Tricia entered the house again, driven by a feeling she could not have explained. The house scared her to death. Mrs. Tanser was strange. But interesting. A welcome diversion after a boring day at school.
“I didn’t think you’d come back after the story of Mr. and Mrs. White,” the teacher exclaimed. “Sometimes I feel like I am just the steward for this house. I have to give its history, no matter how twisted it may be.”
She motioned the girl into the kitchen, a room colored in orange walls and burnished counters.
“You're probably hoping for my nieces, but I'm afraid they're not around to play with you right now. Can I cut you an apple?” Mrs. Tanser asked again, and Tricia nodded.
“Good.”
After awhile, the older woman went back to her grinding, pounding work at the counter, and talked to Tricia from across the room.
“Hmmm…where did we leave off last time? How it all began, I think. Yes. I suppose you’re wondering, what happened after the Whites lived in White House?”
The girl nodded, and Mrs. Tanser barely waited for that response.
Mr. White was found in the basement. I won’t go into how his disposition was, other than to say that the bones of Mrs. White and Baby White were found with him. The house was eventually sold to another family, and life went on-for a time.”
Mrs. Tanser brushed the dust from the lapels of her maroon collar. It smeared like dried milk across her chest.
“You can’t hide the past,” she said. “Nor can you hide from the past. What is, is, and what was, was. The next people who bought this house pretended that the Whites hadn’t killed themselves here, and as a result…”
Tricia looked up from her slice of apple with a keen gaze of expectation.
“Well, they didn’t consider the fact that they might also spend their lives-and deaths-here.”
“Sometimes,” Mrs. Tanser said, eyes looking far, far away. “A mother’s love is not endless. In fact, it doesn’t even really begin.”
The older woman rubbed a tear from the wrinkles at the side of her eye, and forced a grin. “Silly old woman I am,” she said. “You’re just a girl and you can’t even begin to understand the twists and cul de sacs of a mother’s love. I had a tough one, is all, and even now I can hear her scolding me. I’ve met your mama at the PTA, and she’s not like that. Not like that at all. You’re a very lucky girl.
“So where was I? Oh yes, the next family. A pastor, the father was, come here all the way from Omaha. Why here, again I’ll never know. This must be the end of the line for some folks, and they just don’t know it. Hell, why would they come here if they did? Something draws them though, because no matter how many young folks try to escape this town after they graduate, the place keeps growing. Back in those days, before the Great War, there were just a couple hundred here, and the Martins moved into this house with a huge welcome from the townsfolk. For a time, Pastor Martin even held services right here in this house-in the sitting room, I believe-until a proper parish chapel could be built down in the center of town.”
“All that holiness didn’t settle things apparently, though, in White House. Because the pastor and his family came to a similar end as the White’s did. Things were happy here for a few years, and the Martins had two children, Becky and Joseph. But, just like Mr. White, Pastor Martin’s vocation began to consume him, leaving Mrs. Martin here in the house all alone with the children day after day. The story goes that Mrs. Martin got bit by the green bug, and started thinking that Pastor Martin was spending far too much time down at the new chapel in town. There’s no telling if it’s true or not, but she thought the pastor was making time with a pretty little hussy in the back pew, while she was trapped here, in this old, cold house with two screaming kids.
“I’m talking too big for you, aren’t I?” Mrs. Tanser said noting the confused expression on the girl’s face. “The pastor’s wife thought he had gotten a girlfriend, is the thing. And he was married to her and she didn’t want him to have a girlfriend. So she started locking little Becky and Joseph into a small room at the back of the house. Someone, probably Mr. White, had added on, and built the room by hand. It wasn’t completely true. Sometimes, Pastor Martin would come home at night and hear those kids screaming in the back of the house, and when he’d let them out, they’d tumble into the house proper shaking and blue with cold, because none of the seams of that room were level. The outside could leech in easily, you could see the grass waving in the wind through the gaps and the draughts on this hill in the winter are something horrible, I have to tell you. Even asleep in that big four-post bed upstairs, I put an afghan on top of the covers in December. Can you imagine how cold it must have been for those children when they could actually see the outside through the cracks in the walls?
“Anyway, Pastor Martin yelled at his wife many a time for how she treated those children, yelled so loud the people a mile down the hill in town could hear him and mark his words. And she’d yell right back and accuse him of taking the Lord’s work to the devil, not to mention that tart Beatrice Long. She thought he was making time with a church whore.”
Tricia put a hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn, and Mrs. Tanser pushed the plate of apples closer to the girl.
“I’m going on too long, aren’t I? Let me speed it up for you some. An old woman can go on. One day Pastor Martin came home and for once, the house was quiet. His wife told him the kids had gone to stay with friends in town for the weekend, and he heaved a sigh of relief. The noise had really begun to get to him, and that, as much as anything, was why he’d been spending more and more time at the chapel. The Martins reportedly had a lovely dinner, and even broke out a bottle of wine to celebrate their brief ‘vacation’ from the children. Pastor Martin tried to get romantic with his wife, but she waved him off of that. ‘You wouldn’t want to make more of the little screamers, would you?’ she said.”
Mrs. Tanser paused, looking quizzically at Tricia’s moon-round cheeks. “That probably doesn’t mean much to you yet, does it? Hmmm.”
“Well, it came to Sunday, and Pastor Martin spoke after the church service with the folks his children were supposedly staying with, thanking them for their hospitality. But they looked confused at his thanks, and told him that they would be happy to have Becky and Joseph over any time, but they hadn’t seen the kids these past few days.
“Pastor Martin was upset by that, and after the last service, headed home in a rush. He wondered if he’d gotten the family wrong that the kids were staying with. When he entered the house, for the third day in a row it was completely silent, but Mrs. Martin waited for him at the table.
“‘Sit,’ she insisted. ‘Eat.’
“He sat, but asked her where the children were. Mrs. Martin smiled sweetly, and ignored him, fixing herself a sandwich and then pushing the plate towards him. ‘Light or dark?’ she asked.
“‘Both,’ he said absently, and as she put the meat on his plate, along with a long crust of bread, he asked her again. ‘Where are the kids?’
“Mrs. Martin smiled that strange little grin again and nodded, as he lifted the bread to his mouth and chewed.
“‘You’re eating them, dear. Becky’s light, and Joseph’s dark.’”
Tricia’s eyes went wide and she set the piece of apple she held back on the plate, uneaten.
“Horrible, hmmm? Apparently Mrs. Martin had used that back room to turn her children into cold cuts. When he screamed and beat on her for her horrible crime, she only smiled and smiled, and told him to make more with Beatrice Long. Back then, in a town this size, they didn’t have asylums, and so Mrs. Martin never actually left this house. Pastor Martin locked her in the room she’d killed her children in and fed her meals at morning and night. She never came out of there again, and whenever he’d break down and cry and ask her ‘Why?’, all she would say was ‘The house needs strong bones.’”
Mrs. Tanser grinned. “Creepy, hmm? Want to see the room?”
Tricia’s eyes widened.
“Oh, don’t worry, the Martins are long gone from there. Come along, I’ll show you.”
Mrs. Tanser led Tricia through a hallway and a long, dark sitting room to a white door. She turned a latch and a metal bolt clacked audibly before she turned the old round knob.
They stepped through into a small, dark room. It had no windows at all, but still was lit. The sun beamed in through hairline cracks in the grout between the stones that had been shaved and stacked to form the addition. Shadows played like anxious ghosts on the walls and dust motes rained in lazy dances as the wind shifted and groaned outside.
“This is it,” Mrs. Tanser said. “The infamous White room. They think that Mr. White built it with his own
