The craftsman house

“God, that gives me the creeps.” one of the teenage girls mounting the porch said. “Why do you make me come here?”

Here, was a well preserved craftsman style house, one of a hundred or so in the historic downtown area. Walking distance from the high school, many students either lived in one of the hundred homes or had relatives who did. That wasn't remarkable, the city wasn't that big. Big enough to support a university, the people who worked there and the businesses that provided them. It felt tiny to anyone over the age of eleven.

The well-preserved house in question was painted a dull shade of tan with green trim. The trim, a deeper green than the lawn, was chipped in places. Neat beds of flowers lay under the windows, the blooms reaching for the sills as if they wanted to peek inside.

The deep porch, with benches built at either end, was hung with wind chimes. Whenever a visitor climbed the porch steps the chimes would swing, creating a cheerful greeting. The chimes sang whether the wind was blowing or not. The porch floor was poured concrete, it didn't cause the roof to tremble. The chimes simply rang hello to guests, some of which found it charming. Others like the girl approaching the front door, found it off-putting.

The front door was standing open, but the screen was closed. An open front door meant that the lady of the house was happy to welcome company. A closed front door meant all was not well and best to head back to the sidewalk.

“I don't MAKE you do anything.” the other girl replied. “Go home if you want.”
A long sigh escaped her friend. “The chimes just creep me out.” She stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets. “Can we go to Starbucks when you're done?”

They waited. They heard bare feet on the wood floor before the woman appeared on the interior side of the screen.
“Hey-ya. What's up?” She could have been anywhere between twenty-eight and forty. She was average height and average weight with average brown hair pulled back into a ponytail.
Wearing jeans and red t-shirt, but over this she had put on an old style floral apron. The kind that pulled over your head and tied on the sides. Various things were sticking out of the pockets, a wooden spoon, a paintbrush, a wadded up paper towel. The unmistakable shape of a cigarette pack pressed out against the fabric. No filters, it appeared, from the squareness of the box.
“Hi. Um, you read my cards a while ago? And I was wondering...”
“Oh sure, Kirsten and her friend Annie. Come on in.” the older woman held open the screen for the two younger females. The girls stepped into the house.



A perfectly ordinary house. The two most exciting things were a Mac, open on a table in the breakfast nook and an easel set up in the second bedroom just to the left of the front door. There were oil paintings hung around the living room and dining room. Not very good ones. The lines were irregular, the backgrounds blotchy, what were supposed to be trees were simply blobs of paint dabbed onto the canvas with a brown line running vertically through them.

Light poured through the windows, which were free of any coverings. The drapes pulled back from the windows were blackout curtains, fully sixty-five years old. They were drawn most nights and turned the house into a solid brick of darkness.

On Halloween the house was left open and the woman who lived there sat on her front steps to hand out generous handfuls of candy. The children who knew her gave her hugs. Some parents made the sign of the evil eye as they steered their offspring toward safer begging grounds.

The woman walked over to the dining room table and began to pull things out of her apron pocket. Clothes pins, a hairbrush, a cordless phone, a gardening trowel, crumpled pieces of paper were all tossed into a pile. But still her pocket yielded more debris and the cigarette pack remained outlined sharply against the cloth.

“Dammit!” she cursed under her breath and disappeared into the larger bedroom to return with a plastic laundry basket. She swept everything off the table into it and dropped it in a corner. She held her pocket open and reached in again. The square disappeared. Her hand emerged holding not smokes, but playing cards. She took them out of the box and began to shuffle them.

“Hey, Jane?” Annie asked. “Is it okay if I go wait outside?”
“Oh sure. There's a fridge on the back porch with drinks and stuff, go ahead. We'll come out when we're done.”
“Is it okay if I smoke?”
“I'm not your mother.” Jane answered as she started to lay the playing cards out on the table.

Annie headed out back, away from the windchimes.



The backyard was different from the stark neatness of the front. The backyard was not much wider than the house but stretched for a hundred feet. In the corners farthest from the porch there were bee boxes, surrounded by yellow and red flowers growing wherever they liked.

A clothesline on a pulley had been strung between the house and a big oak tree. Sheets and dishtowels were waving the breeze, emitting the scent of lavender. Just past the big tree where the clothesline ended, a garden started. Plants were not in rows, but clumps. Clumps of tomatoes, clumps of corn and clumps of and clumps of peppers were growing along with other plants Annie didn't recognize.

Old toilets were set up along the west fence, all of them with herbs growing from the bowls. Wood lattice work was supported by the porch's pillars. The lattice was covered in roses that had been allowed to vine.

The rest of the yard was dedicated to grass that wasn't tended.

It seemed that every three feet there was a ceramic garden gnome of some kind. Gnomes, frogs, fairies, rabbits, even a big ceramic deer were scattered around and through the overgrown back lawn. They stood watch over the toilet planters and peeked out from the clumpy garden.

Three bird baths held water and bird houses hung in the three big trees that shaded the yard. There were Adirondack chairs set up in the deepest pools of shade with small tables next to them. One had an ashtray on it.

Annie took a Diet Pepsi from the fridge, which seemed to hold every kind of soda pop made, took a seat there and lit up.

Kirsten thought she was possessed. Their friend Madison had made a Ouija board a while ago and they'd all been messing around with it.

Kirsten had taken it home. She'd been playing with it by herself and started having nightmares. That made her work the board more, trying to get the spirit to leave her alone. Her nightmares got worse and she found herself wanting to use the board all day every day. Madison said she should burn it right away. But when they'd Googled 'Ouija board get rid of' they'd found a bunch of sites that said burning it was the worst thing you could do. So they'd decided to come talk to Jane about it.

**********

Jane stared down at the cards on the table, frowning.

“That Ouija board you've been messing around with? If you want to stop the bad dreams just throw the thing away. You're the one freaking yourself out. There is no bad spirit following you around. It's a lot harder to make contact with the dead than you think. If you had one following you around you'd know it. And don't worry about how you get rid of it, just toss it.” Jane reshuffled the cards and laid them out in a different pattern.

She looked up at Kirsten. “You're dad's sick?”

Kirsten nodded. Jane nodded back. “Want to take him some ginger? Might help his stomach from the chemo?”

Kirsten's bottom lip trembled. “Is he going to be okay?”

“That's still hidden. If I knew I'd tell you. But once the plan for him is in place it'll happen before I can see it. I wish I could tell you something better, but I'd be a liar if I said yes.” Jane rooted around in her apron pocket and handed Kirsten a clean handkerchief. She headed into the kitchen to slice ginger while Kirsten wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

Annie saw Jane through the kitchen window and stubbed out her cigarette. She clomped up the steps and pulled on the screen door. It didn't open. Annie yanked harder, the door stuck fast.

She knocked.

Jane appeared at the back door with ginger root in one hand a knife in the other. “Oh, sorry!” she pushed the door open from the bottom with her foot. “Please come in.”

Annie walked into the kitchen and turned to re-latch the screen door. There was no latch. No hook and eye, no bolt, no nothing. Just the screen resting there in it's frame. Annie pushed. It swung open easily.

Kirsten brought the hankie to Jane in the kitchen. “No, that's for you.” Jane said.

“Thanks.”

“And here's the ginger for your dad. Put it in a cup of hot water so he can drink it like tea. “

“What do I owe you?”

“Whatever you think it's worth.”

Kirsten put a ten dollar bill on the kitchen counter and turned to find Annie. The windchimes sang them a merry good-bye.