“Someone must have left the tv on,” I said to Josh.

“That’s not the tv,” he replied calmly.

“Sure it is,” I said, walking through the dining room. The sound of the conversation grew louder as I moved closer to the room. I could hear other voices joining in. “It’s got to be the tv.”

“I’m telling you it’s not. It happens all the time. The first couple of times I thought it was the tv too, but it never is.”

“It has to be,” I asserted. I walked down the hallway. The conversations grew louder. I was right outside the kid’s tv room and could hear the conversation clearly. It sounded as if someone had not only left the tv on, but they turned it all the way up before they left. I turned into the room. Silence. I looked toward the television. It was off. I stood for a second processing what I had heard and at what I was now seeing. I could not figure out how the television had suddenly turned itself off. Then it dawned on me"it was never on. The voices I heard so clearly did not come from the television, no one left it on. It was off the whole time. Something else was talking"something that stopped as soon as I interrupted the conversation by my presence. 

I ran back to the kitchen, my heart pounding, fear spilling into my joints. Running was the only response I had. When I got to the kitchen, Josh was sitting at the table. He looked depressed, but also somehow accepting of his depression, “I told you,” he said plainly.

“That was weird,” I finally said. Thoughts were flashing through my mind"nothing concrete, just various feelings and images. 

“It happens all the time. Nobody believes me, but it happens all the time.”

“I believe you,” I said. I had to believe him. I just experienced it myself. 

“But my parents don’t believe me. They think I’m imagining things. I had to go to a doctor and tell him about it. They all think I’m crazy, or over-reacting, or whatever. But I’m not crazy. They’re all crazy. They just ignore everything that happens. My dad sees things too. He hears things. I can see it on his face. But he ignores it. The other night we were all in the room together watching tv and a loud voice spoke in the room. Everyone heard it. We all looked at each other. Then dad just said it was the house settling and went back to watching tv.”

“What did the others do?”

“They just went back to watching tv too.”

“How can they just ignore it?”

“It’s like adults refuse to see things. It’s like they see things, but tell themselves that they don’t see what they see, until they don’t see it any more. Even Jake is learning how to do it. He used to believe me, but now he just ignores it too.” Josh started to cry. “I’m all alone,” he said between tears, sniffing strongly. “Even when they’re all here, I’m all alone. It’s like it’s easier for them all to just accept I’m crazy instead of actually accepting what’s going on in this house.”

I did not know what to do or say. I knew Josh was not crazy. It was not because I was a kid and believed stupid things, but because I experienced one of the things he experienced. Josh and I were not yet old enough to deny what experienced. Jake was about to turn seventeen and get his driver’s license; Janet was basically an adult; and his parents were adults. I do not know if the house just ignored adults, or if adults just ignored the house. But there I was with Josh, who was desperate for help, but I could not give it to him. 

“I don’t want to live in this house any more!”

Again, I had neither words, nor solutions. I was just a child. Standing in the kitchen with Josh crying at the table"I felt the encroaching oppressive feeling of being helpless in that house. 

“I stay in the kitchen most of the time now when nobody’s here. I want to stay close to the door so I can run out in a hurry. I hardly sleep any more. A couple nights ago, I actually fell asleep, and I was awakened by the feeling that someone punched me in the face. I thought it was like when you feel like you’re falling and you wake up. I let myself fall back asleep again, and it happened again.” He looked at me desperate. “It’s like whatever is in this house, just won’t leave me alone now.”

Something started knocking on the wall. It started so subtly and quietly that it actually knocked for a bit before I even noticed. But it got louder. It knocked, stopped, and knocked again. “My dad says that’s the heat.” The conversation started again in the back room. The ceiling above us started creaking the way it does when someone is walking on the second floor. It was at the moment I knew I did not want to be in the house another second. 

Josh must have saw me eying the door. “That’s how I feel,” he said.

“Let’s go.”

“Where can I go?”

“Come to my house for dinner. I know my mom won’t mind.”

“What about after dinner. I have to come back.”

“Spend the night.”

“It’s a school night. Our parents won’t let me spend the night.” 

“Well come to dinner.” Josh looked at me. He realized how scared I was. Josh was used to being afraid at this point. He agreed to come to my house for dinner, mostly because he knew how badly I wanted to leave, just as he knew I would not leave him there alone. 

Josh wrote a note for his parents and then we walked down to my house. We had dinner and forgot about the house. I explained to my mom that no one was at Josh’s so she agreed to let him stay until his parents called. Josh’s mother called as we were finishing up dinner. 

I walked out into my front yard with Josh as he was heading back home. He took a couple of steps, then he stopped and turned to me and said, “Ya know, it’s not the actual voices, or seeing people, or all the strange noises or things that are so bad. It’s the fear that you will hear something, or see something. Being afraid of it happening is what’s so bad about it. it. It’s like you start to become afraid of being afraid. When it actually does happen, it’s almost like a relief.” He turned around and started walking home.

I tried to understand what he was saying, but I did not grasp it. I went back inside and slowly started to forget the events I had experienced earlier. In the weeks to come, it seemed as if the house heard what Josh said to me in my yard and took it as a challenge.

IX

Weeks passed. The seasons changed. Josh seemed to change with them. He became gaunt and pale and seemed distracted much of the time. He was no longer as talkative as he used to be. He even stopped talking to me about things that were happening in the house. This, of course, was a gradual rather than a sudden change. It happened so slowly that none of us really noticed it. Yet, when we looked at photos over the previous year, we could see the noticeable change. Josh was once full of color, bright, friendly, and active; now he was a wraith, a shadowy ghost of who he used to be. Even his black hair now had a streak of white running through it.

I spent the night over at Josh’s house many times over those months, and he spent many nights at mine. When summer arrived, we were always at each other’s house. His parents were taking trips lasting for a few days at a time. Janet and Jake stayed in the house, and Josh would stay at my house. After a day or two at my house, it seemed as if his pallor vanished and he began to take on some of his former color. His old personality would slowly come back. But then he would go back to live in his own house with his family, and he would be worse than ever.

The last few months of fifth grade, Josh started showing up to school covered in bruises. It was so bad that Ms. Hearse, our teacher, took me aside one day and asked me if I ever saw his father or mother beating him or hurting him in any way. I told her that his parents were nice and would not hurt Josh. I could see her evaluating my words behind her eyes. I told her that it was the house hurting Josh, to which her response was to look at me for a long time, not sure if I was serious, joking, or just an idiot. Ms. Hearse, Josh’s parents, and some people from child services met together. After the meeting, no one ever mentioned Josh’s bruises again.

