“Good! Because then you’ll also understand that I need to set an example. I need to tighten things up around here. So, I hate to say this because you know I love you like I wish I could love my real brother, but I’m gonna have to write you up. And if you’re late again, it’s going to escalate. You understand what I’m saying, Alan?”
“Yes, I get it, and I’m sorry I put you in this position.”
“All right, then, let’s get to work,” Joe said as he stood from his chair. They exited the office and Joe stopped. He put his hand on Alan’s shoulder, stopping him as well. “I almost forgot. Mrs. Henderson called in her order. Must have been twenty minutes ago. Better hurry or she’ll get Mr. Henderson after ya.”
“No problem,” Alan replied. He punched in on his way to the front of the shop.
“And there’s another one, should be about ready,” Joe said
“Ready,” Jamie said as he removed a pizza from the oven.
Alan found the Henderson pizza on the rack, slid it into a warming bag, and waited for Jamie to box the second pizza.
In an effort to lighten the tension, Jamie looked at Alan and said, “Hey, Boogy, when are we gonna see you at the carnival?”
Alan glared back at him. “You can call me Boogy at the carnival. I start tomorrow morning.”
“Sorry, Alan, just trying to get in the carnival mode. Speaking of which, what’s it like being a carny?”
Sensing that Jamie was toying with him, he answered, “I don’t know, Jamie. I’ve never done it before. If you really want to know, ask me again next week.”
“I hear carny chicks are sexual freaks. They might even get off on doing a clown. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting laid there,” Jamie said.
Jamie’s statement got the attention of Natalia, working at the toppings station a few feet away.
“Watch it Jamie. Mixed company,” she warned.
“Oh, sorry, Nat. Just trying to help ol’ Alan out. It’d be nice to see him arrive late for a better reason than car trouble.”
“If I need your help, I’ll ask for it. Just give me the pizza, Jamie,” Alan said.
Jamie closed the lid and handed him the boxed pizza. “Good! Maybe I’ll see you there tomorrow night and give you some pointers.”
“I don’t want your help, and I’ll be here tomorrow night,” Alan said.
From across the shop, Joe chimed in. “So will you, Jamie! You’re on the schedule.”
Alan grabbed his deliveries and headed out the door. At the passenger side of his car, he pressed the remote and pulled the handle. The door remained locked. He remembered that the remote control was broken on the passenger door so he unlocked it manually and placed the pizzas on the seat. From the floor, he pulled out the magnetic sign with the words “Vince’s Pizza” and stuck it to his roof before heading out on his first delivery.
*****
Hidden Valley was the oldest townhouse community in Riverside. Many of the original residents still lived there, but their numbers were in decline. Alan and the other delivery drivers irreverently referred to the neighborhood as Death Valley.
He pulled up the driveway, put the car in park, and tugged twice on his high beams. The house was completely dark, but Alan’s trained eye spotted a flash of light as Mrs. Henderson peered through a carefully peeled back section of aluminum foil from a corner of the window to the right of the front door. He waited for the signal. “One, two, three,” he whispered. On three, the porch lights came on. This was his cue to exit the car and proceed to the porch. Making his way through the fine mist of rain, Alan laughed to himself as he prepared for the remaining sequence of this ten-year ritual.
“Mr. Henderson. Pizza delivery,” he said as he stood at a mark exactly three feet in front of the garlic-clad door.
The metal mail slot creaked as it pivoted half open, fluttering from the rickety finger supporting it. From the gap, the voice of an elderly woman scolded him. “You’re late, Alan. Mr. Henderson won’t give you a tip.”
Alan grinned. “I understand, Mrs. Henderson. I apologize for being late.” The standard tip from the Henderson residence was only fifty cents.
An envelope slipped through the slot and fell. Eighty-seven cents in change jingled as the envelope settled on the welcome mat. Alan retrieved the envelope, placed the boxed pizza on the mat, and returned to his car. His earlier amusement turned to sadness as he wondered if Mrs. Henderson would ever get over her fear of the world since Mr. Henderson’s passing nearly a decade earlier.
