Witch House

“Jamie! Look what I found!” I looked up to see Josh waving a rusty old tin above his head.

“Put in down, you’ll cut yourself.” Typically, he ignored me, and sat down on a log with his prize.

I sighed, got up, put my phone in my back pocket, brushed the dried leaves and dirt off my butt and started picking my way through the rocks and exposed roots of the gully. Why did I always get stuck playing babysitter? Why did he always insist on coming down here with all the dirt and dust and mosquitoes?

As I got closer I saw he'd found a cookie tin, although the colour was so faded, and it was pocked with so must rust, that it was hard to tell. Someone had added a padlock to it, but that was also so crusted with rust that it looked fragile, like a hit with something hard could break it. Even as I thought it, Josh starting to bash at the tin with a rock. Two hard hits were all it took.

Tutting, I sat next to him as he opened the tin. Sitting on top of a pile of papers was a little black book. It looked old, but as I lifted it out, I could feel that the cover was still soft and smooth. It was filled with neat, tiny writing and little hand drawn pictures of a house and dozens of portraits of a young man; at the back of the book I found a black and white photo of him – tall, dark hair, deep-set eyes - dressed in some sort of uniform. The rest of the book was full of newspaper clippings stuck down with glue, which crumbled as I turned the pages. Not wanting to damage it even more, I carefully closed the book and put it aside.

The papers turned out to be letters - tied together with a frayed (but still vibrantly red) ribbon. Under the letters was a lock of black hair, a collection of medals and some postcards from Europe. The writing on the back of the cards was completely faded and unreadable.

“What is all this junk?” Josh whined.

Ignoring him, I carefully drew out one of the letters. The handwriting covered several pages in beautiful swirls and loops which I wouldn’t have been able to read even if it wasn’t almost completely faded. I could read the last four words though “All my love, Edward”.

“Well THIS is a love letter,” I said softly.

I looked over at Josh as he snorted in disgust.

“You know what this is?” I asked in a whisper.

He shrugged.

“It’s a box of memories. Old ones,” I explained.

“Who’s is it? It looks old?”

I thumbed through the stack of letters until I found one in an envelope. I could barely read it; it was so faded. “Everhale or Evendale Street. Maybe 26 or 28 … Mildred something or other.”

Josh gasped and grabbed my arm. “Evanvale!! That’s Old lady Graham’s house! The house in the drawings. I knew I’d seen it before.” He jumped up whooping with excitement.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Come on Jamie. You know! The scary witch house round the corner from home.”

“Witch house? Really?” I snorted in amusement.

He put his hands on his hips and gave me a filthy look.

I smiled and ruffled his hair. “Chill. I know it.” Old. Run down. Overgrown gardens and trees.

“This must be hers. We have to take it back to her,” I said as I put everything back in the tin.

He backed up and started shaking his head. “Nope! No way!”

“Oh yes we are,” I said as I stuffed the tin under my arm and started up the bank. I turned around at the top and saw he was still standing at the bottom of the wash out, his arms crossed defiantly, with a grim look on his face.

I opened my eyes in surprise. “Who’s going to protect me from the big bad witch if you don’t come?” I asked.

“Very funny,” he grumbled.

I waited while he hesitated.

“Fine,” he growled. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

It only took us 15 minutes to reach the “witch” house. It was everything Josh had promised it would be - faded grey paint (pealing in places), overgrown gardens and lawn. There were two enormous trees on either side of the house bathing most of the front in shadow. All the curtains in the grimy windows were drawn. I noticed that one small window in the attic was broken and at least a dozen birds’ nests were attached to the underside of the eaves.

The whole picture spoke of depression, abandonment and misery.

I was about to open the rusted gate when I saw a curtain twitch in a window on the ground floor. Well at least someone was home.

This was spooky with a capital ‘S’. All my little girl fears - of things that go bump in the night - were warring with my common sense. I would not let Josh’s witch story spook me into not returning that tin. I was just about to open the gate when he grabbed my arm, making my heart leap into my throat. I only just stifled a scream.

I looked down at him with disgust.

“We should go home,” he whispered. His face was pale.

I took a deep breath, and without a word, forced open the gate and marched up the over-grown path. I made my way slowly across the veranda, careful to avoid the rotten and missing boards. Deadly looking rusty nails stuck up at random like tiny tetanus filled booby traps. I was reaching my hand out to knock on the door when it opened with a slow shriek of rusted hinges; exactly like every scary movie I had ever seen. The interior was a solid wall of darkness. Thanks to the overgrown trees, the deep veranda, and drawn curtains, we could barely see past the dust coated door mat.

