Scary New Beginnings 3

In my other two stories, I told you about what it was like to feel "something" watching me after we moved into our first home and how I felt a warmth (yes, I know that doesn't make sense. But try holding one hand, palm down, over top of your other hand... Feel the warmth after a few seconds? That's what I mean by warmth) behind me while I cooked, washed clothes, or swept the carpet on the stairs leading to the upstairs bedrooms. It didn't make sense to me either, ghosts and cold go hand and hand, or at least I thought so, but the fact was it scared me to think "something" was that close to me and I couldn't see it. But watching my daughter talking to "someone" who I couldn't see was the finale straw. We started to look for another place to live soon after that.

We bought the farm just out of town. And I prayed it wouldn't follow us. My aunt and her family had that happen to them. But luckily I've never noticed anything out here and it's been 25 years since we moved. However, the poor man who bought the house up town wasn't as lucky. Red was a close family friend of my parents who lived in Amish country. His wife had died and his brother lived just up the road from the house we were selling. Paul was happy to have his brother close by again.

I can best describe Red as a total nonbeliever in ghosts and that sort of nonsense, his words. Yet, after he moved in and got settled, I took my children and went to visit Red. He was a hospitable fellow with a loud booming voice who spoke his mind, s**t was s**t not apple butter type. So when I finally got the nerve to ask if he noticed anything strange about the house, he grew silent and the color drained from his face.

After a few moments, he said, "Yes, I do and I don't know what to make of it." He then told me about feeling he wasn't alone and often thought his brother had dropped by without calling. But after checking he never saw anyone.

The worst experience for him happened while he was in the basement fixing the fire in the pot belly stove. He heard the back door open and footsteps walking across the kitchen. The door to the basement is in the corner of the room. He'd left the door open and called up, "Just a minute, Paul, I'll be right up." He hurriedly finished up and rushed up the steps, anxious to see what his brother wanted.

When he walked into the kitchen, no one was there. He looked around, calling his brother's name. No answer. He then walked out on the side porch, no one. Red was getting mad by this time. Was someone playing a joke or what? But when he walked outside expecting to see his brother's car, no one was there. Damn it, he must have left already, he thought.

He went back into the house and called his brother, "Why the hell didn't you wait for me to come up from the basement. I hollered at you?" he roared at Paul. "What are you talking about?" Paul said. "I wasn't at your house today. Olive and I went to Cadiz." Red said he knew his brother wasn't lying because he wanted to know if he was feeling alright and he was coming right down to check on him.

When he got to Red's, he wanted to know what was going on. Red told him everything and about hearing the door open and the footsteps in the kitchen. "Maybe we better check with the neighbors and see if they saw anyone here," Paul suggested.

But to no avail. No one saw a thing. After Paul went home, Red got his pistol out and kept it close to him while in the house and even put it under his pillow at night, just in case. But if it was what I think it was, a ghost, that wouldn't do much good, would it?

You have to understand this man wasn't scared of anything before he moved into the house. But after living there for a while he said he told "it", "To get the hell out and leave him alone." Things seemed to settle down some after that, but when Red died in the bathroom a few years later, it really bothered me. Now I'm not saying "something" had anything to do with it, they said he died of natural causes, but I'm sure he told "it" where to go many times after that and maybe "it" got tired of it. I'll never know.

Today, I wonder about the family living there now. I'd like to talk to them, but fear they will think I'm making things up. Their son and his wife just had a new baby; they live in the little house next door... Wonder if "it" was as happy about that little girl as when my daughter was born?