Post #261539 by Cammo on Wed, Oct 18, 2006 9:52 PM

Ready with a shotglass of the good stuff?

The Haunted Farmhouse
Part 4

Sara’s favorite thing to do in the farmhouse when she was really young was to hide in the cupboards. That old kitchen was solid cupboards, most of them empty. She’d hide behind the pots and pans at first, then she’d start climbing into the higher shelves, using the lower ones as a stepladder. Sometimes Wendy would find her way up in the top shelf next to the ceiling, sitting there quietly for a half hour and then opening the door. Yikes! It wouldn’t scare Wendy, just startle her. She never thought twice about it. They’d find Sara all over that kitchen, you’d never know where she was hiding.

My brother used to brag about it at work, even. He said she was the best mountain climber in St. Catharines. I found her more than once inside the top shelf. It was entertaining. We never seemed to think it was dangerous, but it sure looks that way now. She seemed to know what she was doing, y’know?

The only slight problem was that nobody ever really saw her climbing, see. We’d just find her there.

A few years went by, some strange incidents happened but nobody thought anything about them. Wendy knew that she didn’t like the cellar, though. They never stored anything down there, it had no lights and it was cold as heck. She finally decided they needed locks for the inside and outside entrances to the cellar, supposedly to keep Sara from going down there but really because she felt uncomfortable about it. Hearing about that whole thing with Ken still bugged her.

As Sara had grown up a bit she had slowly stopped hiding in the cupboards. We had forgotten all about it.

One day Wendy had made a batch of her classic Trail Mix Cookies. These were big yummy oatmeal & nut cookies made especially to take to work. They were great with coffee. After cooling them down, she stuffed the cookie jar with them, got on a chair and put it on the highest shelf, over the sink. She didn’t want Sara getting any, they were just for hubby Mark and the folks at work.

Wendy went into the next room for a while, lost track of where Sara was, then came into the kitchen a few minutes later.

Sara was sitting on the floor eating cookies.

Wendy looked up at the jar on the shelf. She got on the chair again and took the jar down. Yup, a lot of them were gone. There was Sara eating them on the floor. Something was wrong, she felt scared a bit for the very first time.

“Um, Sara, can I have a cookie?” she asked.
“Ya mommy.”
She took one of Sara’s cookies, munching it. “Where did you get the cookies?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“The lady wit lon hair gimme them.” Sara said, still chowing on cookies.

What had she said? Now Wendy started feeling really uneasy. She looked up at where the cookie jar had been. It was way up, had no shelves under it to climb on, and Wendy couldn’t even reach it without the chair. Sara couldn’t have used the chair anyway, she was too short. Wendy had to stretch to reach the jar. And the jar was heavy, really heavy. It was impossible for Sara to get it down.

What had Sara said?

“The lady with the long hair gave me them.”

Wendy looked around. The back door was locked. She was really scared now.

“Where did the lady come from?”

Sara smiled, “Where she always comes from, mommy. Through the wall.” And Sara pointed. Wendy followed where she was pointing to, but it wasn’t to the wall.

She was pointing to the locked cellar door.

Wendy FREAKED. She picked Sara up, took her outside and stood there for a long time, trying to warm up. She asked Sara to tell her all about the Lady with the Long Hair, but Sara knew something was up and wouldn’t talk. Sara promised to tell Wendy the next time she came through the wall, though.

Wendy had finally realized. Her basic, primal mothering instincts had plowed through, ignoring everything but the truth. We were really dumb back then, but we weren’t brain damaged. She understood everything in a flash, the cupboards, the cookies, the cellar, the knives.

Something else was in the house with them. Something dangerous.

It was female.

And it liked her child.

And here’s something weird – Wendy had really long hair. She had straw-blonde long hippie hair that she was really proud of. It went all the way down past the small of her back. If this other lady was ‘the Lady with the Long Hair”, how long was IT?

Even then, Wendy didn’t say anything to her friends. She did tell Mark, and he didn’t like it either. Wendy never went into that kitchen alone again. And she never got near the cellar door that was right next to the cupboards they had kept finding Sara in. And she started looking for a new place to live in the next day.

You see, the thing was smart. It had never done anything directly to Wendy, and very little to Mark. It knew that Wendy would take Sara away if she ever suspected.

Wendy knew now, and they were planning to leave. That seemed to make it angry. The worst stuff happened in the last few months.