When I was a kid, there was an abandoned house I was obsessed with but was always caught when I tried to sneak around it. Which sucked! There was all sorts of cool shit and old cars and I remember finding a stuffed frog that I was forced to take and put back in the old 1960s rustbucket in the yard, where I'd found it lounging in the back windshield. It was a source of many stories with the local kids because we all knew the original inhabitants had died in the '80s (I think?), and because there was a fence infested with wasps in the front that I got my head stuck in once, but I channeled all of the rumors into this story. Which was fun! And maybe gives away how often I got away with exploring things that weren't mine.
Fugate Drive was unremarkable: a short, dead-end road that branched off from the main street of a slowly dying coal town. All of the houses were inhabited by elderly couples who stubbornly refused to leave once the mines began drying up, and extremely transient thirty-somethings who hopped houses on a slow, expensive trek to find their footing. Since most of the homes were owned and rented out by the same woman—my neighbor, Valerie—they all had the same look about them, too. It was white vinyl siding and wrought iron porch columns as far as the eye could see.
It was an extremely boring place to grow up. And back in ‘96, when I was seven years old, it was where I held the unfortunate title of “The Only Kid in the Neighborhood.”
My family was on the verge of dirt-eating poor, so I didn’t have much to do indoors. There were no cool toys or video games to hold me hostage. Outside wasn’t much better; there was only so much to do alone on a street inhabited by old women who’d turn the hose on me if I got too close to their yard. I spent most of my childhood being both painfully lonely and excruciatingly bored, with moments peppered in between where I’d successfully brainstorm something to do that wouldn’t get me in trouble.
I found a creek where I could spend time catching frogs, which was nice until I realized I had nobody to show said frogs to. I learned that the best climbing tree was in the backyard of a rental home that was empty more often than not, though it didn’t seem as thrilling once I mastered climbing it. Sometimes, if I was desperate enough to pitch in, Valerie would tell me some interesting stories while gardening. The tales were fun, even if peonies weren’t.
Without a shadow of a doubt, though, the most interesting thing to explore was the one place it seemed like Valerie didn’t own. On the other side of her home from mine and a few houses down, enveloped by trees and vines, was an uninhabited property that looked like it hadn’t been touched since before I was born. Everyone called it “The Hensley House.”
The Hensley House was unique. The paint was flaking and the roof shingles were loose, and all that remained of a once pristine picket fence was a single section of wasp-infested wooden planks that bordered the sidewalk. Ancient, rusted cars slept in a gravel driveway that had been mostly reclaimed by nature. Sun-bleached curtains, now a nauseating green, were still perfectly cinched in long-dark windows, revealing porcelain figurines of red-cheeked animals gazing out at the world with beady little eyes. The backyard was a veritable jungle of out-of-control morning glories that twined low-hanging branches together so densely, it created a canopy that nearly blotted out the sun. The ground was a mess of moss and ivy, slugs and beetles, and treasures that were lost long ago, waiting for a particularly restless second grader to recover them from cracks in what had once been a lovely brick patio.
When nothing else seemed interesting on a slow summer day, I could always count on getting a kick out of playing “treasure hunter” at the Hensley House.
The problem was that I wasn’t supposed to be there. Valerie told me as much, saying that I was “trespassing” and “being disrespectful.” Apparently, the titular Hensleys were long dead, but had once been fiercely protective of their property.
“I don’t think they’d appreciate it if you kept pokin’ around their yard, takin’ all their stuff,” she once told me, in a tone that clearly implied I was heading toward trouble. Unfortunately, I was a child who only listened to these sorts of warnings if they didn’t clash with what I wanted. I vaguely remember following up her warning by asking if anyone was currently living there, and being told no. There was some boring talk about a daughter who didn’t know what to do with the house, how technically “treasure hunting” was “stealing,” and some other junk that a kid doesn’t really care about. All I was taking out of it was that the house was empty and that meant nobody would catch me if I kept on like I had been.
So, I did. I kept on like I had been, waiting until Valerie was busy or gone so she wouldn’t see me ambling around the forbidden yard through her kitchen window. And, as time went on, I got braver. Hunting for bugs and bits in the moss was fun and all, but the old shed door was cracked just enough that I could get inside and forage for anything useful or interesting. Things like old timey Avon bottles shaped like dogs and race cars, or ancient RC colas still in the carrier. Before long, I realized those cars parked by the house were unlocked and there were goodies in the glove box. Mostly papers, yellowed and brittle, that told a story about the people who used to drive them, though I did also find a moldy toy frog that I decided to keep amongst my hoard.
