A Haunted House

If there can be Christmas in July, why not some Halloween in March?

“This is a Haunted House, you know,” Odie told Beau through a mouth full of Nerds.

Beau’s sister and her husband were at a wedding for the weekend of Halloween, so he had driven to their new house upstate to watch his only nephew, Odie.

They sat in the boy’s upstairs bedroom, surrounded by all the candy that Beau had brought. There were no neighbors within miles, so Odie had not been able to trick ‘r treat.

“Did you see that on TV?” Beau asked, popping a peanut butter cup into his mouth. There had been a feature on the house in an episode of some Biography Channel ghost show that no one watched.

“Well yes, but it’s not haunted like THAT,” Odie responded.

“Right.”

Odie read the packaging on a mini-candy car, “What’s a Zag…Nut?”

“You wouldn’t like it,” Beau said, passing the boy a 100 Grand instead. “Yeah, it’s pretty silly that people believe in stuff like that, huh?”

“Like what?”

“Haunted Houses.”

Odie looked at his Uncle Beau like he had said something stupid.

“But this is a Haunted House, it’s just not haunted like THAT.”

“Like what?” Beau asked, fishing a piece of stray foil from the peanut butter cup off his tongue.

“Oh you know, like the lady who killed all those guys.”

The house had been built in the late 1800’s as a country home for a newspaper magnate and his wife. One night she had some sort of psychotic episode and killed her husband and three weekend guests as they slept. She did it, bizarrely enough, with a garden trowel, which was part of the reason the instance had earned a special place in the tome of gruesome “true” ghost stories.

“So the house isn’t haunted by the crazy trowel lady then?”

“Nope.”

“Or the guys she killed?”

“Nope.”

“Then who is haunting the house?”

“Nobody’s “haunting the house.” It’s just a Haunted House.“

Beau laughed a bit. He had a very creative nephew and this would be a great story to tell his work friends who always loved hearing anecdotes about sagely little Odie.

“Got it,” Beau conceded. “Well, how about we watch a scary movie?”

Odie shrugged, more intent on continuing to eat candy.

“I don’t know, Odie. It’s a pretty good movie.”

“Is it old?” Odie asked.

“It is, but it’s really spooky. It’s called “House on Haunted Hill” and it scared the pants off of me when I was your age. Your Mom too.“

Odie cocked an eyebrow and approved.

Beau told his nephew he’d be right back. He’d left his bag in the living room.

The house wasn’t quite “moved-in” yet, so at the moment it was lit by sparsely placed lamps sitting on the ground. Beau noticed the light never filled any room, rather extended about three feet into the darkness then dropped out completely.

But that’s just big houses.

In the living room, he looked out the windows. Fog had pushed its way up against the panes, surrounding the whole house in an eerie gray luminescence. How was it that it seemed somehow brighter outside than it was inside?

Beau grabbed his bag and walked up the stairs a little more briskly than he would’ve done in his own apartment.

He slowed when he reached the hallway, however. At the end of it was Odie’s room. Beau could see little hands in the lamplight sorting through candy on the ground.

But as Beau passed the other bedrooms, he couldn’t help but look in and shiver. They were empty now, yet his imagination so readily placed beds in their vacant corners, occupied by sleeping guests while a spindly woman in black floated up to them, raised a rusty garden trowel above her head and brought it down again and again and again.

He was just about to reach his nephew’s bedroom when he heard a distinct creak from behind the adjacent door. Beau froze. Another creak. And breathing.

Breathing. Definite, steady, shallow breathing.

Obeying some excruciating temptation, Beau slowly placed his bag on the ground, put his hand on the door handle and turned it, silently. With a gentle push, he forced himself to look inside.

A bed.

Someone in the bed.

Someone in the bed, looking at him.

And it was Odie, squinting sleepily at his Uncle.

“What is it, Uncle Beau?” the boy whispered sleepily.

Beau’s throat tightened. As he looked at his nephew in bed, he heard his nephew in the other room, sorting candy and mumbling to himself.

“Nothing. Sorry. Go back to bed,” he whispered back, and closed the door.

Shaking, Beau turned back towards the lit room, floor covered with candy. He looked in at the thing that wore his nephew’s pajamas.

He looked at that thing.

And the House looked right back at him.