My mom may have some issues, but she’s still my mom.

It wasn’t a pretty fight, but in the end, we came up with, if not an agreement, a cease-fire. I agreed to live in his house in Kasselton, New Jersey. It was the same house both Myron and my dad grew up in. Yes, that was weird. I use the basement bedroom, which had been Myron’s room, and do all I can to avoid the upstairs room where my father spent his childhood. Still it’s a little creepy.

Anyway, in return for agreeing to live in the house, Myron agreed to let my mother remain my sole guardian and, well, to leave me alone. That was the part he had trouble handling.

When I looked now at Bat Lady’s house, I shivered. The wind had picked up, bending the bare trees in her yard. I had seen every kind of superstition in all four corners of the globe. Most seemed downright silly, though my parents always told me to keep an open mind. I didn’t believe in haunted houses. I didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits or things that go bump in the night.

But if I did, man, this place had them all.

The place was so dilapidated it actually seemed to lean, like if you pushed too hard it might just crumble to the ground. There were loose boards. Some windows were gone, replaced with wooden planks. The ones that remained were fogged up as if the house just took a hot shower, which, judging by the dirt, wasn’t really possible.

If I hadn’t seen her with my own eyes, I would swear the house had been abandoned for years.

I approached again and knocked on the door. No answer. I put my ear close to the panel-not too close because I didn’t want to get a splinter-and listened. Nothing. Not a sound. I knocked some more. Still no answer.