There was a hole in the lattice under the screened-in back porch and I eventually got brave enough to crawl under the house, too. It’s where I found stored boxes of old, faded Christmas decorations, grimy Santas that used to light up and were now mostly covered in cobwebs and dirt. Bones, too, of a dog or coyote or some fanged animal that had crawled underneath the house to die and left only a jawbone as a sign that it was ever there.
The screened-in back porch was the natural next progression. It was locked, but rain and time had made the metal latch incredibly brittle. Weak enough, actually, that a little good ol’ fashioned stubbornness saw it pop right off so I could take stock of things I’d only ever seen through a layer of warped mesh. Things like the worn and ragged porch furniture, made of wicker and tacky, moldy floral cushions. There were suncatchers in the shapes of hummingbirds spinning at the end of dirty strings and tied awkwardly to wherever they’d fit.
Once upon a time, there’d been plants, too, but they were long gone with only the terracotta pots remaining. The dirt inside was so dry that it barely registered as dirt. It was more like ash, gritty and crumbly and having settled so far down in the containers that it had almost become a cake at the bottom.
I took a suncatcher, and an entire pot of desiccated soil. For whatever reason, I found it interesting.
Hell, it was all interesting. I felt like I was stepping back in time, getting to know secret things about secret people that I was never meant to know. This was a child’s equivalent of digging up the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. My curiosity burned me like a lit cigarette. I was hooked.
Emboldened by the fact I hadn’t yet “gotten got,” I spent a lot of time trying to find other places to explore. I exhausted the shed, the cars, the porch, and aside from a few new cool spiders and slugs, I’d exhausted everything the crawl space had to offer, too. It wasn’t like I could go back to digging through moss for bottle caps, not when there were treasures left unseen and secrets buried in places I couldn’t reach.
So, I started stealing trash cans from the neighbors. I got caught a few times, but eventually learned when people were at work or the store or church. I’d slip to the end of their driveways, grab my prize, and quietly drag them to the Hensley House to use as a stool to reach the windows. I wasn’t so stupid that I would try actually breaking into the house itself, but I didn’t see any harm in taking a peek. After all, the curtains were wide open and you could practically see into the living room from the street.
I spent a lot of time with my hands cupped around my face, squinting past the dust in the windows. If the sun was angled just right, I could see entire rooms as clearly as if the electricity was still working. Most of them had a dingy, kelly green carpet and wood panel walls covered with dust-caked photos that were impossible to discern. The beds were made so tightly that the sheets still seemed to have a spring to them, and the kitchen was a cramped, meticulously organized affair with a blue-and-white color scheme that didn’t match anything else. The living room was cluttered in knick-knacks but was in spectacularly good shape, save for a brown recliner on the far side of the room, awkwardly tilted with a short stack of magazines in the seat.
All in all, it was everything you’d imagine a grandma’s house to be. Simple. Dated. Dull.
I kept hoping something interesting would catch my eye, but nothing really changed except for the spider webs. In fact, I started getting bored, and that was a feeling that brought with it a deep anxiety. After sinking so much of my summer into playing detective, the idea of doing anything else seemed foreign and empty.
What was I supposed to do, after all? Go back to a life of catching frogs with no one and sitting restless in a tree?
Hell no! I had to up the ante somehow, though the only thing I could figure was finding a way to actually get in the house. Even if I was a stupid kid, I was smart enough to realize that was beyond a bad idea. The furthest I ever got was standing on the front porch and staring at the doorbell, as if ringing it would summon somebody aside from the occasional angry neighbor trying to scare me away.
Which would lead me back to looking in windows. I still couldn’t tell who was in the photos on the wall. I knew exactly how many cans of thyme were left on the kitchen counter. I was reaching first name basis with the orb weaver that was living in the bush by the bedroom window. I felt like a homicide detective that had finally run out of leads.
Case closed. The Hensleys were dead, and their cool, ancient, older-than-me stuff was going to take their secrets to the grave with them.
Then, there was a break in the case. I had been trapped inside by the rain for most of the week, but the sun had finally decided to come out of hiding with a vengeance. It had to have been the hottest and muggiest day of the year, but it was bright and blue and I was sick of watching bad talk shows.
So, out I went. There was an urge to catch up on my daily staring contests with the Hensley’s doorbell, but I heard the shrill, excitable voice of Valerie somewhere around the corner on the main road. Showing around the new revolving door tenants, if I had to guess, and talking louder than a preacher at Sunday service.