*****
One Krauss Drive. A medium pizza with everything. A few dozen houses lined Krauss Drive, but this address was unfamiliar to him. Before Alan was born, a developer bought the front parcel of land from a farmer named Krauss. He built a small neighborhood of mostly ranch-style homes. The farmer’s driveway was at the end of the suburban street. To Alan’s knowledge, the old farmhouse had been abandoned since the horse barn burned down when he was eight years old. Parents claimed a boy playing with matches started the fire. However, since none of the kids in the area confessed, the younger generation was skeptical. They thought it was another clever tactic devised by adults to scare children from playing with matches.
Nobody knew what happened to farmer Krauss and his wife after the fire. The adults of Krauss Drive assumed that the loss of income from renting horse stalls was the tipping point that forced the old couple to move. The house sat, abandoned and boarded up. The barn and grazing land were subsequently sold off, but the farmhouse remained untouched as it decayed from years of neglect.
The children of Riverside had a different story for the old place. The Krauss farmhouse became known as Krauss House. In their active minds, it was the most haunted place on earth. Its seclusion, age, and decaying condition made it the quintessential haunted house. Every campfire story told since the unfortunate demise of the horses and disappearance of the old Krauss couple involved some variation of this tragedy.
*****
At the age of fourteen, the closest Alan came to Krauss House was fifty feet from the porch, partially hidden from view in the thicket of growth which, in an earlier time, was the front yard of the old farmhouse. His younger brother, Dale, and three other boys dared each other to get closer. Fifty feet was Alan’s chicken point. It was early afternoon that day, but the boys trembled as if it were midnight, and in the darkness, they could hear wolves howling in the distance as the front door creaked open, exposing a disembodied ghostly arm motioning them to come closer.
Another boy found his chicken point five paces ahead of Alan. Over the next five minutes, Dale stood between the remaining two kids. Always known as the leader of any group he participated in, Dale and his fearless nature drew the boys tight to his sides with each half step closer to the foreboding structure. As they stood shoulder to shoulder, with no earth remaining, the steps to the old porch were the only things separating the trio from the weather-battered mouth of the beast, the front door.
Frozen in place, Dale glanced back at Alan as the two boys glued to his sides waited to be guided by his next move. Dale smirked and shot Alan a wink. Then, from behind his back, his clutched right hand opened, revealing to Alan a golf ball-sized stone. Alan returned a grin and a supportive nod. He knew that Dale was about to demonstrate one of his most practiced and skilled tricks.
Dale returned his attention to the house. “Did you hear that?” he whispered to the boys pressed against his sides.
“No, hear what?” one replied nervously.
“Inside. I thought I heard the ghosts coming to the door,” Dale said.
“No, you didn’t. You’re just trying to scare us,” the other boy chimed in.
“No, really,” Dale said. “I think they are coming to get us.” Then, with a quick jerk of his wrist, the stone in the hand behind his back flung over his head to the roof of the porch in front of them. He did it without flinching a single muscle aside from his wrist, and the boys pinned to him were unaware of his deceit. The knock and
rumbling sound as the stone rolled down the porch roof appeared to come from within, an audible warning to all who dared trespass inside Krauss House—Riverside’s own gateway to hell.
The two boys no longer found comfort in Dale’s courage. They gasped for air as their bodies broke away from their protector. With arms flailing above their heads, the two screamed as they ran past Alan for safety a few hundred yards up the driveway. Although he was aware of Dale’s practical joke, Alan got caught up in the fear of the moment and fled in close pursuit of the horror-stricken duo. His slightly braver friend, five paces closer to the house, joined in their escape.
