Almost a Ghost Story

Part I

It was late summer. The little cherry colored sports car was made for that weather. With the top down the hot evening turned delightfully cool. The air was infused with the thick taste of cut-grass and night-blossoms. You could barely hear the buzz of the crickets and cicadas over the roar of the little miata’s engine.

Our little car zipped along cobblestoned streets, escaping the sleepy little town where our bed and breakfast was, headed for more lonely, more twisting roads. He was itching to drive, the car was itching to go and I was itching for an adventure. He took a turn northward and the faster we went the more I felt as though we were free. Delving into the back roads of the Pennsylvania countryside, leaving behind the sweet Dutch farmhouses and their cheery neighbors. As suppertime came and went and the sun started to fall dangerously low the roads got lonelier. It was just the two of us. Our conversation, started so chipper and easy - the kind of jabber that comes from being snuggled close in an unknown land – turned low and dark with the sky. We teased about horror movies, ghost stories: witches that haunt the forests, madmen who prowl for vengeance, dark houses that lure unsuspecting couples to their doom. And just as we started to giggle at our jests a building rose up out of the overgrowth of trees and bushes.

It was huge. Many stories tall, with wings that stretched wide either direction. At the top were turrets and gables, and each step down showed balconies and long hallways. And hundreds of hundreds of windows, all dark, all lonely, all threatening. It was an old resort, the chipping paint sadly showing how happy and chipper a place it used to be. The eaves of the windows looked naked without lace curtains. The lawn, overgrown and weedy, looked out of place without happy couple picnicking, happy children playing badmitton in white dresses and short pants. The big french doors to the lobby looked out of place without bellhops and butlers.

If this had been a movie we would have seen a figure in one of those old, dirty windows. A quick flash of a face or the brush of a skirt moving from room to room. If this had been a movie we would have seen lights flash on, beckoning us forward.

Instead a man in jeans jumped out of his work truck, stomping up the lonely stairway to the doors and turning on a construction light. Here too, the movie would have turned. The man would have seen us, come up to us sitting in our little convertible and warned us to move on. Not to ask questions, not stop here after dark. Instead we sat outside the gates and watched the old building in peace.

Driving on we talked about it. How a place like that ought to be haunted, ought to have a story. A grand old building still standing in the wild forests of Pennsylvania should have a history. It should have drama to match its weathered red trim and darken white walls. It should have a life. Motoring on in our little car we chattered about its size, how it’s such a surprise to find it amongst this little tiny road. We chattered so much we didn’t realize the sun was gone now and the road was narrower. We didn’t notice that the trees, which before lent a pleasing feel to the country, now leaned over us ominously making the dark summer night darker, more covered in shadows.

And we were startled to find on either side of us two small houses in disrepair. Unlike the large hotel the windows of these buildings were gone. Everything was dark, ominous. The walls leaned into weeds. The earth grew up around the houses as if it was trying to pull them down, swallow them whole. The wood was rotted, falling apart, the roof was sliding down slowly. The empty eyes of windowpanes were pitch, one could feel the hand of a witch reach out and grab you. Pluck you right in, never to return. Here there was no need of horror movie tricks. We were scared.

“Drive.” I whispered. I didn’t have too…he was already turning around.

To be continued…