By E. R. York
The hot sun beat down on the sidewalk,
August, the hottest days of year.
Boredom overtakes us
As we ride our bikes,
Geezz… wish SOMETHING would happen ‘round here.
The days droned on, one after another,
Riding bikes from one end of town to the other.
My sister and me, little brother Jim,
His best friend, Bernie following him,
In the rear, Bernie’s weird little brother.
Nothing to do on those hot summer days,
Killing time in countless ways,
And just like now,
Always end up somehow
At the gate of the Old Lentini Place.
“It’s haunted, you know,” Jim would say every time,
“Yeah, ghosts...” Bernie’s echoing rhyme,
And we’d just stand and stare,
What’s really in there,
Breaking in would be a crime.
“Break in, I dare ya,” Jim would say, a glint in his eye,
“Oh, Yeah?? I double dare YOU!” (My standard reply.)
And we’d just stare through the gate,
Mulling over our fate,
Wondering if we should try…
But on that hot August day, as we studied the fence,
I noticed a spot where the weeds were less dense,
And a hole not too small
Through which we could crawl
Leaving behind all common sense.
We made our way through the dust and the weeds
Through an overgrown jungle with me in the lead
To the house-‘round the back
A window-open just a crack
Jim pushed on it in so we could proceed.
The house must have been ‘bout a hundred years old.
We choked on the dust and the cobwebs and mold.
We climbed rickety old stairs
Badly needing repairs
To a kitchen--unseasonably cold.
And we wandered around, from this room to that,
I let out a scream when I saw a rat,
“What was that noise???!!”
Whispered one of the boys,
He stopped us dead in our tracks.
“ah, it’s nothin’, just the wind”, scoffed Jim,
Macho bravado characteristic of him,
But in the still dead air,
A faint scratching, I swear.
Then a moan, ever so grim.
Suddenly my sister screamed, falling to the floor,
Something dragged her down a corridor,
Clawing helplessly at the rug
We watched as she was drugged,
Down the hall, disappearing through a door.
I ran to the door, where I’d seen her disappear,
I pounded on the door, my heart gripped in fear,
I screamed her name,
This wasn’t some game,
Her screams were all I could hear.
The door wouldn’t open, the knob tightly locked,
So I screamed and I pounded, something must have it blocked.
I pounded until
It became suddenly still
The silence leaving us even more shocked.
Then the doorknob slowly unlocked and turned
When the door slowly opened, I became even more concerned.
But as I peered into the gloom
I saw there was nothing in the room,
Only a small holder where a candle had once burned.
By then we were all consumed with sheer terror,
Nothing could stop us as we ran out of there,
And though the townspeople tried
We searched far and wide,
No trace was ever found of my sister.