That summer we had to walk everywhere. For some reason, Josh’s mother would not let him ride his bike any more. Actually, I can only remember him riding his bike a couple times after his accident with the ramp. Mrs. Robbins seemed afraid that Josh would fall and hurt himself, which was a valid fear because when we were kids, we fell off our bikes a lot. We did not wear helmets in those days. Mrs. Robbins was becoming withdrawn; Mr. Robbins was constantly working and rarely home; Jake and Janet were rarely home; Josh was traumatized. The house seemed to be living up to its reputation.

One night Josh showed up at my house banging on the door. He was in a state bordering on hysterics. He had found himself alone in the house, which was becoming common. He asked if he could stay at my house until someone came home.

“What’s wrong, dear?” my mother asked him.

“Something was calling my name!”

“What do you mean something was calling your name?”

“I was watching tv, waiting for someone to come home. And I heard someone whispering my name. It kept saying ‘Josh, Josh’ over and over,” Josh said, imitating the sound of the whisper.

“Honey, you were imagining things. It was a car going by your house.”

“No! No! I heard it. I crept down the hall and heard it loud and clear. It was coming from the top of the steps. It was saying my name. I got as close to the beginning of the stairs as I could without being seen, where the wall stops and the stairs are visible, and listened. ‘Josh!’” he whispered again in a loud hiss, “That’s what it said, ‘Josh! Josh!’ Then I heard the top step creak like it was coming down the steps. So I ran out of the house and came here.”

My mother looked at me with a concerned expression. She did not believe him, but she believed that he thought he heard what he said. She looked at my father and shrugged her shoulders and shook her head slightly. He returned the gesture.

I was scared. I believed Josh. I was starting to believe that the house was now actively terrorizing him. More than that, the house was physically attacking him. His appearance proved that to me. I was afraid that Josh was going to die.

“Of course you can stay here until someone comes home,” my mother finally said. “Did you leave a note telling your parents where you are?”

“No. I just ran out of the house. I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Okay,” my mom said calmly, “you’ll just have to call home until someone picks up.” It is probably hard to believe, but we did not have voicemail in those days. We did not even have answering machines yet. If you were not home, you missed a call. There were no cell phones, so no one could call you unless you were home. We had to let the phone ring ten times to give people time to get to the phone to answer it. Josh stayed in my house watching tv with us"I remember we were watching a rerun of Gomer Pyle USMC on Channel 48. My family and I laughed loudly while watching it, but Josh never laughed once. He barely cracked a smile. Every fifteen minutes or so he would call home. Eventually someone answered the phone and he went home.

X

I started spending less time in Josh’s house in the weeks that followed. Every time I was there I heard voices, or saw shadows. On day I was sitting at the kitchen table. From my seat I could see through the dining room and the doorway that led into the hallway. Sitting there, I saw what looked like a boy run by the door. It ran from left to right, from the front of the house where the stairs were, to the back toward the bathroom and the two television rooms.

On another day, Josh and I were in his bedroom upstairs, and out of nowhere, a textbooks flew off his desk and landed on the floor. It did not fall off of his desk. I had looked at it earlier. It was set in the middle of the desk. There is no way it could have fallen off of the desk. Something picked it up and threw it.

Josh’s bedroom was right at the top of the stairs. His bed was positioned so that it ran lengthwise against the wall that was opposite the door. His bed used to be places so that the head of his bed was against the wall next to the door, but he said the whispering in the stairway made him feel like someone was climbing the stairs and he did not feel safe sleeping close to the door. There was another single bed against the wall on the right side of the room. I used to sleep in that bed when I stayed over. Josh would lay in his bed and stare at the door all night until he fell asleep.

One day I was sitting on the bed I used to sleep in and I noticed that the crucifix over his bed was gone. For some reason, maybe because I was a Presbyterian, the large crucifix that hung on the wall over his bed always stood out. We did not have any such thing in my house. We had the random cross hanging on a wall, but no crucified Jesus hanging on our wall.

“Where’s your crucifix?” I asked, sitting in the bed with my back against the wall.

“I gave up on that.”

“What do you mean you gave up on that?”

“It won’t stay on the wall. It keeps falling.”

“Hang it on a different wall,” I suggested.

“I’ve hung it on every wall. I’ve hung it on the door. I’ve hung it on the closet door. No matter where I put it, it falls from the nail.” For some reason, him telling me that made me feel very uneasy. “That’s not all, watch this!” He got up and went to his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a rosary. He went to the wall opposite the wall my back was pressed against. He hung the rosary on a nail sticking out from the wall. It rocked back and forth for a second and then stopped.

“What’s so special about that?” I asked.

“Wait.”

I sat there staring at the rosary hanging on the wall for a few minutes. Nothing seemed to be happening, so I eventually asked, “What’s it supposed to be doing?”

“Wait.”

I got bored waiting and started talking about something else. After about five minutes, Josh interrupted me in mid sentence, saying, “It happened!”

“What happened?”

“Look at the rosary!”

The crucifix on the rosary had turned so that Jesus was now facing the wall. Josh got up and turned the crucifix around so that Jesus was facing toward me again. He sat back down and we started talking again. After a few minutes he declared, “It happened again!”

I looked at the rosary. Jesus was once more facing the wall. Josh got up and took the rosary from that nail and found one on another wall. He intentionally hung it so that Jesus was facing out into the room and the flat back of the cross was against the wall. After a few minutes I glanced over at the rosary and Jesus was facing the wall again. He moved it and hung it ten times at least, and each time the rosary turned so that Jesus faced the wall.

“My dad says this is a drafty house, so a draft is moving it. But I never feel a draft, and I never see it turn, but it always turns. No matter where I hang it, it turns. It not a draft.”

He turned it around one last time. After a few minutes, we heard a loud snap. The rosary somehow broke as if it was cut or torn, it fell to the floor. The beads bounced around the floor.

“That happens a lot too,” Josh said calmly.

I was scared. I was afraid of anything that did not seem to like Jesus to the point that it tried to hide his image, or throw him from the wall. In my eleven year old mind, that confirmed to me that whatever was in that house, it was clearly evil.”

XI

That summer, Josh and his family seemed to be away as much as they were in town. They never talked about their trips, and when I asked in the innocent way a child asks, they would simply say they were camping. I remember once they were packing before one of their trips and I noticed that they did not pack any tents or sleeping bags. They said that they camp with friends who have all the supplies. It made sense to me and I forgot about it. Wherever they went, it seemed to be good for Josh. The longer he was away from the Hackett House, the better he seemed to be when he returned.

