Haiku my Heart - House

old man rocked alone
on dilapidated porch
watching storm come in

This isn't a period story, or a scary story, or something to even make you sit up and take notice.  It's just something I wanted to tell you, about a place I used to live and a house. The place was Ridgeview, and it was a small town I lived in when I was twenty-something. Probably a total population of about 1500 or so.  I had a studio apartment over a coffee shop in the middle of town, and I worked downstairs. Convenient! The people in town were very friendly and a lot of us knew each other. It was a simple, peaceful time in my life.

The town boasted a large, two story house up on a rolling hill. It really stood out sitting up there alone, grey and weathered, and I always thought its peeling paint and dark windows seemed lonely looking.  I never knew who owned it. It was a rental and was  usually vacant. Tenants came and went, and some swore they heard tapping in the walls or footsteps in upstairs hallways. After each family left, weeds grew high in the untended yard, wild vines wrapped themselves up and around the loose, hanging shutters as if embracing the house, protecting it from the outside, or maybe trying to keep something in. (I used to imagine it was the latter!) I remember that the people of  Ridgeview loved the ghostly stories, myself included. It made the town important to tell visitors tales of beds shaking, fans turning on and off by themselves, knick knacks hurtling across rooms unexpectedly, even though no one really believed it. 

One time this writer guy came to town. He was all polished looking in his fine dark suit and full of big words to impress everyone he talked to. I remember one chill fall evening when the sky was getting dark and was streaked as if an artist had swiped a giant brush filled with Paynes grey across the low, white horizon. A rainstorm was approaching and jagged lightning cut wicked patterns in the sky. This writer guy (I never knew his name. Gosh, what if it was Steven King?) sat at the counter sipping coffee. He liked to talk about time travel, missing spaces in time, psychic stuff, poltergeists, etc. and insisted all of it was possible. Anyhow, the writer guy droned on to anyone who would listen about the ghostly otherworld and the book he was writing. He was really big on missing spaces in time. He told everyone who would listen that God caused the sun to stand still for one day. When his audience looked skeptical and smiled behind their hands, he was only encouraged and went on to explain that a scientist-minister had proven it way back in the 1930's, had even written a book about it.  He told us even a NASA engineer said it was true. I did some research later and what he said was partly true, but I don't know about the sun standing still. That might be from the bible and I'm not all that familiar with the bible. Anyway, that night after the shop closed I went upstairs and dreamed about time travel. Power of suggestion, I suppose.

In the morning, the rainstorm had passed and the sun glared like what I thought was much too bright for an early fall day but I was too busy to think about it. Early that evening the regulars gathered at the coffee shop and we all looked for the writer guy but he never came in. Someone looked out the window at the sunset up towards the hill where the grey house stood, and I know this sounds crazy but there was nothing there! Just open, twilight sky. The grass seemed to be mowed, no vines, no rubble, nothing. The house had vanished overnight!

Now, I'm a reasonably intelligent person, and  yes, I was pretty young at the time, but not gullible. No one had an answer for this disappearance. You can't tear down a large, two-story house in the middle of the night, or even day, and cart it away with no noise. No one had seen or heard a thing. It had just disappeared, like the writer guy who told time travel tales and was also missing. It was as if time itself had forged ahead a day to make up for something it had lost long ago and the grey, lonely house had been another time, another place.

Guess I'll never know. 

Anyway, have a wonderful day.

linked with
Rebecca's Haiku my Heart

house picture source: https://www.magalyguerrero.com/

    "one should never believe
    everything one reads"

confucius art: William S. Peters Sr.