The Gingerbread House

When did we know something was wrong? I think it must have been five days before Christmas. The mail had been building up in her mailbox for weeks already, flopping out onto the footpath and getting soggy with the rain. That in itself wasn’t unusual, though, because June Everett never checked her mail, or mowed her lawn, or opened her curtains, or appeared out of doors if she could help it.

So what was it exactly that prompted my mother to knock on her door?

Most likely it was the cats. Legally speaking they were strays, at least that’s what I overheard her telling the police when I was playing in the hedge one day. Well, she may not have been the official owner but the cats definitely considered themselves at home at her place, all fifteen of them. She fed them twice every day and had names for each one. They wandered occasionally; we’d see them sunbathing on our lawn or stalking birds in the hedge, for example, but they’d never ask anyone else for food. The moment they started mewing at the back door, scratching at windows, and cautiously tiptoeing into open doors, we realized something might have happened to June.

“She’ll be all right,” said my father, who hated interfering. “The old duck’s probably just gone to visit someone.”

“I don’t think she has any friends or family, Jack. I’ve never known her to go away before,” my mother fretted.

“Maybe she’s won Lotto and spent it on a world cruise,” he joked hopefully.

“I’ll just pop over and see if she’s all right,” said my mother, ignoring him. “It may be she’s had a fall. Or she could be sick.”

“Can I come with you, Mum?” I asked.

“Yes, of course you can,” she smiled, pleased that I was showing concern for someone.

Little did she know it, but the truth was not that I had been bitten by the altruism bug. In fact, I’d been dying to see the inside of that house for months. My friend Dex and I called it The Gingerbread House and firmly believed June Everett was a wicked witch. After all, I had seen her once; she had long, messy white hair, a wart on her nose, a sizeable hump and fifteen black cats. I’d even glimpsed a besom on her porch once.

Dex and I had spent hours discussing what the Gingerbread House looked like inside. She thought it was 80 percent cobwebs and that that Miss Everett kept a big green talking spider as a pet. I was of the opinion that all that was baby stuff. Miss Everett had a giant cauldron in her kitchen, a giant book of spells, and a pantry that was full of interesting ingredients in neatly labelled mason jars: PICKLED BABY FEET, LIZARD TONGUES, POWDERED RATS—that sort of thing.

If I could get a peek into the house, I’d be in a position to settle the matter once and for all. I could hardly wait to describe everything Dex when I saw her again.

The cats watched us, tails twitching, as we walked up the garden path of Miss Everett’s villa. The garden was full of weeds and the rose bushes looked gnarly, with yellow leaves that something had been taking bites out of. There was a kind of stone fountain in the middle of a young woman with one boob hanging out of her dress who was pouring water out of a vase on her shoulder. The statue was tilted at a crooked angle and had moss growing over her face, which made it kind of spooky.

The villa was actually a pretty impressive house; you could tell it had been fancy in the olden days. It was a big two-storied wooden mansion with an attic and a verandah that went all the way around. At the top of the attic were things that Dad said were finials. And there was even a weathervane in the shape of a black horse with its mane flying out as if it were running fast.

The only problem was that everything was neglected and run-down. The paint was peeling away, the water pipes were rusting and there was lichen and moss on the path and on the roof too. There was a whole bunch of stuff piled on the verandah—boxes full of moldy books and ancient appliances like TVs and vacuum-cleaner parts and those pre-electricity washing machines that had a crank. I noticed that the pillars on the verandah were festooned with at least three giant cobwebs.

When we got up on the porch I noticed a funny smell and figured that must be the cats.

My mother banged on the door but there was no answer.

We stood there for a few moments.

“Aren’t you going to go in?” I said hopefully.

My mother, usually pretty gung-ho, looked uncertain.

“You said she might have fallen down, I really think we should go in mum,” I insisted.

