She nipped the little house tours in the bud pretty quickly.
Other than our landlord’s guided tours of our stuff, only two things of note happened within the first couple of weeks: the exploration of the cellar and the man.
The former happened to me. I was disappointed to find that there were not any hidden staircases or treasure chests (I was really into Nancy Drew at the time) but I wasn’t going to give up so easily. There had to be something remarkable about the house. It was too cool not to have a secret! I found it downstairs. The house had a cellar, only accessible by going outside and walking around the side of the house, made of stone with dirt floors and even though we couldn’t put anything down there, I liked to play in it.
I suppose I should mention that I had no real fear of dark places at this point. I didn’t like nighttime and that kind of dark, but I was perfectly fine with basements, caves, and darkness during the daylight hours. One of our favorite forms of cheap entertainment was to go for long drives and find abandoned houses we could take pictures of. We’d shimmy through windows, crawl around on all fours on dirty floors, and fight all kinds of vermin and insects just to get interesting pictures and “explore.” And I’d climbed around in caves and dark hollows just about all my life. It was only when I was trying to go to sleep at night that my imagination got the best of me.
There were three rooms in the cellar and the first two were dreadfully dark. They were even a little too dark for me. I at least liked to see my hand in front of my face when I was playing. They had tiny windows, but the windows were covered up with vines and dirt so no light could penetrate through them. I usually passed through these rooms quickly and went on to the last room.
The third room was a little bit lighter and depending on the time of day you went in there you could get a pale slant of light shining through the small cracked glass into the middle of the floor. I was never afraid of spiders or snakes (I probably thought we couldn’t get any since we were in town) and the only thing that ever really freaked me out was the small pile of rodent bones in the corner of the room. I just pretended they weren’t there.
For hours, I would play with My Little Pony or Barbie down there in that dirt-floored room, oblivious to the outside world. It was cool there in the cellar, cooler than it was in the house, and nobody bothered me. I liked being alone and having my own secret place. Mom would never go down there. The small flight of stairs were too steep for her arthritic legs and she didn’t like the damp, dark, closed-in nature of the rooms. Besides, she had a lot to do in the house, what with all the unpacking and such. Down in the cellar I had my own little world and could play as long as I wanted to. I made up pretend games, played with my imaginary friend, and sang songs to myself. I was a little lonely, but still felt as though I was living in an adventure so that helped.
One day, however, as I was leaving I noticed something out of the corner in my eye in the first room. It was a staircase! I don’t know why I’d never seen it before, but the rickety stairs definitely led up from the cellar into what was probably the kitchen. The opening where they would have come out at was closed off.
I couldn’t wait to run back up and tell my mom.
“Hey,” I hollered as I ran into the kitchen to find her putting away canned food in the cabinet. “Did you know there used to be stairs here in this room going down to the cellar?”
“Really?” she asked. “Well, I guess that makes sense. I wondered why there wasn’t a way to get down there other than from outside.”
So I took her down and gave her the tour. The stairs were too fragile to walk on, but I was extremely excited at the discovery, which wasn’t nearly as good as a secret tunnel or passageway, but was pretty darn close.
Later that evening, she put me to work putting away more food. There was a very small hole in the middle of the wall with a door on it. When you opened the door, two shelves ran back into the walls. They were wide enough to put food on but the whole setup was very unusual. If you put anything too far back you wouldn’t be able to reach them. “I don’t know why they put this here,” Mom complained. She gave me the job of filling it up because it was such a hassle. I usually got the messy or inconvenient tasks.
While I organized packages of spaghetti and sauce, I noticed something I hadn’t before about the shelves–they came out! It was a day of discoveries for me. Using a flashlight, I looked behind the shelves and, sure enough, could see the outline of what used to be another opening. When I pointed the flashlight down, I could see the remnants of a rope.
I called my mother again. “Look,” I said, pointing. “I think this is one of those dumbbell things that people used to put food on.”
“What? Dumbbell? You mean a dumbwaiter?” she asked.
“Yeah, that. And look, there’s another door!”
We eventually figured out that it must have been set up so that you could pass food from the kitchen into the dining room without having to leave the room. Of course, by the time we lived there, it had all been boarded up and papered over. (And we were using the dining room for our living room.) From down in the cellar, however, you could still see where the dumbwaiter used to land.
“So rich people must have lived here,” I said with certainty, feeling a little smug. “Why else would they be sending food to the basement if they didn’t have servants to get it?”
“I guess you’ve got a point there,” Mom said thoughtfully. “Or, maybe they were feeding people down in the basement.”
“What for? You mean like they kidnapped them?” I asked in wonder. I was very much into kidnapping stories at the time.
“No, like maybe slaves. The owners said this house was part of the Underground Railroad,” she explained.
We spent the rest of the evening discussing the particulars of the Railroad and how it had worked. Now, I was even more excited. I couldn’t believe that I was getting to live in a house that might have actually been a part of real history.
We later discovered that there used to be a door between my mother’s room and the sitting room. It was also boarded up and papered over. It might not have been quite as good as a secret passageway, but I was happy our house had secrets.
