18 Silas Road
By Serina
Built in 1957. Last sold in 2007. Valued at $690,900. 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Currently, three residents. Three living ones, that is. Five if you count the dead.
The first person to become deceased at 18 Silas Road expired in 1962, just a few years after the house was built. It was a peaceful death though, unlike mine. Poor Richard Hardy died of a heart attack in his sleep. His time was coming, though; he was 83 and had lived a good life, but at his advanced age, his heart just bothered to keep pumping all night long. Plus, he was only living here because his adoring son couldn’t bear to see him spend his last days in a hospital bed, surrounded by strangers and beeping machines. His last moments were instead spent in the bedroom closest to the back of the house, right at the top of the stairs.
Two stories down and 24 year later, I met my demise. How it happened is a bit dramatic, but I swear I’m past that now. I was only 31, but it was a tough year for me: my husband was having an affair, my mother had died, and no matter what we tried, we couldn’t get pregnant. One day he came home from the office and told me he would have to start coming home at 6:30 instead of 5:30. “It’s only for a few months,” he said. Something about being understaffed and overtime pay was mumbled, and at the time, I had no reason not to believe him.
But soon 6:30 became 7, and even 7:30 on certain nights. On one night, when he was running particularly late, I happened to run into a coworker of his at the supermarket. Not only was he not at the office, like my husband had claimed they all were at that hour, but he was so glad that they were finally able to leave earlier because of some new hires. I’ve never claimed to be great at math, but I knew when shit didn’t add up.
My mother was my best friend. She was only 20 when she had me, so our bond had always been close. She was always there for me, through every negative pregnancy test and every late night call concerned about my husband’s behavior. She always knew exactly how to console me. I don’t think much of an explanation is needed as to why this helped to push me over the edge.
After nine years of trying, not one positive test. And I think my husband had begun to resent me for it. Maybe that’s why he started the affair; he would rather find someone he could actually have children with.
Taking all of this into consideration, I did what any logical person would do in that situation. I went into the garage in the middle of the night, turned on the ignition to my car and got in. It didn’t take long before the carbon monoxide filled the garage and the car, but by the time there was enough of it to kill me, I was already fast asleep. So I supposed my death was quite peaceful as well.
Since that fateful night in 1986, I’ve been stuck in this house. I wish someone had told me that once you die, your spirit is stuck where it happened. Had I known I would be trapped in my final resting place for all of eternity, I would have picked a better place. But so be it. There’s nothing I can do about it now (if only I thought like this when I was still alive!).
The next few owners of the house weren’t particularly interesting. My husband sold the house in 1988 but had moved out a year before. From what I overheard of his discussions on the phone, he was getting an apartment a few towns over. I’m sure she helped him decorate it nicely.
First, the Sullivans moved in, and then the Shahs, and then the Connors. They were all nice people, nothing to complain about. Though I did suspect Mr. Sullivan was having an affair, I promised myself not to get too invested in that situation. I told myself it wasn’t healthy to become so attached to people in the house because they would all eventually move away and leave me lonely, waiting for the next residents to move in. (Richard’s ghost wasn’t the best company).
But something changed when the next people moved in. It was a young couple, Avery and Scott Hunt, who claimed they didn’t want any children and just planned to live here for a few years until they figured out what to do next. I found Avery quite an interesting subject to observe because of her meticulous cleaning and planning, how she wrote every single expense in her checkbook, the way there was a place for everything, so nothing could be out of place. She seemed to have everything in order, to be on top of everything before it even happened. That is until she got pregnant.
As traditional as I was in wanting to be a stay at home mom, I can understand that life isn’t for everyone, especially not for a young lawyer just starting out. Despite this, I couldn’t help but be excited for Avery, even with her stress and unease about the situation. She was going to experience what I had always hoped for. And luckily for me, I got to watch it all unfold.
I was there when they brought home their little girl, Cara, from the hospital. I was there for her first steps and her first word; I began to feel like she was my own. Her little auburn ringlets bounced as she waddled around the house, going up to her mom and dad to ask them to play with her. More often than not, though, they were too preoccupied with other things to spend more than a few minutes with her. I could tell that in the back of their minds, they resented her for coming before they were ready to have kids. When this happened and she would sulk to her room, longing for a friend to play with, I would do what was seriously frowned upon by Richard. According to him, it was completely inappropriate for me to interact with her at all, let alone play with her. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t bear to see little Cara, just three years old, lonely and longing for someone to be her friend. If she felt this way now, I couldn’t imagine what would happen when she got older.
I tried my best to be a friend to her, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re a ghost. I would do my best to play games with her when her parents weren’t looking, anything to keep her from feeling so down. When she would cry at night because she had a scary dream and her mother did nothing but send her back to bed, I’d sit on her bed and sing her a lullaby until she fell asleep again. Being a friend to Cara was beginning to give me new life that I didn’t even have when I was alive.
When Cara was three, though, her little sister was born. I could tell right away that this new little girl, Olivia, was going to be her parents’ favorite. They doted on her from the very start in a way that they never did with my Cara. In Scott and Avery’s minds, this was their real first child; this was when she was supposed to come, and they didn’t try to hide it.
