The Gray House

In the shadows of the porch I could barely see her. But I could feel her, pulling me closer…

The Gray House by Tobin Pilotte

I grew up in the gulf coast town of Corpus Christi, Texas back in the 1970s. Summers seemed cooler back then and most kids my age lived on our bicycles. We rode through the town, along the sea wall, through cemeteries, narrow back alleys, and undeveloped fields. There is really no freedom that compares to the freedom of childhood spent on a bicycle. That freedom for me created lifelong memories.

I was always a bit of a loner and I would leave my neighborhood each summer morning off for an adventure. Leaving my house I would pass the houses on my block knowing the residents of each by name. There were few kids my age in my neighborhood and there was not much to do there. Riding out to the sea wall and down to the Navy base was the best way to spend the day. There was a little beach there that I visited almost daily. Riding through my neighborhood I would notice the flower covered Oleander bushes in front of each house. The houses in our neighborhood were all colorful and well tended. All but the gray house. 

The gray house was that one house every neighborhood seems to have that’s overgrown, apparently abandoned and, for kids, the source of murderous or paranormal tales. In fact I would go so far as to say that the house was almost an absence of a house in an otherwise familiar street where every neighbor was known on a first name basis. This house was not a house, it was not a lot, it was an event horizon where all that makes sense and is understood folds in on itself and vanishes into a void of reality. It was the house in the middle of our street but unlike the house sung about by Madness in the 80s this house… of the 70s was not a house of joy. It was an overgrown house with a thick lawn that would swallow your knees and dark twisted trees all but lying lazily across the roof and porch. The window screens were old and somewhat stained with patches of what seemed to be rust or dark paint dripping from them. There were never any lights, not during the day, not during the night. I raced past the house quickly never entertaining the idea of stopping to have a look. Pedaling as fast as I could I would pass the house, race through the neighborhood, cut across the cemetery and make my way to the bayfront. Once there I would race across the oceanfront sea wall and down the beach near the Navy base.

The Navy base was fenced off but there was a small beach that wandered up to the fence. A small stone jetty arced out into the bay from the shore. My sister and I spent many nights there fishing with our father. It was a strange little beach with coarse sand and lots of seashells. I have so many memories from that beach. One afternoon I stood at the end of the jetty looking at a black smoky ring hanging in the sky over the bay. It was maybe two or three hundred yards wide and just hung there in the cloudless afternoon. I flinched hard as I startled to the sound of Navy training jets roaring over my head toward the ring. It was amazing to watch them approach the ring which seemed to suddenly get smaller. I soon realized that the ring was not getting smaller, it was moving, moving at an incredible speed away from the pursuing jets. It banked sharply, which was weird for a smoky inky mass in the sky and the jets arked wide, not able to make the tight angular turn of the ring. Without a sound it suddenly shot up out of sight with an unnatural speed. That night my parents tuned into the news and there it was, the ring hanging over the bay. The local news station had dispatched a camera crew to film the object and they caught the whole chase on camera. It made the news that night. I asked my parents what it was but they just shook their heads. Dad said it was probably little green men from Mars. 

The next day I returned to the beach. alone. I flew down the hill at the end of the seawall and onto the beach only to suddenly find myself in an obstacle course of landmines covering the beach. These landmines were mostly on top of the sand and were rolling in from the surf. These landmines were otherwise known as Portuguese man o' war.

A man o' war is somewhat like a jellyfish. They wash up on the beach in all their blue and magenta metallic beauty in season. Streaming from the bottom of their bulbous form are long tentacles as thin as a human hair which they use to sting and immobilize their prey for consumption. If you can imagine a time when you were a child and you would blow a bubble with your chewing gum and then pinch closed the opening with your teeth and pull it from your mouth keeping that bubble intact upon the mass of chewed gum… well that is what a man o' war looks like… only blue and magenta and somewhat metallic and translucent.  At certain times of the year they wash up on the beach and pepper the landscape like poorly hidden landmines. Now a man o' war can sting you with its tentacles but if you were to take something like a stick and pop the bubble of the man o' war then you would see it immediately deflate. From a distance this might seem safe but what you would not see are the invisible-to-the-naked eye venomous microscopic nematocysts that will catch on the breeze and land upon your skin. It could be your thigh, your hands or arms, it could even be your face that would be the landing spot for these nematocysts. The result would be not unlike having your skin set on fire with gasoline and a match.  The pain is horrific. I discovered this that day when I was alone on the beach. I chose a stick to probe the man o’ war with. This poor choice resulted in my being laid up in bed for nights writhing in pain that no pain reliever would take the edge off of. Sweat pouring out of me constantly washing the meat tenderizer my mother applied to the “burns” and wondering as any child might, just why I had poked that thing with a stick.  Sometime later with the experience of the burning but a distant memory I would make sure to get a longer stick and maybe make sure that I stood upwind of the thing. However, that afternoon  I learned of a new level of pain. Screaming and crying I barely remember riding my bike back to my house. I barely remember crossing the seawall, the cemetery or the gray house. 

