The house was big, and Addams
family-ish. The place was dark and dank, but surprisingly lacking in spider webs
and dust coatings. Gwen just stood there looking into the darkness wondering
who lived like this anymore. Then her grandfather placed his hand gently on her
lower back and guided her through the door. He carried her suite case in one
hand and closed the massive front door with the other.
The man was so spidery that he
probably wouldn’t allow the little buggers to set up shop in his domain, and
dust was more than likely too afraid to land under his intimidating glare. Her
grandfather was a terror, and it had really surprised her to see him walk into
the police station that night. When she looked up from under the trooper’s
jacket all she could see were his long, grey pin stripped legs and the
dispatcher said he had come to take her home. She had no idea that home was the
Amityville horror. They hadn’t spoken during the whole ride over, but Gwen was
really alright with that. She didn’t have it in her to fake her way through
meaningless chitchat.
Her grandfather glided up the
grand staircase and Gwen sprinted to keep up. He moved wicked fast for the
crypt keeper. At the top of the stairs he took an abrupt left all the way to
the end of the hall where he pushed open a door and set down Gwen’s bag. He
unfurled his long fingers towards the dark room. Gwen looked in and felt up the
wall for the light switch. It was one of those weird, old push button things
and when she pushed it a single hanging light flickered to light as though just
having electricity was cool enough. The room itself really wasn’t much better.
There was a tarnished wire framed bed on one wall and a small desk on the other
with a single crooked window on the wall between the two. She might have been
better off at the police station. The room wasn’t huge, but it had everything
she really needed. There were four pale walls, a bed, and a door that locked
from the inside. That was the life.
Her grandfather watched her from
the doorway as she trudged about the room. He stood just enough to the side to
be in shadows except for his long pinstriped suit. Her bag was dangling from a cage
of spindly fingers as he offered it to her. Gwen carefully took hold of the
handle so as not to accidentally brush his hand with her own. When she took a
step back into the room he stood for a moment longer watching her before
dissolving into the blackness of the hallway. Gwen didn’t stick her head out to
see which way he had disappeared to, she just quietly pushed her bedroom door
closed and locked it.
The first rays of sunshine were
starting to break over the roofs across the way and he probably had to go shut
himself in a coffin or something. This wasn’t really an ideal situation for
either of them. Gwen didn’t want to be living with her tired old Munster’s
reject grandfather and he didn’t want some nosey teenage kid wandering around
his “evil lair” during the day. But there really isn’t much that you can do in
situations like these. Gwen was a minor in sudden need of a custodian and dear
ol’ grand-dad was the only living relative. The car accident wasn’t really
anyone’s fault.
Gwen sat down on the bed, and it
creaked most satisfyingly. The night had been too long already. She fell
against the pillow and just let it all out. Everything she had been holding in
all night just came flooding out. The tears, the screams, the panic, the
sadness, the pain all came rushing out and through the eerily silent house as
the sun cast long blotches across the wall. She cried until her throat was too
hoarse to make sound and her eyes too red to see and she just lay there
trembling until she was numb enough to sleep. The night was just too long.
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