Ghost Story

 Ghost Story

K.R. Schneider

The children in the village tell a story - about the house at the top of the hill. It’s quiet now - for the most part. Its bricks are worn. They crack and crumble. It was a grand house once, back when the first Mr. and Mrs. Underhill were alive. Before the fire. Before Maggie. Servants in every hall; lamps lit every room. You could see the lights all the way from the edge of town. Bright, warm lights. The kind of lights that gave an impression of...safety. Or an illusion anyway. 

I’m not sure it has ever been safe there. In the house at the top of the hill. The house knows too much tragedy. Like the night they all died in the fire: the Underhills. Well...all of them except Thurston. Like the night that Margaret Underhill went swinging from the widow’s walk. It was something like ten hours before the paperboy notified the authorities. People thought her husband would have found her. But...the cracking of lightning on a tree branch and the snap of a neck on a noose make the same sound. At least, they do in the midst of a thunderstorm when the windows of the house are already shaking. Or that’s what Mr. Underhill told the coroner when they found her. 

Charlie: “Mr. Underhill, sir, we need to ask you some questions about your wife.” 

Mr. Underhill: “She’s dead. What could you possibly need to know?”

Charlie: “Thurston, we just...want to know what happened.”

Mr. Underhill: “You cut her down, sheriff. Seems like you ought to know the answer already.” 

Charlie: “So...she killed herself then. That’s what you’re tellin’ me?” 

Mr. Underhill: “I didn’t tie the rope, if that’s what you’re askin’.” 

Charlie: “No, sir. ‘Course it isn’t. Just...well…people talk, you know. About this place…” 

Mr. Underhill: “The house didn’t kill her, Charlie. And neither did I.” 

He didn’t answer any more questions. Not for the coroner, not for the sheriff, not for the nosy little ladies in the town cafe. Thurston Underhill shut up the doors, extinguished the lamps, and refused to come out to do anything but pay the boy who delivered his groceries. But still…people talked.

Lou: You the one who went up there? To get the Underhill girl? 

Charlie: Yeah. Poor thing. Sad way to go, Lou. Sad way to go.

Lou: You remember when that place went up, don’t ya, Charlie? That fire. Saw it all the way from the center of town. 

Charlie: Sure. I was just a kid back then. Didn’t know those boys too well. Kept to themselves mostly. Poor Thurston though. I always felt sorry for him. Lost his parents and his brother all in the same night. Had to have messed with his psyche, ya know? Had to have.

Lou: Never did seem the same after that. Sweet little Margaret still married him though. Think she knew? What she was gettin’ herself into?

Charlie: Awe, Thurston was all right. That other brother might’ve been a little bit off. But Thurston…he was all right, you know?

Lou: Bad luck, isn’t it? His family. Then his wife. Bad, bad luck. 

Charlie: Maybe. Bad luck…bad omens…somethin’ bad up that hill - that’s sure. 

Millie: “She was a pretty little thing, you know, that Maggie. Why she ever married Thurston Underhill is beyond me.”

Franny: “Talkin’ about the dead is morbid, Millie.”

Millie: “Well, I’m just saying: she should have known what was comin’ to her, that’s all.”

Franny: “That’s just talk.”

Millie: “The whole family dead in their beds while that house burned. Thurston the only one to get out alive? He and his brother shared a bedroom in that house.”

Franny: “It’s all gossip and hearsay, Millie.” 

Millie: “And Maggie should have heard it is all I’m trying to say.”

Franny: “She was a nice girl.”

Millie: “Nice girls should stay away from devils like that. I hope she enjoyed his money while she had the chance. Lord knows you couldn’t pay me enough to live in that haunted old place.” 

Franny: “Stop it. You know I don’t believe in ghosts.” 

Millie: “Well it’s either ghosts in that house, or that boy killed his parents in their beds, Franny, and you know that’s the truth.” 

Franny: “No more. It ain’t right to talk like that about the dead, and you know it.” 

Millie: “Morbid or not...there’s somethin’ strange in that house. Mark my words.”

I’ve been up to the house only once. Years ago now. It was somethin’ of a tradition - when the kids in town turned eleven. Bragging rights if you got close enough to touch the porch pillars. My brother Benjamin got just past the gate before we saw it. 

