Tommy

This is freaking me out, just writing about it, because it brings everything back, as though I were back there again. It was the summer of 1988, I was 22 and our neighbors, Mr. And Mrs. Standish, who lived in the huge old house next door to us, went on vacation for two weeks, out of country, and being a nice (and broke) guy, I agreed to feed their pets in their absence. In their back yard they had 12 chickens and three baby goats, but in the house, there were six cats, two parakeets and a turtle named Tommy, after their beloved Australian shepherd dog that died a couple years before.

We lived in central Pennsylvania and I had grown up in our house most of my life, and our neighbors have always lived there and I am sure their house has been in Mr. Standishs’ family for over 100 years, ya, that house is old. As people talk, people with no life and lots of time on their hands, I guess, there were several ‘rumors’ about their house and about their family, something about a tragic accident in which two gardeners went missing on their property and there was never a court case or anything.

With no bodies, no witnesses...there was essentially no case, but it seemed some neighbors knew different. I didn’t know this until many years later, that decades ago, some other ‘workers’ came up missing as well at that house. Being kids, we would always tell stories that supported the rumors we heard, actually ‘inherited’ so to speak, it seemed like it was our job to keep the history going, looking back it was quite sick.

The day before our neighbors left for vacation, Mrs. Standish gave me a full tour and laid out what was expected of me, luckily, she had everything written down, including the names of each animal, their food, amounts and time to feed them. It didn’t hit me at that moment, but later it did, it seemed most of these ‘pets’ were spoiled as heck, with different needs, times and types of food, I was starting to regret this, but they offered $200 a week, so it should have been an easy $400....should have been.

The next day, before they left, she gave me a key to the house, on what seemed like some funky voodoo type key chain, lots of feathers and what looked like dried pig skin, or so I thought. Anyway, the chickens and goats were the easiest, first because they were out back, and only ate once a day around 8am and I didn’t have to ‘entertain’ them, yet the indoor pets were a completely different matter.

Each cat had to be fed at different times, each a half hour after the first and in different parts of the house for some reason. I thought this was odd, but hey, they're not my stupid pets, well, just for two weeks that is. Tommy the turtle was straight forward, but he only ate live gold fish which had to be fed at 10am and then at 10pm, thank God the birds were easy ‘give them some food, check the water’ as the paper said.

What freaked me out the most was feeding the cats, in different areas of this huge house that I had never been in before. Mr. Doodles, was the oldest cat, very anti-social and had to be fed last, at midnight, in a room on the third floor, in the back of the house. I don’t know why people have such stupid schedules for their pets, I mean, who is the boss of who? I kept telling myself, “It’s just for two weeks” Well, the first day came and went without incident, which later I realized gave me a false sense of security, because I remember thinking, “this is gonna be easy money”

The second day passes as well and I was getting the hang of things, all was easy, it was just those damn cats, I recall thinking, “why not just feed them all in one room, they won’t know, they're not here”, yet in my mind, I thought they might have hidden cameras and I wouldn’t get paid what they promised.

It was on the third night that things began to get strange. While I was feedin Mr. Doodles, I heard what I knew to be a door creaking, either open or closed, but brushed it off as another cat walking around. A second later I heard a door on the first-floor slam and I mean really hard, you can imagine my reaction. After jumping and scaring the cat, I was motionless for several seconds, thinking there might be another noise, yet nothing happened. As my evening chores were complete, I shot out of that house quickly and didn’t want to think about what it could have been.

As the fourth day came around, I was a bit hesitant to go in the house, but the thought of $400 kept chiming in which helped me relax a bit. I fed the chickens and goats as usual, went inside and fed Tommy and the two birds. What was strange is that the first three days I saw many cats, who all came running in the room, when I entered, but not Mr. Doodles, he stayed on the third floor "all day, every day," so she told me. So, I started to feed the cats, in their respectful locations and times, but only saw two cats, which were making a lot of noise, meowing loudly, again, I didn’t care enough to worry, that is until I got on the third floor.

When I reached the top step, the air was thick with something, I can’t explain it, but I will say that the hair on the back of my neck was standing straight up and it felt much colder than the previous days. As I walked to the back room, cat food in hand, I started smelling a strange odor, like rotten meat and as I walked into the room there were three cats, hanging from the rafter, skinned from their necks down to their tails, with a huge pool of blood on the floor below them. I don’t remember if I started screaming first or running first, but I did both quickly and didn’t stop either one until I reached my front porch. I must have made quite the commotion, cause my mom and dad came outside and said I was pale as a sheet, as though I had seen a ghost. When I caught my breath, I told them everything and to my surprise, they didn’t seem as shocked as I thought they would be. My dad said, “I’ll call the Standishs’ and let them know.

I remember being really weirded out by his calmness, but my dad was always super chill anyway and never showed much emotion, so I figured par for the course kinda thing. I went inside, got a snack, watched a bit of t.v. and fell straight to sleep. The next morning, on the fifth day, I started outside as usual, hesitated to go inside but I did. As I made my rounds everything seemed normal and I was starting to think, that I didn’t see what I thought I saw yet in a strange way, I couldn’t wait to get to the third floor. As I got upstairs, there was no smell, as I slowly entered that same room, there were no hangin cats, no blood, just Mr. Doodles looking at me as though I were late, I remember thinking, “I hate cats, what a waste”

Just then I heard another slamming door below me, then a second and a third, I didn’t know if it was the same door, or three different ones cause each slam sounded about the same. As I went downstairs, I peeked over to Tommy's tank and the turtle was gone, now there is a lid on the tank with no way to get out. That really struck me as odd and so, for some stupid reason, I actually went looking for him, thinking maybe he did crawl out. Then I heard a cat scream and a huge kinda wet slamming noise, super loud from the kitchen. I creeped toward the door, seemingly forgetting about the cats the night before and when I walked into the kitchen, Tommy was smashed on the floor, not like some stepped on him or even smacked him with say a baseball bat, that turtle which was about 10 inches in diameter, now he was about a 30-inch pile of flesh and shell.

This time, there was no screaming, no running, I just backed away slowly making my way toward the front door, when there was this super loud and violent shaking of, which seemed like the entire house, like an earthquake might feel and that was quickly followed by an older women's voice, that was loud yet muffled, screaming, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!”...I really didn't even know I could move so fast! I bolted home and had to wait for my parents to get home from a movie. When they got home, I told them what happened and I could tell by my mother's expression, and the way she looked at my dad, that they both knew about that houses history and she was not happy that my dad talked her into letting me go over there, alone and at night. My dad sorta sighed, again, with his kinda poker faced and said he would 'handle it.'

I still don’t know what he meant by that, I don’t know if he even did anything, all I know is that our neighbors came home a week early and I remember Mrs. Standish, as she got out of her car, stared at me with this huge look of disappointment, as though it were all my fault. Anyway, my dad gave me $100 and said that the neighbors gave that to him, to give to me, but I knew better.

I never went back there, in fact I never saw those neighbors ever again. About a year later, I moved in with some friends in another town about 80 miles away and went on with my life. I have never told anyone this story, even to my close friends, I mean it was all too weird, who would ever believe me anyway? Yet, the sight of Tommy the Turtle has never left my mind.