Like most kids with new siblings, Cara grew more and more jealous by the day. The little attention she did receive from her parents before was now given to Olivia, thus triggering the temper tantrums. At first, Scott and Avery thought they would go away once Cara adjusted to her new little sister. Despite her obviously troubled behavior and jealous tendencies, her parents did nothing to ensure Cara that they loved her just as much as they loved her little sister. They continued to show their excessive fondness for Olivia and, at times, completely disregarded their oldest child in favor of spending time with their beloved Olivia. They failed to realize that this very behavior was what was leading Cara down a very difficult path.
As Olivia and Cara grew up, Cara’s behavior only got worse. Her temper tantrums continued as she got older, to the point where it was completely inappropriate for a child of her age to be acting that way; Olivia, three years younger than her older sister, even began to recognize that the way her sister acted was unacceptable. During this time, I still did my best to console my sweet Cara. As she would cry in her room, hoping that someone, anyone, would understand how she felt, I’d sit with her, circling my hand on her back to try to calm her down. I’m certain she didn’t know I was there, but I could only hope that the temporary calm my presence gave her would be enough to fight off her feelings of inadequacy.
All the while, Olivia had free reign to do whatever she pleased. She could break any rule she wanted without repercussions; just a short talking to and she was back to wreaking havoc. Despite Avery’s obsession with cleanliness and order, Olivia could leave her dishes out and make a mess of her toys, all at the expense of her older sister. When Avery would see the messes and clutter, she automatically assumed it was Cara’s doing. Despite how hard Cara would deny it and claim it was Olivia’s fault, Avery seldom believed her. Avery’s mindset surrounding Cara’s behavior was that if the girl was already so poorly behaved and temperamental, it would only make sense for her to lie about making the mess. This carried into every aspect of their lives. Anytime something went wrong, Avery found a way to blame it on Cara.
Watching all of this from the outside, I was able to see just how messed up it was. My poor Cara, always taking the blame for Olivia’s behavior, always getting the short end of the stick while her sister got unending praise and could do whatever she pleased. It wasn’t hard to see the effect all of this had on Cara. She didn’t know how to cope with the stress of never being good enough for her parents, and her behavior worsened because of it. I had thought that by the time she was in fifth grade she would have made some friends at school and learned to endure all of the stress her mother and sister had caused her. I thought that maybe then her attitude and behavior would improve. I was wrong.
From what I overheard her parents talking about, her erratic and immature behavior didn’t change when she got to school. She struggled to complete even the most basic assignments, claiming it was unfair that she had to do them at all. She yelled in class, insulted the other kids, and refused to do any of her homework. I spent countless hours sitting next to her at her little wooden desk in her bedroom while she tried to complete her work, but as soon as she struggled with a problem, she’d give up and throw a fit. I wish I could have said something to her. I wish I could have told her it would all be okay and that long division doesn’t even matter in the real world. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, but I truly believed that when I was talking to her, some part of her mind could hear it. I would say an answer, and suddenly, just a few moments later, she would understand the problem and get the right answer. When I told her not to give up, she gripped her pencil harder and focused her teary eyes on the page in front of her and tried just a little while longer before giving in to her emotions and breaking down. I only wish there was something I could have done to really help her. Maybe then she would still be here with me.
Cara’s behaviors worsened significantly once she entered the sixth grade. She was constantly having meltdowns at home, yelling at her teachers at school, and still had no friends except for me. I would sit with her as she slept, just like I did when she was just a little girl, tracing shapes on her back to comfort her from the worries I knew must have been haunting her dreams. She looked so peaceful as she slept, but the facade would break when she woke up and was forced into her position as the doormat for her mother and sister to walk all over. It appalls me that her mother never recognized that all of Cara’s bad behavior could have been resolved had she taken just a moment to treat her like a person and not like the cursed child that came too early and stayed too long, ruining her idea of a perfect life in the meantime.
Soon after her 12th birthday, Cara’s parents began discussing what they were going to do about her. I listened as they talked, calling her a burden and a nuisance, wishing they could just find some way to fix her once and for all. It didn’t take long for them to come upon the idea of sending her away to boarding school. They said it would be good for her. It would give her the chance to be independent and to get a fresh start somewhere new.
Before the year was up, my Cara was all packed up and ready to go. In the days before she left, she was calmer than she ever had been before. She didn’t scream or cry, and she didn’t knock things over or slam doors. It seemed she was finally at peace. But her relative calm in the face of this major life change completely contradicted how I felt about the situation. I didn’t want to see her go, at least not yet. I felt as though there was something more I could have done for her, and I just hadn’t figured out what yet. But how I felt didn’t matter. I’m just a ghost, silently and eternally watching lives unfold in front of me while I can do nothing of worth to change their course. Cara’s calm demeanor in the days leading up to her departure made her parents think that this was the right decision and that this was what she needed. But I knew the truth. When Cara left, I felt like I had failed her, but I knew that there wasn’t anything I could have done. What she really needed was a mother and father who loved and cared for her as much as they did their other child. With Cara gone, things are finally quiet here at 18 Silas Road.
Serina is a sophomore pursuing a degree in Exercise Science on the pre-med track. Though shehopes to become a doctor or PA in the future, she loves to write and thinks it’s a wonderful creative outlet. She wrote this piece for her Introduction to Creative Writing class taught by Caridad Svich. Svitch selected the story for inclusion in WHR.