Handsome Hauntings on Hidden Hollow Court

Sunday summer mourning.

The dry heat is so welcoming. Blacktop hot as hell, scorching my bare shoulder with spaghetti straps to the side. I could lay here with my eyes to the sky avoiding the sun forever. Perhaps I would get hungry after a while and grab an egg from inside. I don’t think a skillet would be necessary. I’ll just c***k that bad boy right open and cook it on the poorly paved driveway. Let it fry from the Kentucky summer just like Nana used to do. Scrambled eggs are more my speed, I couldn’t even tell you what over easy or sunny side up meant. Sunnyside up had to be like those eggs you see on tv or the ones included in kids cookware sets. Plastic and shiny alongside fake bacon and toast. Definitely not what I like to ingest, but I do like to watch them sizzle. Sizzle and bubble while the edges curl up with little specks of pavement throughout. Not the weirdest thing I have seen on this street or the weirdest thing Nana had done. Lighting an iron skillet on fire in the driveway, or the neighbor's pet goose in the backyard. Those were at the top of the list. The things that happened here weren’t always weird, unnatural, or scary. Sometimes they were nice. For example, the lightning bugs as the day fades or the marching band practicing in the morning. Those were perks of living there that sort of made up for the big haunted house we had to live in. The house was old, I could give you a year and pretend like I know the history behind it but the truth is I don’t. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s ugly, there is a certain charm to it. Add a few antiques and the right curtains and paint and you’ve got yourself some sweet little digs. The thing with antiques and houses that already are haunted though, is ghosts. For sure ghosts. Nana never believed in them. She told me I was crazy for believing. “Stella, you’re going to drive yourself crazy. There are no ghosts. Turn the lights out and get some rest!” Maybe it was all those horror movies I watched before bed or the books I read in middle school. She’d tell me time and time again “I’ve lived on Hidden Hollow for thirty years and the scariest thing I’ve seen is your hair in the morning time!”. I didn’t bother telling her the things I had seen right there in our house. I know it sounds crazy but I swear the wallpaper would breathe. Big gasping breaths followed by disembodied whispers. Sometimes my name, sometimes nanas. Never for very long. Out of all those horrors, nothing compares to when I lost her. My Nana, my sun and moon gone from my daily revolution. Dead and cold and buried. Her gasping for air and saying my name. Leaving me all alone and fresh out of high school to deal with this big cold house without my right-hand gal. No one to have coffee with in the morning or to roll out biscuit dough for breakfast. Plastic lawn chairs counts down to a lonely one facing the back in an overgrown yard. The worst part is, now I have no one to tell me that the ghosts that haunt me aren’t real, and tonight for the first time I know I have to face them.