Shortly after their retreat, Dale caught up to the gang, his body hunched over with both hands on his belly as he tried to catch his breath from his uncontrollable fit of laughter. When he finally regained the ability to speak, he stood tall, raised his clenched fists above his head, and proudly declared himself the winner. The two boys who made it to the base of the porch with him claimed Dale cheated. They called him a jerk and a few other choice words, but none could deny Dale his moment of glory. If he weren’t between the two boys, they wouldn’t have gotten much further than Alan.
Alan had always both admired and envied his baby brother’s fearlessness and his ability to take control in any situation. Their father died when Alan was seven. Dale was only four. As the older male, he couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of failure for allowing Dale to assume the role of man of the house while he retreated and silently struggled with his own loss.
*****
Alan gradually drove past the small cluster of houses lining Krauss Drive. It didn’t take long to realize the address “One” was indeed the old farmhouse. As he approached the driveway, he couldn’t help but wonder if the Demons inside the house had ordered a medium pizza with everything just to lure him back for another visit.
He stopped in front of the driveway. The house was set back a half mile from the street and wasn’t visible through the dense forest and winding gravel path. Taking note of how narrow the driveway was, he knew that once he entered there would be no room to turn around.
What the hell is going on here? Alan thought.
He double-checked the label on the box with the hope that he was at the wrong house. No, the address clearly said One Krauss Drive. Further down on the label, below the address, a name was printed. A single word—KRAUSS.
Instantly, Alan was transported back to that moment where he stood motionless, fifty feet from the front porch of Krauss House. He was back again. Only this time he didn’t have his brother’s courage or the light of day to draw strength from. Without those, Alan discovered that his true chicken point was a half-mile away.
Calling Joe wasn’t an option. What would he say—I’m scared of the haunted house? No. There had to be a logical solution. He looked back to the driveway. This time he searched for signs of life.
It’s not as overgrown as it used to be, and there appear to be fresh tire tracks, he thought.
It was possible a person made the tracks. It was also possible that the spirits were making him think he was seeing tire tracks. “Are you trying to trick me into going to Krauss House?” he whispered, half expecting to get an answer.
Still parked in the road, he knew that he didn’t have a choice. He was already on thin ice with Joe. If he didn’t deliver this pizza, Joe would surely fire him. This should’ve been enough incentive to push him through his fear, but it wasn’t.
For additional motivation, Alan needed only to go back to his last stop. He pitied the old woman afraid to leave her own home without the safety of her long-deceased husband. Was he so different from her, believing in haunted houses and evil spirits whose mission it was to frighten the pizza delivery guy? Were tin foil hats and garlic-clad doors in his future?
He shifted the car into drive and slowly pulled forward until he was about fifty feet into the property. He pressed on the brake and looked around. So far, everything was okay. He proceeded another hundred or so feet before stopping again. To his surprise, his chicken point was getting shorter. Invigorated by his newfound courage, he drove progressively larger distances forward until ten minutes passed and the old house came into view.
“Krauss House,” he said as he pressed on the brake and placed the car in reverse.
His watchful eyes locked on the house for the slightest sign of trouble. He swung his right arm over the back of the passenger seat in readiness to retreat. At closer examination of the house, he noticed the room to the right of the front door was lit. He also noticed a car parked out front. It occurred to him that the windows weren’t boarded up and the yard wasn’t overgrown.
Someone, a human someone, lives in Krauss House, he thought.
Whoever this person was, they must be the bravest soul on the planet. Even Dale at his current age would proudly surrender his throne to someone this gutsy. This stranger’s courage was all he needed to put the car back in drive and roll cautiously toward the house.
I’m about to go to the front door of Krauss House—at night! he thought as he bravely got out of his car with the medium pizza in hand.
His pace slowed to a crawl. With every inch forward, the house appeared to swell around him. The gravity of each step became more intense. “My car is at the fifty-foot mark, and I’m less than ten feet from the porch. What was I thinking? Even if there was a human inside, this was still Krauss House— and he was still that frightened little boy, reliving a moment from so many years ago.
