THE WITCH’S HOUSE. When I was in elementary school, one of the houses was known to all the kids as “the witch’s house.†It was an ordinary house. In fact, the only thing unusual about it was that it was set much farther back than any of the other houses in town. We thought that a witch lived in the house because we’d heard it from other kids. It was a big deal to cross the patch of sidewalk in front of the witch’s property. You paused for a moment to gather yourself and then ran the short distance as fast as you could. All the kids did that. Then one Halloween there was a large group of kids trick or treating together, with grownups nearby, and a few brave souls went up the sidewalk to the house, with everybody else tagging along behind. Of course, the people in the house were very nice, disappointingly nice, and the walk to school was never the same.
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My Dad tells this story, too. He recently told Mia about it. His version differs only slightly– he says that Grandma S told you two that you had to go up there.
“a small, reedy voice, a dry whispery voice, as one unused to speaking. . .and when we stopped running. . .” a bad paraphrase, but you know the place in “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” After they go up to the isolated house, on a dare, to sing “Good King Wenceslaus.”