I knew what happened next; the hero then stupidly walks through the door and gets stabbed by some hockey mask wielding axe murder.

“Jamie,” Josh whispered, the terror evident is his high quivering voice. “Let’s just leave it and go.”

That would make sense. I could imagine leaving the tin, and us making a hasty gasping dash back down the path. No! I would not run away like some spineless wimp. I WOULD get the tin back to its rightful owner.

I took a shaky breath and knocked on the door frame. “Hello?” It came out as a strangled crock. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hello. Is anyone home?” Please don’t kill us, we’re just kids.

“Yes?” The voice came from the dark directly in front of us; clear, close and terrifying. My breath escaped and my heart started pounding in my chest, Josh couldn’t hold back a scream.

“Oh gosh! Let me put a light on,” came a quivering voice.

I was still trying to work out how to breathe again when I was suddenly blinded by light, from the hall, the veranda, the security light. Josh grabbed hold of my arm just above the elbow, I could feel him trembling. Squinting against the glare I looked over the frail little woman that stood stooped before us. A grey shawl wrapped around narrow bony shoulders clad in a black cardigan that had been washed and faded to a dark grey. Her hair, obviously originally dark, was heavily streaked with grey and twisted up into a bun on her head, fine wisps brushed across a heavily lined face. I couldn’t look away from her eyes, the saddest pair of grey eyes I had ever seen. They were so pale that they were almost white. I wondered briefly if she was blind, until she reached out a bony twig like hand and grabbed my arm.

“I’m sorry to scare you both. I don’t get many visitors,” she said softly. It was a pleasant voice, gentle. Exactly the voice a witch would use to lure you into her home. I know my mouth was hanging open in shock, but I couldn’t help it.

The inside of the house matched the outside: faded, worn, abandoned. Dust coated every surface, a giant chandelier housed roughly a thousand spiders - judging by the cobwebs - and the pealing wallpaper and water marks on the flaking ceiling added to the overall theme of decay.

“Come in. Come in,” she said with a mild smile as she motioned for us to enter.

No way!!

I couldn’t trust myself to speak so I held out the tin, swallowing nervously.

When she saw it, she gave a breathless gasp and one shaky hand slowly covered her mouth as tears filled her eyes.

“Where did you get that?” she whispered as she reached for the tin, which I gratefully handed to her.

“Um. We … we found it in “the wilds” off Adams street. Is .. is it yours?”

She nodded absently as she stepped through the door to join us on the veranda, we stepped back hastily to let her through and watched as she made her way, surprisingly without incident, across the veranda to an old swing that was attached by screws to the ceiling. Expecting disaster, I held my breath as she lowered herself onto the ancient cushions, sending up a puff of mildew scented dust.

“Come.” She motioned for us to join her.

Josh must have had the same concerns about the swing, as he joined me to lean against the railing.

She sat the tin on her lap and slowly opened it. When she saw the contents, she sighed with relief and tears started running down her cheeks. She worked her way through the tin, rubbed her hand lovingly over the cover of the book and clutched the pile of letters to her chest. She gently took out the lock of hair and with trembling fingers, held it to her lips.

“I haven’t seen this tin for 60 years.” She gave us a watery smile. “I was robbed you see. They didn’t take much but when they took this, they took everything,” she sighed sadly, “everything I had of my Edward. Everything I had left of him.”

She smiled then. A peaceful, contented smile.

“Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. You have made a very old woman very happy.”

She insisted on getting our names and address, I’m not sure why. I’m even less sure why I gave them to her.

We left her then - to her memories and her Edward - and headed home with a skip in our step and smiles on our faces.

About a week afterwards mum called us in from the yard, she had a letter, addressed to Josh and me. Turns out the old woman hadn’t been alone in the world after all, she’d had a nephew who checked on her every couple of day. The night of our visit she’d died in her sleep, the little tin clasped in her hands and a look of peace on her face. Beside the bed was a letter for her solicitor. For our bravery and honesty, she said, she wished for us to have $20,000 each so that we might have some of the joy and happiness that we had given her.

The very first thing Josh and I did with the money was buy an enormous wreath of flowers for her grave. She was buried, under a huge jacaranda tree, beside her beloved Edward. She was finally able to join him, never to be parted again.