Those fearful thoughts regained control over his body, casting out all regard for the consequences of a retreat. He started to turn, and as he faced away from the house, the sound of the creaking screen door sent waves of cold shivers along the length of his body, paralyzing him in mid-stride.
“Don’t worry, you’re in the right place,” came the comforting words of a woman’s voice.
Alan slowly turned around to see who, or what, had spoken to him. Standing on the porch was a petite woman in paint-covered overalls with her hair pulled back in a bunch. With a paintbrush in one hand, she held open the screen door with the other.
“C’mon in. I need to put this brush down and get your money,” she said as she turned back into the house.
With those few words, a sudden sense of normalcy washed away his built-up anxiety. Seeing this woman casually penetrating the depths of the beast was like watching someone removing a thorn from the foot of an angry lion. She was in charge, and the house succumbed to her powers. He inched closer to the porch. Her reassurance should have been enough to quash his fears— but it wasn’t. He harnessed enough of her courage to wait for her on the first porch step, one step closer than Dale’s personal best.
“Still there?” she called from inside the house. “Don’t worry, I won’t bite. Bring the pizza in and put it on the table. I need to wash the paint off my hands before getting your money.”
“That’s okay, ma’am. I’ll wait here,” Alan replied.
“Don’t be silly. Come inside,” she said.
Alan never was good at saying no to the opposite sex. To his surprise, her command was more powerful than his fear, and his feet eagerly responded to her suggestion. Before he knew what happened, he was standing in the foyer of—Krauss House. Looking around the rooms for ghosts or evil spirits, he noticed the left side of the house was piled high with boxes and old antique furniture. The right side had newly plastered walls, paint rollers, and a long aluminum platform placed over a pair of empty five-gallon paint buckets, all indications that the house was in the state of rebirth. It was coming back to life.
“I’m remodeling in stages,” the woman said as she approached with the money.
“Is your name—”
“Krauss,” she said before Alan was able to complete his question. “Mary Krauss. My grandparents used to own this place. And lucky me got it in the will,” she said while exchanging the pizza for money. “I suppose it’s a good thing, but it sure is taking a lot of time and money to restor
e.”
“I bet. Oh, my name is Alan. I actually grew up not far from here. I didn’t know old farmer Krauss and his wife had kids.”
“They had three boys. My father was the youngest. He moved out before the neighborhood was built. He and my uncles moved out of state, so I guess people around here didn’t see much of them before my grandparents left.”
“Have you…been here before?” Alan asked, still surveying the house for spooks.
“My parents tell me I was, but I don’t remember. I was maybe three or four at the time.”
Still gazing around the rooms of the old house, paying little attention to Mary in front of him, Alan asked, “Have there been any…problems working on the old house?”
“Well—I’ve had to replace the plumbing, the wiring, furnace, hot water heater, windows, and siding, to name a few. Oh, I’ve also had to get the foundation repaired. Other than those few minor things, it’s been a piece of cake.” She smiled.
“Don’t forget the walls,” Alan said, pointing to her current project.
“Oh, right, like I said—piece of cake.”
It was clear that Mary spent many hours, night and day, working on the house. Maybe it was never haunted in the first place. Could it be possible that Krauss House was like every other house in Riverside? Nothing more than sticks and nails? With this new realization, a wave of calm rushed over Alan.
“Wait!” Mary said. “Did you mean—have I seen any ghosts?”
Alan stood in shocked disbelief that she would cavalierly blurt out such a thing.
Sensing Alan’s discomfort with the subject, she laughed and said, “I should have known that’s what you meant by problems. I’ve heard the stories, Alan. I’ve also had some—let’s say—interesting observations of my own since moving in two months ago.”
Alan’s eyes widened.
She continued, “My father warned me that I might not be comfortable living out here alone in the middle of nowhere—but the way I see it is if there are spirits here, they never hurt my father, uncles, or grandparents. So why would they start now?”
Alan took a step backward and asked, “You mean the house really is haunted?”