The Ghost of Rock House: Nightwing's Curse

By Michael Causey

The Ghost of Rock House Nightwings Curse is a fictional story about a middle-aged couple whose lives become intertwined through one common denominator, an old rock house they had both lived in while in their youth.
The spirit of a seven-year-old boy, insane and bearing a terrible curse, haunts the rock house and the couple, falling in love and unwilling to relinquish the house, soon find themselves, their friends, and even total strangers from across the sea, all drawn into a spiritual battle of good versus evil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 16, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450040846

Michael Causey

Living in a large rock house in my youth, an encounter with a ghost became the inspiration for this story. Now, forty-five years later, the question as to whether it was real or not real is inconsequential. After a lifetime of security and police work, I am nearing retirement and my hobbies include reading and writing fiction, R.C. model aircraft, and during the early evening hours I enjoy riding my motorcycle along the lonely and occasionally eerie back roads of the Midwest.

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Copyright © 2010 by Michael Causey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my mother, Laura Marie. Thanks, Mom. Most children are taught there are simply no such things as ghosts or monsters, but you tried to teach me something it took me a lifetime to understand, Ghosts, whether real or unreal, can be scary and they are usually harmless, and you always stressed the word, usually. Monsters on the other hand are very real; they walk among us and they usually walk on two feet.

Chapter 1

Mama, wake up!

A tense, but professional voice crackled over the P.A. system, over-riding the muffled hysteria of the frightened passengers. This is your captain. We have suffered massive equipment failure, our hydraulics are gone and we cannot . . .

Mama, wake up!

control our descent. We are going down. The co-pilot’s voice screamed in the background. JESUS! Number one just blew . . . took half the damn wing off! The captain’s voice roared in the speakers. Brace for impact!

Mama, wake up!

No matter what happens, remain in your seats until all movement has stopped!

Mama, wake up!

Sheila Marie McVickers was lying on her stomach crying softly. In the muffled and surreal blackness she could hear the roaring fires and the screams of people dying. She was drenched in sweat and deep down she knew it was only a dream, a terrible nightmare, but that knowledge did little to belie the fact that it still felt so real. It had been four years since the fatal air crash in 1995 that had claimed the lives of one hundred and ten passengers as well as her husband and her ten-year-old daughter.

The first year after the crash Sheila suffered terrible nightmares almost nightly reliving the crash over and over again, but as time went by she gradually accepted the inevitable that nothing could change the horror of what happened and as terrible as it had been, she was finally able to forgive herself for surviving. Parts of her husband’s body, Brian, had been identified and there had been a funeral, but her daughter, little Sara had never been found. It is believed that she and several other doomed passengers had been lost to alligators drawn to the crash sight by the smell of death and carnage.

Nearly three years passed in relative peace, but now the hellish nightmare had inexplicably returned to haunt and torment her almost nightly. She began to suffer bouts of depression and she could not stop thinking that although she was one of eighteen survivors rescued from the flaming wreckage, she had been the only one to walk away from the chaos unassisted and without a scratch. Why? Some called it the ironies of fate. If only the plane could have held together for one more lousy minute. It went into the swamp less than half a mile from the end of the runway.

Sheila’s daughter, Sara, tugged harder on her mother’s nightgown, Mama wake up!

Sheila’s eyes slowly opened to the darkness of her bedroom and she rolled over to look at her daughter standing next to the bed. It’s okay, baby, I’m awake. Her eyes adjusted to the dark as she disentangled herself from her wadded up sheets and sat on the edge of her bed. She sat with her bare feet on the floor with both her hands gripping the mattress and she looked at nothing. Sara! Sara, darling! She held the sheet to her face and burst into tears. Her daughter was not there. She could not have been there to wake her from her terrible dream. She had been dead for four years. But she had been there. Sheila distinctly remembered the very real touch of her daughter’s hand tugging on her nightgown. Her voice had been real, loud and desperate. Mama, wake up!

