Jerald Stubbs was a superstitious ten-year-old who used routine to battle perceived evil. It was not the Devil kind of evil the preacher at his church railed against on Sunday mornings; this was more about keeping his distance from ghosts and spirits, who he believed inhabited his small world. Even though he had these fears, he still enjoyed Halloween and was glad it had finally arrived. Kids who are dressing up as ghosts and ghouls, to collect free candy he understood. It was the times he found himself alone in unfamiliar places or fading light, where he became fearful of the things he could not see but believed to be there.

It was 5:15 PM when Jerald stepped off the school bus onto the dirt road that led to his house. It was nearly a mile walk from the main highway to his home. Most days he did not mind the walk, However, as the season changed and days got shorter, the evening shadows grew a bit larger each day. Today the sky was a cacophony of color with the sun hidden behind layers of clouds. There was a crispness in the air that felt like frost was likely by morning. Several farmhouses dotted the landscape along the way, and one abandoned farm where Jerald made sure he walked on the far side of the road while at the same time quickening his pace.

Jerald had never seen anything unusual; there was just a strangeness about the location that gave him an uneasy feeling. The place was on the right side of the road, a little beyond the rise. There was a small grove of old oak trees standing on land unusually sunken in contrast with its surroundings. The fields on both sides of the road were open and mostly flat or having a gentle slope. This place with its twisted oak branches looked closed in and always in the shadows, even in full sunlight.

Within the grove and old, dilapidated one story farmhouse stood, its entrance had long since been obscured by overgrowth, making the house seem more like an island with no noticeable access. That was fine with Jerald; he never could imagine a time where he would want to get closer to the home anyway. There was no glass in the front windows facing the road, and he often thought that someone might be standing in the shadows watching him pass.

Jerald was looking forward to getting home, his dad traditionally drove his old pickup into town, and along the way gathered Jerald’s friends. The boys joined with the children in town to Trick & Treat in areas where houses were closer together, unlike in the country. Thinking about the festivities, Jerald barely noticed he was approaching the rise in the road. Daylight had been rapidly fading since leaving the main road, and the sun was about to drop below the curvature of the earth.

Instinctively, Jerald moved from the center of the dirt road to the left in preparation for passing the old farmhouse. At the crest of the rise, a sudden wind stirred within the fields, causing the old twisted oak branches in the grove to sway against a darkening slate sky. The motion to Jerald looked like creepy arms reaching out from the shadows. Looking between the trees, he could barely see the old house.  Another rush of wind reanimating the branches revealed a slight flicker of light from within the house that stopped Jerald cold in his tracks. Starring into the grove, he saw it again; the light had a yellow-orange quality, not unlike a Jack O Lantern, and flickered like a candle.

Jerald, inexplicitly and against all logic and reason crossed the dirt road and leaned against an old fence post. From this vantage point, he could see the flickering light through one of the black window openings. Some mysterious force he did not understand was pulling him toward the house against his better judgment.

Jerald began picking his way through the underbrush toward the house, the grove being at least a hundred feet or so from the dirt road. At the point where the underbrush ended, and  the trees began, he hesitated for a minute before inching into the shadows of the trees. Everything was different here,  the air had an earthy smell, and the closed-in look he had observed from the road was exponentially worse and felt claustrophobic. Jerald could scarcely believe he was among the trees he had purposely avoided for years and within a stone throw of the mysterious house that had fueled his imagination with fear.

One side of the front porch had sunk into the ground, and the other side, still attached to the house caused the structure to look more like a ramp. Jerald started up from the low end and making his way to one of the front windows; he looked inside. The flickering light did not have one source and intermittently lit small places within the room for a brief second before showing up in another part of the room illuminating in the same way. It almost looked like small bursts of light. At first Jerald thought it might be lightning bugs, but it was the wrong time of year.

Jerald could now hear somebody softly humming, the sound coming from where an old wood-burning cookstove stood against a far wall. There was a smell of wood smoke in the room and something else – something sweet and spicy like pumpkin pie. A short shadow moving quickly along a wall to his right was accompanied by the sound of a little girl giggling. Jerald had seen enough, and his instinct for flight was on red alert. He was not looking forward to going back through the trees to escape, but staying in place was not an option.

Stepping off the porch, he tried to guess the approximate path he had taken on the way in, and at best could only manage a fast walk through the darkness. Nearly to the outer edge of the trees, he saw a small enclosure with a single gravestone marker within.  He would not have seen it except for the same soft bursts of light down low near the stone. As he hurried past toward the open landscape, he paused long enough to read the inscription on the stone. MaryJo Hawkins March 1903 – Dec 1913.

Jerald did not understand or talk about that night and what he had witnessed, but as he grew up, got married and had a family of his own, he realized the significance of his experience and the probable story behind that lonely abandoned farmhouse from his childhood.