When he was in town, he spent a lot of time at my house. He slept over a lot. My parents, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Robbins seemed eager for him to spend as much time with me as possible. At first, I thought that maybe they had come to believe that the house was attacking him and they wanted to give him all the opportunity he could to be away from it. But then my mother told me that Josh could not stay at my house one weekend, but that I should go stay over at his. It had been a long time since I was comfortable in Josh’s house. I told my mother that I was afraid to be in the house, but she insisted. I reluctantly agreed, but I nearly changed my mind when I arrived at his house" Josh seemed pale and weak. I knew the house was as active as ever.

Josh was happy to have me there. As it turned out, that night the house was quiet. There were the occasional knocking here and there, and the sound of someone walking up and down the hallway outside the bedroom, and what sounded like someone walking up and down the steps, occasionally having a conversation, but nothing drastic, dramatic, or devastating. Josh fell asleep early, which was unusual, and I stayed up keeping vigil in the dark room.

A few days later, Josh and his family went camping again and I did not see him for two weeks. I was glad to see him at the end of his trip because I missed having him coming to the pool with me. He still was not allowed to ride his bike, so when he was home, we had to walk everywhere instead of take our bikes. Sometimes, when our parents were not around, and Jake was somewhere else, he would hop on my bike and ride around the block. I would usually stand in my yard and wait for him to circumnavigate the block. When he turned around that last corner, his face would be fixed in a huge smile, and the wind would flow past his ears, and he looked..., well, he looked free.

Apart from the long periods of Josh being off camping with his family, and the random experience in the house when he was home, that summer seemed almost completely normal. Most of it was spent away from the Hackett House for both me and Josh, and Josh seemed to look better and feel better for much of the time he was home. The stress and terror of the school year seemed to have passed and was rapidly becoming a distant memory.

The only thing that kept that summer from feeling completely normal was that Josh would occasionally talk about the children. About a two weeks before school was to begin, we were lying in my bed late at night, unable to sleep. I had a queen size bed, it was so big that it seemed that Josh and I could share it when he slept over and never come anywhere close to each other. It was usually hard to sleep when one of us spent the night at each other’s house. So we often stayed up, talking through the night.

I do not remember how we got on the topic, but Josh said that the children he saw almost a year before visit him almost every night when he was home. He spoke of the children at various times before. He would tell me how he saw one or many of them. He would tell me that they wanted him to play with them. This one night I remember because I was afraid for him when he told me about it.

“They come every night now,” he said calmly. “Sometimes they come in my dreams, but it’s not like a dream. It feels different somehow. I know when I’m dreaming, and when they come, it’s not like a dream.”

“If they come in a dream, how do you know it isn’t just a dream? Sometimes dreams seem real.”

“It’s just different. Besides, they don’t just come in my dreams. They only do that sometimes. Sometimes I’ll see them when I walk through the house. Or I’ll hear them giggling.”

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

“Not any more. They just want to play.”

“What do they want to play?”

“I don’t know. They just always say ‘Come play with us!’ I used to just tell them ‘I can’t play now’ and they would go away. But lately they are different.”

“Different how?”

“Well, they come to me and say ‘Come play with us!” and I say ‘I can’t!’ but instead of going away, they just giggle loud and say ‘soon!’

XII

The remainder of the summer passed without incident. Before we knew it, it was Labor Day, then the first day of school. We were now in sixth grade and once more in the same class. Maybe it was because Josh was away for much of the summer, and when he was home, we spent most of our time at my house, and not as much time in his house, but it seemed as if the house were on summer vacation as well. Now summer was over"it was time for all of us to get back to work, even the house.

The voices, the knocking, the sound of walking, the moving objects, slamming doors, doorbell ringing with nobody there"these all started up again, but now they seemed to be constant. When someone else was there, like Jake, Janet, one or both of Josh’s parents, it would be mild"just enough so Josh and I heard it, or saw it, but small enough, or unobtrusive enough, so that the others could find some way to dismiss it"either explain it as something natural along the now stale lines of “It’s just the house settling,” to simply ignoring it. But when Josh and I were in the house alone, it acted up as if it were making up for the times when it had to be quiet and unassuming.

One afternoon, Josh had to go somewhere with his mother. It was still a few years before video recorders became a common fixture in our homes, so what we would do is we would put a tape recorder next to the television and record a show we did not want to miss. Most cassette tapes were thirty or forty-five minutes on each side, so we could at least get the audio of a show if were around when it was starting. Josh loved The Monkees, so just before it came on, he set the recorder in place, pressed the “Play” and “Record” buttons to record the show, and left with his mother. Nobody was home the entire time Josh and his mother were out. When he came home, he rushed to the tape recorder to listen to the show. The show did not record. The first minutes or so did, but after that, the audio of the show faded out and was replaced by a man’s voice. The voice rambled on and on for the whole side of the tape. He played it for me the next day. We could not make out anything that the man was saying, but it was clearly a man talking into the microphone for thirty minutes.

On another day, when he and I were alone in the house, the phone rang. We were in the kitchen when it rang. Just stood up and went the phone, placed the receiver to the side of his head, saying “Hello?” He then turned white and hung up the phone. The phone immediately rang again. Josh made no move to answer it. 

“Aren’t you going to get it?” I asked.

“No!”

“Why not? It might be important.” We always said that in those days. We did not have answering machines or voicemail, and when we did not want to talk to anyone on the phone, we were plagued by the nagging feeling that it may be important"someone could be in trouble or hurt"and we would not know. 

“It’s them.”

“Who?”

“THEM!”

The phone had rung about six times. I stood up and went to the phone. I picked up the receiver and placed it to my ear. I was about to say “Hello,” but before I said anything, I heard giggling, and the sound of a young child saying “Play with us.” The voice was loud and understandable, but sounded distant. Josh looked at me with a panicked expression.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” he asked.

I ignored his question and just listened. “Play with us!” is all the voice said, accompanied by giggles from other children. 

“Who is this?” I demanded.

“Play with us!”

“Sure,” I said cautiously, “We’ll play with you.”

“We want Josh to play with us.”

“Josh doesn’t want to play right now. I’ll play with you though. Where are you?” I was trying to sound unafraid.

“Josh! We want Josh! Soon! He will play with us soon!” A chorus of giggles and laughter displaced the voice. My body reacted before I knew what I was doing. I had slammed the phone back down and stared at it for a second.

“What did they say?” Josh asked, his voice quivering.

“Nothing.”

“What did they say?” he demanded.

“They want you to play with them. They called you by name.”

“Did they say I’ll play with them soon?” I was silent. I did not want to answer. “DID THEY?” he shouted. “Tell me!”

“Yes,” I finally admitted quietly.

