THE HOUSE by Zack Mitchell Contents: Preamble Lea, 1959 Fowler, 1984 Coda, 2015 Preamble 1 The people in the town of Harrison have an unspoken rule not to talk about the house. Not out of taboo or fright, more a survival technique. The house is there and always has been. Gossiping about it would have been as redundant as informing someone of their own name. Life in Harrison adapted, yet everyone at some point thought about the house on the corner of Liberty Road. It was strange. The house, the activities drawn to the house, and the people in the house. 2 It went like this, and had for many years. A few people are suddenly living in the house. No one in town knows them. They never leave the property but are sometimes seen walking around in the yard. After a few weeks they vanish. A new group appears. The switch appears instantaneous and leaves no trace of the former tenants. The weirdest part is that no one is ever seen moving in or out. No trucks full of ripped up couches carted around the country. No armloads of boxes. No plates and glasses wrapped up in newspaper comics. No excited children running into the house to see their new rooms. Nothing at all. They just appear. Over and Over. 3 In the early days there were many attempts to pursue the source of the disappearances. Curious minds met nothing but failure, frustration and finally abandonment. Some of the transient tenants (old Lea Glover always called them Space Pods, Tom Pitkin used to call them Beatnik Vampires or later Manson Kids) were questioned. They usually said nothing. When they did reply it was always the same vacant answers about not having known the former tenants or their whereabouts. What else could be done? There's no names, contracts, landlords or any proof at all that people have even lived there. The tenants hardly do more than walk around (from what has been seen anyway) so legality isn't much of an issue. Old Lea, in her adventurous time, spent countless days researching the house. A few hoax-y novels and vague newspaper articles had been inspired, but not much could be found in the form of legal documents. All Lea turned up was the confirmation that nobody had ever owned the house. It was built by an unknown crew and left around to be inhabited by whoever would inhabit it. She also discovered probably the most startling fact, it was built in 1846. To look at the house today, over a century and a half later, it hardly looks a decade old. Not just for condition, but for the newness of it. Everything about it looks so modern. Of all the crazy theories, the town of Harrison is in unanimous agreement that no one has ever seen the house undergoing repair work. This began Lea's 'aging house' theory. Not that the house was alive, but that it had nevertheless changed with the times. She claimed to have seen an old photograph showing the house in its original form, a log cabin. Such a photo has never been produced. Interest in the theory waned over time. Few doubt the 1846 creation theory however, and in all those years the house has never been seized, burnt, bulldozed, foreclosed, flooded or had any other misfortune inflicted upon it. Strangers stay there for a few weeks and then move on. That is all.