Creepiest ever

It seemed like a normal estate sale on paper. A "Years of collecting...H&H items....depression glass...vintage hats" type of affair, but upon arrival I knew it was different than all the others.

The neighborhood was a typical suburban microcosm with winding, ranch house lined avenues. There were a number of vehicles in the shady driveway and even more parked along the sides of the road. We stopped the car and pulled our children from their child restraints, then walked toward the house.

My initial impression of the house was the same as the others in that neighborhood. They all appeared to have been built between the late 40s and early 60s and had a minimalist tidiness about them with sparsely landscaped lawns. As I approached the teetering, doorless mailbox I glanced at the ground and stepped over a large, dead blacksnake. The snake was in the level area of the edge of the yard where people were trailing in; smack in the middle of the walkway. I momentarily considered it odd that neither the owners nor the estate liquidation company bothered moving the carcass before customers arrived.
Jason and I figured the snake was hibernating in the house and then got unpacked, and then got dead.
It was freezing cold so we hurried up the slick, moss covered and railing-less front steps and into the house.
Every surface was covered with relics and dust. The floor was spongy beneath my feet and the olive colored carpet was emitting the musty odor of moist decay. Old people were sitting in filthy wingback chairs eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts and wiping their finger tips on the threadbare damask. Discussions of blood sugar and cholesterol levels weighed heavily in the cramped livingroom. For fear of something in that environment mingling into my person I was scarcely breathing through mouth; How the hell were these people eating in that place?
The contents of most estate sales I go to are "mid-century vintage" heavy; probably people who married in the 1960s, started families in the 70s. Lot's of Herb Alpert albums, melamine and golden amber tones. This sale could best be described as "post war". