Home Sweet Home

Ellyn Siegel

ellyndraws@sbcglobal.net

Blog: thenextchaptert.live

Home Sweet Home

        “Home Sweet Home”, at last!

        My sweet husband, Chazz, the father of our baby, due to arrive in less than a month, is bringing in some boxes from the car while I waddle into the bedroom.

        Consider man, he’s asked the movers to set up our bed first, so I can lay down as soon as we get to the house, after our long drive from The City.

        After years of living in our cramped apartment, our dream of a house with a lawn, and a baby on the way, is finally coming true.

        I drift off to sleep to the comforting sound of him talking to the movers.

        The sweet scent of orange blossoms drifts in through the open window.

        I’m awake now with no idea how long I’ve been asleep.

        I open the closet, thrilled to have a walk-in for the first time in my life.

On a shelf near the back, I see a white envelope propped against a book.

All it says on the front is:

~Welcome~

Dear new owners,

Welcome.

Wishing you much love and happiness in your new home.

What a sweet gesture, I think.

Leaving a note of good wishes to the new owners of a house you are leaving.

…By the time you’re reading this, my family has moved on.

We’ve said our good byes to this house that was so filled with love and laughter.

Until it wasn’t.

Yours truly,

The Previous Owners

P.S. Either I’m cursed, or this house is haunted. Or maybe both.

My best advice is to Run for your Life !!! while you still can.

….

My heart is pounding as I sit back down on the bed. The baby is suddenly kicking like he wants out.

Chazz comes in to check on me. I show him the letter.

"C'mon. Seriously?" he laughs. “It’s obviously some kind of practical joke. ‘Run for your life while you still can?’

“It doesn’t sound like a practical joke to me.” I disagree.

“It sounds like a warning.”

I tuck the envelope under my pillow to read later, and try to put it out of my mind as we walk through the rest of the house together, holding hands.

We grin at each other as we make our first dinner in our new home.

It’s been a long day.

I’m tired and am sure I’m probably just imagining a woman’s face reflected in the candlelight that flickers against the kitchen window.

“Did you see that?” I whisper, pointing towards the reflection.

“Honey, I don’t see anything except the window and the candlelight.” Chazz says, cupping his hand over mine. “I think you’re just tired from the move.”

When I turn to look again, the face in the window is gone.

I decide I will not be showing Chazz the diary any time soon.

If he’s already making fun of me for thinking the letter might be real, who knows what’s in the diary.

My plan is to wait until he leaves for work in the morning.

Then I’ll take the diary out from under the pile of neatly folded sweaters on the closet shelf that I’ve claimed as mine.

….

Chazz has left for work.

I’m feeling happy and pregnant, even if I didn't have a very good night’s sleep.

I had scary dreams of horrible things happening to the baby, to Chazz, and to the house, for most of the night.

Hoping my minty tea will help me to calm down, I walk out onto the back patio. (we have a patio!)

The bedroom still smells like orange blossoms, which is weird, since there are no orange trees in the yard.

Maybe one of the neighbor’s has citrus trees.

I want to see what’s in the diary.

Then I’ll attempt to go for a short walk, just to stretch my legs.

….

Dear Diary,

“Home Sweet Home”, at last!

        My sweet husband, Charles, the father of our baby, due to arrive in less than a month, is bringing in some boxes from the car while I waddle into the bedroom.

We were finally able to save up enough to move out of our cramped apartment…

….

I slam the book shut.

That’s one hell of a lot of eerie coincidences.

I probably just need some fresh air to clear my head after my night of not sleeping.

The neighborhood is as beautiful as I remember from our two visits here to look at the house.

Tree lined streets with flowers planted out front. Pumpkins and other Halloween decorations are starting to appear on front porches.

One house has an outdoor fountain with two tiers, in the middle of a formal rose garden.

Someone has put a bright yellow, little rubber ducky in it.

It floats along as the water splashes onto its head.

Cute. Whoever lives there obviously has a sense of humor.

Maybe a potential new friend?

But no orange trees as far as the eye can see.

I walk up the pathway that leads to our front door. It’s lined with bright tulips waving gently in the breeze.

 The same woman’s face that I thought I saw last night in the kitchen, is peering out at me, from the front window.

….

Of course, when I get inside, there’s no one there.

I remember reading once that sometimes ghosts don’t know that they’re dead.

They wonder why someone has moved into their house.

You just need to let them know that they’re dead, and that this is your house now. And that they need to leave.

I’m curious, but also scared, to see what the previous owner has written in her diary.

