Boo!
The house stood some distance away from all the rest of the houses, as though it had decided to remove itself from the common crowd- or perhaps the other houses had crowded together to avoid it.

It had been old when Elizabeth took the crown. Generations had lived and died there, soaking its timbers deep with human experience. The gingerbread trim on its high square tower was beginning to rot away now, and the sills were crumbling beneath the blank glassy stare of the windows. Small trees grew from its gutters, and several had even taken root in the shingles of the roof. The chimneys still stood tall and proud, but the mortar had gradually crumbled between the bricks so now they looked like the arms of an elderly woman, deeply seamed and frail. No voices sounded in its rooms, no children played in its yard, the only sound coming from the ancient timbers as they settled when the wind blew.

The air of desolation kept people well away from it, even teenagers. No one had lived in the house within anyone’s memory, and no one wanted to change that. There was something forbidding about the bleak face it showed to the village, an old man glaring at young children.

And yet it had once held life within its walls.

************

Jeremiah Sandler had been a rather imposing presence in life. Over six feet tall, with snow white hair and eyes the color of frozen slate beneath bushy eyebrows, he had terrified grown men who had to face him on the other side of his desk at the bank as he discussed their mortgages. At home he was somewhat more approachable, at least to his wife and children, but when he was out in public he strode along in his black suit like a biblical patriarch on his way to deliver judgment over sinners. He never looked left or right, only straight ahead with a look of determination that made people practically leap out of his way.

He had lived all of his eighty two years in the house. He had been born in the front bedroom on the second floor on a cold and snowy day, and had slept in the small back bedroom overlooking the yard and the woods. His feet, clad in small leather shoes with hard soles, had clattered up and down the staircase thousands of times, gradually changing in size as he grew older. He had gotten his first kiss on the front porch, a quick moment of warmth stolen when his mother’s watchful eye was distracted. Every Sunday he ate his dinner in the formal dining room, across the table from his younger sister until her death at fourteen from pneumonia. After that Sunday dinners became a bleak affair, with his unspeaking parents at either end of the table, the silence only broken by the soft clatter of silverware on china and the ticking of the great clock on the parlor.

When his father died he had been there to console his mother, but it was in vain as she followed her husband two weeks later. By this time he was engaged to Prudence, the daughter of a lawyer, so after a proper interval they married and the house once again held a family. He had inherited the bank from his father, and continued to run it as it had been run for forty seven years. Every night he came home, ate dinner, read the newspaper while Prudence did her needlepoint by the light of the gas flame burning on the wall, then retired to their bed by ten.

They had three boys, and for twenty three years the house had been full of the lively sounds of youth. But the boys grew up and moved away, and the house became quiet again for many years.

Prudence died at the age of seventy eight, and Jeremiah spent the last two years of his life with only his nurse for company. The boys came to visit him twice a year as duty demanded, but when they got word that he was ill they came immediately to his side. He breathed his last in the very room where he had breathed his first, and went peacefully to his rest.

Or so he thought.

He gradually became aware of his surroundings again, and one day found himself standing in the dining room facing unfamiliar furniture. His long face registered a scowl as he strode through the house, seeing that the rose wallpaper that Prudence had selected for the parlor had been removed and replaced by a pale floral design. Nor was he pleased by the more modern bed and dresser that stood in his bedroom, positioned opposite where he had had his bed. But it was the pale green paint that they had used on the walls of his study that really infuriated him.

Jeremiah was no fool. He knew that he no longer walked the land of the living, that his time had come and gone, but to see his house treated in such a cavalier fashion made his blood boil- or would have, if he had any. He stood before the frilly couch in his living room and swore an oath that he would make sure that the current occupants knew just how he felt about it.

************

Stella Goldblum was a sweet woman, all who knew her agreed. She was short and plump, shaped something like a pigeon. She had soft moist brown eyes behind her square framed glasses, and curly brown hair that, if left to Nature, would have been neither brown nor curly. Her husband Hershel was a grocer, and when their children had grown they moved from the city to this quiet little town out in the middle of nowhere. She had been the one to stumble onto this old house on the outskirts, and when Hershel was done negotiating they bought it for a price that would have made Jeremiah Sandler spit out shards of broken molars. But she knew that with the money they had saved on purchase she could redecorate it and make it into a home she would be proud of, and dear Hershel had agreed.

