A Quiet Kismet

Chapter Ten

AGE 10

My brother Jorge and a bunch of his friends were the ones who told me about the haunted Pickett's farmhouse. He was visiting home after being away all summer. I was eager to see him and wanted to be around him all the time. I guess I got in the way of his limited time with his friends, so he sat me down and told me about the haunted farmhouse.

Some eighty years ago, a farmer named Sam Pickett had a beautiful wife and two children. Everything in his life seemed perfect, until of course, he murdered them all in a fit of rage. Something about his wife sneaking off in the middle of the night with the handsome young ranch hand. The farmer killed his children in front of his wife to punish her then killed her before turning the gun on himself.

Jorge said that you could hear the children's laughter in the nursery, and a woman weeping in the kitchen where the wife was murdered. But you can't get too close to the house because the angry spirit of Sam Pickett wards off unwanted guests from his home, running off every single tenant the old farmhouse ever had after. Eventually the city put it on the market and there it had remained, untouched and withering in the decades to come.

"Why don't they just tear the house down?" I asked him.

Jorge shook his head and explained. "They tried, but then weird and unexplained things would happen to the crew and their equipment. Like, something beyond was trying to preserve the old house. Like Mr.Pickett protecting what was his."

"Have you gone in the house?"

"Never. It's said if you go into that house, you never come out." Jorge said, widening his eyes comically. Now, I could clearly see Jorge was just messing with me so all my energy would be channeled into that old farmhouse. But then, as a child, I drank in every single word. Whether that story was real or not, I never bothered to fact check it. I just really wanted to go into the house and see if I came out alive or if the mean spirit of Sam Pickett trapped me inside forever.

So when I went back to school I shared the story with a few of my friends. A couple, with older siblings, had already known the story of the old Pickett farm. Others listened with terrified expressions like I had.

Derek was the one who suggested we go visit it for Halloween, to see if the ghost was real. I had the same idea, but I refused to let Derek know that I agreed with him. That time was no different. "We can't, haven't you heard? You can go in, but no one can ever come out."

"Well, how do we know that's true?" Frankie Galindo, one of Derek's friends, said.

"Only one way to find out." Derek said, his eyes turning to me with a mischievous glimmer in them. "Halloween is next week, it'll be the perfect time to mess with the spirits. We can even bring an ouija board to communicate with Sam Pickett."

Okay, that wasn't exactly what I was aiming for. My Mom wasn't a strict parent, and for the most part let us do our own thing. But one thing Mom forbade was messing with spirits, especially with a ouija board. I didn't particularly believe in their sinister powers, but I also didn't want to risk it.

But was I really going to let Derek of all people show me up? "You bring the board, I'll bring the candles."

At this a few of our friends protested. They wanted no part in our creepy seance. I guess I couldn't blame them. As far as we were concerned then, the ghosts of Gable lived in that house. I was a little scared about going, but like always, my need to spite Derek won out.

I was going ghost hunting.

***

As a compromise, we promised not to spend Halloween in the house. Instead we chose to go the night before, somehow that seemed safer. I don't know who thought of it, but it's the way it happened.