Gingerly, she tried the door. It creaked open and we saw a living room that was dimly lit, dusty and incredibly disordered. Boxes were not so much stacked as thrown on top of one another, books and photograph albums lay on every surface. Bowls full of cat kibble were dotted about the room. The funny smell was definitely stronger inside the house but I was no longer sure it had anything to do with cats.

“Yoo hoo! June? Are you there?” My mother’s voice fell dead on the jumbled heaps. No answer.

“You stay here Thea,” my mother told me sternly.

“OK,” I said quickly.

She ventured into the house, picking her way over the objects strewn in her path. I watched a dark corridor swallow her up with a sudden feeling of extreme apprehension.

Only a couple of minutes later, mum came barrelling down the corridor with a handkerchief to her mouth looking pretty sick. She slammed the door grabbed my hand, yanking me off the verandah.

“Ouch!! What happened?” I asked.

“Never mind,” she snapped. “Let’s go home. I have to make a call.”

Well, I was told to stay in my room but I left the bedroom door open just a crack so I could hear what was going on. Mum spoke to dad in whispers and for once what she was saying seemed to make an impression on him. He made a phone call and told whoever was on the other end that there was a body at 5 Stone Street, that there was a lot of blood and that he thought it might be a homicide.

A body! Blood! So June Everett was dead…murdered even. This was huge.

“Muuuum!” I yelled from my bedroom, aware that it would be an infringement on her instructions to leave my room, “Muuuuuum!”

I heard her sigh and thump down the corridor.

“What is it?” she said through gritted teeth, hugging herself.

“I’m bored. Can I go to Dex’s house to play?” I smiled sweetly.

She looked momentarily relieved.

“That’s a good idea. I’ll call Mrs. Wright and if it’s OK I’ll drop you over.”

As I’d predicted, mum was glad to get me out of the way during the whole corpse-removal process. This suited me because I was planning to go over the matter in detail with Dex. It wasn’t often I was an almost-eyewitness to a grisly crime scene, and I planned to make the most of it. I also wanted to rub it in that there had been no dumb “green spiders.”

In record time, mum arranged a whole sleepover for me at the Wright house and packed my overnight bag.

“No way!!” Dex’s eyes were practically popping out of her head.

“Yes way,” I nodded solemnly, perched on the edge of her bunk bed.

“Do you think she was murdered?” Dex looked at me with her mouth was hanging open in a way that made her look even dopier than usual.

“Well, I overheard my dad say that there was a lot of blood, so...” I let that hang in the air.

“Wow,” said Dex.

“I know,” I said.

“What did the inside of her house look like?” she asked.

“Well, number one, there weren’t any big green spiders.” I snorted.

“Did you see any footprints?”

I twisted up my mouth to think.

“Hard to say. It was super messy and dusty, as if it had been that way for a long time. And also it was much too dark to see footprints.” I secretly felt annoyed that I hadn’t thought to look for them at the time.

“Who do you think might have done it?”

“I don’t know. We lived right next to her and I never saw her have any visitors or anything.”

“Maybe it was a mermaid.”

“What?”

“I heard they’re really evil. They sing to you so you come to them and then they eat you.”

“Yeah but Mrs. Everett didn’t swim anywhere. She was just sitting around in her house. Mermaids can’t come on land.”

“Oh yeah” she said, crestfallen. “Well, but, you know she’s a witch and everything. Maybe she’d summoned an evil being and they had a fight. Or maybe it was the devil and he’d come to take her to hell.”

I nodded slowly. Finally, she was talking some sense.

“I bet you that is what happened” I said. “It’s dangerous to mess with the Prince of Darkness.”

We tinkered with our Lego blocks for a few minutes in silence.

“Did you really not see the green spider?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “But I did see some giant spiderwebs. Not green though.”

“Was there a cauldron?”

“I only saw into one room. I didn’t see a cauldron there, but it felt like there was definitely one in the house.”

“Are you girls all right in there?” Mrs. Wright called.

“Yes, thank you Mrs. Wright. Thank you for having me over. Oh, Mrs. Wright?” I asked.

