The Spring House

I am so fed up with "wars," tea parties, bickering, idiocy, Silly Sarah, lies, hypocrisy, Wall Street, Main Street, mines, McCain, Republicans, murders, misery, infotainment, and the so-called "news" I just can't deal with it tonight. So here is a short story I've been working on. Perhaps it will become part of my prospective volume: Encounters: the Unfinished, Unread, Uncollected, Unpublished, and Unwanted Short Stories of Morialekafa. For others see Morialekafa 7-25-09.

The Spring House

“What is that thing?” The potential buyer emphasized “that” and only less so, “thing,” in a demanding voice, as he pointed to a stone structure some fifty yards from the house.

“I’ll explain it later,” the agent said, “first let me show you the rest of the property. I think it may be exactly what you’re looking for.” He led the couple away from the house and toward the hillside. “I’ll show you the spring first.” As they walked through the dry orchard grass and between a few withered fruit trees, he continued. “As I told you, it’s twenty acres, mostly flat and usable… used to be forty, but they had to sell twenty when everything went bad for a while a few years back. They continued in silence until they arrived at the spring.

“It’s beautiful,” the buyer’s wife gasped, “absolutely beautiful, I love it.” The spring water emerged from under a huge granite boulder situated between two similar but smaller boulders. The pond was about ten by twenty feet in diameter and three or four feet in depth. It had been enhanced by a rock retaining wall of large carefully cut and shaped stones placed brick-like along the lower side, so weathered they appeared to be part of the original spring. It had been an obvious labor of love. Green moss covered parts of the rock and skippers moved gracefully across the surface. A single huge wild rose bush bent over one side, a few pink and white petals having fallen on the water, enhanced the charm of the quiet place.

“The water runs through a pipe down to the house,” the agent explained. “It’s really wonderful water.”

“It’s great,” the buyer exclaimed.

“The property line is right there behind the spring. All that land from there up the hill belongs to the state. You’d never have to worry about neighbors.” The hill rose gradually from from the spring, broken up with outcroppings of granite and sparsely covered with scrub pines and juniper.

As they walked back toward the house they passed two rows of old firewood, stacked in cords, covered heavily with pine needles and home to a family of squirrels. As they passed, a slender brown weasel emerged from the stack with a mouse in its mouth.

“This was the garden,” the agent explained, as they walked across a large area now heavy in weeds.

“Look, honey,” the buyer said, “We can have a great garden, grow our own food, it’ll be wonderful.” She looked at him with surprise but said nothing. As far as she knew he had never gardened.

“You said you were looking for a place for a Bed and Breakfast,” the agent reminded him, “This ought to be a perfect place. Of course it would take a lot of remodeling and modernization, but it’s got everything. It’s not right on a main highway, but the freeway is only about a mile away. It’s twenty acres with its own water, pasture, a great old barn. Before I show you the house let me show you this wonderful old barn.” He led them past the large two story house, towards the barn.

It was a great barn, huge, with a dozen stanchions for milking cows, a hayloft above, a couple of box stalls for horses, and off in one corner stood an old one-horse carriage covered with dust. It was unusually clean for a barn and smelled pleasurably of hay.

“My god, it’s wonderful,” the buyer exclaimed excitedly. “It’s perfect, couldn’t be better. Look honey, we can have a few horses for our guests to ride, maybe even a cow.” She looked at him with wry smile, after twenty-five years of marriage his enthusiasms no longer surprised her.

“Just look at this barn,” the agent ordered. “It’s just as sound now as the day it was built. Those old Norwegians really knew how to build things. The house is the same, you’ll see.”

As they passed within sight of the strange round stone building the buyer asked once more, “What is that thing?” The emphasis now was on the “is.” Once again the agent ignored the question and led them to the house.

After unlocking what was apparently the back door with a strange old key, the agent led them through a screened-in porch and ushered them into a large old-fashioned kitchen with massive beams overhead.

“They don’t build ‘em like this anymore,” he exclaimed proudly. “Just look at that construction.” It was true, the house, like the barn, although probably more than a hundred years old, was so solidly built it didn’t seem to have either sagged or shifted.

“It’s still furnished!” The wife blurted out in surprise.

“Yeah, much of the original furniture is still here,” the agent explained. “Apparently the owners left in a hurry and for some reason never came back for it.”

“That’s weird,” the buyer observed, “really weird.”

It was a marvelous old farmhouse. From the kitchen they entered an equally large family room. There was a heavy oak dining table surrounded by six matching chairs. On one side was a large sofa in front of a window that looked out on the grounds, with the picturesque barn in the background. On the opposite wall stood an old, elaborately carved, piano. Sheet music for “The Pagan Love Song” was still in place. It was a comfortable, inviting room, that showed evidence of having been much lived in. “It’s just lovely,” the wife observed.

“Now look at this,” the agent implored, “you don’t see these anymore.” They entered a parlor room. Aside from the dust and cobwebs, it appeared to have never been used. The antique furniture was covered with what appeared to be bed sheets. “Most of the old houses like this used to have parlor rooms,” he explained. “They were only used on rare occasions when they had special guests. Seems like a terrible waste, but that’s the way they did it back then.”

Also on the main floor was a bedroom entered from the family room. It was not large but comfortable- looking with a window that looked out toward the spring.

“Was this the master bedroom?” The buyer was obviously disappointed by the size.

“They didn’t have master bedrooms when this old place was built, but there are four other bedrooms upstairs that are all about the same size. Of course none of them have bathrooms. Indoor plumbing, for whatever reason, didn’t quite make it into this house. That’s one of the main drawbacks to this place, you’d have to put in plumbing and bathrooms. There’s enough space but it would be expensive. The closets aren’t very big. Of course you probably noticed there’s no hot water in the kitchen either, but that wouldn’t be so hard to remedy. Obviously an old place like this is going to need some real overhauling, but think how great it’ll be when it’s done.”

