A ghostly encounter: The end
Walking home from a party, young Lonie and three friends had just dared each other to enter a vacant house across from Myrtle Hill Cemetery...
“Scaredy cat,” I yelled, and walked up on the porch. The door was standing open. I looked in. It was black inside but the moon lit everything up outside. Then Eddie yelled “Look at old scaredy Adcock, big brave man” and started to laugh. I turned and stepped inside.
I have always been sort of confused as to what really happened.
I was standing in front of a fireplace. There seemed to be heat coming from it, but there was no fire. Then I stepped away, into the middle of the room. I always wondered how come it was so cold in there when it was a hot, muggy July night. It was like moving from a furnace into a deep freezer. I was not sure then, and still not sure, of what I saw. I know that I was shaking from the cold.
In the corner of the room there appeared a mist. The mist was light with dark figures in it. I often wondered if there was a light from outside playing tricks on a scared little boy.
What looked like a figure of a man with a knife in his hand turned to face me. I will always remember that he held a knife in one hand, a smoking cigar in the other. But what I remember best is his eyes.
The eyes beamed like they had a light behind them. He made a sound and I hit the back door. The door was closed but went down under my weight. I made one leap onto the back porch and I was on the ground.
I scrambled getting up against the side of the house. A voice called me. I stopped to listen. It was my friend Jimmy. He had gotten worried about me. He came running up.
“Are you OK?” he asked. I answered him, moving toward the street where Robert and Eddie was. I was shivering from being cold. Eddie made some remark about “My hero.” I cut him short and he got quiet. I got away from there as fast as possible.
Robert and Eddie turned down Second Avenue and Jimmy and I went up Broad. I stopped in the Krystal and got a hot cup of coffee to see if it would warm me up. Jimmy turned down Fifth Avenue and I crossed the street and sat down on a bench to wait for a bus. I drank the coffee and it helped some to warm me up.
I remember that when I got home I put a quilt over me when I went to bed. I remember my mother waking me up and shaking me to see if I was all right. She questioned me about all the covers over me, on a muggy July night.
I can still shut my eyes and see the face in the mist. A knife in one hand, a cigar in the other. And two evil eyes staring at me. I might say two of the most evil eyes that I have ever seen.
I have always wondered just what did I see that night. I often heard that those old houses were used as a hospital during the Civil War. I know that people didn’t live in them very long at a time. I never had any desire to go in them any more.
A friend of mine lived there for about a week. I would sit on the porch, but I never went back inside ever again.