MYSTERIOUS BROWN HOUSE

          Deanna could never explain to her mother, Sara, why she feared going down to the basement in the small brown bungelow house her parents rented - and now her mother was saying once again "Please go down to the basement and get me a jar of peaches."
          No," Deanna shouted, "There is something evil down there."
         Deanna had never felt this way in the other houses they'd rented, but ever since she'd stood at the edge of the basement steps she'd had a feeling about something evil emitting from the basement.
         After refusing to go down to the basement for peaches Deanna wandered out into the yard to explore her surroundings.
         On the left corner of the block there was a gas station. Between the station and their house was a long white house, where an old lady who had a dog lived.
         Deanna didn't know what kind of dog it was, but she knew she didn't like it. The lady's name was Gladys Mitchell. She kept to herself, didn't come outside much and didn't bother anyone. Deanna was warned to stay away from the dog as the dog was not very friendly. No problem, she thought to herself.
         On the other side of the house was an empty white house. No one had lived there for quite some time.
         Deanna didn't think about the houses too much until one day when she came home from school her mother's friend, Kathy and her mother wre talking in the kitchen. The conversation stopped suddenly at the sight of Deanna.
         When Deanne went into the other room and she heard the word "murder" coming from the room where her mother was talking. The voices dropped in tone. Deanna's curiosity was instantly peaked.
         Deanna hurriedly went upstairs. There was a vent above the room where her mother was talking. Deanna got down on her knees on the floor and put her head where she could look down and yet hear what they were saying.
         "You mean, there was a real murder here," she heard her mother say. "The realtor never told us." Her face drained of color.
         "Yes, and the police caught the man who did it," said Kathy. "It apparently was over drugs. It was said that the man shot him and threw him down the basement. The police didn't find him for days. You can imagine the smell."
         "That would explain Deanna's fear of the basement, said her mother. "She was always a sensitive child."
         Kathy went on to say that the murder happened about ten years ago and no one could stay in the house for any long periods of time.
         "Thats why no one told you about it. The realtors have been having trouble renting the house."
          Deanna was really curious now. She was fourteen and was starting to notice a lot of things going on around in her neighborhood. She was always into exploring areas around where she lived, in every house where they moved the basement was the first place that she would check. If there was no presence there, she knew the house was safe. Then she would explore the rest of the house and finally the surrounding area.
         Now after listening to her mother's conversation Deanna grabbed her library books and quickly went down the stairs. She had an idea to find out what really happened. But she could not let her mother know what she was going to do. It would scare her.
         "Mom, can I go to the library?" asked Deanna.
         Sara was still visiting with Kathy in the kitchen. "Sure, go ahead, but be home by six."
         Deanna hopped on her bike and rode the four blocks to the library. It didn't close until seven. Running up the stairs to the doors of the library, and went immediately to the archives room. Here there were newspapers from many years ago to the present. The papers had also been put on micro disks, so Deanna could look through the disks rapidly.
          Hmm, Kathy said it happened ten years ago. I need to look up in the 1950's. As she strolled through the news, she found one article that stood out. It was about a young man that was being harassed by a group of men. Apparently he had seen something and had told the police. No one believed him and so he feared for his life. He had disappeared after several weeks; no one knew where he had gone. Hmm, interesting.
Deanna kept scrolling through the news. Wait, what was that? Deanna backtracked and read a small article about a man that had been living by himself but had numerous visitors all hours of the day. He had lived there for about a year. No one saw him out and about the neighborhood. If he did come out he was dressed so no one could see his face.
         The article went on to say that one night a gunshot was heard, but no one knew where it came from and it could have been a car backfiring. This was a neighborhood that didn't see anything, hear anything, or say anything, like the tree monkeys, "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."
         Deanna kept looking for more news after that small article and came across where the police on an anonymous tip went to the house and after entering the house found a man lying down in the basement. He had been shot in the back. What made this interesting, is that the man in the basement wasn't the man who had been renting the house. No one knew where the young man was that had lived there.
         Hmm, could that be the man that had disappeared in the first article? Could he have come back and was confronted by this man and in self defense killed the other man? Since no one knew what the man looked like, no one knew who was renting the place. But, then, who was the man that they caught? Did the police get the right man?
         Deanna's curiosity was in overdrive. She had to head home. She quickly ran off copies of the articles and headed home. She had grabbed some magazines to check out and hid the articles inside them. She didn't want her mother to know what she was doing. This sounded like a mystery just waiting to be solved.