The contractors she brought up to the house looked the place over, whistled between their teeth and shook their heads. The taller one smiled at her gently. “Mrs. Goldblum, we can do what you’re asking, but it’s going to be a bit expensive to do.”

“Oh?” She fiddled with the handle of her imitation designer purse. “How expensive?”

What the contractor hadn’t realized up until that point was that Stella Goldblum was not a soft and simple matron. When he quoted her a price that was about double what he knew it would ordinarily go for, her jaw set and the purse was forgotten as her eyes became two shotgun barrels pointed right at his face. For Stella Goldblum, when she found someone defying her will, was a raging force of nature with a voice like a steel whip. She had already had Hershel get a friend of his who worked in the city to come out and give them a ballpark estimate, and she knew when she was being taken for a ride. By the time she was done both men were pale and stammering, their faces shiny and their hands clammy as they looked over the house again and stated that perhaps the job would be easier than they had originally thought. They revised their quote to something more in line with what Hershel’s friend had told her, and she informed them that they would start on Monday morning at nine o’clock sharp. They both agreed instantly and stumbled over one another in their haste to leave to prepare for the job ahead of them.

As their truck left she shook her head. Sometimes you just needed to be firm with men, she thought, not for the first time. It had taken Hershel twenty years to learn that her judgment was invariably the best, but now the dear gave her no difficulty whatsoever.

They lived for ten years in the house before Hershel died of a massive coronary. Stella wept for days, and finally set up a memorial to him on her dresser, where she could see him every morning when she rose and every night before she fell asleep. And she said goodnight to him every night for her last five years.

She gradually awakened from her rest to find herself standing in her living room one day, with the walls back to the old horrid rose wallpaper that she had detested on sight. Gone was her favorite couch, replaced by a pair of leather wingback chairs before the fireplace. She gave a cry of outrage and stormed through the house to see what else had been changed.

Where she had painted the walls with light cheery colors they had been returned to either the ancient and dark wallpaper or an unimaginative eggshell white. The furniture had been replaced with antiques of dark stained wood and somber fabrics. The dresser where Hershel had beamed down at her for so many years was gone, along with Hershel. And her bed was now a tall four poster with a canopy instead of the bright brass frame she had gotten on sale.

Stella was no fool. She remembered lying down for the last time, and she knew that she had not gotten up again. She didn’t know how she was walking through the house, but she was glad that she was because she certainly wanted to give a piece of her mind to whoever had so completely undone all of her wonderful improvements.

************

Jeremiah stalked through the house, glaring at the pastels and lace that seemed to have infested his house like some strange mold. He stood in front of the sofa in his parlor and snarled at the thing, his rage building in his throat, when it happened.

The couch wavered in his vision, then became indistinct. In its place stood the two wing chairs he and Prudence had always inhabited in the evenings. He reached out to them and found them to be solid in his grip.

He stood there stunned for a moment, then a ferocious grin split his face. He looked at the wall, then willed it to return to its customary condition. Sure enough, the rose wallpaper seemed to come through the floral print as though coming up through the surface of a pond. The cream colored shag carpeting faded out, and in its place was the burgundy Oriental rug.

By God, he thought, perhaps as a ghost he had more power than he thought!

He marched through the house, putting things right again.

************

Stella looked in dismay at the old four post bed, so much like the one she remembered from her grandparents. It was massive dark wood, with a somber quilt and unadorned pillows on it. She looked at it, and her hatred for it rose in her like venom.

But as she watched, the bed faded from sight, and across the room from it her own bed took shape. She clapped her hands together in joy, and turned to look at her dresser. Hershel beamed at her as though proud of her for willing him back into existence. She turned around and looked about, and her room reverted to the way she loved it.

