A short story for Halloween

It was a dark and stormy night , I was snuggled under the duvet in the old bedroom where I stayed as a child in the holidays, listening to the heavy rain as it hit the window panes. I had not been back here for 20 years, but was now here to visit my mum's sister, she had taken over this house after our aunt, our Great Aunt Ivy had died. My mind drifted back to a similar stormy night many years earlier when my sister, Becky & I had been sharing this room on a visit to Great Aunty Ivy's. How old would I have been? 8? maybe 9? Becky would have been 4. Mum and Dad had gone out leaving us in the care of Great Aunt Ivy, who smelt of moth balls and had the strangest of clothes, long skirts with pantaloons which showed when she sat down. Great Aunt Ivy didn't have children of her own, just a black dog that followed her everywhere. Great Aunt Ivy, we often went to visit her so my parents could go out and she would baby sit us. We hated it. She was so creepy and the smell just lingered wherever she went. She lived alone, she had once been married, but he had gone away years ago, I heard mum talking about him, he was a "bad'un and a drunk" and "glad to be rid" The thought of that particular night is making me shake with fear again, did it really happen? I still don't know for sure. Becky was too young to remember. We were in bed, Mum came in all dressed up in her long colourful evening gown, her hair piled up in a bun, she looked so beautiful, she kissed us goodnight and and told Great Aunt Ivy was downstairs if we needed anything and she'd see us in the morning. I was drifting off to sleep, when I woke with a start, there was shouting coming from somewhere, a man's voice, then a scream that would waken the dead. High pitched and persistent. Then the sound of something hitting the house wall, the house shook. Becky woke up too and started to cry. I was in a panic and shouted out " Aunty Ivy!!!". No one came. The house became quiet again. Becky had jumped in bed with me and I cuddled her. I called again "Aunty Ivy", just then the door opened and I could smell the moth balls before I saw her, Aunty Ivy was standing in the doorway, there a kind of flashing lights behind her coming from the road and she looked startled, flushed and what looked like blood running down her face . "Whatever is the matter?" she stuttered. I said about the screaming and the banging on the house. She looked at me in strange way and said " No, No, it's alright, You must have been dreaming my dear, there's been no noise here, I was watching the television, maybe that's what you heard, now come on dears let's settle back down to sleep." Her little dog wandered in and sat at the foot of my bed, he was covered in mud. Maybe I had been dreaming. Becky and I went back to sleep and in the morning, everything was normal, or so I thought. Mum & Dad were there making breakfast, they were talking quietly under their breath, like they didn't want me to hear. Aunty Ivy was in the garden planting up the vegetables so she said. She seemed to have done a lot of digging, the ground was freshly dug in a big rectangle and she was putting in Potatoes. She came back in and said, "There should be a good crop of potatoes there in a few weeks, got some good manure" I watched as the dog was digging into the soil, I thought I saw something sticking out of the ground like a thumb. Suddenly Aunty jumped out and chased the dog away and the "thumb" was seen no more. I blinked did I see that? Aunty came in and told the dog off for digging up her potatoes, she brought in a damaged potato, she said the dog had bitten off the potato sprouting root, so it was no good and she threw it away. My mind is back in the present, did that happen? What was the screaming and the banging against the house? I jumped out of bed, my heart banging in my chest, I grabbed my clothes, it was still pouring with rain and the wind was battering against me as I ran into the garden. But, where was the vegetable plot? The garden was completely changed. The area where the potatoes used to grow was now a large patio with a brick BBQ. I just stood and thought, well this is ridiculous, no one is going to believe me if I said I think there is a body under the patio. So I was about to go back indoors, I was getting soaked through but suddenly I thought I heard a sound, a sound of scratching and moaning it seemed to be coming from under the patio............... No, this cannot be , my mind is playing tricks , it must be the wind roaring through the trees......... a branch was scratching against the wall..I ran indoors and started crying...................... I caught my breathe, What was that smell, pungent and strong- mothballs! and I felt a breeze as if someone had passed by and from the corner of my eye I saw the shadow of a black dog coming in through the garden carrying a bone. Copyright E.Waight 2016

Empty nesting but still Life like "The Waltons" !

How can it be that the last time I wrote on my blog was Aug 2012? Where has that time gone? What have I done in that space of time? I think it is indicative of the increased work load I now have and the simplicity of using Face Book for brief updates on my daily life. I am what is known now as an Empty nester, yet the nest is far from empty! There are more people living at our address than before and more are due.Yet the house is empty and only one of the bedrooms is being used. How so? Well, that is because my middle daughter with her husband and 2 children with another on the way live in the garden! They have built a mobile flat packed home in the garden. It is very superior accommodation with 2 bedrooms, a lovely living /kitchen area, bathroom and hallway, and a Verandah. I also loved the idea of a verandah, loved the idea of house like the "Waltons", with Grandma on a rocking chair on the verandah, loads of children running around, Grandparents, parents and children all living, working and eating together. How close have we come to that ideal lifestyle? The answer is "yes", we have a really lovely family lifestyle, the grandchildren spend so much time at our house they feel as comfortable with us as they do their parents.We have dogs, cats, chickens. A large garden with a wood to play in and have adventures. Never a dull moment. We have big family meals together at the weekends but do our own separate thing during the week. We pop into each others all the time. We share milk, sugar, bread eggs and bacon, cheese whatever one hasn't got but the other has, so there is constant too-ing and froo-ing from the 2 houses. We cross the "car park" to get to each other's house. I say "Car park" advisedly as my husband Stan and son- in- law Nick have filled the drive way with cars, not just the ones they drive, but about 25 in total that they do up to sell, sometimes it's like a maze to get round the cars and we need a map to show us the way. This is us on a good day, covered in snow they look quite nice! I used to work from home which was the perfect solution but now I work from an office so do not spend so much time at home and miss my garden. This summer I hardly sat out in the garden.Though I know the rest of the family did. I am missing out, so not so much Waltons for me, only at the weekends. My eldest lives about an hour away and the youngest has just gone off to Uni, but as she met a young man from near home before she went we see her home more than she intended! So the nest is never quite empty. It is strange but nice to have some space to be us after all these years.Hubby and I are getting to know one another again. But being parents & grandparents is never far away.