A stain on this world.
Three houses were set below the crown of this hill.
Each home with an attic,
each attic with a window,
and each window facing the summit.
20 years, 50 years, 80 years pass
without any but human comment...
and then 2 houses came together in marriage.
The daughter of of the East moves in with
the son of the South. She settles in and spends
time arranging every room so that it speaks of
her. She takes her old diearies inside a satin lined
box up the stairs. In to the attic. To the window
she walks. How strange that she sees just what she saw from her childhood attic window.
The same lichen covered boulder before the same side of the center tree, the highest
looming tree in all the township. She told her husband. He looked through it with adult
concentration, took her hand and went to East house.
They had tea with mother and father, discoursing on daughter's peculiar sentiment.
With glasses empty, they all got a look from East attic.
The same lichen covered boulder before the same side of center tree..bare on the left
since the blizzard in 08, such winds, my God.
So, son and daughter, being convinced, brought East parents to South attic. Father
kept at that vista with his steady wizened eyes for houres, taking his dinner before it.
He proclaimed,
What you've told is true, but that doesn't make it right.
Next morning, the family went over to north house with bread and milk, and at 20
minutes of time past they brought to light their findings. North house held three generations,
and it's eldest stood right up with a stern set to his face. He took in North attic's view in
some minutes. All else looked as much at him as the view...
His unsettled countenance before the same lichen covered boulder before the same side
of center tree, it's left side bare since 08 and 2 others like it, dieing, off to either side.
Everything The Same.
They visited East attic, elder North looking all the worse for it and finally South attic,
where he turned to the assembled families and asked,
Do you all know there was
once a West house? Well, there was. Mine and yours great grandparents built
all four 2 turns ago. Worked the land around em, ate and drank from it for
years and years until some blizzard caught and held on tight... day after she let go,
3 of those families woke to find West house was gone. Gone
like it never was.
Not a stick left. And, not one of em could remember who
it was that lived there.
Can you imagine? Not knowin that kinda thing and then just
movin on , livin,
marriein, makin babies...No? Well, you will. We got time.
So, here's another thing to think on,
that storm. It did the flip of
what we always thought, all of
you and I. I believe, in the normal way of things, we ain't
even here, ya know.
West house is, though. And that's what we're all seein-the view
from it. The only
thing left. Ever wonder why we don't
use names? What's your name, honey? Or
mine? I don't think we got any. Generations of us, not-born in
this halfway place...
names just ain't a part of that. If I ever wasn't sure of it, I
am now.
Tara turned from the attic window of her isolated home up on the
west side of the hill.
That desolate tree before it gave her the oddest sensations...
This time, she saw faces-
-------I found a compilation of unsettling stories done by
Evan Ribliss. Printed in 1915.
The book was behind the first floor radiator grate. Brittle and
yellow and fascinating.
The above is the 3rd story inside.
