Some people swore that the house was haunted.
Haunted? Like, by ghosts? No, it wasn’t like that. But “having or showing signs of mental anguish or torment” as the definition reads? That’s more accurate.
But how does that work for an inanimate object, like a house? Well, if you consider that a house is made of wood and wood comes from trees and trees are living things, can’t living things be unhappy, maybe even very unhappy? If a house was made of wood from trees that were unhappy in life, does the wood remember? Can you expect those warped gnarled timbers to hold their shape, bear that load, to shed weather any better after being harvested than it did before?
This house was built from wood that should have been plowed into a slash pile and burned before anyone relied on it for anything but heat. The trees were bent and twisted from weather and wind over many years and had been left standing when others around them had been harvested.
After years of standing as a windbreak and being used as a living fenceline, having gradually engulfed wires and staples, the land was cleared and no one related their story to the new owner. New to the territory, they pulled the trees down and piled them up for burning. But before the wood was dry enough, someone took the bigger pieces and built the house — the one we’re talking about — from the lumber they trimmed from them. No one knew who took the wood or who built the house. We don’t know how they milled it, as crooked and dangerous as it was. No one ever saw it in its intended location. We never saw it til it got here, where you see it now.
It moved itself here, where the trees came from. We never figured out how. It left some marks behind, of course. Nothing that big moves without leaving some trace. That gate you came through? Demolished. Knocked flat with 20 feet of hedge on either side of it. Some gouges in the lawn there, too. But we never found where it started from. And no one claimed it. Can you imagine a “Lost: house” posted on a telephone pole? See a milk carton with “Have you seen my house?” printed on it?
Next morning, the coast watchers came out to check the beach and do their usual weather observations and look for any problems. And there it sat. Right on that cliff as if it had been built there. The old fellow who was first to see it, well, he didn’t know any better, so he went up to it and tried to open the door. It was locked or somehow held shut. He kept on pulling and knocking and for some reason it finally opened (according to the fellow with him that morning). He went in and the door slammed so hard, the house jumped off the ground. And out through the front door, on the opposite side, he came flying out and ended up out in the channel, about where you see those gulls. Fully 20 yards.
His partner rescued him, as they had a boat and life-rings right there, but he quit that day and never came back. Haven’t had a coast watcher here since. No one will take the job.
Time was, we had a swimming beach and a boat launch here and some picnic tables and fire rings for families to enjoy. But then that house arrived.
Nothing was ever the same again after that.