She could have danced as she rushed through the house, bringing her furniture and decorations back by force of will alone.

************

Jeremiah was getting thoroughly fed up with this. It seemed that no sooner had he brought back one room than another one had changed again to the fluffy lacy look he was really beginning to despise. He had no idea how this was happening, but it was really getting on his nerves.

A new thought occurred to him. He had been trying to restore his house, but this other person kept changing it back somehow. Perhaps what he really needed to do was to persuade her to leave.

He turned to the mirror over the fire and stared at his reflection, but try as he might he couldn’t alter his appearance. He cursed and gave up on the idea of transforming himself into a rotted corpse.

Maybe if he left her a message?

In his desk he found a bottle of the red ink he sometimes used in his ledgers. Now was hardly the time to be subtle, he thought. He strode to the study with its cool minty green walls, opened the bottle and dipped his finger inside. The streak of red on the wall with its drips looked convincingly like blood. He dipped his finger again and worked in bold broad strokes across the wall, creating a message that he hoped would get his point across.

************

Stella sighed as she finished restoring the last room. It was starting to get tedious, and she was feeling rather crabby as she went to the little room she had made her reading room. She sat down on her recliner and leaned back, and as she did her eyes ran across something wholly unexpected.

Red letters were scrawled across the green paint, bold and unpleasant. She sat staring at the wall which now read, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

She sat in her lounger in shock for a few more moments, then struggled out of the chair in a blind rage. How dare they! It was bad enough that they kept replacing her lovely furniture with dingy antiques, but defacing the walls was truly beyond the pale!

She stomped to the living room. The hated rose wallpaper was back, as were the wing chairs. She stepped over to the wall and drew her finger along it, and to her satisfaction she saw a chartreuse line across the wallpaper. She wrote in letters as tall as her hand, “THIS WAS MY HOUSE FIRST!”

She stepped back and admired her handiwork for a moment, then gave a grim nod of satisfaction.

************

Jeremiah saw the message, of course, and his fury knew no bounds. He stormed back to the study and wrote, “THIS HOUSE BELONGED TO MY FAMILY BEFORE ME. IT IS MINE!”

A reply was waiting for him in the living room: “I BOUGHT IT FROM ITS LAST OWNERS. THIS HOUSE BELONGS TO ME!”

Furious, he abandoned using ink and used sheer force of will to write his reply, then stomped back to the living room where he saw a new message. Gnashing his teeth, he went back to the study again to answer this latest charge.

************

The inspectors from the county opened the door. The building had finally gotten old enough and unsafe enough that it was decided that it should be condemned and removed, so they were there to do the final inspection for the report. The door protested loudly, and the musty stench of a long abandoned building assaulted their noses. They turned on their flashlights to look around, and stared.

All through the house words were scrawled on the walls, covering every square inch. They had started out large, and as wall space filled the writing grew finer. The writing continued up the stairs and covered the walls of all the rooms there as well.

“Jim? What the hell do you think this means?”

“Damned if I know. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s as though two people got into an Internet flamewar all over the walls in here! Listen to this: ‘First of all, you worthless hag, State Law declares the possession of this land to belong to the oldest remaining owner. That would be me, if you are too dense to absorb the fact. Second, I owned it by title free and clear, without mortgage. This makes my claim far stronger than yours. Third, your husband must have predeceased you to get away from your shrewish yappings!’”

“Hey, here’s a good one. ‘Never before have I encountered such an obtuse old fool. If you truly were the bank president, it’s a wonder that the whole town wasn’t bankrupt. You obviously have a greater interest in your own anus than in the world around you!’”

“Heh. Not bad. What do you suppose he meant by wishing pulsing carbuncles upon her hemorrhoids?”

“I think he was getting back for her comment over here about him having verbal diarrhea.”

************

In the end the inspectors decided to leave the house as it was and not recommend condemnation yet, since it would require at least a month to read all of the arguments and insults.

And in the attic two insubstantial shapes continued to compose the most incendiary rhetoric of their lives- and after.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 4 Jul 2008, 18:00, Reply)