Monday, 5/10/10 - "R" is for Rat (part 2)

Old Lady Mackey wasn't always old.

At one time she was young and beautiful and as vibrant as the asters, zinnias and petunias that bloomed all summer long in the gardens along the white picket fence at the front of the property. Flower beds that lined the walkway from the gateposts to the porch were filled with yellow, white and orange lillies. Those in front of the porch were reserved for roses: red and white tea roses, yellow roses as big as your head, orange roses that filled the air with their sweet scent, deep red roses the color of love and a white rose that blushed pink as it opened.

Old Lady Mackey had a name back then, too.

Her name was Elise and she lived with her mother in the neat little house surrounded by flowers.

Elise was popular in school and almost effortlessly got good grades. She was happy and even happier still when Johnny Spencer asked her to the Spring Fling. Johnny was a senior while Elise still a junior. Elise's mother didn't approve but Elise was such a good girl that she kept her disapproval to herself.

Then, one day in mid-July, Elise was gone. Packed up and sent to Minnesota to live with her mother's sister for a while.

Elise hadn't returned by the start of her senior year and when she came back in February, she didn't return to school. Friends called but those calls were never answered. Elise rarely left the house.

In her time away, something had changed Elise Mackey.

The following spring the flower beds that she had always meticulously maintained went untended. Like the flowers, Elise wilted, withered and went to weed.

Elise's mother died suddenly later that year. Most of the neighbors claim that she died of shame.

The gardens and lawn grew together, spilled over the sidewalks and reached high up over the picket fence. Elise, spending her days indoors, never noticed.

Years passed and the house fell into disrepair. The once white paint had weathered and peeled exposing the dry bone color of the underlying wood. Two glassless window frames, like empty sockets, stared through the weeds, out into the street and watched the children as passed.

The missing slats in the sagging porch looked like a skull's hungry grin patiently waiting to catch the wrist or ankle of a passing child and hold them there, screaming and scrabbling until Old Lady Mackey came out from the house and stood above them with her rusting garden shears...

Adults said that she had just become a sad old lady but the children knew that she was evil and they told tales of those who got too close to Old Lady Mackey's property and were pulled into the tangle of weeds and brambles by things dead or maybe by the weeds themselves. Those caught were never seen again.

Old Lady Mackey died three years ago. A small headstone, no bigger than a child's shoebox, marks her grave site way in the back of Cresthaven Cemetary.

Her bones may lie in Cresthaven but her spirit still moves in the shadows of her old, crumbling home. On quiet nights you can still hear strange sounds coming from inside the house and if the moonlight is just right, you may be able to catch a glimpse of her ghost moving slowly past the empty windows.

Even now, children only pass her house from the other side of the street.