(Not based on a true story - just for Halloween)
Oblivia
was very excited to move into her late great-aunt’s dilapidated Victorian
mansion. Sure, it was a bit of a
fixer-upper and needed to have such modern conveniences as central heating,
central air, and central plumbing installed, but the house was all hers. After 20+ years of sharing a three-room
apartment with 10 people, she was willing to do some interior decorating in
exchange for that glorious concept called personal space.
She
arrived by taxi on an overcast day that threatened rain without ever following through;
she only brought an overnight bag so she could get a feel for the place before
stuffing it full of useless furniture.
From the outside, she already could see the house’s non-existent paint,
missing roof shingles, broken chimneys, and the other criteria required for
condemnation. She paid the taxi driver,
who managed to throw her bag onto the house’s front steps without even leaving the
driver’s seat before screeching the tires back to the main road, then turned to
survey the property. There were some blades
of grass and a few dead plants, but she knew that she could get advice on
landscaping from the three extremely close neighbors (one on either side and
one behind the tiny backyard), all of whom were currently staring at her from
their respective windows, through which she could hear their television sets as
clear as bells. She waved with both
hands in friendly greeting at all of them until they slunk back to their boring
lives behind their curtains; what caring people, she thought to herself.
She
climbed the fragile front steps, nearly losing a foot when one board broke, and
unlocked the rusty front door with the ancient key that she had inherited. The door ominously creaked open, so she took
care of that issue immediately with some oil she carried for just such an
occasion. The electricity either had
been disconnected or had never existed here in the first place (she could not
remember which), so she had brought a bag of candles and matches along with a flashlight
to assist. Slowly turning in a circle while
holding the flashlight, she took in the main hall with its dusty furniture,
cobweb-ridden walls, moth-eaten drapes, rundown master staircase, and sounds of
rattling chains, moans, groans, and screams.
She
gasped. “This place – is – disgusting!”
she exclaimed to no one in particular.
She feared the mold, mildew, and possible asbestos she was now breathing
in, but she could not dwell too long on such thoughts, for this house literally
screamed “Disaster!”
After
tossing her overnight bag onto the opera house organ, she explored the other
rooms of the house. The constantly
creaking floorboards, the grandfather clock chiming 12 on every hour, and the little
children choir that followed her wherever she went were all driving her up the
wall with the noise pollution. She now
understood why Great-Aunt Eccentra had willed the house to her: she was the
only one who could take on such a DIY project and actually like it.
In
the attic, Oblivia switched from flashlight to candlelight just because and she
walked gingerly, since breaking through the floor here would result in a fall
of five stories into the basement. She
saw an ancient trunk in a corner and approached it carefully, accompanied by her
singing entourage. The trunk had been
locked, but oxidization had taken care of that nuisance and she opened it easily. Inside was a massive amount of correspondence
between her great-aunt and some guy named “Beloved,” to whom she had written
daily for 16 years, it seemed. The gist
of the letters ran along the lines of “Why don’t you return my calls?” and “I
don’t care that you already have a loving family,” and “You’re been dead the
whole time I’ve been writing these, haven’t you” – in essence, the usual boring
tripe.
Oblivia
made her way downstairs to the kitchen and managed to find some unspoiled
canned goods that she could scarf down for dinner, in-between the utensils
flying away from her and the drinking glasses being thrown against the
wall. The drafts in these places can be
such a bother, she thought as she washed and dried the wayward dishes as fast
as she could before they could be destroyed.
That
night, she made her way by candlelight again (her flashlight batteries had long
since died and she had forgotten to bring replacements) to the master bedroom
on the third floor, shunning the more conveniently placed guest bedroom on the
second floor because she was the master now, and the servants’ bedrooms on the
fourth floor were jail cell quality.
There was a fireplace in her bedroom, which she tried to light with her matches
until the bats flew out; she opted for the extra quilts that were kept in the
closet along with the glowing eyes and the growling darkness. Much cozier after wiping the quilts and
mattress down as much as possible, she curled up with her book and a bottle of
room-temperature water. Nodding off, the
book slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor, where a scaly hand
reached out to grab it and pulled it under the bed. She jerked awake when a loud crash resounded throughout
the house – grabbing her pepper spray and cell phone, she ran out of the room
and down to the balcony above the main entrance hall.
She
had to blink a few times to focus her eyes: the main hall was filled with all
types of ghosts, goblins, and bogeymen who seemed to be having a party. She unobtrusively dialed 911, hoping they had
not seen her.
“Hello? I’d like to report a break-in,” she whispered
to the dispatcher. “I think they’re
drunk teenagers.”
“What’s
the address?” Oblivia gave it. “Oh, that’s the haunted house. Yeah, you’d better get out of there.”
“Haunted? Oh no, these aren’t ghosts; these are very
obviously deranged children.”
“Want
us to send the exorcist over? It’s
worked a few times in the past.”
“No
help whatsoever!” Oblivia disconnected
the call and ran to confront the gathering as she stood mid-staircase.
“All
right, you delinquents!” Everyone stared
at her. “There’ll be no squatters here,
so begone from my sight!”
The
ghouls collectively moaned as they shuffled off; she heard one mutter, “Eccentra
was never that mean.” Satisfied
that all had gone, Oblivia returned to her bedroom. She found her book on her bed with a note
attached to the cover: “Loved the setting, hated the protagonist. Three stars out of five.” Shrugging in puzzlement, she tossed the book
onto a chair, got into bed, and almost immediately fell asleep.
She
dreamt of her plans to extensively renovate the dank and dirty house – all these
silly distractions such as the howling she now heard coming from the basement
would simply need to be ignored. She
relished the challenge.
