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WHILE DRIVING
IN CLAIREMONT
"Some
people swore that the house was haunted," the tour guide noted, with a
sneer in her voice; it was apparent from the outset that she did not number
herself within that particular set of
people.
Nor did I. Apparently, there WERE some feeble-minded souls who chose to let
their imaginations run rampant, randomly accepting all the tripe foisted on
them by movies and dime novels. How I had cackled (surreptitiosly, of
course) when my American History teacher had spoken in hushed tones
about the thousands who gave complete and unstinting credence to Ouija,
seances and such-like throughout the nineteenth century. I took no end of
pleasure in mocking those who had paid to see the Bates Motel set, and
the Munsters', Addams' and Amityville houses,
which at least had the grace to look as though they could have been
haunted.
The example in question at this moment had
not even that good grace. The small nondescript house, though a trifle
shabby, was in no wise haunted-seeming. "How did this crackerbox
even get onto a tour in the first place?", I could not help
asking myself.
As had so often happened in the past, though, my mocking drowned out my
learning. For had I been listening, I might have heard the guide,
intoning in her cartoon-eeriest voice, of the two little boys who wandered up
and down this otherwise normal street, carrying things little boys are
not typically pictured with; no Rockwell etching, this! The smaller toted a
zippered bag which might have passed as a bowling bag, but upon closer
examination became the enclosure for a Naval fighter pilot's helmet. The
larger carried only a claw hammer, and a cold chisel. None of
these three items was pristine.
Had I been listening, I might have learned
how two little boys were incarcerated in the Ju-Vee, for having driven a
chisel into the skull of their drunken father, who had passed out after
administering a horrible beating to
their pregnant mother back in 1964, then severing his head with a hacksaw.
Saw and head then went into the newly-emptied helmet bag. Then they struck
off down the street, with no actual plan besides removing themselves from the
scene. Whether they might have stayed, had they known that the helmet bag's
blow, freighted as it was with a fresh fifth of Cutty Sark, had broken their
mother's neck instantly, no one can say.
"Now, that's a queer coincidence," I remarked. "I was born in
1964, and MY father died in 1964, AND I have two older brothers, who don't
talk about 1964!"
Had I been listening, I might have realized that the tour guide had
momentarily stopped her droning, and that all the other occupants on the tour
had turned to face me. But perhaps "FACE me" isn't wholly
accurate, as none of them had what you might call a face, but only facial
bones and tatters of flesh. About a third of them had epaulets, though, as a
Naval Junior officer might have had, and wore cavalier sneers across their
ripped, disfigured maws. Another third had torn, stained dresses, and rather disarrayed bouffants.
Their expressions were merely hopeless. The last and most intense third,
and the only ones who seemed to have eyes, stared at me with a solemn mixture
of envy, shame and pain.
At this point I began to scream. I am not sure I have ever stopped
screaming. I am sure, however that nothing was ever the same
again after that.
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