CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Oakley House |1990s

 

Martin didn’t know why his family held onto this old dump of a house, but the historical society wouldn’t allow him to tear it down, so he had to figure something out. His great grandfather had recently passed from lung cancer and left the house to him with strict instructions on how to care for the house without actually stepping foot into it. He knew from old family stories that his family believed the house was haunted, but he wasn’t going to believe that garbage for one minute.

Ghosts aren’t real, he told himself.

When he was small, his great grandfather told him that Oakley house was a prize that can never be opened, whatever that meant. He knew it was won in a poker game over a hundred years ago. What he didn’t understand was why his grandfather didn’t just fix it up and live in it, or sell it? Hell, why not turn it into a creepy bed and breakfast? A part of Martin knew deep down that he should listen to his family, and simply be a caretaker for the house until he passed it on to his grandkids or great grandkids one day. But the other part of him didn’t see how this house continuing to sit empty would do anyone any good.

The house was outdated, no one had lived in it for over a hundred years. He needed to add some modern things like air conditioning, and update the water pipes, and possibly electrical work. Martin hired a contractor to first add the air conditioning. They assured him that only a few walls would need to be opened and the job should be complete within a week. Martin set the date and work began.

It wasn’t long however that odd things began to happen through the house. The contractors complained about spacing out and not remembering where they were, or why they were there. They had seen several children in the woods around the house, all which seemed to disappear when they went to investigate. Then there was a woman. Only one man had seen her, but he refused to enter the house again after claiming that she had evil in her eyes.

Martin was skeptical. He was sure that there was little truth to their tales and suspected that they were merely feeding on rumors they had heard in town. To prove a point, he moved into the house with his wife and two young daughters.

The air conditioner intact and walls still open, Martin began the electrical work with the help of a local electrician. They worked through the weekdays and took evenings and weekends for themselves. Martin didn’t even notice as his wife began to slowly slip away from him.

Many of the rooms were off limits to the children because they were dusty, and Martin still needed to sort through their contents. Martin’s wife, Abigail, was moving from room to room slowly going through things. A little over a month into living in Oakley house, several projects complete, Abigail mentioned to Martin that the house gave her the creeps. She told him that she felt uneasy, and that the girls often spoke of seeing children in the woods similar to the contractor’s stories.

She wanted to move out. Two days later, Martin discovered Abigail in a room on the third floor. She was dead, hanging by the neck from a belt she often wore around her waist in her summer dresses.

Distressed, Martin took the kids and moved out immediately, leaving Oakley house to rot. He made sure his children never went back telling them the house was horribly infested. When he died many years later, his daughters knew they did not want to hold onto a house that they believed killed their mother. They spoke to the historical society, only to learn they could neither demolish the house due to it being an original Oakley home, nor sell the house in its given state of disarray.

Martin’s youngest daughter, now forty-five years old, turned the house over to her husband, who sold it off as cheap and as fast as he could. There was little known about the property as it was, however, they made sure to clean up any loose ends involving the house. Making sure they had nothing linking their family to the house, they placed sheets on everything and sealed it up until a buyer could be found.

Years passed and the family didn’t even realize the house was still listed, when a young buyer was found. They were shocked. Feeling they should divulge some kind of information to the new buyer, they spoke to the estate agent, who informed them that the buyer was fine not knowing. It was the historical aspect of the home that interested her.

None of the family attended the sale. They all opted to digitally sign the papers in the presence of a notary. They never met the young buyer, Mariah Litback. All they cared about was the fact that once and for all, Oakley house, the family burden since the American Civil War era, and the house that killed their mother, was now someone else’s problem. They were free from the evil residing inside. They had nothing tying them to Oakley any longer. Nothing could possibly go wrong now.