Of course, avoiding her was the best option. I turned on my heels and decided to cut through some backyards, hers included. I hopped some fences, accidentally stepped on a flower or two, and eventually made my way to the Hensley House’s thoroughly investigated property. Ivy and cracked brick crunched beneath my sneakers as I tread the same tired ground I had been haunting for weeks, eyes fixed on my feet in hopes that maybe something new would have popped up since the last time I was there. Hell, I’d even settle for a new snail.
No such luck. I let out a resigned sigh and stopped dead in the center of the brick patio, lifting my head to look up at the gaps between the vines and trees. Spots of sunlight managed to sneak through the branches, but not enough. I could barely see the blue of the sky, and I remember finding it strange. The canopy had always been thick and the property had always been shady, but it had never been as dark as it was that day.
However, a child’s mind isn’t too keen on picking up bad omens. I was at an age where I could get swiped off the street if somebody offered me enough candy, so it being a little too dim didn’t really set off any alarms. It was an oddity I noted before trying to figure out whose trash can would be the easiest to swipe. The Hughes family always sat out several of the big, square, sturdy ones, but they usually sat them out in plain view of the Hendersons across the street. Valerie would always notice if hers were gone because she was a stickler about things being in place. The Johnson family at the end of the road probably wouldn’t notice since they never seemed to notice anything, but I’d have to walk past some prospective renters and their loud landlady to get to them.
That’s when I heard a very sharp creak that snapped me out of my train of thought. At first I thought it was a tree branch or Valerie’s back door. I braced myself for the crash of a falling limb or some unforeseen family member to burst onto Valerie’s porch, but I was met with silence. Then, another creak.
This time, it didn’t take me by surprise, save for the fact that it was coming from a curious direction. My heart was thudding faster than it ever had in my life, and I found myself craning my head towards the house itself. My eyes came to rest on the culprit before my brain really had time to process what I was seeing, and I stood in silence as it took its time catching up to the moment.
Through the mesh on the back porch, partially obscured by tacky suncatchers, I realized that the back door was open. Not a lot, not entirely. It was just a crack, about the width of my hand, and just obvious enough to be noticeable.
My first thought wasn’t investigating. My first thought was to think back to Valerie telling me about the daughter who didn’t know what to do with the house, how she wouldn’t have appreciated me being on the property. How what I was doing was technically trespassing and stealing. Again, I froze, waiting for some stranger to come out and demand that I explain myself.
And again? Nothing.
I let out a long breath and loosened my posture. I walked to the edge of the house and peered around into the overgrown gravel driveway, trying to see if there was any indication of a new car. The only ones that greeted me were the rusted heaps I’d already gone through.
But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t anyone there, I reckoned. There was a church parking lot at the top of the hill and I’d known plenty of people to park there. Fugate Drive was a cramped mess and some folks opted to walk it rather than try to find comfortable parking.
So I called out, an innocent hello with a tone that I hoped conveyed the lie that this was a first time offense for me. I played dumb as I elaborated to the air: Hi, do you live here? I live just down the road. I was cutting through on the way to a friend’s house. I’m sorry.
Silence. I checked for a car again. I checked to make sure the coast was clear. I uttered another greeting and wound up with nothing in return.
My thoughts shifted. Maybe somebody was in there, probably this hypothetical daughter. Or her cousin or brother or aunt or uncle. Maybe whoever it was happened to be somewhere on the other end of the house and didn’t realize they left the back door open. Or, worse yet, maybe they were already gone and didn’t realize it didn’t latch. Either way, it wasn’t safe. What if somebody got in that wasn’t supposed to be there?
That would be positively awful, wouldn’t it?
Motivated by only the faintest desire to see the inside of the Hensley House, I cautiously began to edge forward, across the brick patio and up the steps. I pulled open the broken door to the screened-in porch and hesitated before knocking a bit too quietly on the back door itself. My voice was faint as I muttered another “hello” through the crack. My second knock was more calculated, louder and more forceful, so that the door squeaked open just enough to see inside.
Which, admittedly, was difficult to do even with the door open. It was too dark. So, I poked my head in for a better look and was hit with the distinct odor of mildew, dust, and something sour that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Considering that the back door led into the kitchen and electricity was nothing but an ancient memory, I figured it probably had something to do with sour milk, bad meat. Years of rot and grossness that had been left to fester and nothing I needed to be too worried about so long as I didn’t yank open the fridge to investigate further.
Covering my nose with my shirt, I took a tentative step inside. It was hotter indoors, and somehow more humid. The kitchen tile was sticky with some unknown substance, and dusty enough that I left prints in my wake. A single point of light could be seen at the opposite end of the house—the living room window, visible from the kitchen—but it was filtered through what looked to be a sheer set of once-white curtains, fluttering like a worn flag. Odd, honestly, because I distinctly remembered all of the curtains being the same thick green ones that were all carefully cinched in the middle.