“They’re going to kill me!”

I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, but I could not. In my mind, I was thinking the same thing. I tried to tell him that he would be okay, but it is hard to sound sincere when even you do not believe what you are saying. I continued to vomit falsehoods to him, hoping to calm him down. My words just sounded phoney, and only seemed to add to his anxiety.

I heard the man’s voice and those of the children one other time on the phone. I was talking to Laurie, a girl in our class. I had known her since I moved to Woodstown in second grade. Although we had the same teachers since second grade, I never really noticed her much before. But something happened to her between June and September, and I noticed her now. Josh had become tired of me talking about her, and dared me to call her. 

“I’m not going to call her,” I rebutted.

“Bok, bok, bok, bok,” Josh countered, making chicken noises, complete with his thumbs shoved into his armpits, flapping his arms. 

“I’m not chicken,” I lied.

“Prove it! Call her.”

“I’ve known her since second grade. I’m not afraid to talk to her.”

“Wrong, you weren’t afraid to talk to her. But now you like her. Now you’re bok, bok, bok, bok.”

“I have no reason to call her up. I don’t know what to say.”

“Ask her if she’s going to the movies Friday night.” For those of us who lived in town, the movies were a common way to spend at least one night during the weekend. Laurie lived out in Laurel Hills. She needed to get a ride in to town to get to the theater in Woodstown. I was still unwilling to call, and he countered with, “If you don’t ask her to the movies, I will. Janet will let us in for free.” His sister had been working in the theater and would often let us in, or give us free popcorn, or let us stay for the second showing for free. A couple of times, I fell asleep in the theater, and she woke me up and drove me home.

Josh floated to the phone, “I’m calling,” he said in a sing-song voice. He dialed some numbers. “It’s ringing,” he said with the same tone of voice. “It’s still ringing...”

I snatched the phone from him just as someone answered. I asked for Laurie and she came to the phone. I made some small talk about school today and then asked if she were going to be going to the movies, explaining that if she went with me and Josh, she could get in free with us. The conversation was going well, and I was beginning to forget how nervous I was.

“Play with us!” 

Laurie was in mid-sentence when the child’s voice on the phone interrupted. There was a long silence. “Is somebody else on the line?” she asked. The children giggled in response. “Are you fooling around?” she asked me.

“No,” I assured her, “I’m at Josh’s. I think there is a problem with the line.”

“You’re in THE HOUSE?” That is how most of us have always referred to the Hackett House"simply as “The House.”

“Play with us!” 

“What does that mean?” she asked me.

“I don’t know,” I pretended not to know.

“We want Josh to play with us!” Then it was as if there were many children chanting into the phone, “Play with us! Play with us!” Then the old man’s voice started mumbling something. Then the line went dead. I hung up the phone quickly and then lifted it back to my ear expecting the dial tone, but it was silent. I pressed down and held the button then released it for the dial tone. Nothing. I tried again. “Play with us!” There was no dial tone, just voices. I hung up the phone. 

“What’s wrong?” Josh asked.

“Nothing. Let’s go outside.” I started moving for the screen door to go outside. Josh followed. Before we got to the screen door, the heavy, wooden kitchen door slammed shut. I grabbed the doorknob and pulled. The door would not open. It was as if it were jammed. 

After trying it a couple of times, we instinctively ran through the dining room and turned left once we were in the hallway. We made for the front door. The front door was also jammed. We turned the knob"it was unlocked. It just would not pull open. The curtains by the door started whipping around like a wind was blowing. Suddenly, I felt Josh’s fingers dig into my shoulder. “LOOK!” he shouted and pointed up the stairs. 

At the top of the stairs stood an old man. He looked unpleasant. I felt as if I were going to faint. The man started to slowly walk down the steps toward us. Josh started screaming. I turned back to the door and pulled harder. I put my foot against the wall and pulled as hard as I could. I looked behind me again. The man was halfway down the stairs, mumbling the familiar mumbling voice that we had heard many times. 

“He’s going to kill me! He’s going to kill me!”

The man was nearing the bottom of the steps. I turned and pulled hard and the knob came off from the door. I flew backward, landing on the stairs. Lying on my back, the man was standing above me. He stopped and reached down. I shrieked a shrill, high-pitched scream. I raised my legs and let my body slide down the few stairs, bumping hard against each one. I rolled to my feet, grabbed Josh by the hand and pulled him, dragging him back toward the kitchen.

When we reached the door to the dining room, the group of children were standing in there like the silent chorus in a Greek tragedy. Josh cried, but I just pushed him into the dining room. “Get to the door!” I looked down the hallway toward the front door. The man had descended the stairs, turned and was coming down the hallway. I still had the doorknob in my other hand and in a panic, I threw it at him. It passed through him and rolled somewhere near the front door. 

“Play with us! Play with us! Play with us!” the children in the dining room started chanting"slow and menacingly. 

“Come on!” I said to Josh as I again pulled him through the dining room toward the kitchen door. Somehow, I did not know how, I was going to open the door and we were going to get out of there. Just before we entered into the kitchen, the door flew open and a figure was standing in the doorway. It was Mrs. Robbins, holding two paper bags filled with groceries. She had to balance the bags in a way so that they were in front of her face as she negotiated both the screen and the kitchen doors.

“You boys should leave the door open and let some fresh air get in here,” she advised, ignorant of the events we had just undergone. Josh and I looked back into the dining room"the children were gone. “There’s still a couple bags out in the car.” Josh and I stood there stunned for a moment. “Let me rephrased that,” Mrs. Robbins said in a manner that was both playful and authoritative, “Please go get the groceries out of the car.”

We walked outside toward the car. I felt a freedom I never experienced before. I had never been so glad to be outside. It took a couple of trips from the kitchen to the car to get all the groceries into the house. I did not go back inside. I was afraid the door would close behind me. I stood in the doorway, holding the bag, and Mrs. Robbins took it from me and set it on the counter and immediately began rummaging through it.

“Staying for dinner?” she asked me.

“No, ma’am, I have to go home. Now!” Josh asked if he could eat at my house, but Mrs. Robbins said not tonight. She wanted him there. They were going to eat together as a family. She said it was harder and harder to do that these days.

I told Josh I would see him in the morning. He looked at me, imploring me with his expression to take him with me. But there was nothing I could do. His mother decided he was staying. I would have liked to have taken him with me, but the issue was settled, and I just wanted to get away from that house. 

The phone rang. Josh and I were startled by its ringing. “Can you get that, Honey?” Mrs. Robbins said to Josh. 