That night, the night of the sting, was awakened by the sound of a screech like the kind an owl makes. I sat upright in bed and looked out the window where the sound seemed to come from. It was a breezy summer night and the shades on my windows were up so that the night air could cool the room. The burning sensation in my arm and leg was gone. Another screech and I turned to look out the window to find the owl. I saw no owl but I did see a girl standing in the backyard by our tire swing. I flinched in fright but something instantly soothed my mind. I felt calm and I could smell the jasmine in bloom. The girl was lit by the light of the moon and to me she was the most incredibly beautiful thing I had ever seen. Long inky black hair ran down past her shoulders and covered her brow making it somewhat difficult to see her dark eyes. She was staring at me and I felt drawn to her in some strange way. She was beautiful and terrifying. Her skin seemed to glow with the light of the moon. She wore a white tank-top with cutoff shorts as was common for kids in the 70s. The dark haired girl was older than me, maybe 16 or so years of age. She was pretty, even to my own 12 year old mind. She beckoned me with her finger. A long pale spindly finger. 

“Will you come with me?” Her soft voice came into my mind. 

“I don’t know” I whispered, not sure why I was whispering. I was frightened and I could not see her eyes through her thick dark silk hair. 

“Choose me” she said, “Choose to come with me, I want to show something to you… something wonderful”

I nodded my head and I stepped out of my bed and walked across the cool hardwood floors to the door that went from my bedroom to the back yard. I felt light headed and it was difficult to tell if I was awake. I remember taking her hand, I remember it feeling like cool smooth glass. I remember walking barefoot across the dew covered grass. And then I was there, there at the gate of the gray house. A sick feeling of fear crept over me and I felt a strong sensation that I should be waking up now. I should be sitting up in bed shaking this off as a dream. But that was not the case I was just inside the gate of the gray house slowly moving to the naturally dark front porch. Stepping over old newspapers and a few small dead branches that had fallen from the trees I found myself on the front porch. The girl, who was at my side, holding my hand the entire way was still there. Her dark hair falling across her face was sweaty and it looked like she had been crying. Dark fluid was rolling down her cheeks, something that was like tears but I knew was not. No, not tears, too dark for tears. The shadows covered her face before I could make sense of it. 

Inside my head I was screaming, screaming worse than I had ever screamed in my life. I could smell my sweat and bile kept rising in my throat as I searched for the form of her face as the shadows of the front porch closed in over us. Soon we were in the inky blackness of the house. I never remembered the door opening. I never remember even seeing a door. There was no threshold and my feet seemed to glide across the plane of reality that surely must have contained a floor. Some kind of ground must have existed but as my eyes fought to find some familiar form in the darkness I could see nothing. I could feel nothing I wondered with new found horror if I was actually falling.

All sound ceased and I panicked with the feeling of being deaf. I felt the cool glassy form of the girl’s hand still in mind. I groped with my free hand up her arm searching the darkness for her form, searching for some body that must be there in the darkness with me but as my hand moved up past the cold smooth skin of her forearm I felt a new wave of nausea come over me. I doubled over and wretched, shaking with fear and reaching out now free from her grasp into the darkness of the gray house. I wondered where she had gone. I wondered who she was and why I had come with her. The air became cold and I felt suddenly that I was no longer standing but laying on my stomach on some hard floor of dirt and rock. I could feel a weight resting on my back and a cool glassy familiar feeling at my sides. In horror I realized that the girl was straddled upon my back and she was tightening her long spindly glassy fingers through my hair. She violently smashed my face into the dirt. Pieces of dirt and rock went up my nose and filled my mouth. I could feel something squirming in the dirt beneath my face and finding its way into my nose, mouth and eyes. Something not unlike the feeling of insects raced over my tongue and into my throat. My eyes burned with the feeling of dirt and grit. I tried to scream but the more I tried the more dirt went down my throat.

Choking and writhing I tried to escape the tightening grip of her thighs. My spine ached with pain as something drove deep between my shoulder blades and through my chest. It was like ice and fire, pain and wood. Everything was black but then came some understanding of something darker than darkness. Something that made black seem positively brilliant. My sense of feeling receded like the tides and my ability to hear came back to me. Numb but able to hear I strained to hear something… anything that could let me know I was still alive.

In time, what seemed like an eternity I could hear voices, distant human voices. They were faint whispers in the darkness. My body started to tingle with feeling again and I noticed straight away that there was no pain. I strained to understand the voices, paralyzed with fear I dared not call out to them. Then there was a cold and metallic voice, a voice that rose above the whispering voices.

“Remember, you chose this” 

Once again pain washed over me and the brilliance of the morning light stung my eyes. I cried out in pain and my mother moved her hands over my leg and arm with a cold cloth. 

“I put some ointment on your stings, try not to let the blankets rub it off”

“This is only the second day but you should start to feel better by evening.” 

I struggled to gain my footing at the moment. I wanted to ask her where she was, where I had been and how I had returned to my room. My throat was dry and horse, I had difficulty finding words to express all the thoughts racing through my mind as my senses returned. I must have been dreaming. It must have been a dream. 

Something scratched at the back of my throat and I coughed. 

Did I swallow a spider in my sleep? 

“What happened to your wrist?” My mother asked with a worried tone. 

I looked at my wrist on the arm burned by the man-of-war and I could see dark angry bruising stings around my wrist. 

Bruising in the form of long spindly fingers

Cold

Glassy

Spindly 

Fingers.

A whisper echoes in my head. “Remember… you chose this.”

Hope you enjoyed this original story by yours truly. I do not profess to be a writer, this was originally a campfire story I told on one of our family camping trips. We are a family of storytellers.