My brows furrowed. This was clearly a sign that somebody had been in the house, or was in the house. Why didn’t they answer me? Was it because I had been purposely quiet? I’d knocked louder the second time. And why would they just hang up some gross curtains? What did that accomplish?
Unless…
A laugh escaped me and I popped my forehead with my palm.
Duh! It wasn’t a curtain. It was a sheet. I’d seen my dad hang them up while touching up the walls in our house so paint didn’t accidentally get on the windows. And the Hensley House was in bad enough condition that even a second grader could tell you it probably would need a new coat (or five) whenever somebody came back to fix the place up. I couldn’t guess why they wouldn’t have cleaned out the rancid fridge or dusted first, but sometimes the reasoning of adults went way beyond me.
However, that also meant that somebody was probably actively there, and that person probably had heard me come into the kitchen. And maybe that person would like some help from some bored, well meaning kid who’d come in with the pure intention of letting them know their door was open. And maybe they’d let that good kid take a look around and tell them stories about who lived here before, so said kid could compare notes to figure out if they were right.
I yelled into the house, louder and more confident. I explained they’d left their door open. I asked if they wanted me to close it for them. Or if they needed help.
Step by step, I inched from the kitchen to what I assumed was a dining area. I hadn’t seen this part of the house from the outside since there were no windows, just a light fixture swinging in the breeze I’d let in. Cobwebs danced between links in a chain that was tangled with a yellowed electrical cord.
I kept talking. I wasn’t even waiting to hear if there was a response, and to this day I don’t know if it was because I was caught up in the excitement of seeing something nobody had seen in decades, or if it was because my gut instinct told me that something was wrong. I blabbered and blabbered, and I’m sure that the longer I spoke, the more holes were apparent in my story. I’ve never been good at maintaining a lie, and I was even worse before my brain fully developed.
The floor creaked beneath me with every step, a sound that echoed into the depths of the house as if it were as hollow as a cave. I skirted around the dining table, fingers running across tacky, dusty chairs. My heart skipped a beat as I stopped beside the bedroom door.
Finally, my brain registered with certainty that something wasn’t right. Nobody was answering me, the darkness was beginning to feel constricting, and I consciously realized something that’d I’d been ignoring in my excitement. The smell from the kitchen was getting stronger the further I walked from it, rather than fainter. When I began to consciously focus on it, I was surprised it hadn’t repelled me sooner.
It was less sour now, and more… something else. Putting words to it seems impossible in retrospect, and was even harder at an age where I was barely struggling through Accelerated Reader programs at school. I didn’t have the vocabulary, but I knew it sat in my nostrils and twisted my stomach and made my head throb. Somehow, I knew that I was walking towards something dead.
I don’t know how I knew that, save primal instincts. My only encounter with death at age seven was second-hand gossip from Valerie about some of the neighbors and some pet fish I’d failed to feed properly. It wasn’t anything I’d really seen, let alone smelled, yet my mind filled in the gaps with images from horror movies I’d peeped through parted fingers.
I called out another apology, and an excuse which was probably wildly different than the ones I’d used coming in.
In response, the floor squeaked.
Yet, I hadn’t moved. And the way the floorboards squealed beneath the carpet told a story about something moving that was much, much bigger than myself. As if my shoes had sunk in concrete, I stood there frozen, unable to will my legs to move or my body to turn. I forgot how to swallow or speak as I entertained thoughts of being the next missing kid on America’s Most Wanted.
Thud. Squeak. Thud.
I could see movement now, shadows dancing across the wall, far too blurry to make out. A wave of putrid air caught my nose again, and the jolt was enough to knock me out of whatever trance I’d fallen into. I clasped both hands over my face to block out the smell and scooted backwards towards the kitchen.
Squeak. Thud. Squeak.
My eyes couldn’t register what I was looking at at first. It was just a blob, obscured by the tears welling in my eyes from the scent of decay. When I blinked them away, it began to take a solid form: hunched and loose and knock-kneed in a dress that was tattered at the edges, backlit by the living room window. At first I thought it was a person and my first instinct was to apologize, but then, it moved.
Rigid. Jerking. Its head slumped sideways and then snapped up so violently that what looked like an entire clump of hair flung free of its scalp and slapped against the wall. A new, noxious odor followed its movement and a few droplets of something black and rancid hit my hand.