Benjamin: Keep watch, will ya? 

Rosie: I don’t like this. It’s a bad idea.

Benjamin: It’s just an old house, Rosie. 

Rosie: I don’t like it. 

Benjamin: Just stay where you are. You’ll be fine. I’ll be right back. 

Rosie: Benji, no...let’s just go home. 

Benjamin: Don’t be a baby. Just count until I get back.

Rosie: One...two...three...four....Benji!...five...six...Benji, hurry! Come on. Seven...eight…

I got to eight before I saw it. Just a motion in an upstairs window. A face - and then curtains. The flick of a drapery, maybe. A glance out the window. Nothing special. It could have been anything. But I saw a face there. I know, for a fact, I saw a face there. It could have been Mr. Underhill. Except that...when Benji looked up from the edge of the porch, he met Mr. Underhill’s eyes through the window. Locked in - a hard gaze - eyes on eyes. Benji froze there for a full five seconds. I’d been screaming his name for a minute by the time he got back to me. Dragged me still screaming from the gate. He nearly tore my arm off. 

Rosie: I saw it.

Benji: You didn’t see anything, Rosie. A breeze blowing the curtains maybe. 

Rosie: It was a person. 

Benji: It was nothing. Now shut up about it. 

Rosie: Benji...there’s a ghost in that house. 

Benji: No. There isn’t. 

But Benji didn’t sleep for weeks. Maybe Mr. Underhill spooked him through the window. Maybe my screaming stuck in his head. Or maybe he’d seen something too. 

Benji and I weren’t the only ones with a story like that. Something in that house - something we couldn’t explain. Faces in the windows even though Mr. Underhill lived alone. But...alone is relative I guess - if you believe in ghosts. 

Patrick: I heard Thomas got all the way inside - went in through the back door. He only lasted a couple of seconds. The whole house started shaking! It’s haunted for sure.

Susan: No way. I heard all he did was peek through the kitchen window. But he saw old Mr. Underhill though - the father? He died in that fire, ya know? Definitely a ghost.  

John: Thomas didn’t see nothin’. I was with him; he barely put a foot on the porch steps!

Patrick: That’s closer than I ever got. 

John: Why? You don’t believe in ghosts do ya, Patrick?

Patrick: I don’t know about ghosts. But my pop went to school with the Underhills - said he always knew there was somethin’ strange about those boys. Even back then.

John: That doesn’t make them ghosts, Pat. Just odd kids, that’s all. 

Patrick: Maybe. 

John: You do believe in ghosts. Don’t ya?

Patrick: If you heard the way my pop talked about the Underhills…you’d think twice about it too.

Mr. Underhill died on Christmas morning about five years after Maggie. At least the coroner thinks it was Christmas. They didn’t find them until the new year. Charlie climbed the hill to check in on him when the grocery boy came back unpaid. Nobody opened the door to take the groceries. 

Charlie says now if he knew what he’d find at the top of that hill, he would never have left his bed. 

Grace: Charlie, come on, honey. Tell me what you saw. Make you feel better to talk about it.

Charlie: So much blood. It was hard to tell what happened. Too many secrets, I guess.

Grace: Secrets?

Charlie: There was a devil in that house, Gracie. A real devil. 

Grace: What do you mean?

Charlie: He killed ‘em all. Ever’ one of ‘em. That boy killed the whole family. 

Grace: The fire? Margaret? Thurston did it, you mean? 

Charlie: I don’t even know which one he was. 

Grace: Charlie, you’re not makin’ sense, honey. Which one who was?

Charlie: They had the same face, Gracie. Those two dead boys had the very same face. 

Grace: Two dead boys?

Charlie: He was alive all along. Which one did what, I guess we’ll never know.

Thurston Underhill, 42, son of the late shipping-industry mogul Thomas Underhill, was found dead in his home on January 1, 1926. Another body, that of his twin brother, Clarence Underhill, who was presumed dead following an 1899 house fire at the Underhill family home, was also discovered at the scene. The coroner estimates the time of death for both men to be late December, 1925. When asked for comment on the peculiar circumstances, Sheriff Charlie Walker said only: “If that house weren’t haunted then, it will be now.” 

The children in the village tell a story - about the house at the top of the hill. It used to be a ghost story, but then...nobody really believes in ghosts.