Like Watchful Eyes

         “How are we going to get in?” My brother Gary whispered as the two of us peered at the shoddy, plywood fence the separated our grandmother’s backyard from that of the forbidden House Next Door, a sprawling Victorian house that had fallen into disrepair.  From our vantage point, we couldn’t see much of it.  Tall trees obscured most of the condemned house from this side, and I could just make out the point of a rounded turret jutting out from the rest of the structure.
         I gave the fence in question a testing kick, and got nothing but a sore tore for my trouble.  It was too high to climb, but there had to be a way in.  After all, Bobby McCreary had gotten inside—or so he said.
         “Let’s go this way,” I suggested, glancing furtively back towards Grandmother’s house.  There was no telling when she would wake up from her doze in front of the television and realize that we were gone.  We crept along the fence line, following it to the edge of Grandmother’s property and then behind the house.  After all it was that house, not Grandmother’s that was walled off from everyone, and, judging by the graffiti that decorated the weathered wood, had been for some time.
         “Look,” Gary whispered, pointing.  I looked to where he was pointing and saw a couple of boards that had been knocked over.  It wasn’t too large of an opening, but big enough for both of us to squeeze through.  I went first, and Gary followed.
         “Whoa,” he breathed.
         “Wow,” I whispered.
         Things looked entirely different from here.  Tall trees left most of the overgrown lawn in shadow, and the house itself stood fifty or so yards away.  The fence muffled the sounds from the street, and there were no birds singing in the trees.  A chill crept down my spine. 
         The grass hadn’t been mown in a coon’s age, and the rose trees that had once dotted the property line were overgrown.  Flowers bloomed, almost too pretty against the dingy backdrop.  A crumbling stone walkway cut through the jungle towards the house, snaking out from the building like a dragon’s tongue.
         “Look,” I pointed out to Gary. “There’s no door.”
         “There’s no windows either.  See?” 
He was right.  There wasn’t a piece of glass to be seen in any of them, though a few looked as if they had been covered in plastic—an ineffective attempt to protect the interior from the elements.  The back porch was held up by a couple of columns, one of which leaned precariously to the left, giving the roof above a bit of a dip.
         As we approached, the house seemed to get larger, the window-holes staring out at us like watching eyes.  The deep porch was a monster’s yawn:  its broken railings teeth just waiting to close around unsuspecting children.
         “Are we going in, Carrie?” Gary asked, hesitating at the foot of the short steps to the porch.
         “Yeah, I guess,” I replied, after a moment’s consideration.  Those windows are like eyes, I thought again. Like watchful eyes.  Watching us.
         “Carrie?” Gary had hesitated upon the first step and was now looking back at me, his dark eyes questioning.
         “What?” I demanded. “Let’s go.”  I climbed the stairs without further ado, not looking back at Gary.  Sometimes he could read me better than I liked…
         My brother followed me, and the wooden boards creaked ominously under our feet.  There was no back door, or even plastic to barricade the doorway, and we approached it.  Inside, I could make out the silhouette of a fireplace, the torn out space where, perhaps, a marble mantel had rested atop it.  A couple of chairs covered with sheets stood like sentinels between us and the wall.
         I stepped through the doorway, wrinkling my nose against the stale air inside.  Even open to the elements, the place had a faint stink to it.  The room wasn’t well lit at all; it’s only light coming from a window half-covered in plastic to the right.  The floor was covered with old, holey carpet that had faded to a drab grey.  It squelched under our feet with each step, and I paused just inside the room to look around.
         There had indeed been a fireplace, though the mantel was long gone, and the grate was nothing but a blackened ruin.  Two doorways on the wall opposite from where we stood led to other rooms, and I noticed that not only the doors, but the frames that had held them were gone.
         “Hey look!” Gary exclaimed.  He had strayed from me while I was looking around, and now stood in front of a tall mirror to our left.
         “What?” I asked, cautiously approaching him.  The mirror looked antique, though if it had been left there, it might just be junk, and I peered curiously at my reflection. “It just looks like a mirror to m-“I broke off abruptly, for standing beside me in the reflection was an old woman in a purple dress.  Her face was black with strangulation, her hands outstretched.  A breath of cold wind breathed into the room, lifting the bit of plastic that had partially covered the window behind me…
         “Did you see that?” I asked, goose bumps breaking out along my arms. “Did you see her?”
         “See who?” Gary asked, frowning deeply. “I just wanted to show you this mirror.  Isn’t it neat?”
         “Yeah, it’s…uh...”  She was looking at me.  “Let’s look at something else.”
         Gary eyed me and moved further into the house, passing through one of the doorways.  A little plaster dust rained down upon him, and a little reluctantly now, I followed.  The doorway led into a hallway covered with the same dingy carpet.  There were holes in the walls and ceiling, where I guessed either candle holders or light fixtures had been.  At the end of the hall was a small window, covered in plastic, and a set of stairs without a banister.
         “Don’t go up there!” I snapped. “The floor could fall through.” 