“Yeah, it’s a great old place,” the buyer agreed, “I love it. Look, honey, we could have the downstairs bedroom and use the upstairs for guests. The family room is perfect for breakfasts and we could use the parlor room for TV and recreation. It’ll be perfect. We’d have to find a decent architect but I’m sure it could be done.

His wife smiled and agreed, but noncommittally, “yes, it really is a great old place.”

Finally they had to confront the strange stone house that was located no more than 20 yards from the back door. “What the hell,” the buyer exclaimed, “there’s no door, or even a window. What was this thing anyway?”

“I don’t know why there is no door. There was a door at one time. Look, you can see where the stones were set into the opening. There was a window too, there, you can see where it was.” The agent pointed to what must have been a small window.

“But it doesn’t make sense,” the buyer insisted, “Why would anyone have closed the place up like this. I don’t get it.”

The agent was silent for a while, considering how to explain what might have happened, but not too eager to do so. As offering no explanation was not a reasonable option, he finally spoke. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know what happened. There are different stories about it. I don’t know if any of them are true.”

“What stories,” the wife demanded, “What are the stories? You must tell us.”

The agent looked down at his feet and shuffled about nervously as he began. “This was the spring house. Remember, there was no electricity or refrigeration when the place was built. Water from the spring ran down here into this stone house where it kept things cool. There was a stone pool about two feet deep where they kept the milk and cream in those old milk cans. Not too long ago all these small farmers had dairy cows, they’d milk them twice a day and sell the milk. There was a little train that ran by here every day, actually twice a day, they called it the ‘Dinky,” because it was so small. It picked up the milk and took it to town where it was processed. The train track is still there but they don’t use it anymore.” He pointed to a spot about four hundred yards away. “The farmers took their milk there almost every day.”

“But why did they close the place? Even if they didn’t use it anymore, why close it? We have to know,” the wife said firmly.

“Well, there’s at least three different stories,” the agent reported. “I don’t know if any of them are true, but the most popular one has to do with a little girl. The couple that lived here had no children of their own. The woman was a school teacher and it was rumored she didn’t even like children. But anyway, apparently one day her relatives came to visit. They had a little girl. She was said to be about 3 or 4 years old and pretty as a picture, a little blond girl. The story is that somehow she fell into the pool in the spring house and drowned. The owners and the parents were so ashamed and so distraught they sealed the place up and left and never returned. I don’t know for sure if that’s what happened, but it’s true they never returned and no one seems to know what happened to them.”

My god, how awful it must have been. But what happened to them? Where did they go?” The wife, horrified by the tale, was visibly upset and kept staring at the spring house.

“It was in the summer,” the agent explained, “They just up and left, no one knows what happened to them. No one around here heard from them again.”

The husband, now intrigued, spoke up. “You said there were other stories. What are the others”?

The agent paused before continuing, “Of course these are nothing but rumors, you understand. No one knows what really happened. One of the stories is that the husband, who was said to be abusive, killed his wife in a fit of anger, sealed her in the spring house and left. That’s why he never returned, because he murdered his wife. The other story is the same although in reverse. Some people think she killed him when he began to abuse her, or maybe for some other reason entirely, and had his body sealed in the spring house. There was an old guy used to live just down the road a ways, an Irishman, claimed that he sealed it up for her. But he was a drinker, always drunk, and no one believed him. In any case she, too, disappeared, and no one knows where she went. If either of these two stories is true it would explain why the murderer never came back. But maybe the first story is true and they actually meant to come back but somehow never did. Anyway, no one really knows what happened. It’s all just talk.”

“Why didn’t someone open the spring house and find out what happened? Weren’t the police or anyone interested?” The buyer found the situation impossible to believe, his wife agreed, “yes, why?”

“A good question,” the agent acknowledged. “I don’t know the answer, except this has always been a rural area where people live on their farms and mind their own business. There’s only the Sheriff, but he’s busy and doesn’t go around poking into rumors. Lots of funny things happened around here. People died and their families buried them and nobody was ever the wiser, especially if it was a child that died. I guess they weren’t very close to any of the neighbors so no one raised a fuss about it. If it happened nowadays it probably might be different. But that’s the way it was.”

“If we bought the place we’d have to do something about it,” the buyer said. “But what could we do?”

“I suppose you could get a stonemason to open the doorway, don’t know what you might find. If there’s a body I suppose you could just bury it. Probably the easiest thing would be to just get a dozer in here and bulldoze the whole thing away. You don’t need it for anything anyway.”

“You couldn’t do that,” the wife gasped, “if there’s a body in here that would be a terrible thing to do.”

“She’s right,” the buyer agreed. “I guess we’d have to find out first if there is a body. That wouldn’t be a hard thing to do. If there is one we could just have it buried someplace, maybe back there on the hillside somewhere.” In his mind it was already done. He could see the tiny grave somewhere behind the spring with a tasteful small tombstone, and he was already rehearsing how he would tell his clients the story of the restored spring house. In his mind the bathrooms were already installed, the kitchen remodeled with new granite counters, a state-of-the-art range and walk-in refrigerator, the breakfast menus of shirred farm-fresh eggs and puff pancakes, fresh fruits and vegetables were already becoming world famous.

As the buyer was lost in his imagination, and pondering the problems and challenges of his exciting new life, he did not perceive the eye contact between his wife and the agent, nor did he notice the almost imperceptible but meaningful negative shake of her head.

“What a nice lady,” the agent thought as he drove away, “A nice looker, too.”