He walked over to the phone and slowly picked it up. He listened for a second, looking at me in such a way that he seemed to say to me with his eyes, “It’s them.” He slowly hung up the phone and turned toward his mother, who was looking at him curiously. 

“Who was it, Honey?”

“Wrong number,” he just said sadly, moved to a bag of groceries on the kitchen table, and started finding places for its contents. 

I watched for second as they danced through the kitchen, putting their groceries away. Then suddenly, directly into my left ear, I heard a loud, hissing whisper, “Leave!” It startled me so much that both Josh and Mrs. Robbins seemed to notice my involuntary spasm.

“You okay, dear?”

“Yeah, I gotta go. Bye, Josh. See you in the morning.” I rushed off toward home. The should of the whisper still in my ear. My ear tingled for about an hour, and it felt as if I could still feel the hot breath that accompanied the sound of the voice as it spoke.

XIII

Mr. and Mrs. Robbins went away for a few days in the second weekend in October. They left on a Friday and came back the following Tuesday. Mr. and Mrs. Robbins expected the two siblings to watch Josh during their absence, but a week or so before they left, the four of us, that is me, Josh, Jake, and Janet, convinced them that it would be best for all of us if Josh stayed over at my house while their parents were away so Josh could be looked after by two responsible adults. The four of us stood around the car as they were about to drive off"Mr. Robbins was behind the wheel, waiting for his wife to issue her final instructions to their children. She hugged them one by one, then looked long and hard at both Jake and Janet and said firmly, “No parties!” The two of them promised that they would not have anyone over.

The next night, they threw a party and the house was filled with teenagers. I remember distinctly that the date was the 13th, and even though it was Saturday the 13th and not Friday, I remember thinking that it still was an unlucky date to have a party in a haunted house. My mother gave Josh and I a curfew of eight o’clock. We extended the curfew by saying that we were going to the movies, we figured that would allow us to be out until sometime well after nine. Instead of going to the movies, we went to the party. Jake and Janet said that we could stay for a bit if we did our best to stay out of the way and promised not to drink anything. My mother had the nose of a bloodhound, so if we did have a beer or something else, she would smell it on us. They also knew that the party would not really get started until after we were back at my house anyway. What we witnessed was the party before the party.

One of the teens showed up with his dog, the dog refused to go inside the house. They were standing outside, near the kitchen door, and the dog started growling at the doorway. There was nothing there, but the dog started growling, looking intently at the door. When the teen decided to go inside, the dog refused to follow. The teen tugged at his leash, but the dog pulled the other way, until his collar slipped over his head and flew at the teen. The teen slipped the collar back over the dog’s head and tied the leash up to the fence and went inside. The dog lay down, keeping its gaze fixed on the door, growling or barking sporadically. 

A few minutes later, from upstairs, a girl started screaming. Jake and some others went to the steps as she was running down. Everyone was asking her what was wrong.

“I was in the bathroom and washing my hands. I was looking at my hands as I was washing them. When I was finished, I was going to fix my hair and I saw a man standing behind me.”

“What sort of man?” Jake demanded.

“He was old. He had long, grey hair, and was wearing a dark coat. He was right behind me! I looked right at him in the mirror. I screamed and turned around and he was gone.”

“You’re drunk,” someone insisted. 

“I only had a Sprite,” she insisted. 

“Then you need to get drunk,” someone else suggested.

I recognized the description of the man she said she saw. It sounded like the same man that Josh and I saw coming at us a few weeks before. Jake and the people he was with passed her off on a group of girls sitting in the room next to the steps. Josh and I went into the parents’ television room. There were six or seven teens in there talking and drinking. Jake and Janet came in a few minutes later and started talking with the teens already assembled. The one teen had somehow coaxed his dog inside, and he was in the room with us. The dog ran to a corner of the room where nobody was and started barking wildly. His fur stood up on his back, he bared his teeth, and just barked savagely at something it thought it saw in the corner of the room.

The dog growling at nothing and refusing to enter the house made me uneasy. The girl screaming and claiming she saw a man in the bathroom who fit the description of a man me and Josh had seen scared me, especially since we told no one about it. Nobody could possibly know about the man or his description. But the dog barking wildly at nothing in the corner really terrified me. It was so disconcerting to witness the dog behave like it cornered something and was threatening to attack it, but to also see that there was nothing there.

I was about to say to Josh that I wanted to go home, but before I could, a shortish teen with dark hair walked into the room.

“There he is,” Jake said joyfully, “Did you bring it?”

“Yes, sir!” said the teen, revealing a rectangular box. 

“Ha ha!” Jake laughed. “Now we’ll have a Halloween Party!”

“What is it?” Janet pressed.

“A Ouija Board,” the teen said.

“No way!” Janet said in a way that betrayed that she was afraid. 

“Come on, sis,” Jake said, “it’ll be fun.”

“I don’t like them,” she insisted. “I don’t want one anywhere near me.”

“Janet,” Jake said in a tone that expressed both exasperation and mocking, “it says ‘Parker Brothers’ on it. How bad can it be?” The small crowd of teens in the room began to urge Janet to “lighten up,” promising it would be fun. She finally relented and the board came out of the box and they all took turns sitting around it in a circle on the floor, asking a variety of questions. They asked if the house was haunted. They asked who would get married first. They asked who would be the Homecoming Queen. The whole time they assembled around the board asking questions, they continually accused one another of moving the pointer, while at the same time declaring that they were not moving it.

The Robbinses had lamps that were touch sensitive. They were made of metal and they used a special lightbulb that did not require you to use the switch to turn the lamp on or off. All you had to do was touch the metal on the lamp and your body heat activated it. If the lamp were off, you touch it once and the lamp would turn on; touch it again, and the lamp would get brighter; touch it once more, and the bulb would shine as bright as it could; one last touch would turn the lamp off again. As the teens were sitting around playing with the Ouija Board, the lamps continuously turned on and off without anyone touching them. The temperature in the room would get extremely hot or extremely cold.

Somebody eventually asked the stupid question that someone always asks: “Will anyone in the room die during the next year?”

“It’s moving! It’s moving!” a girl shouted.

“It’s pointing toward ‘NO,” another answered.

“Phew!” someone said. Nobody here is going to die.

After about an hour of playing with the Ouija Board, only two teens were using it"a boy and girl who were dating each other. The pointer was moving around wildly.

“It’s shocking me!” the girl shouted.

“Don’t let go!” the boy ordered. “We have to let go at the same time, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“One, two, three, let go!” The two teens removed their hands and the pointer was sitting in the middle of the board, hopping and making a sound that sounded like a spark. We all just sat there quietly, watching the thing jump up and down on the board, emitting a snapping spark sound.