         Gary, who had one foot on the bottom stair, hesitated.  He paused, looking up at the ceiling.  It looked just like any other ceiling, minus any lights, but still, it never hurt to be careful…
         “Let’s go this way,” I nodded towards the other end of the hallway, which led into another large, airy room.  Obediently he turned from the stairs and followed me into what looked like a parlor of some sort.  There was no carpet here, and the floor was unfinished wood.  Dilapidated furniture was scattered about, couches, chairs and tables all covered in sheets, and another fireplace in similar condition to the first was on the opposite wall.
         “I saw somebody,” I whispered, unnerved by the way it echoed in the room. “I saw someone in the mirror.”
         “I didn’t,” Gary replied. “It’s just a mirror.” He kicked a table leg, and added. “Do you think this house is haunted?”
         “Dunno,” I answered. “Grandmother just told us not to come over here.  She said it’s about to fall down.”
         The room suddenly felt colder, and I looked around carefully.  Pieces of plaster littered the floor, leaving holes in the ceiling that made me glad Gary had listened to my-
Something creaked.
         “Did you hear that?” Gary whispered, glancing back over his shoulder.
         “Hear what?” I asked.
         “I heard a noise,” he answered.
         “I didn’t hear any-“I broke off abruptly as another, louder creak reached us.
         “Maybe it’s a ghost!” Gary squealed, grabbing my arm.  The woman in the mirror flashed through my mind, with her black face and outstretched, clutching hands.
         “Shhh!” I hissed. “If it is, you don’t want it to find us, do you?”
         There was another creak, and then a voice echoed through the house. “Hey!  You kids!  I know you’re in here!”
         “Oh crap!” I declared, trying to keep my voice down. “Somebody’s looking for us.  Just sit still, Gary.  Maybe he’ll go upstairs.” 
         The sound of footfalls on carpet getting closer, and the voice again. “I know you’re in here, and you ought to not be.  This place isn’t safe for kids.  It isn’t safe for anybody.  Look, just come out and I won’t tell your granny.”
He knows us, I thought, shivering. He knows who we are.
         “I’ll go,” I whispered to Gary. “You stay here.”
         “No!” Gary declared. “There might be ghosts.”
         I hesitated, and that feeling from earlier, that feeling of being watched, nearly overwhelmed me.  There was another creak, and the scraping of him shoving a chair aside.  That got me moving.  I went down the hallway and into the room we had entered the house through.
         An old man stood in the doorway between the house and the porch, dressed in an old chambray work shirt, jeans, and rubber boots.  In one hand he held an old straw hat, and his hair was snow white against the grey of the carpet and the peeling, flowered wallpaper.
         “Edith Anne warned me that you all might try and get into here,” the old man continued. “And I’m warning you now not to do it again.  This place isn’t safe.”
         “What happened to it?” I asked. “How did it get so...messed up?”
         “Come on,” the old man said, moving back out onto the porch. “You two can help me plant flowers and I’ll tell you about it.”
         “You’re Abner,” Gary said suddenly. “You’re Grandmother’s gardener.  I’ve seen you around pruning trees.”
         Abner nodded and, without another word, walked out of the house.  We followed him, and I glanced back at the mirror.  For a moment, the room on the other side looked completely different, the wallpaper a sunny yellow, the window full of glass and covered with a sheer drape.  For a moment…
         “Carrie!” Abner called sharply. “Come on.” 
         I ran out of the house, off of the porch and back into the yard.  Gary and Abner were waiting, the latter staring at the house with sharp, piercing blue eyes.
         “Shame, really,” he murmured. “It used to be such a grand old place.”
         “What happened to it?” I asked again, sidling closer to the old man.
         “It died,” he said at length, fishing a Marlboro and a lighter from his pocket and lighting the cigarette.
         “But houses can’t die,” Gary protested.
         “Sure they can,” Abner said. “Once every bit of life and vitality has been sucked out of ‘em.  Sure, houses can die.”
         I was listening, but my gaze drifted back to the house, to the empty windows, the gabled roof with its missing shingles, the rounded turret open to the elements, and the weather-beaten siding that covered the lower two floors.
         “It used to be real nice,” he drawled. “Back when the Walkers had it.  Doctor Walker built the place in about...eighteen and eighty-five. For his wife.  It stayed in the family until…” He paused. “Ten or eleven years ago, when the last of them died.  By then their money had run out, and the place was starting to fall out of shape.  Some real estate bigwig bought it then and started fixing it, but he ran out of money when the economy went down the toilet, and someone else bought it…not sure who.” Abner took another drag from his cigarette. “But it really went downhill after that.  He came in one night and took out all the doors and windows, and just about anything else of resale value, put up that fence, and the place has been sitting ever since.”
         “Wow,” I whispered. “That’s…”
         “A shame,” Abner agreed. “But it’s about to fall down anyway.  The place has been condemned for four or five years now.  You two need to stay out of it, you hear me?  I won’t keep this from Edith Anne again.”
         “Okay,” Gary promised before I could say a word. “We won’t.”
         “Best not,” Abner said gruffly. “Now come on. We’ll put the rest of your afternoon to good use.”
         As I followed them out, I took one last look at the dilapidated old house, shivering a little.  Dying he has said. 
         The thought of houses with minds of their own was something I had little time to think about in the following months, and I never had another opportunity to explore the old place.  Three weeks after our encounter, Gary and I were taken away to live in California.
Sometimes, though, late at night, I close my eyes and see that old house, with its empty windows staring out at me like watching eyes.