….

…We were finally able to save up enough to move out of our cramped apartment in The City.

It’s so beautiful here!

Lots of big, old trees and flower gardens all around.

As soon as the baby comes and I’m no longer as big as a house (!),

I want to plant some flower bulbs along the walkway that leads to the front door.

Some bright colored tulips would be nice.

I have to say it.

 I’ve had a weird vibe, like someone is watching me, as soon as we started moving our stuff in.

It’s probably nothing. I’m just not used to having so many big windows, and so much open space around me, after years of living in small rooms with shaded windows.

And another thing.

The kitchen always seems cold.

Even when I have the oven on, like I did this morning.

I was baking some cookies, opening and closing the oven door, and the air in the room still felt cold.

Charles and I are in a panic!

Last night a giant tree branch from the old oak tree, fell on the house. Right on the roof of the babies’ room.

It crashed thru the ceiling into the crib where he would have been sleeping.

Luckily he’s still safely inside me, but it was still scary.

I’m not usually the superstitious type, but even I have to admit

that’s not a great omen for our new home.

 There wasn’t a rainstorm or any wind last night.

It just fell.

It sounded like an explosion.

I can still hear the glass breaking and the roof shattering under the weight of the old branches.

I hope our insurance will cover the cost of repair because we scraped together everything we had to buy this house, and now with the baby coming soon….

…

The vein in my right temple is throbbing like it always does when I’m nervous.

Talk about a close call.

I look out the window of the smaller bedroom that we’ve turned into a nursery. The old oak tree, with one limb cut off like an amputee is still there.

It’s blank, round stump of a face is looking at the side of the house.

Hoping to take my mind off of the diary, (not to mention the woman’s face in the window!), I sit down with one of my crossword puzzles in progress.

Even though we’ve only been in the house a few days, there’s already a half finished puzzle in every room. When I get stuck on a word I just set it aside for a time and move on to a different puzzle.

Someone has filled in the last few words:

Malevolent and Benevolent.

Was Chazz was messing with me?

I could just hear him saying, “Oooo scary! Maybe the Lady in the Letter finished it for you.”

When he got home I told him about the face I’d seen looking out the window this morning. The same woman’s face from last night.

I also told him about the scent of orange blossoms with not a citrus tree in sight.

And the falling tree branch.

We went into the nursery and I showed him the cut off tree.

“Okay,” he admitted. “Smelling orange blossoms where there aren’t any citrus trees is a little spooky, I admit. But the tree branch has already fallen. The other branches are too far away.”

“See?” he pointed out the window. “Even if they did fall, they wouldn’t hit the house.”

When I told him about the crossword puzzle, his face got serious. “You know I don’t do crossword puzzles. That’s your thing.”

He swore he wasn’t trying to scare me or trying to be funny by filling in the words I was stuck on.

I decided to tell him about the diary.

“Maybe something bad happened to the previous owners.” I began.

“If there is some kind of ghost in the house, maybe it’s a friendly one. Trying to warn us to get out while we still can.” I continued.

“Or maybe, the woman who wrote the letter really believes that she’s cursed. And that bad things just seem to keep happening to her.”

But, there’s no time to talk about any of that now.

I’m having contractions and it looks like the baby is going to arrive early.

Chazz is trying to act calm, but I see him cross himself when he turns to get the car keys off the hook in the kitchen.

….

Thank God the baby is alright.

Healthy and happy. Just early.

We had to leave him at the hospital for a few scary weeks, but thankfully, were able to visit him every day.

Sweet, baby James is home now.

Safe and sound.

Chazz and I are equal parts exhausted and unbelievable happy. And incredibly nervous about being new parents.

We haven’t talked about houses being haunted or people being cursed since we brought James home.

When Chazz takes the baby to nap on the couch with him, I secretly read everything I can about haunted houses, curses and omens.

I haven’t been able to find any news stories online about a murder or anything else that happened in our house. I think realtors have to disclose those kind of things, don’t they?

I research everything I can find about the house, the neighborhood and the previous owners.

There’s not much to go on except the names of the owners, Susan and Travis Mitchell, from the closing papers on the house. The rest is just public information about property sales.

All I know for sure is that the kitchen still feels cold, even when the sun streams in though the windows.

The diary is still tucked under my sweaters.

I haven’t felt ready to look at again

….

Baby James falls into a deep sleep whenever he takes a nap with Chazz.

Yesterday while they were napping, I went for a long walk in a different direction from the way I usually go.

I passed a cemetery that I didn’t even know was there. Union Cemetery. A historic plaque said it had been there since 1859.