Two weeks after moving in, a knock on our door came in the middle of the afternoon. I opened it to find a nice looking young man in glasses. He smiled pleasantly at me and asked if my parents were home. I got my mother.
“Hi,” he started, “I know this is going to sound strange but my grandmother lived here when I was a little kid and this is the first time I’ve been back in years. I was wondering if you’d let me walk around and look at the house.”
Now, to most people this might have sounded strange but we’re friendly people and, the fact is, we had done the very same thing a few weeks before. When I was born I was brought home to a house in Mount Sterling. We moved out not too long after that so I didn’t remember the house. When we returned to Mount Sterling, however, my mother had taken me there and we’d knocked on the door and asked if we could look around. They let us in and gave us a tour, even though they didn’t know us from Adam.
Who were we to refuse this guy?
Mom was in the middle of something but thought nothing of letting me walk around with the young man. He was friendly and talkative and entertained me with all kinds of stories about his time there at the house with his grandmother. He pointed out the rooms she lived in (the house was two apartments at that time) and the antics he’d gotten into. He even showed me how he used to slide down the bannister.
I liked the man and nothing about him sent up any red flags my way but I couldn’t help but notice that every time we went into a room he appeared to be looking for something. He’d stand there, stop, look around, and walk to the fireplace or the closet or something and act like he was trying to find something but wasn’t sure where he’d left it. I pointed this out to my mother before we went down to the cellar and she followed us the rest of the way. “Maybe he’s just remembering things,” she whispe
red. “He might just be looking at the room and thinking about the things he used to do in it.”
In the cellar, I showed him the “secret” staircase and the dumbwaiter. He remembered them since he’d also played down there as a kid. “I liked playing here in the cellar, too,” he smiled. “It’s cool and dark. Of course, when I stayed here there was furniture down here and all these vines were gone.”
I wanted to put furniture down there, too, but we were afraid it would flood. And things were awfully dirty down there anyway. I always came up filthy.
I was a little sad to see him go. I missed having my friends around and it got kind of lonely playing there by myself. He was the first company we’d had since we moved in.
A few days later, Mom was in the utility room doing laundry. I’m not sure what the room was originally used for but it was one of the most neglected places in the house. Both of us could look at just about any building and see the good in it, even if it was on its last legs, but this room looked like it might cave in at any moment. You could see the wires coming out of the electrical outlets and nobody had even bothered to paint or paper the walls in years. A few of the floorboards really squeaked and I was afraid to walk too hard on them in fear I might go crashing through to the cellar. We didn’t use the utility room much.
At any rate, Mom had a load in the washer and one in the dryer and was busying herself in the kitchen when she just happened to go in and check on them. A good thing, too, because sparks were shooting up the wall where the dryer was plugged in. The inside of the wall was on fire and the room was starting to fill with smoke.
It took a miracle and quick thinking on Mom’s part to get the fire out, but she finally managed. Another few minutes and it might have caught some of the old boards and insulation and sent the whole house up in flames.
That incident shook her and doing laundry was never the same after that. It also meant the bloom was off the rose as far as the house went. Suddenly, moving in there didn’t feel like such a good idea, even if it was only $300 a month.
Sick
Mom understood how much I missed my friends and once we’d at least made a path with our boxes through the house she invited my friend Teri to come and stay a week with us. Teri lived back in Martin County and we’d spent almost every day together that summer until we moved. I was brown as a butterball from all the time we’d spent at the local swimming pool, and suddenly being without her was like losing a limb. I really thought I’d have made friends by then, but the only other girl on my street was a girl named Olivia who lived in a mansion (a real mansion) four doors down. She was nice enough but told me that when school started she would have to come and pick out my clothes for me because she wasn’t convinced I’d be able to match them on my own.
Two weeks later and I was still trying to think of a comeback to that insult.
I was so excited at the thought of having my friend come and stay with me that I couldn’t sleep for several nights. I stayed up, reading and watching VHS tapes since we didn’t have cable. Teri was happy to come and stay with us, too, especially when I told her about all the fun things we could do downtown and how I had an extra bike for her to ride.
On her second night at the house, however, I became very ill. I hadn’t missed a day of school in two years, but I unexpectedly woke up in the middle of the night, vomiting violently and with a raging fever. It went on for some days without any relief. Our living room couch let out into a bed and Mom made a place to sleep for Teri and me there so I could be close to the bathroom. I wasn’t able to eat, walk, or bathe without help from someone and the days soon began to bleed together and I felt as though I’d never be well again. My fever spiked to 104 degrees at one point but since we didn’t have our insurance yet we couldn’t afford to take me to the doctor. I was in and out of consciousness for the most part, first feeling wretchedly hot and then frightfully cold. Everything hurt and as I moaned and groaned in pain and clutched at my stomach I found myself praying aloud for some kind of relief. In the middle of the sickness I felt horribly guilty for not being much fun for Teri but she was understanding, even as a child, and tried to help Mom take care of me.