“Get that thing out of my house!” Jake ordered after a couple of minutes. “I’m serious! Put it back in the box and get it out of here. I don’t want it in my house!” The dark-haired teen who brought it, tossed it back into the box and put it in the trunk of his car which was parked a few houses down on Grant Street.

“We need to get back to my house, or we’ll get in trouble,” I said to Josh. We walked down Grant Street toward my house. It was dark and cool, but not cold. The only sound as we walked were the scuffling of our shoes against the road and the sound of crickets. 

“Did you see it? Josh asked, suddenly breaking the silence. 

The sound of his voice startled me. “See what?”

“The Ouija Board said I’m going to die.”

“No it didn’t! It said that nobody was going to die.”

“No, it didn’t. It didn’t say that at all. Didn’t you notice? The pointer thing never went up to the word ‘NO.’ It turned and pointed to it. Every other time, it went up to the word so that the word was in the clear center part. But that time it just turned and pointed.”

“So? It pointed to “NO.”

“The word “NO” wasn’t the only thing it was pointing to. I was sitting on that corner of the board. When they asked if anyone would die in the next year, it wasn’t pointing to the word “NO”; it was pointing toward me. It was saying that I’m going to die.”

I immediately saw the room in my memory. I saw where each of us were sitting. I saw the pointer turning toward the “NO” written on the board, and suddenly noticed as I examined the scene in my memory that Josh was right. It was pointing right at him. We had not noticed because we were all so afraid that it would name one of us in the room. When it looked like it was saying that no one would die, we were all so relieved that we failed to see that it was pointing at Josh.

That night, we climbed into my queen size bed. I rolled onto my side with my back to Josh. I was unable to fall asleep. I just lay there, quiet and still. I could hear Josh. He was crying almost silently, muting his weeping with the pillow.

XIV

A week later, I spent the night at Josh’s house. Jake and Janet each had gotten in trouble for the party the week before, but Janet was never around because she was either at college or working. Jake was home, but was keeping to his room. Josh and I did not get into any trouble since we were technically not there, and even if we did happen to show up, the other kids should have been responsible enough to send us on our way.

Mr. Robbins, Josh and I were in the back yard for some reason I do not remember, but I do remember that Mr. Robbins was talking about building a bonfire the next weekend. He thought it would be fun to have a big fire on the weekend before Halloween, make Smores, and tell ghost stories. “It’s a shame it’s not this weekend,” he said to us, “It’s the New Moon. If we turn off those floodlights,” he pointed to the lights on the back of the house illuminating the yard, “it would be pitch black out here.”

“It’s not fair that Halloween is on a Wednesday,” Josh spoke at one point. “We should get the day after Halloween off from school so we can Trick-or-Treat and then stay up all night watching movies.” I agreed with him. Halloween was so exciting and the prospect of school the next day seemed to rob Halloween of its dignity.

Later that night, Josh and I climbed into our respective beds and I quickly fell asleep. I was awakened by the sound of something stirring. I lie there motionlessly, listening. I heard it again. It sounded like when someone forcibly flips through the pages of a magazine or a textbook. 

“Josh?” I said quietly into the darkness. Immediately there was a crash above me as the book flew against the wall as if someone had thrown it. It landed on my face. I sat up, holding the book, determined to use it as a weapon against anything that came near me. 

Josh switched on a lamp by his bed and we scanned the room. A baseball that was sitting on a shelf suddenly flew toward Josh, smashing against the wall, falling onto his bed, and then rolled onto the floor, bouncing a few times on the hardwood floor. Other objects began flying around the room. The chair at the desk flew backward a few feet and then fell back onto the floor with a crash. 

“What are you boys doing in there?” I heard Mr. Robbins shout from another room. “Settle down and get to bed!”

By that time, it seemed as if every object in the room was in motion. Objects were either whizzing past us and crashing against the walls, or they were moving around the room like they were caught up in some kind of vortex. I pressed myself into a small ball against the wall, the covers pulled up to just under my eyes, watching it all while trying to hide from it.

“Don’t make me come in there!” I heard Mr. Robbins. The objects continued to float and spin and crash around the room. “You have five seconds to get in bed!”

“We are in bed!” Josh replied.

“Then what’s all that noise I hear?”

“It’s the house!”

“That’s enough! Get in bed and go to sleep!”

The objects paid no attention to the warnings. They were moving faster and crashing harder. Josh was crying. I was terrified. They were orbiting the room fast and faster and faster. Then they all suddenly dropped from the air, landing on whatever was directly beneath them"most were littered upon the floor, some landed in our beds, others fell on the desk. They all fell just as the bedroom door opened. Mr. Robbins glared at us from the doorway. “Look at this mess!” he exclaimed. “Turn off that light and get to sleep. NOW!” Josh and I began telling him how we were asleep and how the objects started flying around the room, but he would have no part of our explanations. He just chastised us for the noise and the mess, telling us that this would be the last time we would spend the night together unless we went to sleep. 

I did not sleep that night. I just lay there keeping watch, jumping at every little noise, trying not to breathe too loudly. The next morning we were fed breakfast and then told to clean up the mess in Josh’s room. After the room was reasonably organized once more, I was sent home. As it turned out, that was indeed the last time I spent the night at Josh’s house.

XV

The following morning, Jesse, Ray, and I were walking to school as we normally did. When we arrived at Josh’s house, he was not there waiting for us. I went to the kitchen door to knock. I peered in the window next to the door before I knocked. Mr. Robbins, Janet, and Jake were sitting at the table while Mrs. Robbins floated around the kitchen. It was odd because Mr. Robbins usually left for work before we walked to school, and was usually still in bed. 

I knocked softly. The door opened. Mrs. Robbins stood tall above me. The rest of the family looked at me with pained expressions, but said nothing. “Is Josh coming to school?”

“Josh won’t be in school for a few days,” Mrs. Robbins said succinctly in a way that seemed to try to express normalcy, but failed. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. I wanted to ask why Josh would not be coming to school, but their expressions choked the question from me.

“Come on, guys,” Jake said after a moment, “I’ll drive you all to school.” We slowly piled into Jake’s car. The day had that unreal dreamlike feel to it. When I think about it, it is like I am looking at it from the outside, and even then, it is not like I am watching it happening, but looking at snapshots of it"perfectly captured surreal images on a slightly foggy October Monday morning.

As we were driving to school, Jake spoke in that sort of insincere small talk that people speak when they are either upset and do not want you to know, or they are trying to comfort you when you are upset, but it is clear that they do not know what to say. He kept a large, fake smile plastered on his face for the entire ride. He dropped us off in front of the Middle School entrance, and seeing no ready parking places on that side of the street, complained about having to park back by the football field. Then he drove off.

