The Witch's House

[This is a story I will rework one day. As it stands now it was written to satisfy the guidelines of a short story contest. the opening sentence and closing sentence were given as part of the contest rules, as well as the length.]

Some people swore that the house was haunted. Almost all the kids in the dodge-ball circle agreed. "They say a witch lived there," whispered Darla's big sister. "My friend saw a ghost inside." Maybe her sister was just teasing, or making it up.

Darla walked across the street and climbed onto the old bike her father had bought for her, its fragile "German racer" frame as spindly as her own little limbs. She pedaled down the street past the homes and obedient shrubbery of the suburban development. The houses were reassuringly uniform, placed at even intervals along the green stretch of front lawns. At the corner the street post marked the intersection of Trafalgar and Cypress Drives. Familiar names. She had been turning left here on her way to school every day for the past three years.

But today Darla turned right, and then a few blocks later turned left, leaving behind the young housing development built on a former potato field. She coasted down Pine Avenue towards the witch's house. Here the houses were older, each one different under a tangled canopy of unmanicured woods. The street was pitted. Gravel and dirt blurred the line between roadway and yards. An old boat dropped peeling paint on an unkempt lawn. Scraggly grass, neglected under the trees, did its best to survive.

There it was. That had to be the witch's house. The air was suddenly cooler. Darla got off her bike and buttoned up her cardigan.

The cracked stucco cottage barely held up its sagging roof. Vines pushed their way off the crowded lattice and spilled across the walls. Even the "Condemned" sign was in tatters on the torn screen door above the rotted stoop. But the late-summer flowers bloomed and thrived among the weeds in what used to be the garden.

Darla did not have the nerve to walk up close and look in the dirty old windows. She stood still for a long while and watched the honey bees at work in the liberated yard. And then she began to see. She began to see the image of an old lady -- watering her garden, making tea on the stove, talking to her cats and her flowers, clocking the changing seasons. She saw a lonely old woman. No. Not lonely. Alone. A woman who nobody understood. Who had no one to tell the things she saw and the things she knew.

The sun was getting low in the sky. Darla was pretty sure the streetlights would be on back in her neighborhood, and the rule was: Come home when the streelights go on. She mounted her bike and rode back.

Ciprion Court? That was a strange street name. Was she going in the wrong direction? The next street post said Lloyd Lane. What? Was everything replaced while she was on Pine Avenue? Was this actually a dream? The ground tilted. The green lawns might open up and swallow her.

Ahh. OK. Trafalgar Drive. She turned into her street and then into the driveway. She was home. But now the houses looked dangerous. The obedient shrubs did not understand her. She felt out of place, and the uniform homes laughed their ridicule from behind neat curtains.

She could not tell anyone the things she saw and the things she knew. Nothing was ever the same again after that.

(c) ilyse na'omi kazar, 2011