Short Story

The House

As always, I was sitting in the back door way of my family shop, unable to sate my curiosity, I was staring at the house behind the shop. Early spring was my favourite season of the year in this ridiculously hot country. Warm sunlight brightens the world and wraps my body while the cool breeze cools the heat down. It's the best weather that can be felt in Brisbane. But even with the perfect sunlight and breeze, that house over there refuses to accept the sunlight and chooses to stay oddly cold. Brisbane had a lot of old houses, but that one was different. Every time the breeze blew through that house, it came out to be as cold as ice.

No matter how long I stare at that house, it refuses to show any sign of life and continues to maintain its aura of uninviting spookiness. I asked the house out loud,

"How long are you going to stay like that?" Not expecting an answer, I came back to reality and a lady was looking at me with a boring facial expression, while her body was facing towards the house. I guessed that she was about to continue her walk to the backyard. I lifted my hand and waved slightly, smiling politely, maybe awkwardly. She lifted her hand without waving it, but simply showed her wrinkly palm to me. Her face muscles didn't move at all.

A few weeks ago, I saw her for the first time. The next day, she saw me. I waved at her on the day she saw me, but she kept her poker face and ignored me. She ignored me like that for about two weeks. Then she nodded at me, and from last week, she lifted her hand to signal a greeting. But every time I saw her, she had that expressionless face as if she didn't know how to move it.

That lady is the only person I ever seen who is not fazed by the spookiness and goes into the house. I wondered whether she actually enters the house. But the high vine-covered fence blocked my view and allowed me to see only the front part of the house. And because there is a door stuck on the house's front wall, a level higher in the middle of nowhere, no one could access the house through the front. So, I had no chance of knowing whether anyone could enter the house. I wondered what that lady had to do in that abandoned house. My curiosity seemed to grow.

I never asked anyone about that house. I wanted to know things like what happened there and why it is ominous like that. But I felt like it was rude to ask about other families' business.

Soon the weather was getting hotter like it always did at this time of the day. I hated the usual weather of Brisbane, and it made me want to quench at least one thing, the temperature or my curiosity.

So I went back into the shop to ask my parents. They were both at the counter and the shop was quiet. It was a good time to ask something.

"Mum! Dad!" I stopped in front of them.

"What is it darling?"

"Do you know why the house at the back is abandoned? Did you know there is a lady going in there frequently?" My curiosity made the questions tumble out.

"Wait. Don't ask too many questions at once. Plus, we don't know anything about it. You can ask the bakery next door. They've been here for a long time."

Off I went to the bakery.

As soon as I arrived in the doorway, I quickly made my way to the bakery. No customers were there, so once again it was a perfect time to ask a question.

The baker's name was Jim and he sometimes gave us leftover breads. I asked him,

"Jim! Do you know what happened at the house behind us, the abandoned one? And did you know there's a lady going into that house?" I went into the bakery's kitchen while continuously asking questions. "Do you know who she might be? Is there a..."

"Whoa, I don't know about the lady you're talking about, but just relax a bit" He looked troubled, but he calmed down quickly and told me the story.

"About 13 years ago, the house was just a normal house like the surrounding ones with a family of four living there. Two sons who were both in senior high school, and a parent. But the father always swore at the mother who didn't work. The two sons were always on the father's side and hated their mother as well. Then one night, the house mysteriously caught fire and everyone died except the mother. But the autopsy revealed that the sons and the father had knife wounds. They were killed before the fire.

Most people knew that it was the mother who did all this, but the mother strongly denied it and they were unable to find any evidence to prove it. So they concluded it was a robbery and the mother lived somewhere else. After that no one wanted to buy the house or go near it.

The incident was even on the Courier Mail and Channel 7 News. A house was on fire and most of the family members died by knife wounds, so they were obviously murdered. Surely it was a big news in Brisbane." Jim finished his story, but I just stood there, thinking about the shocking story I've just heard. If the mother was the one who did that, she is obviously a psycho, killing her own family and burning them.

Then I wondered, who is that lady that enters the house that everyone fears? I looked through the big back window in the bakery. The house came in view and soon after she came into my view as well, standing in front of the house. She was looking straight through the window and at me. For the first time, she lifted her hand and waved at me before I did, then also for the first time, she smiled.