The three of us, watched him drive away in silence. We stood and looked at each other for a moment. We knew something was going on, but we did not know what. So we migrated to a group of kids standing near the entrance, and waited for the bell to ring.

When the school day was over, we walked back home. When we passed by Josh’s house, we saw that there were no cars there and that nobody was home. I rode my bike around to the house a few times that afternoon and evening, but nobody was home. The next day as we were walking to school, I could see the glow of light coming from the kitchen. Someone was home and awake. When we walked home in the afternoon, the cars were gone and the house was empty, still and dark. This went on all week. 

I rode my bike around Josh’s house many times that Saturday. There was no movement or life around the house at any part of the day. From the time I woke up and went around the house it was empty. In the evening, the house was unlit. There was no sign that anyone was at the house any part of that day until I was no longer allowed to go outside at night. There was no bonfire that night.

I rode my bike to Josh’s house Sunday afternoon. I stopped, half standing, half sitting on my bike, balancing myself loosely. I examined the house and yard. I glanced up to Josh’s bedroom window. Josh was there, peering down at me. His face and the palm of his right hand were pressed against the glass. His image seemed perfectly framed within the borders of the window. I heard a car turning onto Grant Street from Main. I glanced at it for a second and then looked back at the window. Josh was gone.

The next morning the three of us were walking to school. Josh was still not outside his house waiting for us. I went to the door and knocked. The door opened and the scene was similar to the one the previous week when I stood at the door. Mrs. Robbins stood at the door quietly.

“Is Josh coming to school this week?” I asked.

“Sweetie, Josh died yesterday,” she said almost compassionately. She could read the questions on my face. “He had been sick for a long time.” She stood there looking at me. Her face distorted and tears began leaking from her eyes, her voice cracked and she said, “It’s over now. He’s at peace.”

She promised she would call my mother later that day with more information and details about the funeral. She shut the door. I stood on the back steps unsure of what to do. My head was busy with questions and my thoughts were so loud I could hardly stand it. My first instinct was to run home, but nobody was there and I would just be stuck with myself and my thoughts all day. So I decided to rejoin my group of friends and walk to school. They asked me what was wrong. I said nothing. I said nothing the entire day. I was even sent to the Principal’s Office because I refused to talk that day. I was given detention, but it was later overturned when the news of Josh’s death began circulating later in the day. It had trickled down from the secretary to the teachers to the students.

The whole day I just heard Mrs. Robbins say over and over that Josh was at peace. She was wrong. Josh was not at peace. He could never be at peace as long as the Hackett House was still standing. On Monday October 29th, 1979, as I passed by the house on my walk home, I vowed that I would find a way to let Josh and the other children find peace. Someday, somehow, I would find a way to free them from the house that would never let them find their much deserved rest and peace.

XVI

Halloween was a Wednesday that year. I dressed as a pirate, but I neither enjoyed Trick-or-Treating, nor did I enjoy the candy in the days that followed. Halloween made me feel guilty�"I felt as if I were betraying Josh by finding moments of enjoyment or normalcy. It was the first time I had experienced death firsthand and I did not yet know the rules for such a thing. I also felt as if I had failed Josh by not finding a way to save him from the Hackett House. I felt like a failure and I felt guilty because I lived and Josh did not. I replayed all the experiences in my head over and over, wondering what would have happened if I found some other alternative to the choices we made. 

The funeral was on the following Saturday. There was a viewing the night before and an hour before the funeral. We went to both viewings and the funeral because we were close to the family. Friday night, I became hysterical. I remember having the distinct feeling that everyone was embarrassed on my behalf, but I did not care. Josh was dead and he did not have to be. We let the house kill him.

Mrs. Robbins knelt down and smothered me in her arms and rocked me back and forth as I screamed and wailed. “Shh, shh, shh, shh... Nobody killed Josh. He was a sick little boy. He didn’t want anybody to know.” She told me that he was diagnosed with some rare blood disease when he was three. “That’s why he was pale and weak,” she told me. “Nobody was trying to kill him. The house wasn’t trying to hurt him. It was all a game that you and Josh were playing. We probably should have stopped it, but it seemed unimportant.”

“No,” I insisted, “there were the children and the old man and the Ouija Board and the voices...” I went on and on recounting all the events and experiences we had together in the house. 

“That was just your imagination, dear,” was all she said.

“He wasn’t sick! He would have told me if he was sick! He told me everything!”

“He was very sick. He spent most of his summer in hospitals.”

“You were camping...”

“No, that’s just what we told everyone. Josh didn’t want his friends to know he was sick. So we told a little white lie.” She looked into my face and then squeezed me hard, “He loved you so much, he didn’t want you to be sad knowing he was dying.”

“I don’t believe you,” I pouted, “It was the house.”

“Oh, honey, it’s all true. That’s why we wanted you two to spend so much time together. And then last week, after you went home, he collapsed. We rushed him to the hospital. We were there all week. He never regained consciousness.” She started crying and my heart broke to see it�"even now, it breaks my heart to remember it.

“But I saw him!” I recalled, “I saw him in his bedroom window! Sunday, I saw him.”

“He never came home from the hospital. You couldn’t have seen him. Or if you did, maybe he was just saying goodbye.”

Sometime soon after, I regained my composure, and I settled in to perform my duty as a well-behaved child amongst the grieving, most of whom were adults who did not want to attend to a hysterical child. I silently wondered if it was simply Josh saying goodbye to me, or if it was proof that he was now trapped in the house with all the other children, waiting with them for the next victim. The thought made me nauseous and I vomited in the viewing room. The next day they gave me a tranquilizer before we left for the funeral home, and all went as planned without incident from me.

I never liked the Hackett House before Josh moved into it. It always made me nervous to pass by it. Now, however, I did not feel fear or anxiety, I felt hatred. I hated the house. It killed my best friend. As far as I knew, Josh was still trapped in there�"somewhere.

I never spoke to Mrs. Robbins after the funeral. She began to withdraw into the house. I only remember seeing her outside the house three times between the funeral and when they moved away a couple years later. When I walked to school, or had to go by the house, I would occasionally see her in the kitchen window, looking out. The first couple of times I would wave to her, but she never moved or responded in any way. I could see her eyes following me, but she would never acknowledge me. I got the feeling that she did not like me any more, like she blamed me for being alive while her son was dead. So as time passed, I stopped looking at the kitchen window, or at the house, but I could still feel her eyes upon me, and I quickened the pace of my steps just as I had done when I was afraid of the house.

