|
harlie
Cook was an early bloomer, I think he failed out a couple of times too,
and his father was a drug dealer, a big hairy biker drug dealer, and he
had two brothers and no sisters and because they were pretty wealthy from
their dad dealing drugs they had one of the oldest, most expensive houses
in the neighborhood. This was in back in Ohio.
Their house was there before all the other houses
were, the street it was on was named after the original owners of the
house, and everyone knew the house was haunted. It was guaranteed you
would see something.
The first time I was there, I can’t remember what
we were there for, but his mom called and they were all over and his mom
was a badass too ‘cause they fought all the time, fist fought, all the
brothers, and instead of dealing with it in the middle of it she just
bought a stun gun and when they were getting out of control she would
just fucking zap them and they would wake up later, laying in the middle
of it. So no one fucked with his mom.
Anyway, we were there at his house and she had all
these dolls, his mom did, but the dolls would always be moved by the ghosts,
they’d always be turned upside down on the mantle, and this time two were
missing and she accused everyone, so Charlie and I couldn’t go anywhere
until the dolls were found. Charlie and his brothers are searching the
house and I’m just sitting there talking to his mom about something and
she has one of those old strollers and there was a little doll in there,
the kind where the eyes open and close, and I was thinking don’t do it.
I was looking in there and the eyes were open and I thought don’t look
back in there don’t look back in there and I glance in and the eyes are
still open, and I glance again and the eyes are still open and I kinda
forget about it and I look over again and the eyes are now closed and
son of a bitch it gave me the chills.
The second time I saw something we were in his kitchen
and there was Jiffy Pop sitting on the stove so we were eating some of
it and Charlie was kinda crazy so he was putting his face in the Jiffy
Pop and going “Arrr arrr arrr” and it was all sticking to his face and
I’m laughing and he leans out through the doorway to ask his parents if
it’s alright if I stay the night—no one was really allowed to stay the
night because his parents were paranoid about the whole drug operation—and
I’m watching the Jiffy Pop spin on the stove and it’s spinning all by
itself and I’m patting him on the back, going “Charlie! Charlie!” and
he’s waving me off of him and he finally looks and shrugs because he’s
so desensitized to it. That was a bad night. His parents left and I’m
scared shitless but I’m like alright so we’re sitting on our elbows, lying
on the floor watching T.V. and the whole time we were watching T.V. there
were people running up and down the stairs and of course his house was
empty but doors were slamming and I’m white as a ghost, freaked out, and
Charlie says “Fuck man, don’t even worry about it. It happens all the
time.”
They had geese—this is probably one of the more violent things that the
ghosts did—they had a cellar that opened up, with double doors, and they
built a wading pool down there for the geese. In the daytime they’d open
the doors and the geese would go in there and swim around and then come
back up, there were six of them, and then one day when we went to open
the cellar up—I swear it had been locked all night—we open it up and down
in the wading pool there’s a goose with its neck twisted and twisted and
twisted around, floating in the pool. Do you know how hard it is to twist
a goose’s neck like that?
And there were cats all over the house, at least forty
cats, none of them they’d ever tried to keep, but his mom would come out
and they would swarm all over the side porch. And they bought this sheep
dog and named Harley, he’d always run out into the same spot in the road
and get hit by a car. The first time was really bad but the second time
killed him, so they got another sheep dog and named it Harley and it ran
out into the road and got hit and died and they got a third sheep dog
and named it Harley and it ran out into the same spot in the road and
also got hit. We watched it happen. I didn’t know. I said “What’s the
dog doing in the road?” and BAM the dog got hit. The car didn’t even fucking
stop. Harley #3 had been hit several times and still he’d run right out
into the road.
It never stopped. Charlie’s room was really hot in
the winter and so cold in the summer that he had to put a kerosene heater
in there. And when they were digging the new septic tank they found a
grave. The shovel hit the casket and Charlie’s mom was like “No no no,
we’ve got enough trouble already. Put it back and cover it. We’ll build
it somewhere else.”
Things like this probably put ideas in out heads.
I’m not saying it made us vandals, but we would brake into this woman’s
house and rearrange her furniture. That was fun. We would stake out and
wait for her to come home—she was a nurse and we knew her schedule—and
we would look through the windows and see her reaction when all her furniture
was moved. We’d really take some time. We stole hotdogs once and had a
cookout. We stole a bottle of quarters and bought pot. We’d throw mudballs.
This one time there was a pear tree right on the corner
of my friend Tim’s lawn and there’s this family, the Welton family, we
fucked with so bad. They got a brand new Monte Carlo and we got paint
and wrote “fuck you” on the window and put a potato in the exhaust pipe,
sugar in the gas tank, and cut the fan belt, and the next day at school
we’re waiting for the bus—the bus stop was right by his house, the corner
where we waited—and were were like “Aw man, what the hell happened?” And
it was so obvious, there were footprints in the snow. And we accidentally
killed his dog once.
Tim and I got into a pear fight with Chris and Joey
Welton once, not a real one but it got out of hand and we started beaming
them with pears and they were crying and freaking out and then his father
came out and he started reading the bible to us and we started throwing
pears at him and the police came—and this is the only time I’ve been in
a police report, and it goes along and it says, trying to be dramatic
or something “There were pears on the premises.” Of course there were
pears on the premises, we were throwing them at each other.
We used to set smoke bombs in the road and the cars
would stop because they didn’t know what it was and we would make toilet
paper walls across the road and they’d stop and get out and go “Argh!”
and we mooned cars and we got chased once, mooning cars, chased all over
the neighborhood by this great big big-legged woman. It was winter and
she was running after us and I looked behind and she was like a mad bull,
I could see her breath in the air, and she was like “Uhhh uhhhh uhhhh”
and when she ran, the girth of the woman, the volume of the woman, you
could see her hips shaking with each stride and she was yelling “I’m gonna
pound your head into a rock!” It was me and Tim and Rick, this great big
great giant big kid, and we’re running from this lady and it’s complete
dark and we flip over a fence ‘cause we didn’t see it and we get up and
run again in this fenced-in enclosure with this dog chasing us and the
woman going “I’m gonna beat your head into a rock” and we’re so scared
running blind through this yard and boom we hit the fence on the other
side.
I don’t even know what happened to Rick, but Tim and
I hid out under this porch and we’re looking through the slats and the
woman’s right by this house, going “Uhhh uhhhh uhhhh” breathing hard,
and we finally make it back to the house but Rick had lost his cap and
we’re saying “Don’t go back and get it don’t go back” but he did and the
cops were waiting for him. She had already called the cops. So the cops
followed Rick back to Tim’s house and we got busted. The cop looked at
us and said “Just as the description said: two skinny boys and one fat
boy.”
Charlie was really big and this one time I thought
I could kick his ass. I tried to hit him and he picked me up over his
head and dropped me on the concrete. I crawled back home and I was crying
and like an hour later he came over with a pan of cupcakes, still warm
cupcakes that he made for me, to apologize, “Aw, I’m sorry Wyatt,” he
said.
Aw Charlie. Poor guy. Once, when we were going to
play tag football we were walking through a field and just as we were
walking up to his house Charlie comes crashing though the window, the
front window, in a fight with his dad I think, and he had a cut down his
from his bicep to his wrist, a deep one and blood everywhere, and he just
stumbles out and picks himself up and there’s glass everywhere and he
says “What’s up guys?” and he looks at his arm and says “Aw, I don’t think
I can play football, I gotta go to the hospital.” That’s all he had to
say.
|
|