Boo-fest

Thanks to Quinn over at seeing, dreaming, writing and Patricia at Simplicity in Volumes for hosting!

In the spirit of Halloween the idea of this blogfest is to tell a ghost story....a true one. Mine is posted below. It's my own story.

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Most people’s recurrent dreams involve flying or forgetting their high school locker combination or showing up to work naked. Not me, I dream about houses. It never used to bother me all that much.

Until the day I found one of them.

One night I dreamed about a house. Primly white with neat landscaping it boasted a row of small square windows across the top floor. Inside nobody was home, but I had the guilty feeling that comes with trespassing. I snuck through the rooms, exploring, careful not to disturb anything. On the main floor I found an office, the walls paneled in dark wood.

Upstairs the back bedroom was papered in pink and white stripes, with a fireplace at one end. Another bedroom was painted mint green.

I woke the next morning and went about my life, not giving the dream another thought because it was just one of many similar dreams. Just another house.

Months later, nearly Christmas, I was shopping for a gift for my boyfriend. I planned to visit a store I’d never been to before. Navigating unfamiliar streets, I glanced to my left.

There was the house from my dream.

I drove another block and turned around, pulling into the driveway. It was abandoned, the paint peeling, the landscaping overgrown. Several of the square windows were broken and staring like hollow, brooding eyes. It had a presence. It was watching me. It knew I had finally come.

I went home and told my boyfriend the whole story and he went back to the house with me. We went inside together. I held his hand so tight I felt the bones crushing together under my fingers. The house wanted me. It had called me.

We explored the main floor – there was the wood-paneled office. Upstairs I told my boyfriend that the back bedroom would have a fireplace and pink and white striped wallpaper – and it did. Another bedroom was painted mint green.

The house was full of scattered debris, the detritus of a family long gone. On the floor in the living room, in a pile of old papers, we found a sepia photograph of a boy and girl holding hands, happy grins on their faces. It was taken in front of the house.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled, and goose bumps raged on my skin. Empty and alone, this house had reached out to me in my dreams. But now that I was here I didn’t know what it wanted. I didn’t want to stay and find out.

Some houses don’t need ghosts to haunt their halls. They have souls of their own. And often, these houses haunt my dreams.

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Hope you liked it! Happy Boo-fest and Happy Halloween!

btw, I'm still looking for volunteers to critique my query letter and synopsis. Anyone interested, e-mail me at maranash66(at)gmail(dot)com.