Oh, God! Sara! Sheila’s body was wracked with uncontrollable sobbing. For several minutes she cried herself into total wakefulness. As her crying eased, she glanced at the clock sitting on her nightstand. Three thirty a.m. Oh, Jesus, why is this happening to me? She switched on the small reading lamp next to the clock and sat on the edge of her bed combing her fingers through her hair pulling loose strands out of her face and trying to calm herself down. It had been part of the dream. Sara was not there, could not be there, but the touch of her hand had felt so real. Her little voice, so filled with fear and concern and desperate to wake her mother up, had seemed so real. Sheila could still hear the haunting echoes of Sara’s voice in her mind.

She reached to switch off the lamp and she looked at the clock and sighed. Three forty five. Six o’clock would be here before she knew it and she felt as though she had gotten no sleep at all. She knew she needed at least a few hours of restful sleep, without dreams or nightmares, to get through her day. She used a corner of her sheet to wipe the remaining tears and sweat from her face and she lay back down. She had to try to get some rest, a little more sleep before her nine o’clock appointment with her attorney. She wanted to be fresh and wide-awake when she met with the realtor to sign the final papers and close on her dream home.

Just two months before, about the time the nightmares and depression started anew, Sheila had been glancing through the realty section in her local newspaper when the listing caught her eye. The house in the country where she had lived in for awhile in her youth was on the market. She’d been fourteen years old when her parents had rented the house in 1972 and she had lived there for four years before graduating from high school and leaving home to go to college. Her parents continued to live there for another three years before they moved in 1979 to a smaller home in a different part of the country. Now, as an adult, it had always been Sheila’s dream to one day purchase the home and move back. The home was a seven room, two-story rock house that had been built in 1851. It had been built with quarried limestone blocks from an abandoned rock quarry not a mile away and it had a huge rock barn sitting across a narrow barnyard. Many of the stones used in the construction were huge and she remembered being told that many of them weighed well over a ton. The old homestead sat at the end of a long driveway in a shallow valley about half way between Columbia and Waterloo. The house had at one time been part of a larger farm, but it was now for sale with just thirty acres of mostly wooded land that immediately surrounded it.

Sheila, for the most part, had fond and happy memories of the old rock house and she had loved living there, but occasionally nagging whispers in the back of her mind hinted that there had also been a dark side. Often, the name, or word, Nightwing would come to mind and when it did, she would experience dark and fleeting memories. Mysterious events had happened while she lived there, but she was unable to remember what they were. On rare occasions, usually when business or other errands caused her to drive past the old rock house, she would experience a surrealistic feeling of dread. There had been something there, a presence in the house. She couldn’t recall if it had been something she had actually seen, or more likely something she had only felt. She remembered it as something illusive and angry and although she’d had the wits frightened out of her on occasion, for some reason there now seemed to be a mental block keeping its memory from her. Oh well, she thought. Silly thoughts like that would not deter her from her desire to return to the old house. Those feelings were from many years ago and as an adult it was time to put away her childish fears of the dark. It was easy to shake off the occasional spooky memories and to place them in the category of things that unexplainably go bump in the night. Few grown-ups, if any, ever realized that those things, if given the chance, could and would prevail themselves upon the innocent and un-suspecting, especially children.

When Sheila learned her offer for the old rock house had been accepted, she put aside the dark, childish, memories and she concentrated on closing the deal and in making the preparations to move. She was having enough problems with the reoccurring nightmares of the jet crash and if they did not stop on their own, she made up her mind that as much as she would hate doing it, she would seek professional help. She knew the only difficulty would be finding a decent therapist willing to help, unlike the quacks and charlatans who seemingly appeared out of nowhere and continually hounded her soon after the crash. She soon learned their primary goal had been to convince her that her sanity and mental health relied solely on her willingness to sign away her financial future. A paltry five hundred dollars an hour for two or three hours a week for a mere four or five years and she would be right as rain, guaranteed.

