Encounters
Thursday, October 12, 2006
I met Corina when I moved into Greenridge at age eight. She was the friend that I could hit as easily as hug. If we weren't fighting, we were thinking about it, if only to escape the monotony of endless summer days walking the neighborhood streets.Corina was a latchkey kid. Her parents were insane and we were pretty sure her mother had probably killed someone at sometime and locked them away in the basement where her stepfather lived.
Corina's mother always reminded me of someone. It was that niggling feeling in the back of your head that this person, you should know her. Looking back I know exactly who she reminded me off. Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmations, only blonde. She had the flamboyant gestures down, the tall, skeletal figure clothed in flowing clothes, the short, high done hair, and the most telling feature, the lines of cruelty etched deeply into her face.
We were convinced Corina's house was haunted. There were signs. Curtains moving when no one was home. The sound of unseen doors opening and closing, and the radio going off for no reason. Nothing else in the house went out, just that radio.
Like anything else when your a child, you embellish it, add in monsters under the bed and solitary figures at dark windows, if only to entertain your bored summer entourage.
This summer was much like the rest that stretched behind us like ceaseless footprints in the sand. We spent the days rounding the circle of our neighborhood like the spokes of a wheel. Over and over we walked that summer. Spying on the boys in the neighborhood, pretending we were anywhere but here while the sun beat down upon the asphalt. We practiced gossip like your grandmother practices medicine. Repeating what we heard, what we thought we knew, and pretending to be experts on everything.
On this day, myself, Corina, and our friend Kimmie were doing our rounds of the neighborhood when the bickering with Corina became too much. We wanted to do one thing, she wanted to do another. In a fit of defiance designed to corral our intentions, she demanded we did things her way or she was hitting the highway(in this case, that would be her driveway) we chose the highway for her. So off she flounced in typical teenage showmanship.
Kimmie and I walked another lap on our proverbial hamster wheel and decided to swing by Corina's house when we came around the way. We trundled up her driveway, the whole way whispering about what a pain she could be. Standing before her door, the kitchen window to our right, the long expanse of living room windows that stretched from foot to head on our left; we rang the doorbell and waited. Shortly we could hear the scrap of a kitchen chair on linoleum as the person seated pushed away from the table to stand. We waited some more. No response. We pushed the bell again and began to yell at Corina, saying, "Come on, let's just walk. Stop being silly."
No response.
As Kimmie is trying to talk some sense into a non responsive Corina through the door, a flicker of the living room drapes catches my eye. Not wanting to be obvious, I look and can see that Corina had layed down on the living room floor and was peering up through the drapes at us from our feet, trying to not be seen.
I nudge Kimmie and say, "psst, look to your left, Corina is on the floor. She's being stupid."
She looks out of the corner of her eye and spies the same image I had seen. Looking back at the door as if we thought she was standing on the other side of it, we both yell, "Fine, be a baby! We can see you looking out the window!."
With that stinging comment ringing in our friends ears, or so we suppose, we haughtily march down her driveway and begin anther rotation of the neighborhood. As we pass the house next to Corina's, the two interconnecting trees in the front yard rustle and sway as out steps our friend from between their branches.
"Who were you talking to at my house?" laughs Corina, "No one is home but me, you know that".
Kimmie and I look at each other. The horror dawning over our faces as we realize that Corina was not who we had heard and seen at her house.
We stayed far away from her house that summer. Far, far away.
link | posted by Kara at 10/12/2006 10:26:00 AM
12 Comments:
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Kristen had this to say:
wow - what a cool memory. spooky and perfect for october as well.
- 6:27 PM, October 12, 2006
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Jodi had this to say:
What was it? Was it an intruder?
God, that's creepy!
J.- 3:33 AM, October 13, 2006
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Just a trumpet player had this to say:
Creepy !
I'm not sure I could sleep after that...
Have a nice weekend !- 5:46 AM, October 13, 2006
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had this to say:
Wonderful entry! I loved it. I so remember trying to scare ourselves silly and succeeding.
- 7:24 AM, October 13, 2006
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Carrie had this to say:
That scared me. What are you trying to do? Give me nightmares? That ghost story rocked!
- 9:36 AM, October 13, 2006
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Kara had this to say:
HoosierGirl,
Honestly, she dragged us into the house to search because we had scared her(and ourselves!) but we never found anything. I hated that house! The house next door was not much better..but then again, that's another story.- 2:36 PM, October 13, 2006
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*~*Cece*~* had this to say:
Ohh great sppoky story! Looking back, now, do you really think it was a ghost or the over active imagination of kids?
- 9:18 AM, October 14, 2006
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Red Hot Sexy Papa had this to say:
pretty spooky!
- 11:05 PM, October 14, 2006
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Jodi had this to say:
Totally creepy. I'm just glad there wasn't anyone in there.
Ooooh.
J.- 4:30 PM, October 15, 2006
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Kara had this to say:
CeCe,
Looking back, i'm more convinced then ever that there was something in that house.- 12:18 PM, October 16, 2006
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smizzo had this to say:
OMG, this totally sucked me in. Got any more?
- 2:06 PM, October 16, 2006
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TamWill had this to say:
You have me wondering...is this real or a child's imagination?
I believed in blink=eye and yellowman, they were killers of children and I thought I could see them standing outside my window at night. I forgot about all this until...your post.- 9:42 PM, October 16, 2006