I was about to turn back towards home when I saw a small white, wrought iron crib, close to where the cemetery meets the sidewalk.

At first I thought it was garbage that someone dumped there, then realized it was a headstone for a baby.

He had died one year ago, and had only lived to be a year old.

His name was Miles Mitchell. “Beloved son of Susan and Travis”. The previous owners of our house.

….

James seems happy and healthy. And is a good sleeper when he’s curled up in Chazz’s arms. But every time I go into the nursery to feed him, or just to check on him in his crib, he’s lying there with his eyes wide open.

He has never been asleep any of the times I’ve checked on him.

Not once.

Twice now, I’ve heard a woman’s voice singing him a lullaby when I opened the door.

“…Baby, baby, so glad you’re here at last…

….Mama’s praying, you don’t grow up too fast…”

The singing stops as soon as I walk into the room.

It’s time to get my nerve up and read the rest of that diary and find out what the hell happened in this house.

….

I open the book and flip past the part where the tree branch came crashing through the roof and fell on the babies’ crib.

… Charles and I are both so happy in our new home, with our new baby boy!

We named him Miles after my Dad.

The insurance covered repairs to the house, so we don’t have to worry about money for the moment.

I have enough to worry about with Miles, who seems to be having trouble sleeping through the night.

I’m a nervous wreck as he is losing, not gaining weight.

The doctor ran some tests and couldn’t find anything wrong with him. We have another appointment in two weeks.

I skim past some of the diary entries about what they cook for dinner and how much she and her husband were looking forward to an upcoming visit from the grandparents.

…The kitchen still feels cold and I still feel like someone is watching me in the house.

But I haven’t seen anything or heard anything that I can point to.

It’s more of a sensation. Like when a cat brushes against your leg.

Or when someone puts their hand on your shoulder, and you can still feel the warmth for a few seconds after they take it away.

~

Yesterday, I almost bought one of those Ouija boards when I was out at a toy store buying some toys for Miles.

I have fond memories of playing with that with my friends, at our junior high slumber parties.

Trying to get it to answer all kinds of serious and silly questions.

But I also remember hearing stories about people who started having scary things happen to them after joking around playing with it, saying maybe it was more than just a kids’ game.

I ended up putting it back on the shelf.

A week goes by in her diary, before there is another entry.

Charles and I are in shock.

Miles took a turn for the worse and we rushed him to the hospital.

No one seems to know what’s wrong with him!

He died this morning at 2am.

Everyone at the hospital was very sympathetic, but I feel like they were all looking at us.

Like they think we did something to our baby.

What a horrible ride home in the car without our little boy.

I held him in my arms as we drove to the hospital.

And then the long ride home, with just me and Charles in the car.

Neither of us could talk.

The hospital is keeping Miles there until we can make funeral arrangements.

….

I feel like we’re cursed. Or this house is cursed.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Maybe I’m the one that’s cursed.

Ever since we moved into this house, things have been going wrong.

First feeling like someone was watching me.

Then the cold feeling in the kitchen.

The oak tree branch falling on the babies’ crib, that felt like some kind of warning.

Then the ghostly lullaby in the nursery.

And now this…

We plan to bury Miles in the nearby cemetery and then we are putting the house up for sale.

Charles tried to convince me to stay, but I want to just drive away from this place and never look back.

….

The vein in my right temple is throbbing and my heart is pounding.

I run to check on Chazz and the baby.

They are both sound asleep and snoring.

I don’t want to wake them.

And also refuse to be scared out of this house and this life we both worked so hard for.

 I’ve decided not to share the rest of what I’ve read in the diary with Chazz.

Instead, I light the ends of a bundle of sage I bought, and walk into every room, saying out loud, “You don’t live here anymore. This is our house now. You need to leave.”

For good measure, I sprinkle some salt in every corner, and add, “Thank you for trying to warn us about everything, but we’re staying. This is our Home Sweet Home now. For our family.”

….

It’s been a week since the sage burning and the salt throwing.

So far, so good.

The kitchen feels as warm as the rest of the house now.

I haven’t seen the reflection of any woman’s face in the window except my own.

James and Chazz are both healthy and happy. My scary dreams have ended and we are all sleeping through the night now.

There is still the scent of orange blossoms wafting in through the open windows.

And, I still hear a woman singing her sweet lullaby when I go in to check on James.

But, I can live with that.

“…Baby, baby, so glad you’re here at last…

….Mama’s praying, you don’t grow up too fast…”



The End