No, if she truly needed it, she would have to find real help because she wanted the purchase of this home to be a good thing and she wanted to remember and relive the good times she had experienced there. She had no wish to ruin the experience by dragging up nagging and unpleasant memories of old ghosts. Perplexed and unable to put her finger on it, she did not think about or take the time to associate or connect the return of the terrible nightmares with the purchase of the old rock house. That realization would come later after several bizarre and frightening incidents in the house finally culminated in one terrifying and mind shattering occurrence that left her on the phone ranting and screaming out of her mind and on the verge of insanity. Later, in the hospital, she made the connection when she realized the memories and nightmares had been a warning. She had been spared a fiery death in a flaming jet crash deep in a Florida swamp only to face the great-unknown five years later in the rock house. That was when the real terror began. The nightmares revisiting the terrible crash all but stopped and the first few months in the rock house had been peaceful and quiet with only an occasional bad dream or a strange noise in the night and for the most part she was happy, but then one day she decided to clean out the attic and while rooting through old boxes of discarded old clothes and musty bedding she found a faded cardboard game box shoved way back in a nearly inaccessible and dark corner. She hauled nearly everything else out to a burn barrel in the back yard and burned it, but out of curiosity she kept the game box.

That very night she was awakened from a sound sleep by her daughter, crying and tugging at her nightgown. Mama, please! Don’t talk to him, Mama, you gotta burn the box!

In a cold sweat and sobbing, she sat up in her bed and looked at her frantic daughter. She’s real. She’s really there, crying, scared to death. It’s okay, baby! It’s okay, darling. It’s only a Ouija Board, only a game. Before Sheila realized what she was doing, she reached and turned on her bedside lamp. Sara! Sara, darling! but of course Sara wasn’t there. Sobbing, she lay back down and eventually cried herself back to sleep.

If only she had listened to her daughter’s frantic warning. If only she had burned the box. If only she hadn’t opened it. If only. The terror began in earnest and for the next several months the nightmares got worse and the bizarre incidents got worse, each more real and terrifying than the last, until at last it happened, the most horrifying one of all. She saw him. He, it, came down the stairs and looked nothing like the sweet seven-year-old child he had claimed to be. He looked like nothing she’d ever seen, like nothing anyone sane had ever seen. Horrifying, terrifying, alien ugliness, all mild descriptions of what he was and he was coming for her. She was trapped in the dark hallway and he was coming down the stairs, not on two feet, but upside down on all fours with his arms and legs bent unnaturally backwards and she could hear the joints cracking. He was bloated belly up and he was coming down head-first, fingers and toes clicking on the steps; the sound of long fingernails tapping on the oak steps, chittering like an alien crab, it was talking, mixing chittering clicks with ancient words, saying horrible things and telling her what he, it wanted to do with her. Something large and heavy, a shriveled sack bulging, filled with something, was dangling from its body, dragging and flopping down each step and there was a long, limp, tentacle-like appendage dragging behind it, oozing a foul, viscous yellow liquid and she realizes in gasping horror the abomination hanging from its body was it’s genitals. With the knuckles of both hands pressed to her mouth, she turned to run screaming out of the hall, but she stumbled and fell, he, it, came flying over the handrail and clumped down hard on the floor and at first all was darkness. Sheila was held, crushed underneath its body and the oozing appendage was probing, searching for her . . . Sara was crying and screaming for her mother. It was bedlam, lights were flashing, people were screaming, children were crying, she heard the stuttered whining of a damaged jet engine revving up in the distance.

Time seemed to stand still and Sheila’s world consisted of the ugly chittering noises, the foul words, the horrible sound of alien fingers and toes, claws clattering frantically on the floor, the horrible laughter of an insane child and a woman screaming in the distance. An eternity later she woke up and found herself strapped to a bed in a hospital psych-ward, she felt searing pain and the bed was on fire . . . she was not dreaming, the pain was real and she was the one screaming.

