Bringing Mae Flowers

The Young House: a modern suburban supernatural suspense story

Part 1:

There isn’t anything remarkable about the old brick farmhouse. It was an eyesore with its crumbling chimney and sagging porch, but something about it drew me in from the start.  It’s a small house on a scraggly, half-acre lot. The old stone well house still stood beside a leaning big with peeling red paint, despite the rest of the neighborhood being tied to the city water decades before, and the old woodshed was still piled high with molding logs. The land might have been grand once; many farms in the area had been, but as the suburbs grew, the farms shrunk. Now the property had receded to the old, abandoned 2-bedroom house. Its empty windows were boarded up with rotting plywood, but faint echoes of memories filled the lot with a presence that felt alive and restless.

Local gossip said the place had been on and off the market for years, but no one wanted it- not even for the prime location it stood on. No one lived in it, and no one cared for it, but the old house refused to disappear. No matter how heavy storms raged, earthquakes rumbled, and the canyon winds howled, the old bricks stood tall and the roof held steady. For decades the old house survived, out of place, among all the McMansions in the white-picket suburb, a piece of the past that refused to surrender to time.

I hadn’t meant to linger that night after my evening run. The moon was already hanging low, casting a blue glow on my dark skin by the time I came to the property line. I didn’t remember stopping, but I must have. My feet were planted on the concrete at the edge of the dead grass, my body facing away from the street and toward the shadow drenched structure. The world around me went mute and gray, as if making way for the voiceless whispers that echoed in my ears -intelligible-  but insistent and demanding. Seconds dragged on and raced forward like a dream. The attic window beckoned me like a pleading eye, not with words but with a weedeling urgency. My right foot left the concrete.

“Are you alright, young lady?” The elderly gentleman shuffled toward me from across the street. His wrinkled face heavy with concern, visible even in the growing dark. 

“I’m fine, just lost in thought, I guess.” I said, stepping back onto the concrete, away from the dead grass I threatened to cross.

“It’s not safe to linger here after dark. I recommend you get home now.” His voice was gruff but gentle, how I imagined the grandfather I never knew would sound.

“Yes, it is getting late. I know it’s not usually a good idea to be out at this time, but this neighborhood seems so safe.”  The voices that whispered in my ears had stopped, but I still felt a presence staring from the attic. 

“It isn’t the people around here you should be worried about. There are other things that can cause a young lady like you some trouble.”

“Yes, you’re probably  right.” I said, feeling that some deeper meaning was laced into his cryptic warning. “Good night then.” I wished him, as he smiled and waved his hand in farewell, watching me leave as if to make sure I was really going home. When I looked back after passing the next house over, I saw he was no longer watching me, but frowning at the old house, glaring at the attic.