“Yes Thea?” she said warily.

“Would it be all right if we camped out in the back garden tonight? It was really fun when we did that on Dex’s birthday.”

“Well, it’s a little cold tonight…”

“Yeah, but you have those snuggly sleeping bags, right?”

“Yes. Oh, well. I suppose so, if you girls put the tent up yourselves, and take it down in the morning. It sounds like a nice idea actually. Very adventurous of you two.”

As soon as Mrs. Wright fluttered off to get the tent I felt a thwack as Dex hit me on the head with a pillow.

“What’s the big idea?” she hissed. “I don’t want to sleep in a tent. It’s freezing cold and that thing smells like Harry.” Harry was their Bernese Mountain Dog who had a health condition that made him very smelly.

“I’ll explain in a little bit,” I murmured back. “I have an idea.”

“So here’s the plan,” I said as we hammered the tent pegs into the ground under a spreading pine. “We wait until midnight and then we go to the Everett house and look for clues.”

“Won’t it be locked?” she said doubtfully.

“Yes, but that doesn’t matter. I’m sure we can get in through a window.”

“I don’t know…” Dex looked glum.

“It’s the only way,” I assured her. “What if the Prince of Darkness invades our whole town?”

“I guess.” She said unhappily.

We agreed to wait until midnight before we decided to make a move. As it turned out, that was a wise decision because at ten o’clock Mrs. Wright came out to give us a thermos of hot chocolate. Then Harry came and decided he wanted to be in the tent with us. I didn’t want him to sleep with us but Dex said it was her tent so she got to decide. I let her have that one.

It was only when I saw the lights go out in Mr. and Mrs. Wright’s bedroom that I felt I could breathe easy. Dex had started snoring softly so I whacked her on the shoulder.

“Wake up!” I hissed.

Dex screamed. Harry started barking his head off, then the bedroom light went on again. Mr. Wright leaned out of the window.

“Everything OK down there?” he called.

“Yes, Dex just rolled over poor Harry and he got scared,” I said. “He’s OK though.”

“All right. Well, just yell out if you need anything. Goodnight,” he said and shut the window.

“I don’t want to go to the Gingerbread House,” Dex whined softly. She sounded like she was going to cry.

I made chicken noises.

“Stop it!” she hissed. “I am not a chicken. OK, I’ll go then. But Harry has to come too.”

I was about to object but then it occurred to me that he might give us some protection. He wouldn’t bark at anyone who attacked us, but his stink would create a powerful forcefield around us.

“All right. Harry’s in.”

We crept out as quietly as we could. Harry thought it was a game and started running around in circles. Luckily he didn’t bark this time.

It took us about fifteen minutes to get to Miss Everett’s house. I knew the way perfectly well but the streets looked different at night. A spooky mist was coming up from the lagoon and we heard weird noises from the geese and other water birds. We were shivering, half with fear and half with the damp cold. No one else was walking but a few times a car came past. Every time that happened we jumped into a ditch or behind a power pole.

When I think of it now, I shudder. Two little girls (and one smelly dog) exploring a big empty old house in the middle of the night! But at the time I was enthralled by a chance for adventure.

The first obstacle was a yellow ribbon tied in front of the gate, blocking our entrance. ‘KEEP OUT’ I read in the light of the streetlamps.

At this point, Dex got worried again.

“We’re going to get into so much trouble! What if the police find us?”

“Don’t worry, they won’t. There’s no one here,” I assured her. “Come on, follow me,” I said and showed her a place at the base of the hedge where you could crawl under and get through to the other side.

“What if there are spiders?” she said.

“We’ll just get Harry to eat them.”

Harry perked up at the sound of his name, but was very reluctant to go into the hedge until it was clear that he’d be left behind if he didn’t. He was even more of a wuss than Dex.

“OK, we’re through!” I said as we emerged triumphant. “Now we just have to get into the house.”

“Won’t it be locked?” Dex said.

“We’ll see. I’ll go and check the back door and the windows. You stay here.”

