By Mark Patterson
I don’t believe in happy endings, frisbee-shaped crafts speeding here from other galaxies, some fat reindeer jockey who gives a flip about my Christmas, nor that ever-popular protector in the sky-the one who moved heaven and earth (literally) just for the sake of us self-obsessed primates. Two or three betrayals ago, I probably believed in the goodness of family, and before an eight-year vacuum of playoff wins, I definitely believed in the Pittsburgh Steelers. Likewise, bitter experience has conditioned me to not put faith in the loyalty of acquaintances, the support of co-workers, or even ostensible fruits of my own labor. And I certainly don’t believe (whatever the bullet angles) that Oswald had accomplices.
But like the saggy-suited lion from that timeless film, I do believe in spooks. And I believe in the house.
Since William McKinley served as president, and its grand pillars were not an anachronism, it has stood there, glaring imperiously downward into the vibrant borough of Beaver. Vintage automobiles once sat rusted, abandoned for who knows how long in a back yard perfect for croquet, afternoon tea taken in Great Gatsby attire, and the 1965 intrusions of an adventurous neighborhood kid mesmerized by all the decadent grandiosity and pulled in by whatever unearthly spirits he would come to know abided there.
Acutely aware of the decaying mansion’s reputation as “haunted,” the then-children of Maple and Westwood drives -laid out right across from the more affluent (and deliciously named) cul-de-sac , Windy Ghoul-conducted reconnaissance there, creeping closer and closer to the structure proper until finally mustering the courage to gawk through its dust- shrouded windows. More dust, crumbling walls, and hardwood floors vacant of furnishings. That was all.
Not that we expected to see headless specters, little girls in blood-spattered party dresses beseeching us to “come in and play forever,” or even a garden variety vampire. (Bela Lugosi style, slicked hair and all, might have been my faint hope.) Contrary to romanticized myth, kids don’t actually believe in what they can’t see, touch, or consume. We knew as well as any adult, for instance, that burial meant things stay in the box, and that green fingers don’t grab from under the bed. Thus, “Haunted House” was merely a game we played-no different than tag, hide and seek, or whiffle ball. Nobody, I’m sure, in that whole residential area truly believed that anything besides roaches and rodents walked within those walls.
We were disabused of that deeply held notion-and lost an irretrievable chunk of our quaint 60’s innocence-late one summer night of my eighth year when the house bared its soul. Anguished screams and reproachful commands, looped and repeated for maybe an hour, boomed out unnaturally amplified from an upstairs window bathed in strobing brown light. Discernable figures, coal black and not quite human, kept acting out the same discordant play, over and over-like prisoners of some unresolved passion or dispute.
Reverential in the face of its unmasking, we gathered around the house and bore hushed witness to the inconceivable. Our dark church, so to speak, an apparent repository of the sort of strife and internal tension no doubt simmering in many of our own dwellings, had at last sounded the bell summoning us to midnight sermon, and all within earshot attended.
Despite the deafening noise, no police cars rolled up in response to what for all the world-or, at least, whatever world those dark, stilted marionettes existed in-seemed a domestic disturbance. Nor was that night much spoken of in the aftermath, as little league baseball, backyard cookouts, and weekly episodes of Bonanza (Adam had not yet departed the legendary show) soon rendered irrelevant that 60-minute peephole into the grand house’s business.
Maybe we held to some unspoken pact in keeping the house’s secrets. But I think sometimes of the place, and compelled by echoes of that somehow transformative experience, occasionally visit, even now, some six decades later. Counterintuitively, standing in its foreboding presence brings solace. Somebody, sometime, has boarded over the windows, and the tall, imposing chimney many feet in the air looks ready to collapse, but the over-sized, ancient rock steps I ascend to the front porch remain intact, even if their quivering iron rail might eventually betray some interloper.
“I wish you peace, and may you stand forever,” I say quietly when up close to the source of my entire life’s sum of wonderment-and perhaps the only thing I’ve ever believed in. The house does not reply.
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