A nurse sitting at a nursing station a short distance down the hall from Sheila’s room heard a woman screaming and saw wisps of smoke coming out of the room and she could even smell it, but for some reason it did not strike her as being something amiss. In a dazed stupor she sat and paged through a magazine as if nothing was wrong. Another nurse returning from the cafeteria stepped out of the elevator and heard the screams and saw the smoke pouring out of Sheila’s room. Screaming in alarm at the nurse sitting at the nurse’s station, she threw down the sodas she was carrying and ran into the room and was horrified to see Sheila’s bed was on fire. Knowing Sheila was restrained and unable to get out of the bed and time was short, she frantically began beating out the flames with her bare hands. She saved Sheila’s life, but paid for it dearly by spending two months at home with both her hands wrapped in bandages. The nurse sitting at the station, hearing the frantic screams of the other nurse snapped out of her fugue and shook her head. Dazed and confused but realizing what was happening, she hit a nearby fire alarm and then she too ran into the room to help extinguish the fire.

The event was over and the ordeal had passed. Sheila had spent nearly two weeks in the hospital and although she refused to be transferred to a larger, better-equipped hospital in St. Louis, the doctors were amazed at her recovery. After the incident with the burning bed she had been transferred to another room and for seven days she rested peacefully and slept soundly without nightmares and even more surprisingly the memory of actually seeing Jeffrey had all but faded. Although she was still frightened out of her wits, she wanted to return home. The terrifying events at home and then later in the hospital were past now and surprisingly, even to herself, she felt an inner strength she hadn’t known she possessed. She felt that despite her fear she could handle almost anything, at least long enough for her to get the place sold.

The first two weeks back home Sheila made it a point to avoid the attic and the upstairs all-together and the house remained quiet and peaceful. She began to relax, until the night Sara tugged on her mother’s pajamas sleeve. Mama, wake up!

Chapter 2

The large stone house sits all alone surrounded by the most fertile farmland in southwestern Illinois. Built into a sloping hillside, the front of the house is two stories high and at the rear it is nearly three stories from the ground to the top of the roof. The downstairs consists of kitchen, living room, a dining room and master hallway, the master bedroom, a full bath and a half-bath. The kitchen opens out onto the back porch. If a person were standing at the kitchen door looking in, they would see a short hallway running left and right, the sink counter on the left and the kitchen beyond, straight across the hall is a closet-like door that leads down into the cellar, the inner part of the foundation itself and built of massive stone blocks with an arched roof. If they look right, or east, they would see a doorway that leads into a room that can be used as a dining room or possibly a spare downstairs bedroom. There is a doorway in the north wall of that room that opens into a half-bath that then opens into the master bedroom. Over the sink counter, they would be looking north down the master hallway that leads out of the kitchen and goes straight through to a foyer at the front of the house. A heavy oak door opens inward and a glass storm door opens out onto the front porch that extends all the way across from the west to the east side of the house. Half way down the main hall, a door on the right opens into the main bathroom that is directly under the staircase. Left of the foyer is a doorless arched entryway into the living room, which also has an arched opening into the kitchen. The oak staircase on the right side of the foyer leads upstairs. At the foot of the staircase on the right side of the foyer is a doorway into the master bedroom. The stairs go up and hook around to the right forty-five degrees and opens into the foyer upstairs. At the top of the stairs on the left, or south side, a door opens to access an open attic directly over the kitchen and dining room. On the west side of the foyer there is a door into the west bedroom directly over the living room and across the foyer is the east bedroom directly over the downstairs master bedroom. On the north side of the foyer, between the bedrooms, there is a small sewing room, or storage area. The outer stone walls of the house average one and a half to two feet thick and the inner walls are merely painted plaster over the stone. The only insulation to be found in the house lies between the heavy rafters in the ceiling and roof. The house and its stone barn sit among the rolling hills and lush game-filled woodlands midway between the small towns of Columbia and Waterloo.

