The House Next Door

You know that house down the street? Yes, that one. The rambling bungalow with years worth of leaves covering the ground. The house with the sagging porch with the bare, burnt out bulb that has been there for beyond anyone can remember. Half the shingles are missing, the paint is peeling and the house has a condemned look to it. No one could ever live there.

But someone does.

The neighbours tell you how they sometimes see a strange, flickering yellowish light in attic. It's candlelight, they gleefully tell you. The candles the occupants use in their dastardly spells and curses. You laugh scornfully, but the neighbours insist that it is so.

You should listen to the neighbours. Sometimes they know something more than idle gossip.

But the neighbours will always be ignored by the adults of the town. The children, though, will listen with horrible delight to the disgusting tales the neighbours tell. Later, when they arrive back home, their parents tell them that those tales are lies and that there is no witch in 23 Thornridge Avenue.

But the parents lie.

The house is the center of all speculation in that small town. Elementary school children whisper to each other about the house during their lunch breaks, each boasting of seeing The Witch. Some especially boisterous children say that they have touched the house. But all run past that house if they ever need to pass by it.

Junior High students spend Halloween daring each other to go ask for candy from The Witch. Some of the more rebellious brag about how they're going to egg that house. But, on All Saint's Day, there are no egg marks on the house and the gate never opened once. And on sleepovers, they tell each other dark tales of the house, only to terrify themselves past sleep. They stay awake, clutching crosses dug up from closets or cut from paper, a vain defence until the sun rises again.

High school students pretend to be above such things, yet as they drive by the house in their newly bought (but ten years old) car, they go several kilometres faster than the speed limit. Not that they don't speed to begin with.

And the adults. Well, they're a work of art. They speak to each other over glasses of expensive wine, saying how foolish the children are for believing such tales, each refusing to admit that they had believed them as well. They speak of how the house tarnishes the image of their town and how someone should just go clean it up one day. Of course, it never happens and no one ever lifts a finger to clean it up.

Everyone of all ages talks of the house. I know this because I was once a child, and then a teenager and now I am an adult. And I am the one who lives next door.

Everyone speaks of the house in daylight, jesting and laughing at the foolishness of believing in The Witch. But when the sun sets and the powers of the dark regain their power, one wonders if it was such a good idea to speak ill to the house and its occupants. They wonder if the evil has ears that can extend into the light of the day and know when someone talks against it. They then ward themselves, futilely.

I know this, because I'm sitting in my living room with the two women I've known forever. I know that our six children are upstairs in my son Jeremy's room discussing the house next door. But we three adults sit downstairs, quietly sip our wine and talk of frivolous and meaningless things until we fall silent and hear the creaking of the swing set outside drift through the open window. We all shiver.

"It's awfully cold in here," Nora said, glancing at the window. It isn't. It is one of the dog days of summer, hot, muggy and a humid 40 degrees Celsius outside. On days like this, it is pointless to run your air-conditioner for all it does is chug away and lower the temperature by five degrees, if you are lucky. But I took the hint and stood up to close the window.

"Ah, to be young again," the African-American Janelle smiled after my nine year old daughter Addie's shriek of delighted horror faded. The three of us, so starkly different and yet the same exchanged smiles. Janelle's statement was double edged.

Out of our children, mine were the youngest and the oldest. Jeremy is fifteen to his sister's nine and Nora and Janelle's children are spread out between. Three girls and three boys. We all knew that they would end up spending the night in Jeremy's room after him and Chantal terrified the younger children witless. This was something we had done for a few years now, every Saturday Janelle and Nora would bring their children over to my house and we'd spend the night. We have been doing this since our husbands left.

I say left because I do not know if they are dead, or alive or anything. All I know is that at the same time our husbands had disappeared in the night. No, they did not leave us. All of us had normal, functioning marriages. Our husbands were just called away, and it was then we truly knew that we hadn't escaped our childhood.

"Do you remember the time that we were fifteen," I start. Nora somehow manages to pale, despite her already porcelain skin. Her hair is equally white and her eyes are a pale, pale blue. In a startling contrast to this, she is constantly wearing black, which makes her appear skinnier than she already is.

"No. If you wish to tell that tale, it starts when we were seven and Nora had just moved here," Janelle is the exact opposite of Nora in appearance. She is dark skinned, dark haired and dark eyed. She is a larger woman who is constantly wearing bright, gaudy colours and she's always cheerful and optimistic, while Nora is more quiet, reserved and somewhat of a pessimist.

"Why are we bringing this up?" Nora asks softly, "Why can't we just bury our past?"

"We've tried, and look where that has gotten us," I snap, briefly losing my temper. I sigh and close my amber eyes and say in a more calm tone, "I'm sorry, it's just that-"

"Say no more, we know how it is, Sherrie," Janelle lays a hand on my arm. She was the first to move on with her life, I was the last. It still hurts me, though.

"Well. Do you remember when we were seven and Nora had just moved here..."

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