The Three Spots

House on the Corner II

It was a clever joke that the old house on the corner played on them. Many times, you wouldn't see it standing there, on a particularly hot afternoon, taken for granted in its own place; then its spots would jump up on you. It would have a great laugh with the occasional toddler who would be so confused they wouldn't know if they wanted to laugh or cry.

So, the debate ensued over the nature of the spots and died down every generation without any conclusions. What was never debated, more interestingly however, was whether that house stayed. Even when the entire town was basically renovated in the years of its passing, the old house remained unchanged, a constant.

The old house with the new families.

And never once did any of the families think the spots could be painted over, either. The spots stayed. The wall which bore them was always painted white near its bottom; and whenever you end up visiting Herring, just look where the crawlspace hid and you would find those estranging spots staring at you brightly like they had lost their place in the world.

The wall above the spots was a shade of violet that morning. But over the years the violet was painted over with lime, and once even green and golden as a joke that was considered lame unanimously in the town. There... was a protest, it was a whole thing.

The unspoken rule was that the spots stayed. The painters knew it, the town council knew it, and every youngling ready for the next big teenage rebellion knew it. It wasn't said out loud, wasn't printed. It was as if the old house were alive, and it would never let you do it.

But surely, that's just stupid.

That morning, the spots were especially remarkable, because they were singin- No, it was actually the clockradio in the window exactly above them that did their singing for them. But you can never be sure when those rectangular spots weren't tricking you.

The clock, however, had affirmatively hummed out fifteen songs without a pause for half and a quarter of an hour which was highly unusual for it. It didn't stop. Presently, it was beginning to play Sonny and Cher's I Got You Babe like it was made to play that song. Which was not entirely untrue.

There was no one in the room, which was not surprising because the window was opened. The bed was made and it was deserted.

There was no one in the entire house, either, when the house bell rang. It had a queer effect on the old house. The house stopped all of its movements and the building stopped shifting. You could only hear the radio, now, and the bell that rang for the second time. There was one old-fashioned knock before what would've been the sound of steps going away.

With a stroke of fortune, the door slid very quietly instead, with the knock. Not entirely open, but enough for a tiny head to pop in the doorframe. Its huge round eyes moved around the room for a while, its face inching further into the door, leaning into the door mindlessly, until the door slammed open and the figure stumbled inside awkwardly. It balanced on the tip of its feet to stop falling and twirled around finding its foot again, did kind of a two-step tap dance that ended with jazz hands, embarrassingly.

"Hello?" her voice was low while she spoke, and she was frozen at her place looking for people who had witnessed that. But there was definitely no one inside that could talk back. So, she moved closer inside the living room. The house on the corner was an old one, so it was very different from every other house which were all the same. The house on the corner of the Neandle Street was beautiful, instead of being liveable.

The living room directly opened onto the patio, which showcased the green backyard, fresh with the early shower.

The backyard, fading into bare ground, stood in front of the looming forest behind a small fence. That forest was one of Herring's only two interesting possessions - the second being the spots on the House on the Corner of Neandle Street.