It had been thirty-two years since Bill James had lived here, but he had no trouble finding it. He remembered the back roads and country lanes nearly as well as he remembered the two-holer outhouse sitting next to the barn. When he lived there, there was no running water and the indoor restrooms did not exist. Having lived there for several years in his childhood, he could have found it blindfolded. It was one of several homes he’d grown up in. Back then, renting and living in each home four to seven years seemed to be the norm before his father became antsy and he would pack up lock, stock and barrel and move on. Bill’s parents couldn’t seem to settle down in any one place and his mother didn’t seem to mind until it became time for him and his brother to start school. That’s when she put her foot down and insisted that his father park it in one place, at least until the boys got old enough to go out on their own. Well, his father was having none of that nonsense, but he did manage to keep the family pretty much in the same neighborhood. Regardless, it was still pretty rough for Bill and his younger brother, Bobby. They’d get settled in one school and start making new friends and before they knew it, their father would find a place he’d rather be and off they’d go.

Back in those days most people looking for a place to live would look for four rooms and a bath, but Bill’s father thought the ideal home was five rooms and a path, running water was nice, but not needed. The school chums that occasionally visited would always ask the dreaded question. Where’s your bathroom? Bill would usually ask back, One or two? Ya gotta pee or poop? If it was one, they had to pee, he would answer, Anywhere out back. If they answered, two, he would tell them, Through the kitchen, out the back door, follow the path across the barnyard to the small building right next to the barn. Oh yeah, to avoid splinters, use the hole with the seat, raise the lid and don’t forget to check before you sit. Nothing will thrill you more than getting kissed in the nether regions by an aggravated brown recluse spider or an irate chicken snake that thinks its being fired upon.

The boys rarely had the same friends out more than once or twice. Later, in their teen years, when they brought the occasional girlfriend out to meet mom and pop, they never let them stay for more than ten or fifteen minutes, especially if they’d been plying them with cherry cokes all day. Needless to say, Bill and his brother hated that path.

Bill graduated from high school and by the end of that year he’d went to work, gotten married and moved out on his own. Not long after, his brother jumped the nest when he quit school and joined the army. His mom and dad stayed there a couple more years, which unfortunately turned out to be a year too long. During their time there, the whole family, at one time or another, had become aware of the other presence in the house. Spirit, ghost, entity, poltergeist, they didn’t know what it was and for the most part, they hadn’t cared. Bill’s dad always shrugged it off as the house settling or birds in the attic, and his mom would usually just oh, poo it away as nonsense. His brother never seemed to have anything to say about it one way or another. Bobby wasn’t Duh stupid it was just his way of coping. Bill personally, tried his best to ignore it until the clomping of over-sized rain galoshes and the jingling of boot buckles in the foyer and the attic, especially during the night, would keep him awake and drive him nuts. He’d usually leave his bed long enough to stick his head out in the dark foyer and yell, Hey! Cut it out! and then he’d run back to the safety of his bed and his magic covers; every kid knowing that covers are magical and nothing can get you if you are completely covered up, which Bill thought was pretty neat. The only problem he had with the theory was that of the air hole. You had to have air to breath, but if you open a small flap to let fresh air in, then ‘It’ can get in and not only in, but right in your face. Man! It was hard for a kid to catch a break back in those days.

