The House Next Door

When I was seven, a family tragedy led my father to move us from Pine, Texas to Weatogue, Connecticut. Gone was our sprawling ranch-style home now replaced with a small Cape Cod. The miles between neighbors replaced with postage stamp lawns where you couldn't help but say “hello” to one another when dragging the garbage cans down to the street or checking the mail.

Gone, too, were the friends I had made at school. As our neighbors were now mostly in their twilight years and it being summer, no new kids were there to fill that gap. Mother suggested that once school started, I would make new friends, but I never believed the things she said. The house to the right of ours, almost a duplicate of our own, was currently unoccupied and the 'sold' sign pasted over the poster of the realtor's smiling face gave me some glimmer of hope that perhaps some children my own age would move in there soon.

My room was on the second floor, the window facing the empty house next door and across the hall from the room which would eventually become my sister's. She was still an infant and so cohabited the ground floor master bedroom. There was a small kitchen, a small living room and an office which barely fit my father's desk, computer and fax machine. I didn't understand what he did for work, but I knew he could do it from home and he'd said that that was what our family needed. I never believed the things he said, either.

I passed my time in solitude, riding my bike around the suburban streets, nightfall coming ever sooner as the summer came to a close. Mother always insisted that I be home by the time the streetlights came on and in my current state I would have dismissed her were it not for fear of my father's wrath. And through all of that time the house next to ours remained empty. I'd stare out my window sometimes, imagining the kinds of people who might move in, though those people generally fit the template of my own family with small tweaks.

September came and I was thankful to begin school, still at an age when it was more playful than studious. Moreover, I was grateful to meet Teddy and Lionel who would, as time passed, become my best friends. Living on the other side of town, I couldn't play with them without arranging for my father to drive me there (a rare occurrence!) but we were chums nonetheless. I stopped thinking about the house next door and almost as soon as I had done so, a moving van appeared.

That first week of October was unseasonably warm, the moving men soaked with sweat as they delivered the new family's furnishings. My imagination ramped up its efforts to predict what the newcomers would be like based on the antique-style furniture, olive green refrigerator, giant console television and stained glass lamps. The next day, a late model Oldsmobile pulled into the driveway and our neighbors arrived.

Dour. It wasn't a word I knew at the time, but when I learned it in high school it fit this family as if it were coined just to describe them. Dark clothes, all greys and browns with nothing in the way of ornamentation. Frowns. Dark, deep-set eyes. The three of them, father, mother and son, were as if stamped from a machine that created grim people. The boy appeared to be my own age but looked away when I waved to them from the porch. Having moved to a new town myself only a month before, and having a child's optimistic view of others, I chalked it up to his being nervous about his new home.

A few days passed, and it appeared that the new boy's room was facing my own. We made eye contact through the windows one evening but he promptly pulled the curtains closed. My father went over to spread some neighborly cheer and introduce himself, but was brusquely dismissed and all but driven from their doorstep as if he were an unwanted solicitor. He used some colorful language to describe them and it saddened me to think that befriending the new kid was unlikely to occur. Mother went over to visit them, telling me she thought my father's attitude set them off, but they wouldn't even answer the door for her.

Every weekday morning I waited at the end of the block for the bus to take me to school, each day expecting to see my neighbor but he never showed, and as near as I could tell he never left the house at all. Teddy and Lionel had numerous explanations for this behavior spanning from cultists to spies. My mind began to create an amalgamation of these ideas and in hindsight, I shouldn't have listened to them either because that shaped the things to come.

Unseasonal warmth was followed by unseasonal cold and we discovered that the heat in our new home vacilated from 'ice-box' to 'oven', at least in my room. My father insisted that I was being a whiner and my mother contributed nothing to the conversation. That first freezing night I snuggled up under two blankets and a comforter, drifting off to sleep with my body too warm and my nose too cold.

It was just after 3 AM when I heard the tapping at my window. I didn't snap awake as much as I slowly roused myself and stumbled out of bed to investigate. On the other side of the window, the boy from next store was tapping. My mind scrambled to make sense of it, it made no attempt to make sense of the thick, red tears streaming from his eyes.

“Help us!” he shrieked, throwing his head back.

Perhaps it was the 'us' in that statement, perhaps it was the sinister speculations of my school friends, but I felt a terror in my heart and stomach. Without realizing it, I had stumbled backwards, tripping and landing on my rear. Eyes scrunched shut, I began screaming in fright.

When I opened them again, I still heard screaming, but it was my sister from downstairs. There was shouting too, from my father. He was framed in the doorway, eyes wide and that vein on his forehead bulging. I was castigated for being a sissy who merely had a nightmare. I was blamed for waking up my sister, which to be fair, was my fault. There was no bloody eyed boy at the window. I was crying as I put myself back to bed and later my mother came in to comfort me, telling me it was all a dream. For once in my life I tried to believe her, but failed in this attempt.

I never asked him, so I'm not sure if it was my father or old man Hardesty two doors down who called the police. Three days after that night, people began to notice the smell. It was a smell I remembered from Texas, when a hike with my class brought us past the carcass of a deer. The stench of rot. The stench of death.

Reading from the local paper one night, my father told me that they had died from carbon monoxide because there was a problem with their furnace. It was a rare, but not unheard of occurrence in the days before smoke detectors gained additional functions. He didn't mention my 'nightmare', nor did mother. I didn't bring it up. I just let it sit there and ferment in my mind.

Mother says that I was young and have the order of events confused due to the unreliability of memory. She says that I had nightmares only after the incident. But she died giving birth to my sister, so I never believe the things she says.