Haunted by Dorah L. Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

seem as much frightened by it as mystified.
    The next day I gave him a pencil and paper and asked if he could draw me a picture of what he had seen in his room. He immediately started to draw a strange object that resembled the funnel cloud of a tornado, but just what it was that he had seen was no clearer to me.
    On the exceptional nights when I had fallen asleep and Matt remained undisturbed, a smoke detector would inevitably go off somewhere in the house, jarring everyone awake. The smoke alarms were becoming a very serious problem for us. We had a total of nine detectors installed throughout the three-story house. Within a six-month period, the alarms sounded a total of nineteen times, always around 3:00 a.m. and for no apparent reason. Regardless of where they were located, or whether they were battery operated or wired into the electrical system of the house, all of them went off at one time or another. It bothered us that none of them ever shrilled during the day when everyone was up and wide awake. Nor did they ever go off while I was lying sleepless in bed late at night. The detectors only screeched when every person in the family was in a sound sleep.
    After detecting the chill in Matt’s room, which I had noticed only after construction had begun on the addition, I called a furnace repair man to fix the problem. We had replaced the furnace shortly after we had moved in. It heated the rest of the house very efficiently, and the persistent chill in Matt’s room was a mystery to the repair man I called time after time. He could detect no mechanical failure, although he checked both the furnace and the radiator several times to ensure there was no blockage. Each time he was there he managed to get the radiator heated, but within hours of his departure, it would grow cold. I stacked blankets and quilts on Matt at night to keep him warm.
    By the time the addition was completed and all the furniture was in place, both Matt and Kammie were on summer vacation from school. We celebrated Matt’s birthday by holding a party for him in the new room. Then, the following morning, we packed up the car and headed north to our family’s cottage on the coast for a much needed holiday. It was so peaceful for us there. Everyone slept soundly, with no interruptions at all.
    On the day we returned home, I walked through the house and the new room and out the back door. I started down the stairs to the backyard but stopped on the first step and stared straight ahead at the tree growing next to the wooden fence between our property and Donelle’s.
    The previous year we had noticed a small walnut tree starting to grow in the grass near the property division, apparently after a squirrel had buried a nut there and forgot to retrieve it. It had been only a very small sapling when we first noticed it, and several times Ted had accidentally run over it with the lawn mower, cutting off its top. Because Donelle had told us that walnut trees emitted a poison to surrounding vegetation, Ted would occasionally mention that he was planning to get rid of it. Yet the tree had not seemed to pose a threat to our garden or the grass that grew in abundance around it.
    By the time the new room was completed, the sapling had grown slightly higher than the six-foot fence. Its top had been severed where Ted had cut it with the lawn mower, and only a few scraggly limbs had branched out from its thin stem. I had videotaped the addition’s progression, and the small tree was clearly visible on the tape.
    Now, only weeks after those images had been captured, I stood looking at the same tree in disbelief. It towered over the whole corner of the property. It had become so large that it covered not only Donelle’s kitchen window on the first floor but her bedroom window on the second. She would no longer be able to watch the children and Piper playing in our yard, which was one of her favorite pastimes.
    When Donelle saw Ted unpacking the car