Josh’s family moved away in the early 80s�"I don’t know where they went or what happened to any of them. One day there was a “For Sale” sign in front of the house, then not much longer after that, they were gone. I do not know if they ever sold the house. I do know that no one has lived in that house since they moved out.

My family moved out of the Manor after I graduated from high school. We moved to the nearby town of Alloway. I lived with my parents in Alloway during my first two years of college, but then I transferred to a place far away. I was happy when we moved out of Woodstown because I had become bored finding routes that would allow me to avoid passing by the house. I would drive out of my way just so I would not have to look at it. When I did pass by it, I always looked up at Josh’s window, almost expecting to see him looking down at me from the second floor. Sometimes I felt like the house was tauting me, daring me to keep the promise I made on October 29, 1979.

I was happy to go away to college. I wanted to get as far away from that house as possible. I found reasons to avoid going back to New Jersey during summer recess and breaks. After college, I traveled even further from home. I went to seminary in Louisville, KY and became a priest. Then I told myself that I was too busy being a priest to get back to New Jersey. Avoiding home had become such a habit, I sometimes forgot why I had been avoiding it. But I could not avoid it any longer�"my father was sick and he was dying, so I had to make the trip home to say goodbye to him and to learn along with my mother and the rest of the family how to live without him. It seems that there is nothing in New Jersey for me but death and grief.

XVII

It has been nearly thirty-five years since Josh died. I hate being old enough to say such a thing as it has been “thirty-five years since” anything. I can say, that for the most part, I have learned how to forget. For good or for bad, it is a sleepy, faint collection of memories and feelings. It sometimes seems so unreal that I find myself debating within my own mind whether the events actually happened or if they are the product with some dream, or dreams, that I have somewhere along the way confused with the events of the past.

I have learned that distinctly adult trick that I remember Josh commenting on all those years ago�"the trick of ignoring. I have learned how to insert other explanations into the mix of memories, substituting what seems more plausible to my rational, adult mind. Everything I experienced in that house was nothing more than the product of a child’s overactive imagination directed toward a mysterious house with a macabre, legendary past, mixed with an inability to process the complex emotions that a lingering, terminal disease fosters, mixed with a couple of nightmares that I have confused with history. That is my official self-diagnosis. I did not understand what was happening, so I mythologized the entire experience, telling myself the story so much that I came to believe my own self-created narrative. The human mind is like that. We can tell ourselves something we know to be a lie over and over until we ourselves come to believe it.

On those days when I find the courage to be honest with myself, I will tell you plainly that I do not know what to believe about what happened all those years ago. I prefer to believe that it was all imagination and emotional restructuring and projection because, frankly, that makes it all safe and tidy. It robs it of mystery and of menace. Yet, the nagging doubt and skepticism of adulthood cannot silence the one, enduring voice of certainty that shouts loudly from deep within. It is the voice of that inner-child that I try to keep stuffed out of the way where it will not trouble me and my neat, orderly rational world. But I cannot always silence that voice. From time to time, it demands to be heard. When I cannot silence it, it declares: “I was there! I saw it! I heard it! I experienced ever second of it! It happened!”

Yet, whether it happened as I remember it or not is no longer the point. The point is that thirty-five years ago, I made a promise to one eleven year old boy whom I knew, and scores of children I did not know. I promised to set them free and let them find peace, and tonight is the night I kept my promise.

I pulled up to the Hackett House, parking my car along the curb back by the kitchen door. The yard was overgrown and wild, worse than I remembered it as a child before the Quintly family tamed it along with their other renovations. The hard and house were almost black with dark. I parked under a street light, but it was as if an invisible wall stood along the yard, keeping out any light. 

I opened my trunk and pulled out three large containers. They were heavy. I had one pressed between my left arm and torso, and carried the other two by handles with my hands. I kicked open the fence gate that led to the kitchen door. I put the containers down and tried the doorhandle. It was locked. I used the heel of my shoe and gave the door three solid kicks and it busted open. I pulled out my cell phone, using it as a weak flashlight. 

I walked slowly through the kitchen, the dining room, down the hall, toward the front of the house. There was still some furniture and debris laying about the house. I took chairs and smashed them into a pile in the middle of the hallway. I wadded up any paper I could find and stuffed it in spaces within the pile of wood and debris. I pulled off the wooden rail from the stairs and kicked and ripped out the newels, placing them all in the pile. 

I went to the back door and grabbed two of the large gas cans I had brought with me. They each were filled with five gallons of gasoline. I poured a little more than half of one can onto the pile I had built. I then threw the rest of that can all over the from of the house�"I dowsed the front sitting room, the closet, the walls, the floor. When the can was empty, I tossed it away from me. I took the second can and walked upstairs, splashing gas everywhere I could. I stood for a while in Josh’s room�"the memories came flooding back, and I threw gasoline over all of them. The upstairs was covered, the canister empty, and I tossed it away. 

Making my way downstairs, I was choking and coughing from the fumes. I had a fear that my cell phone would ignite the fumes if someone were to suddenly call, so I turned it off and negotiated my way through the dark house. I kept waiting for someone to grab me, but no one, or nothing, did. The house was quiet.

I went to the back door, grabbed the last canister, and made a trail of gasoline from the pile to the dining room entrance. I went back into the two back rooms and the bathroom, splashing them all with gasoline, then continued with my trail of gasoline through the dining room, the kitchen, and running out almost to the door.

I walked back to my car, pulled out a folding lawn chair, placed it in the backyard about thirty feet from the house. I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out a cigar. I said a prayer for Josh and all the children that they would find peace and be welcome into the loving arms of God, placed the cigar in my mouth, ripped out a match from a pack of matches, used it to ignite all the matches at once. I lit the cigar with the fireball in my hand, and then tossed the flaming pack of matches into the kitchen. The fumes burst into flames, the trail carried the fire to the pile, setting the rest of the house on fire along the way. 

I sat in the chair, puffed on the cigar, and watched it burn...

Reviews

[Tony]

First of all, I am wondering what happened to your friend? You will need to include the rest of that tale I suppose.
Second, I found this to be an engrossing read, intellectual and very well researched.
I wonder, can inanimate things really hold such demonic power? It would seem so, given the huge amount of evidence that is only a click away.
I like this story a lot, you sir, are a wordsmith and an historian.

[Father Mojo]

now you can find out

[Tony]

Oh f**k, this is years ago... lol ... writers.. never cease to amaze me..
okay then, I'll have to read the whole dang thing again.
Not right now, Bookmarked.
Thanks for the alert, it nice to have 'the rest of the story', but your tenacity is inspiring as well.
Have a great day :]s