As far as Bill knew, no one had ever actually seen anything other than an occasional odd or moving shadow so no one bothered to give it much thought, or at least they didn’t until his mom found an Ouija board in the attic and started talking to the thing. Bill and his brother had both moved out by then, his dad was working evenings and nights and his mom was usually home alone. When she found the Ouija board, the entity in that house decided it was time to start taking advantage of her loneliness. That’s when Bill and his dad learned the entity had a name. Poor, sweet, little seven-year-old Jeffrey had been dead and haunting the house for nearly a hundred years. At first, they laughed and went along with the joke, but when they realized it was no joke to mom, they started trying to convince her that it was just a mind game, a game designed to scare the socks off silly kids at parties and such. Come on, mom. You know there are no such things as ghosts. You’ve always taught us that, but she wouldn’t listen. Her nightly chats with Jeffrey went on for months and it finally culminated when Jeffrey tried to drive her insane, causing her to suffer a complete nervous breakdown and then by going so far as to setting the hospital bed she was tied to on fire. That little episode caused Bill and his dad to really start taking things seriously and while his mom was undergoing electro-shock therapy to erase her memory, his dad spent most of his time hunting and searching the house for all the books and magazines she had secretly been buying; books and mags that dealt with the occult, spiritualism, ghosts and other mysterious things of that genre. When he brought her home from the hospital, she was to have absolutely no access to anything at all to do with haints, ghosts or spirits and everyone, family and friends all were strictly warned to not say so much as a word to her about anything along those lines. Everything he found, every piece of literature and every book that had anything at all to do with ghosts or spiritualism was hauled out to the burn barrel and burned, even the family bible, everything except one thing. They searched that house from cellar to attic, but they never found that Ouija board. They never saw it again. Since Bill was living in another town and his brother was overseas, his dad decided it was time to pack up and leave that place. A few months after Bill’s mother got out the hospital and just as soon as she was up to the task, they moved out of the house in 1970. They had lived there a total of eight years, longer than normal for them to be in any one house.

Although his mom had all but recovered from her experience in the rock house, she was never quite the same. To her dying day Bill could see the mystery and confusion in her eyes. She had no recollection of Jeffrey that he knew of, but he could see in her eyes that she often wondered about that lost year, a year she never regained. Years later, Bill took a chance one day and asked her, Hey, mom, do you remember Jeffrey?

She looked at him oddly. Jeffrey? Jeffrey! No . . . she hesitated, I don’t seem to recall a Jeffrey. It’s odd though, for some reason that name brings to mind that big rock house we used to live in. Is it, uh, he some boy you knew?

Bill was in his mid thirties at the time and her answer bothered him. Jeffrey’s name invoked the memory of the rock house and although she knew he was referring to a boy, instead of asking Was he someone you knew? she had referred to him as it, uh, he. Not wanting her to dwell on it, he answered, Yeah, mom. He was that ugly little freckled-faced kid that lived down the road from us. He let me drive his motor scooter once and you got mad at me and told me to stay off it. You remember. Anyway, I read an article the other day that he’s helping to design the new moon shuttle or something. A complete and total lie, but a harmless one and something Bill knew she’d know nothing about.

His mom just shook her head in confusion. Oh, that’s nice, and Bill let the matter pass.

Over the years, Bill followed in his dad’s footsteps and spent a lot of time moving around the country, especially out west, but unlike his dad, he got tired of it at an earlier age and he decided to settle down here in what they call the rural Metro East, the part of the country he’d always considered home. Now, over thirty years after graduating from high school he found himself standing on the side of a lonely and familiar country road looking at the old rock house. He was single and after several years of hard work and personal sacrifice, he found himself, not what one would consider obscenely wealthy perhaps, but he was financially secure and he retired a year shy of his fiftieth birthday. During his life he tried marriage a couple of times, but he found himself unable to cope with the new age thinking that he learned was the basis of marriage in these modern times. He was from the old school and some would call him old fashioned because he was inclined to remain firm in his convictions. He came to believe that in today’s new world his concepts of right and wrong and the belief that everything should be fifty-fifty we’re archaic, old fashioned and definitely not in style.

Viet Nam was going hot and heavy when Bill married his first wife, the one and only girl he was mesmerized by and crazy in love with. But, fates of the time decreed it was not going to be. Responding to his Greetings from Uncle Sam, his draft notice, he was scrubbing pots and pans working K.P. or kitchen police on his birthday when he received his Dear John letter. Bill. I’m sorry to do this on your birthday, but he (he being any rat scoundrel that takes advantage of a deployed soldier’s lonely wife or girlfriend and is referred to in the army as, Jody) is here and you are not. If you don’t get killed, try to have a nice life. Your ex-wife.