“No, we’ll come with you,” she said hurriedly.

It was at that point that Harry growled, low and long. I’d never heard him do that before. Goosebumps broke out all over my body. I saw a black shape approaching us, dim but just perceptible in the moonlight.

“Oh, it’s just a cat,” I said with relief. “I forgot about the cats. I knew we shouldn’t have brought Harry.”

“He doesn’t usually mind cats though,” said Dex. “I’ve never seen him growl at one before. Our cat brought him up as if he were one of her kittens, so he always likes cats.”

“Well he doesn’t like this one apparently,” I grumbled. “Come on. We’re wasting time.”

As we crept towards the house, I saw an eerie glow coming from a window on the ground floor. It was blueish and pulsing, fading and growing like a visible, phosphorescent breath.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Probably just a fridge,” said Dex.

“Your fridge does that?”

“Well, no. Maybe it’s a nightlight. Or…oh! I know! A Christmas tree!”

I decided to look through the window. It was a little high so I had to get on tippy toes to see over the sill. I will never forget the sight that greeted me.

It was a fancy room, not messy like the disaster area of the front room. This was neat and tidy and—Dex was right—there was a big Christmas tree there. But it wasn’t the tree making that weird glow. It was Miss Everett herself.

At least, it was something that looked a lot like June Everett. She was in her usual outfit—a loose dress, floral pinafore, sagging pantyhouse and fluffy slippers. Her hair was wild, her nose was warty, her back hunched. But now she was surrounded by that electric-blue pulsing glow, as if she’d turned into some kind of terrestrial jellyfish.

She selected each Christmas ornament with great care from a big box full of bones. One by one, she lifted it and hung it on the tree. Fixed on the sight, it took me a while to realize that these were no ordinary Christmas decorations.

Instead of great colored baubles, these decorations were bones! A jawbone, a small femur, a clavicle, they gleamed against the dark pine needles, reflecting the blueness of Miss Everett’s plasmic aura. I heard the tune of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” and realized that the witch was singing:

O come all ye tasty,

Chubby and delicious,

Come ye, o come ye,

To my roa-oasting dish!”

She ended up cackling.

“What is it? What’s that sound?” Dex hissed.

I was so appalled I could not speak or move. I was afraid that if I made any movement then the ghostly apparition would notice and hunt us down.

Slowly, I lowered myself until she couldn’t see me and I whispered to Dex.

“We have to leave, right now.”

We skittered to the hedge, Harry leading the charge. I just saw his hindquarters, tail between legs, shimmy through the gap when I stopped dead. My legs were still working, but I couldn’t move forward. Something gripped me on the shoulder. The sound of Harry’s toenails clacking away on the asphalt made me realize Dex and I were completely alone. I turned to look at her and her eyes were large, dark and resplendent with terror.

“What’s the hurry?” said a deep, chilly rasp.

“Help!” I tried to scream, but it emerged as a voiceless cry. The Thing that held us was merely a shadow. It had the outline of a large person but I couldn’t make out any features except for a massive eyeless smudge.

The Thing dragged us both, shoulder first towards the house. I struggled as much as I could but it was no use: he held us both in his thrall. When I realized this, I made my body go limp and started to think intensely about how to escape.

By the time he’d dragged us up the porch steps, through the messy box room and into the Christmas Tree room, I thought I might have hit upon the answer.

The Thing dropped us on the floor. Glaring up at him I realized that he was made up of about million fur balls, probably coughed up by the fifteen black cats at one time or another.

Miss Everett smiled toothlessly at us. The blue halo around her seemed to be glowing extra brightly.

“Ah, hello. Two fat little Christmas puddings, eh? Excellent!” she cackled.

“Hello Miss Everett,” I said, adopting my grease-up-the-adult tone. I’m glad to see you’re all right. We were all worried about you. There was a lot of blood.”

