Strange things often happen down at the old Lowell house on Oak Street. Cracked and peeling paint hung from the rotting walls, pale yellow and faded. The area was so dense with trees that hardly any light fell on the 200-year-old abandoned mansion. The old lamppost was never replaced; the city took to neglecting this side of town, so at night it was black as tar. This was the sort of house that the local neighbourhood children would tell ghost stories about in the dark of a bedroom closet. Some still do. Of course, as it normally is with creepy tales, none of them were anywhere near the truth. But the truth itself was something quite out of the ordinary as well.
There was an old legend about Old Man Lowell, who was the last resident of the house on Oak Street. This tale was among the few circulated that came closest to the truth. Folks would see him sometimes out in the lawn, fiddling with cages and other various contraptions, and he always carried around a rusty shotgun. None of the sensible adults believed it was still in working order, but all the children rushed inside to peep out the curtains in fear. No one ever saw him use it, but it was always at his shoulder. Some days, he would clamber up the roof, tapping and poking at the siding. No one knew what he was searching for. In the evenings, there would emanate from the house on Oak Street great banging and shouts that would wake the neighbourhood. One day, Lowell didn’t come out, and then the next day and the next, going on for a week until the neighbours assumed he had moved or just abandoned the house on Oak Street. No one ever saw him again.
Old Man Lowell was the prime subject for discussion in the midnight tales. Kids said he kept a monster in one of his cages, and each night he had to feed it whatever child he had caught roaming around. Others said he was a pirate searching for treasure inside the old house on Oak Street. But no one really knew why he was there, or what the truth really was. That’s what two children found out one cold September afternoon: the truth…
©2004 Caleb Warner. All Rights Reserved.