At the time, Mr. Nixon, or ‘Tricky Dick’, wasn’t pulling troops out of Viet Nam, but he had stopped sending troops over there so Bill went elsewhere and managed to not get killed. After his discharge from the army he tried marriage a couple more times, but the ladies were students of the new school and both marriages were doomed to failure. He began to liken himself to Sophia Loren in the movie, Grumpy Old Men 2. He was cursed in love. Realizing it was highly unlikely that he’d ever find a soul-mate and he would never raise a family in a comfortable little house surrounded by a white picket fence, he pretty much gave up on the whole idea and he threw himself into his work and his goal of retiring early.

Bill was sitting in a local pub sipping a few cold ones with a friend named Doug Lassiter who happened to be a realtor and Bill happened to mention that he was thinking about buying a new home. He was living in an apartment in town, but he was thinking about moving back to the country. He was not a farmer, but a home anywhere out of the city would be nice. A few days later Doug called Bill and asked, Didn’t you used to live in an old rock house out there between Columbia and Waterloo when you were a kid?

Bill answered, Yes I did. A big old rock house out there just off Cottonwood road. Why?

Bill heard what sounded like shuffling papers on the other end of the line. I just downloaded and printed out a new listing. Thought you might be interested. It’s on Cottonwood road and I think it might be your old house. It says it is a two story stone structure, built in 1851, completely modernized with three bedrooms and one and a half bathes. The full-sized barn is a stone structure too. It says it was part of a 2000 acre farm, but now only the house, barn and the thirty acres it sits on is up for sale and it falls within the price range you said you were interested in.

When Doug mentioned it had been modernized and the price range, Bill became instantly interested. Who owns that place now? Who’s selling it?

It says, Nightwing Estate, for sale by owner, a Sheila McVickers."

The name Nightwing brought a flashback memory of an engraved stone plaque mounted in one of the stone chimneys at the rock house. Bill remembered the house had two chimneys, one on the west wall and one across and on the other side of the house, the east wall. The plaque was on the west chimney and he remembered it well. As a youngster he often traced the engraving with his finger, Nightwing—1851. He remembered being told that the house had been built with four fireplaces, two on the first floor and two on the second floor, one above the other on both sides of the house. They had all four been walled over sometime in the twenties or thirties when a coal burning stove was installed in the living room to heat the house. When he lived there a more modern and more efficient propane stove had replaced the coal stove. Now, going by the asking price of the house, he assumed the place sported a deluxe central heating and air conditioning system and if it didn’t, it was going to before he purchased it. He spoke into the phone. Yeah, I might be interested. When you get a free minute contact this McVickers and find out if there have been any other offers and see if she’ll accept an earnest check. Get all the particulars and tell her I’ll probably make an offer. In the meantime, I think I’ll run out there and check it out. Is she living in it now?

Doug shuffled some more papers. Says here, owner is presently in residence and open house is available at buyer’s request. No appointment necessary. That’s odd. It also says the seller will vacate by arranged closing date. Buyer to assume full ownership at closing.

Now, standing here looking at it, there was no sign of activity and there was no way to tell if anybody was home. Bill could see a No Trespassing sign nailed to an old corner post, but he figured what the heck. He was after-all, a prospective buyer. He got back into his pick-up truck, turned into the driveway and drove the two hundred some odd yards up to the house and parked in the barnyard. The south side of the barn roof extended out beyond the barn to become the roof of a detached tool shed and work shop. The open area between the barn and the shed, what his family had called the tunnel, was open at both ends and was used to house tractors and other farming equipment, but when they lived here they used it as a garage. Apparently the present owner utilized the space as a garage as well because he could see a relatively new dark blue Ford Explorer parked in there. He sat in the graveled barnyard staring at the old structure for a couple of minutes and it was as though the last thirty-two years hadn’t happened. Several years of his youth came rushing back and his mind was flooded with childhood memories of his life in that big rock house. He looked at the upstairs west bedroom window, the only one he could see from where he was parked and he shuddered. His had been that west bedroom while his brother’s had been on the east side of the house across the foyer. He was looking at that window with his mind drifting way back into the past when he snapped back to the present. He thought he saw a movement, the silhouette of someone standing in the window looking down at him. He blinked his eyes and shook his head, but when he looked again there was no one there and he couldn’t be sure if there had been. Without even thinking about it he reached and turned the key shutting off the engine. Parked in the middle of the barnyard between the house and the big rock barn he could see both the front and the back of the house and he would see anyone coming out the front or back doors. After a moment he honked the horn. He tried again a few seconds later, but when no one came out he decided to try knocking on the back door on the south side of the house. That was the door that led directly into the kitchen and when he had lived here it was the one used most of the time by visitors.

