Sweet Little Gothic House 'O Horror

When I was a child, I wanted gold, I wanted velvet, I wanted history, damnit. I wanted Pomp and his pony-pal Circumstance, too. On Sunday mornings, I would sit inside our church, a church that managed to be both plain and ugly, stare at the turquoise walls and blonde wood pews and wish I was Jewish. I longed for a bearded Cantor dressed in a heavily-embroidered yarmulke and prayer shawl who would chant in foreign tongues. Instead I got an earnest Minister dressed in a white, short-sleeved shirt and brown sans-a-belt slacks. If it wasn't too hot he might be wearing his very shiny, all-polyester, Lamb of God robe. But as I stared at the stained glass window of The Fractured Jesus Doing Something With Children? done in the faux-Picasso style so beloved by stained glass designers of the sixties, I prayed, "Dear Lord, please, pretty please, make me Catholic."

It wasn't much better when I got home. I grew up in the suburbs of Southern California when the Modern space age look of the fifties had given way to the Modern bland look of the sixties. The only thing that set our tract home apart from all the others was the paint job-- Acapulco Gold with Navaho Gold trim. After reading Wuthering Heights for the tenth time, I would lie back on my bed and dream of a home with secret passageways, spooky wine cellars, wainscoted libraries, and attics stuffed with the cast-off belongings of a dozen generations. I pined for creaking staircases, Baronial armor and ancestral curses. The only horror in our house was the Green 'N Gold Daisy contact paper my mother had glued to the kitchen cabinet doors. But I knew one day, one day...

I'm all grown up now and I don't live in a haunted castle, I must confess; I live in a modest bungalow. But it does have a few odd chasracteristics. The arched doorways are a nice touch. For sound effects, you can't beat the groaning plumbing in the back bathroom. And it does have a secret passageway. Unfortunately, the only one who can use the secret passageway is Mick the Cat.

It all started with the Great Squirrel Infestation of 2001. We had had squirrels in the main attic before and it was easy to control them. We just pulled down the attic steps and sent Mick up to wage war. But the great squirrel infestation of 2001 was a little different. This time they had somehow managed to get into the attic space above the laundry room. This room had been added on and the two attics were not connected, or so we thought. The only way we could figure out how to get to the squirrels was to cut a hole in the ceiling of the laundry room. So Dave cut a hole. And then he cut three more for good measure. We showed Mick the holes and left him to do his job.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth that day. Fur flew and so did insulation fiber. In the end, the squirrels decided it was just easier to move out. But even after he had vanquished the foe, Mick would disappear up into the ceiling. He discovered a hitherto unknown connection between the two attics so he no longer needed to rely on us for entrance into his dusty domain. These days he sometimes forgets how to get out, however, and ends up crying, waiting for his humans to come pull the steps down.

Before the last squirrel left, we saw him peer out from one of the holes in the ceiling, chatter angrily and shake his tiny fist at us. I believe he was blessing us with an ancestral curse.