What's Wrong With Our House?

 

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

—William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun 

 

The white-haired woman stood by the window pulling the drapes carefully aside, attempting to sneak a look out into the street. It was October 31st, another Halloween night, and just like every previous Halloween, trick-or-treaters were busy going from house to house in search of the precious goodies they all so desperately desired. But for some strange, unknown reason they seemed to be avoiding her house; almost deliberately so.

"What's wrong with our house?" Gladys Millbury asked of her husband, Harold, who was sitting quietly in his recliner, reading the sports section of the local newspaper and paying little attention to his wife, as was typical of him. The room was clean and tastefully decorated with furnishings they had acquired throughout their forty-three years of marriage.

Harold said, "How the hell should I know, Gladys? Who really knows what goes on inside of the minds of young kids these days? Heaven knows I don't have a clue. But what's the big deal anyway? If they show up, they show up and if they don't, they don't. To be perfectly honest with you, I don't really care if they ever come around. Young kids can often mean nothing but trouble these days. In fact, they're often more trouble than they're worth. Good riddance to bad rubbish as far as I am concerned."

"Oh, Harold," she replied, "that's no way to talk for pity’s sake. You sound like such an old fuddy-duddy. It’s Halloween night and you know the children in our neighborhood are all good kids. We’ve always opened our doors to them on Halloween. In the old days we would have been overrun with trick-or-treaters by this time of night. Remember how they always said I gave them the best candy? I was always so proud of that. But now they won’t even ring our doorbell anymore. I wonder what happened. It’s almost like they seem to be deliberately avoiding us this year. What could possibly be the matter? What in the world do they think is wrong with us?"

"Funny you should ask,” Harold replied. “I was starting to wonder what might be wrong with you myself. The way you’re standing there staring out into the street. You look like a desperate, starving lost little puppy. For heaven’s sake, Gladys, just let it go. So what if the kids choose to ignore us this year? It just means more candy for me."

“Like you can eat all of this candy,” Gladys replied looking down into her enormous basket of goodies, “you with your blood sugar issues!”

Gladys and Harold Millbury had been living in the same house at the end of Maple Street for well over thirty years.  And for as long as either of them could recall the neighborhood children always flocked to their house for treats faithfully, every Halloween. So Gladys knew something definitely must be amiss to cause them to behave in this fashion.

As Gladys peeked out the front window again she exclaimed, "Oh my goodness, Harold! You should see this! Several of the kids just crossed over to the other side of the street as if they were making a point of avoiding our house. I even saw a couple of them looking back then quickly looked away. They seemed to have looks of terror on their faces. It was like they were afraid to come here or something. Why would anyone be afraid to come here, Harold? We're good people. What's wrong with these kids?"

Harold decided to go back to ignoring his wife and continue to read his newspaper.

Outside, the neighborhood kids who Gladys had seen from the window were doing exactly as she had described, walking across the street, pushing and shoving each other playfully, occasionally giving wary glances back toward the house. Every so often one of the kids would point back toward their house then make spooky gestures with his hands at the younger children and laugh hysterically. The small children would look back at the house quickly before hurrying to be back with the group.

The house sat in darkness, illuminated only by the pale moonlight shining through the branches of the tall oak trees in the overgrown front yard. The trees had lost their leaves a month earlier and now stood like colossal multi-limbed monstrous sentries guarding the mysterious home with its battered, paint-chipped facade and foot-high weeds surrounding the broken brick walkway.

The neighborhood children all knew about the Millbury place and they had all heard the many frightening stories surrounding the house. They knew both the real history of the property, which was in itself terrifying enough, but they also knew all of the local legends and those were certainly enough to keep even the most daring of them away.

As the true story of the house went, a nice elderly retired couple named Gladys and Harold Millbury had once owned the home. Mr. Millbury had been retired from the railroad and Mrs. Millbury had worked her entire career as a nurse at a local hospital. Every Halloween children from all over would flock to the Millbury place since Gladys was reputed to give the best candy in town.

There was also a false reputation that followed the Millburys. Since the couple had no children, lived frugally, and both had generous pensions, it was assumed they were quite well off financially. This was completely untrue. The two weren’t starving by any means and Gladys was quite generous with her precious trick-or-treaters, but the couple was far from wealthy. Unfortunately, those particular false stories about them being rich had reached the ears of some local undesirables and the result was a horrific crime the likes of which the small town had never seen before or since.

Twelve years earlier to the day, October 31st, Halloween night, the couple had opened their home to trick-or-treaters as they had done for so many years before. Gladys waited by the window with her bowl of candy, watching for children, while Harold sat in his recliner reading the sports section as always. It had been a very successful evening with many children enjoying their treats.

However, later that night while the couple slept, persons unknown broke into the house, murdered the couple in their sleep then robbed the house of whatever they could find. The place had been ransacked as if the killers had been looking for caches of hidden money. But of course there was no treasure to be found.

And there was much more to the story than just two people being murdered in their sleep. Word had leaked that the murderers had conducted some sort of strange, bizarre and possibly satanic rituals with the bodies. It was said the twisted perpetrators had savagely dismembered the couple’s bodies and had arranged the parts in a bizarre manner. Witnesses said the scene resembled something which might be described as a modern art show in Hell. This included limbs from Harold’s body being attached to Gladys’ torso and vice versa.

It was said that Gladys’ breasts had been hacked off and attached to Harold’s chest. Likewise Harold’s genitals were severed and placed between Gladys’ legs. Their stomachs had been sliced open and the room decorated with their bloody intestines like some unimaginable pink and crimson garland. Both of their heads had been decapitated and placed atop their dresser, as if posed to witness the hideous tableau being staged before them. The room stank like the inside of a slaughter house, which was exactly what it had become.

The unholy display of mangled and reordered body parts was so horrifying and beyond anyone’s ability to understand, that every investigator on the scene was unable to keep from vomiting. Perhaps the most disturbing part of it all was the writing on the wall behind the bed, as if the killers had wanted to come up with a title for the macabre scene. Written crudely with hands dipped in the couple’s blood were the words “Happy Halloween.”The criminals were never caught.

If there was any consolation to be taken from the scene of unimaginable butchery was the county coroner’s report suggested the couple had likely been killed instantly and did not have to suffer. He even suggested they had probably died so quickly that they might have not even known what had happened to them.

So, from the coroner’s single statement the legends began, spread and grew as such legends often did. Stories of late night sightings of Gladys standing, looking out of the front window abounded. And this was especially prevalent on Halloween night, the anniversary of the murders, when it was believed she still stood watching for her beloved trick-or-treaters. There were also tales of the two headless specters being seen floating inside the home.

Because of the savagery of the murders committed in the house,  no one would dare buy it. As a result it soon fell to disrepair and eventually to ruin. And now every year the neighborhood children would make it a point to cross the street on Halloween night in order to stay as far from the Millbury house as possible.

“I just don’t get it.” Gladys said as she looked out of her living room window, “They are avoiding us like we have the plague or something. I can't figure it out, Harold. Our house used to be a magnet for children at Halloween, but no longer. What's wrong with our house?”

“Forget it,” Harold said. “Look. This is all pointless. I’m tired anyway. I think I’ll head up to bed for the night. “

So, Harold stood and set the newspaper down on the end table and went up the stairs to bed. The date of the paper read October 31st but the year was not the current year; it was twelve years earlier. He read the exact same paper every October 31st. And this was the same scenario, which he and Gladys had played out every Halloween night since the horrific event had occurred. But to them, it was always be the first time, always new, always fresh, and it would be eternal.