When he walked up the large stone steps onto the back porch to the kitchen door, again just for the briefest of moments, he felt like he was in the past. He was sure the heavy wooden door that was standing open on the inside was the same old oak door that had been there when he was a kid, but the outer wood-framed screen door had been replaced with an aluminum screen and glass storm door. The bottom glass had been slid up allowing fresh air to enter the house, letting air in, but keeping flies and other flying insects out. He walked to the door and he could see into the kitchen over the obviously newer stainless steel sink and its marble counter top into the hallway that extended clear across the house to the front door and the front porch. He had not knocked on the door yet and when he realized what he was looking at, he was nearly startled out of his shoes. The last thing he expected to see was sitting on the counter top. His friend had told him the house had been modernized with one and a half baths so he naturally assumed the place now had running water. But there it was, right where it had always been when he was a kid, a galvanized water bucket with a long handled dipper sticking out of it. He hadn’t thought to look when he first came up, but now he looked at the other side of the porch and there was the old hand-pump that pumped their drinking water out of the cistern under the porch. He couldn’t believe it was still here. He remembered the cistern was kept filled with rainwater off the roof or by water pumped in from a nearby fresh water spring and every day or two when the bucket got low he or his brother was expected to fill it. He couldn’t help himself. He went to the pump, grasped the handle and it stubbornly came up five or six inches before the rusty screech stopped him. Nope, its innards were badly rusted and it was obvious it had not been used in years. It would never pump water again, but it was a relic of a bygone era and he was glad to see it still there.

Hoping nothing would break, he gently pushed the handle back down and he turned to go back to the kitchen door. Still looking back at the pump, he raised his hand to knock on the door and when he turned to knock, he almost had a heart attack. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his entire life was standing just inside the door watching him. Her arms were crossed just below her breasts and she had just the slightest hint of a smile as she looked at him curiously. She was almost slight in build, but everything was perfect in proportion. She had long, slender, but perfectly shaped legs, a thin waist with just a touch of tummy, perfectly shaped breasts, long, slender neck and the smooth skin and the face of a cover model. She had high cheekbones that set off a perky little chin, a small mouth framed by full, luscious lips, a little perky perfectly shaped nose and perfectly spaced, almond shaped light brown eyes that swirled with flickering highlights. She had rich, beautiful, shoulder-length black wavy hair and it was highlighted with thin streaks of silver. She was wearing cut-off blue jean shorts over what looked like a blue one-piece, short-sleeve body suit or a tightly tucked tee shirt. Regardless what it was, he felt totally stupid standing there with his mouth hanging open and his hand held up getting ready to knock on her door. He guessed she was somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five years old and although she was obviously not a teen, he seriously doubted she belonged to AARP. The only word he could think of at the time was, smitten. Completely and irrevocably smitten. In the five seconds he had known her and although they were total strangers he knew he had been in love with her all his life and he would die loving her. There was nothing for it. He was at her service, he was at her beck and call and he would grant her every wish. All she had to do was ask.

Are you thirsty? The sweetest, most feminine voice he’d ever heard.

Huh! What? He shook his head, looked at his raised hand and he looked at her in confusion. Pardon me. Did you say something?

Her smile broadened. Since you tried the pump, I assumed you might be thirsty and I since I’m here, there is no need to knock.

He returned her smile. Yes. Knock. He looked at the hand he was still holding up and he blushed. He could feel the heat on his cheeks and neck.