The House on The Hill

The House on A Hill


Have you ever heard about a haunted house on a hill? The kind where an old witch lives? You know, the type that eat trespassing children? When I was young I moved from the big city, to a small town in Oklahoma. There where many memories I hold dear, but one stands out above all. The manor on the hill, was something that would taunt watchers every morn as they went out to gather their papers and children ran to the bus stop.
Every morning I would awake to hear the swallow tails chirp in the warm southern breeze. Walking down old farmhouse steps and cringing as the third step from the bottom creaked loudly. I could smell the delectable and cloudy aroma of bacon from around the oak doorway and into the kitchen. My mother stood by the bronze fire breathing beast of gentility, cooking eggs. After breakfast, I left the kitchen through the old blue and white barn door to the garage.
As I left through the doors and into the outside, I could smell the crisp morning air and the bark of our newly awakened dogs. My duck quacked as I left through the only picket fence to go down the road to the bus stop. I hesitated in my walk and doubled around to pet the happy mallard. Then on my way I went, walking through the still damp grass and down the short pass between houses. As I reached the front of my delicate brown and cream colored home, I saw it.
I looked up the grass damped hill, to the wired and crumbling fence, and passed the long weeds; there I saw it. It was like an unpleasant creature watching its prey,  with curtained windows and a loose door hinge that cause the screen to blow in the wind. I felt an ice cold shiver up my spine as I walked passed it, smelling the sharp smell of the chimney smoke from that retched house. I looked up once more as I stood by the discolored stop sign to wait for the bus. I saw the curtain flitter shut, I could still feel the uneasy feeling of being watched.
Near 3:30pm, I walked off the bus to go home. The sun shone brightly in the slightly clouded sky, the crisp smell gone and filled with the smell of flowers and tree wood. I walked home slowly, it was only a short ways away. My mother and father would be gone for a short while yet. I stopped in the road and looked up at the house again, some how, it looked even more morbid at this time of day. I watched, a paint chip slid off the wall and onto the rotting porch.
I went into my house, closing the screen door with a loud CRACK and tossing my purple backpack on the ground. I would save my homework till later in evening, most likely after dinner. I sit in the exquisite bay window near the door, sitting down and watching as it started to rain outside. I smiled and closed my eyes as I listened to the thick and thwack of the water hitting the gutter. I opened the window a bit; thinking about how the rain sure came fast, considering the sun had just been out.
I found myself watching the rain beat off the fence post of the old house on the hill. The clouds over its head like an ugly old top hat on an decaying skull. The light in the front room of the house shone brightly through the its decrepit and draped eye. I nearly fell out of the window when I heard the back door slam; my father was home from work.
It was always like that, the eerie house and all. Sometimes Amy would come over and sit in the window and talk. I stared at the house the whole time she spoke. Her bitter mint breath wafting in the air as she talked of school and a boy she thought was cute. Every time the curtain or the door of the house moved, she’d stop and look herself.
Christmas time came early that year, it would be my first one in Oklahoma. I wasn’t use to the lack of snow. The holiday was a week away and I stepped carefully into a bare inch of snow. I sighed, Amy had gone away for vacation to Texas with her family. I was all alone, save for my parents. I sat on the faux grassed step of our house and looked in the sky, it was raining. For once this rain was not welcome, I felt warm tears down my face, I wished the snow would stay. I missed my home in the city up in the northern states. I heard the door behind me and quickly rid myself of the salty water, and turned to see my mother with a large box of cookies.
I smelt the warm bitter smell of chocolate cookies and wedding cakes. Her yearly baking gift, every year she would make them for our neighbors, friends, and family. I loved it, this meant that me and my dad could get all the others she baked, before anyone else. She smiled at me and gave me the box; I was slightly confused by this.
It was to my immense horror that she told me that she wanted me to take them to the hill. I tried telling her the story of how the old lady on the hill was a witch and she would not take kindly to a child in her lawn, but I lost the battle. She watched from the porch as I walked up the steep hill. I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, where was Amy when I needed her.
I could hear the crunch of a leaf bellow my foot as I walked to the gate. The gate was even worse when you where within reach of it. I could see the white fence posts had lost a great deal of paint and might have suffered from termite damage. The wire of the fence was old and rusted wires, it brought on the thought that I needed to get a tetanus shot soon. I looked over the top of the gate to see the rusted and bent metal lever. I clicked it open and listened to the gate door open with a loud squeal. The loose board at the bottom of the gate ran against the damp and cold grass. I walked through the gate slowly, as if waiting for a creature to jump out from the dying rose bush near the front porch.
I fell onto the cold wet grass as the gate swung shut behind me and gave a loud smashing sound. I could smell the rain; that crisp and damp smell, before it even fell to the earth. The rain was slow at first, almost slowly pushing me to the door of the witch on the hill. The rain picked up, it seemed as if the earth had frozen around me as I approached the horrid beast, its top hat back once more. I finally reached the porch, completely soaked by the downpour, and the cookies where safe in their pretty Christmas paper made box.
I put my foot tenderly on the rotting boards. It smelt rancid in the rain, and was very slippery, like thick saliva. I nearly fell again as I approached the door. The window pain of the door was cracked and filled with scratches, as if small hands had tried to claw their way out. Cautiously I knocked lightly, hoping the witch would not answer the fearful cry of the creaking door. The skull blinked and light shone on me. I shook as the door opened and the witch had arrived.
I could smell a flowery scent, that of like a fresh garden newly in spring. It was too pleasant for a witch. It was a trap, I decided. She smiled a toothless grin, it was like death welcoming its new companion. I looked back at my house, my mother was watching from the living room window. I looked back into the yellow and brown eyes of the witch, her white luminous hair tied up like a knot of yarn. She pulled me into her cooking pot of hell quickly and asked me to sit.
I did as told, fear building up as I sat in an aged wicker rocker and looked around. It was a lavender shaded room with fading paint and wallpaper, old photographs where behind me. Ones with children, ones with a woman and a man, and one of a cat. The cat in question came slinking around the corner; it was what was expected of a witches cat, nearly see though and old. Its coloring was a white however, which didn’t fit the old theories of a black cat. The witch laughed at the fear in my eyes and began to talk to me.
Nearly two hours later, I left the cloud on top of the hill, and returned home. She wasn’t a witch at all, but a kind old woman who lived alone. Her husband was the man in the photos; he had died in WWII and had been her high schools sweetheart. She had lived there since she was a young lady and had declared to never leave. She had one son who was a doctor, though he didn’t come to see her, save for Christmas.
Miss Smith it turned out, was a great addition to the wonderful stories of my childhood. Since that day, I’d got to her house as much as possible. I’d bring my duck with me and after a short while, Amy joined me. Those days where filled with playing baseball on the witches hill, painting that old washed out house, and fixing that rigid fence. Stormy nights I’d find myself drinking coca at Miss Smith’s house and telling her that storms where not all bad, and neither where people once you got to know them.