“Oh that,” she waved the concern away airily. “That was my regenerative blood spa. I do it every year. I let the constabulary think I was murdered just to make them feel useful. And maybe they’ll finally stop bothering me about my minions.”

“You mean the cats?” I asked.

“Whatever you like to call them.”

She poked me with a long stick-like finger.

“How old do you think I am, eh?”

“Uh, well, maybe 80?” I said.

She laughed.

“I am 340 years old. How do you like them onions?” She pinched my cheek, which hurt, with freezing cold fingers.

“Wow,” I said. “You actually look really young and pretty for your age. What moisturizer do you use? My mum uses Oil of Olay.”

“I use a very special type of moisturizer,” she leered and came so close to my face that I smelt her breath, which was like an estuary at low tide, sort of sulfurous. “What do you think it might be?”

“Er, maybe Estée Lauder?”

“No. I prefer the blood of little girls.” She grinned again and licked her lips.

Dex fainted with a thud on the floor that made Miss Everett’s box of bones rattle. A leg bone fell out and I picked it up absent-mindedly.

“Oh interesting,” I said. “But have you tried Estée Lauder?”

“Who is Estée? Is this one of your little playmates?” she asked hopefully.

“Yes, that’s right. She’s hiding out there in the hedge because she’s so shy. But she’s bigger than both of us and she really wanted to meet you.

“Mmm? Well, the more the merrier!” she cackled.

She muttered something in a strange language and the fur-ball man appeared again.

“Wait! I said. Maybe you should give me a big bag so she can’t run away?”

“Hmmmm, all right,” said June Everett and produced a large Santa sack from under the tree.

I went out with the Thing and, just as I suspected, Harry was still in the hedge whimpering a little bit.

“I’ll get her,” I said to the thing. “She trusts me. “Hey Estée!” I said loudly. Then, under my breath I said softly, “Harry, here Harry!”

Harry stuck his muzzle out and regarded me dolefully. I brandished the leg bone and got closer and closer, until it was practically under his nose.

“Hey Estée, why don’t you come inside and see the nice lady?” I said loudly.

The moment Harry’s jaws clamped down on the bone, I smuggled him into the sack without too much trouble.

“OK!” I said to the Thing. “Got her! Can you carry the sack? She’s a bit heavy for me.”

The Thing grunted and lifted the sack with Harry inside, growling a bit but mainly chewing.

Back in the witch’s Christmas room, Dex had revived. Judging by the look on her face, she wished she was still unconscious.

The witch came bustling greedily over to the bag

“We got Estée,” I announced. “She’s excited to meet you!”

Harry burst out of the bag and licked the witch on the face.

A sudden change came over the witch. She grew out two sharp ears, whiskers and a long black tail. At the same time, she let out a horrified yowl and scrambled across the room, climbing a curtain and clinging to it for dear life. The blue glow around her had turned into a sickly fluorescent green.

“That’s…a dog!” she gasped. “Get it out of here, get out of here all of you. Neeoooooww!” she screamed.

Needless to say, we obliged. We didn’t wait for the Thing to throw us out, we made record speed getting to the hedge and high-tailing it back to Dex’s house.

“My goodness, Harry is pooped!” said Mrs. Wright the next morning, looking at the dog sprawled on the mat. “I hope you girls didn’t keep him awake with your talking last night.”

“No, we didn’t really talk much,” said Dex, truthfully.

“Well, I saw that your neighbor was found dead yesterday, Thea, the poor old lady. It looks like she met with an accident in the kitchen. But the good news is that it wasn’t murder or anything like that.”

“Yes, we know,” said Dex. “It was just her annual beauty routine.”

Mrs. Wright looked nonplussed but decided to let it go.

“But the funny thing is that this morning there are two signs on her lawn. One says ‘For Sale’ and the other says ‘Beware of the Dog.’ Can you imagine! People are so disrespectful. She’s not been dead for 24 hours and already people are mickeying around on her property. Shameful.” She shook her head.

Dex and I chewed our cereal in silence but exchanged a quick, knowing glance.