Bile rose up my throat and, for the first time in my life, I dropped the f-bomb. In true child fashion, my fear only intensified when it left my mouth; not only was I going to die, my mother would somehow magically know and be so mad at me, as if my current company wasn’t mad enough. It lurched forward and a ragged, wheezing sound escaped it. The floorboards squeaked as it stumbled and barely caught itself.
I finally found it in me to run.
Something sour rose up my throat as I let go of my face and was slapped with the full force of the smell, and it was only made worse by the way my stomach flip-flopped inside of me. I knew I couldn’t stop to look back, but I could paint a very vivid picture in my head based on the grotesque noises behind me. Squelching, stumbling, thudding and hissing as ancient, hole-filled lungs struggled to say words that would never come out. Clicking teeth, falling objects. Something broke in the kitchen as I felt cold, bony fingers claw at the back of my shirt and barely miss getting enough of a grip to pull me back.
The kitchen tile seemed to expand infinitely, the door always moving further and further away, still tantalizingly cracked from when I came in. Lungs burning and stomach roiling, I launched myself at the back door like a pouncing cat and curled both hands around the edge. I pulled and I pulled, but it was as if some invisible force was holding it shut out of spite. I felt a rush of musty, bitter air on the back of my neck and screamed.
The door flung open. So forcefully that I nearly fell back into the entity and barely managed to catch my footing as I threw myself out on the porch. The wicker lawn furniture and empty plant pots became obstacles as I stumbled and shrieked and threw cushions and watering cans and whatever else I could in the direction of the door. Stealing only the briefest glance to see if I was making any leeway, I saw it looming at the threshold, emaciated and flaking to nothing, eyes long gone and dried maggots caked to what was left of the flesh. Strings of loose hair fell messily around it, from patches of scalp that were mostly peeled away from the skull.
It was the sort of image that sticks with you, one you carry with you in excruciating detail for the rest of your life. And so I have, just like I carried the memory of how bad it hurt when I realized I’d carried myself to the porch stairs and promptly fell down them.
My nose cracked against the brick patio. I felt blood oozing down my face, but adrenaline numbed the pain enough that I could climb up to my feet and bolt around the edge of the house, past the abandoned cars and the garbage cans I failed to return. Something slapped the windows as I ran by, my legs pumping so hard that I could barely feel them, but I refused to look up. I didn’t know who or what was trying to get my attention but, given what I’d just seen, I could imagine.
Instead, I just screamed.
I screamed as I ran out onto the sidewalk. I screamed as I stumbled over the uneven pavement. I screamed until I saw Valerie on the sidewalk in front of one of her rental properties, waving at a car of hopeful tenants as they made their way out of Fugate Drive. It was obvious that I’d taken her by surprise; she never stopped waving even as her smile faltered and I collided with her legs like a runaway vehicle.
She swayed and threatened to fall as I wrapped myself around her knees, blood smearing on her slacks and fingers digging into my own sleeves. Not a word passed her lips as I confessed three times in the span of thirty seconds to what I had done. I’d not listened to her, I’d been snooping around the Hensley House, something was in there and it was going to get me. The phrase “I’m so sorry” flung from the end of my tongue so many times that it ceased to have meaning, becoming more and more strained as tears and snot began to block my throat, making it harder for me to speak.
To her credit, she listened. Hand still lifted in a wave, she looked down at me with puzzlement, then disappointment, then sympathy. The final time I glanced up at her, her face was twisted in indignant anger and her eyes were fixed on the Hensley House, deceptively still and silent behind a fragment of its fence.
“Oh, Leslie,” she sighed, dropping her hand at long last. “I told you not to go snoopin’. Their girl ain’t cleaned that house out for a reason. Nobody gets in there anymore. Nobody can.”
Slowly, she fell to her knees. Her arms wrapped around me in a hug, and I could feel the heaviness of her sigh as she rested her head on my shoulder. She was still facing the house and I could imagine she was still glaring.
After a long, tense moment of tears, Valerie looped her arms around me to pick me up off the ground and lead me home. She didn’t flinch as I wrapped my snot-and-blood covered hand around hers and toddled behind her, legs so weak that I didn’t know whether or not I could keep up with her stride. My whole body shook and neither of us spoke as we ambled down the sidewalk to my front door, or at least we never spoke to each other. I muttered to myself that I was stupid and I was sorry and I wanted my mom, and Valerie mumbled under her breath when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.
But, I was. At one point, I looked up at her and saw her expression was still stony and mad, her jaw stiff and her brows fixed like those of an angry mother. She never looked down at me, never even noticed I was looking at her, and I sniffled as I watched her suck in a breath between her teeth.
“Fuckin’ Ruth Hensley,” she quietly grumbled. “Always hated her. What a bitch.”