The move had taken most of our money and if we wanted a treat, like French fries somewhere, we had to roll pennies we found around the house. I probably should have gone to the doctor, but we all thought it would pass and I’d improve at any minute. The sickness was relentless, though. I called out for Mom, for Nana, and pleaded for help. There wasn’t much anyone could do.
It was extremely difficult for me to eat or drink anything but Mom was hell-bent on getting Gatorade into me, always sure that it was the miracle cure for anything that ailed you. On the third day, we ran out of it and she left Teri with me while she ran out to the store to pick some up. She used change she found around the house. I was still fading in and out of consciousness at that point and couldn’t tell you if it was day or night. We kept the curtains drawn in the living room so the room remained dark. It helped me sleep.
I remember sitting up and feeling alone. “Teri,” I called. She appeared from the kitchen, her eyes kind of wide and upset. I believe she was half afraid of me by then.
“Yeah?”
“I feel like I could eat something. Do you think you could make me a baked potato?” It was the one thing that had more or less stayed down and my stomach was in pain from being empty. She’d been making them for herself over the past few days, too, just by poking holes in them with a fork and then popping them in the microwave for a few minutes.
“Sure,” she replied. “Do you want anything on it other than butter and pepper?”
“No, that’s all. Thank you.”
When she left the room I laid back down and must have drifted off to sleep again. I felt warm and woozy, like I was floating through the room. What seemed like hours later I heard her scream. There’s nothing like the sound of a ten year old girl screaming to bring you back from the brink of death.
Teri, in her ponytail and nine year old scrawny knees poking out from her cutoffs, was standing there at the side of the bed, looking down at me in horror. A plate was balanced in her hand. “What’s the matter?” I asked as I tried to sit up and failed. I just didn’t have the strength to move.
“I saw–I thought I saw–I–“ she could barely get the words out and her face was ashen. I took the plate from her and set it on the bed next to me.
“What did you see?” Now I was starting to feel afraid and it dawned on me that we were in the house alone. Could I get out if someone came in on us?
“Your grandmother!” she finally blurted out. “She was sitting right there on the bed with you, touching you! Looking at you!”
I don’t think I need to mention that my grandmother had passed away three years before.
“Are you sure?” I asked, looking at the barren spot in the bed she was pointing to.
“Yes! Just like the pictures you have of her. It was the same person,” she insisted.
Well, that made me feel a little better. In relief, I closed my eyes and smiled. If Nana was in the house looking out for me then I’d feel better in no time at all! After comforting Teri and assuring her that if she had seen Nana everything was okay because she was like my guardian angel, I put in a new movie for her, ate my potato, and fell back asleep. Hours later, I woke up feeling rested and fine. My nausea, aches and pains, and fever were all gone.
I wouldn’t be the only one to get sick from the mysterious virus. Mom and Teri were to come down with it as well. Luckily, we got Teri home before hers became too bad. It was very difficult for a ten year old to take care of her mother, though. Mom was down for almost a week with it and during that time I had to do most of the cleaning, cooking, and whatever else needed to be done. I blamed the house. I knew it was silly to blame a house for being sick but I hadn’t been really sick in years, and neither had Mom, and now here we were fighting something bad off. I couldn’t go out and play for very long because Mom might need something.
I didn’t have any friends around, we couldn’t afford to have cable or a telephone, and I felt trapped. I couldn’t wait for school to start.
I never saw any mysterious visitors sitting next to Mom on the bed, nor did she, but she did have some pretty wicked dreams. Unfortunately, right before she got sick we’d watched the movie “Tremors”–the Sci-Fi movie with the big worm things in the ground? Well, apparently in her feverish state she woke up at one point and swore they were in the walls. She could see the walls moving and waving under their weight and called out for help, certain they would break free and come gobble her up.
Betty
One of the perks of living in Mount Sterling was that we got to visit my cousin Betty regularly. Betty was an interesting soul, not just because she was family and I tend to think we’re all kind of unique, but because of the situation she was in. She had an adult son named Brian and when he was nine years old he’d fallen into a comatose state for no known reason. He couldn’t move or speak intelligibly (Betty said she could understand him) yet his eyes were open and he often seemed aware of what was going on. He’d been like that for almost twenty years.
Rather than send him to live in a facility, like most everyone encouraged her to do, Betty had a hospital bed brought into her home and took care of him around the clock. He was hooked up to a central line and she changed all of his IVs, diapers, and took care to ensure he didn’t get bed sores or atrophy. She even slept in the room with him. Betty refused to leave the house for anything other than his doctor visits. He often came down with infections and illnesses, despite her exquisite care of him. (He had to be taken by ambulance when he left the house.) If Betty needed something from the store, somebody brought it to her. She ordered her towels, decorations, and other products from magazines like Home Interior. It had been more than a decade since she’s shopped in a store herself, gone to the movies, or eaten in a restaurant. As a result, she was a recluse in that she never left, but she was so likable that she always had tons of visitors and her house was never empty. With her loud laugh, wicked sense of humor, and ability to make anyone feel welcome in her home she was never without company.
Three True Tales of Terror: A True Hauntings' Collection Page 2
