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Arts & Entertainment

Fiction: The Milverton House

Part one

In honor of Halloween (such a great kid holiday!!) I thought I'd change things up a bit and spin a tale about two brave little witches Annette and Becky.  The house that they have been dared to enter is the Milverton house, referencing one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories....

Annette stood at her window, up on her tippy-toes so she could get a better view. The magnificence of the orange and yellow foliage outside her window alluded her notice for the moment. She actually wished that the leaves had already fallen from their branches; then she would be able to see the sky better from where she stood. Her small smile grew slightly as she thought she noticed what she was waiting for: the sun had gone down, sunken behind the distant trees. Nighttime was finally coming. This afternoon seemed to have taken a lifetime to pass. It seemed odd, because on the days when she wanted the daylight to last, it seemed to disappear much more quickly.

She let her feet rest back on the floor as the lower part of her legs had started to ache.  She sometimes wished she were taller, maybe next year she wouldn’t have to use her tippy-toes. After all, seven-year-olds were much more grown up than six-year-olds.

Her two homework sheets were done and her costume was ready.  She turned from the window and started to change. She was a little nervous, but mostly excited, hoping her best friend Becky was getting changed about now, too.

Annette’s mom, dad, and two older sisters were downstairs in the kitchen talking about history and geography and a bunch of other stuff she had no idea about. Her brother Finley was playing in the basement. He didn’t care about the big-kid school stuff, either.  

She took off her jumper and put on a long black dress with a jagged-cut hem.
Annette’s witch dress fit her perfectly this year.  Last year it had been too long, and had been a pain to hold up on Halloween night (to avoid tripping over it).  She put on her purple and black striped stockings and her black lipstick.  Her wig was orange, and only slightly messier than her real brown hair. But she thought she’d look the part more with it on.  

After fooling with her wig, trying to set it straight on her head and pushing the remnants of her own hair underneath it, Annette looked out the window again, and was happy to see the shadows of twilight creeping across the lawn. Then, almost as though it were timed, the outside light in the lamppost popped on.  

She grabbed her witch hat and quietly walked downstairs. She checked that the coast was clear, then quietly rushed straight through the family room into the mud room, and out to the garage.  The garage was still open (her sister Mary never closed it when she got home from school) so she snuck out without detection. As she exited her garage and turned the corner, she saw Becky right away. Becky’s costume was almost identical to her own. The only difference was that Becky had a green wig, and her mom had gone the extra mile and bought her a witch mask, complete with a large hooked nose with a wart on top.  

When the girls met up with each other, they giggled.

“Ready?” said Annette. “We have to hurry. My mom thinks I’m still in my room doing homework.”

“Let’s go,” replied Becky as she grabbed Annette’s sleeve and began walking towards the outer edge of her fence. They walked around the perimeter of Becky’s back yard and entered the strip of woods behind her house.  

Becky and Annette had been best friends for two years, ever since Becky’s family moved in next door. Before that, Annette really didn’t have anyone close by to play with. All the other kids on the street were much older--  her sisters’ ages.  But now that Becky was there, everything was great. They rode on the school bus together, rode bikes together when they got home, and they were always going back and forth to each other’s houses.  

The girls walked down a short hill and jumped over the bubbling creek, careful not to get their costumes wet.  

“Do you think they’ll really be there?” asked Becky as her feet slushed through the fallen leaves and broken branches between the trees.

“Probably…” answered Annette.

‘They’ were Tommy Carfax and Bennett Jones. They were two boys a year ahead of Annette and Becky at school. They sat in front of the girls on the school bus. A few days before, Tommy and Bennett had been talking about the Milverton house on Terrace Lane.  It was the street behind hers and Becky’s. The Milverton house was one of those houses you don’t really go near. It’s set back a little from the road, surrounded by trees and overgrown bushes. Most kids avoided it when they went trick-or-treating or when they were selling school stuff door-to-door.

The owner of the house, Mr. Milverton, had been an old man who died a few years ago.  He had kept to himself, and no one in the neighborhood had really known him. After he died, someone else started living there. Annette’s mom said that it must be his son because the house was never sold to someone else.  

Whoever lived there, though, was hardly ever seen. Only once had Annette and Becky seen a tall man with dark hair coming out of the house, going to an old car that was usually in the driveway.

But over the past two months or so, nobody had been at the house.  The car had been gone, and the shades had all been drawn.  Bennett and Tommy had told the girls that the house was haunted by the ghost of the old man that had lived there, and that he had scared whoever was living there away.  

Becky had refused to believe them, saying that the new owner was probably on a trip or vacation. But the boys were relentless in insisting that it was indeed haunted.  

Well, one thing had led to another and before she knew it, Becky had made a bet that she and Annette would go into the house and stay inside for five whole minutes to prove that the place wasn’t haunted.
Annette had been slightly terrified, but Becky assured her that the boys were just trying to scare them. So the girls had come up with a plan: wear their witch costumes, just in case the place is haunted, then at least they might have a chance of scaring a ghost away.

As the girls walked out of the strip of woods and up the short hill, they entered the back yard of the Milverton house. Their surroundings seemed much gloomier, as the gray of twilight was quickly being replaced with the dark of night. The girls looked around, and many of the nearby trees were dead and spooky-looking. The Milverton house stood in front of them, shadowy and menacing. Suddenly, they heard someone or something stepping on crackling branches, approaching them from the right…….

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