Two young lads decide to check out the spooky looking house not far from their homes..
but maybe they got more than they bargained for. 'The house upon the hill'...it's chapter
number two in Tales Unleashed and is here for your inspection...step up and take a look.
The House Upon the Hill
Our town of twelve hundred people had a resident that was more than just a bit unusual. The “lady who lived on the hill” – as she was known, never by her given name – was rarely seen during the light of day, preferring to go out early in the evening, strolling down the road to the little grocery store about a half mile from where she lived. Sometimes she would ride her old bicycle, the original tires patched and re-patched from the years of riding up and down the cinder roadway. Indeed, Beatrice McGee was a strange and lonely lady. No one could remember a day when she did not live alone in that house on the hill. Rumor had it that her husband had been lost at sea some fifty years ago, and she took refuge in this lonely country house that would be far removed from the dark and murky New England coast which had claimed him.
And here it was, Halloween eve, young Tommy and Joe in their ever-increasing curiosity to get a closer look at the old woman, inched their way through the briars and brambles leading to her place . . . trying to get close enough to peek through a downstairs window on her front porch. The house was usually dark, with perhaps one light in the second floor to keep out the bats, and a dim light on the first floor. The night air started to settle in quickly now as a half moon brought more light to the scene just in front of the boys.
“Tell me again why we are doing this?” asked Tommy. Joe replied, “You’ve heard the rumors Tommy… everyone in town says she has about twenty cats.. and they’re all dead, stuffed and in different spots all around her . . . I’ve got to see for myself.”
Before Joe could respond, Tommy crouched lower and headed out to cover the last fifty yards to the front of the house. Joe wanted to be somewhere else at this point . . . anywhere else. He had hung out with Tommy through some weird adventures, but this one was going to take the cake, and if they got caught . . . boy, would things be bad at home for both of them.
Beatrice had no phone or television. The boys had heard that she would listen to the radio at night, pop some popcorn and then retire sometime before midnight. It was now just eight p.m., and with any luck at all, Tommy and Joe would have a real close look at the ole’ recluse and see for themselves what the town’s people had talked about for years.
Finally, the two boys had made it to the porch. Both on their hands and knees, they paused, trying to catch their breaths and straining to hear anything from inside the house.
The faint light of the one bulb which was lit filtered out through the dirty window and faded curtain, and onto the weathered boards where the boys sat.
“Hear that?” Tommy said, grabbing Joe’s arm to get his attention. “She’s got the radio on for sure.”
Joe leaned over closer to Tommy’s left ear and said quietly, “I want to go home . . . come on Tommy, I don’t care about seeing any dead cats and this place is just too creepy.”
Just as Tommy was ready to respond, they heard a rush of air and boards scraping boards as the bottom window was thrown up and a voice shrieked out, “What do you young-uns want? Come to visit my dead cats did you?” What followed was a foul, high pitched laugh that made both Joe and Tommy jump from the porch with legs and feet struggling to get traction below them. Within seconds they were ten, fifteen, twenty yards away . . . Beatrice was still laughing from the open window . . . and yelled to the pair as they made their way down the hill, “What’s the matter . . . cat got your tongues?” The question was followed by a screech that followed the pair as they raced homeward, Joe losing his baseball hat as he ran, with Tommy in the lead by a good five yards.
Two minutes had passed and the pair, totally spent, stopped at the bottom of the hill, both out of breath and shaking profusely.
“Next time you want to do something stupid, count me out,” Joe said.
“Ah, shut up,” Tommy responded, and the two started the final two-minute walk back to town.
Back at the top of the hill, Beatrice settled into her favorite antique rocking chair, and grabbed a coffee jar filled with popcorn she had made days before. Except for the sound of the rocker pushing down on loose boards of the old house, the house was still. The radio playing lightly on the mantle . . . the cats, placed here and there, all in their respective spots, their glazed eyes piercing the cobwebs and dust, transfixed on Beatrice their keeper.
As Beatrice rocked and smiled, she announced to her pets, “Tomorrow is Halloween my sweeties . . . do you think our two little friends will return?”
“We shall see, we shall see.”
Tommy and Joe didn’t return the next night, Halloween. But they planned on going back on a Saturday afternoon, when the sun would be high, and the shadows not so frightful. But it was not to be.
Three weeks after their night on the porch under the screech of Beatrice, an overnight fire burned down the house on the hill and everything that was in it, including Beatrice and her beloved collection.
The next day after the fire, as Tommy and Joe sat on a slope nearby looking across the way to the destroyed house, Tommy remarked, “I guess we’ll never know . . . about the cats, that is.”
“Oh I know,” replied Joe. “It was too strange of a story not to be true . . . just too strange not to be true.”
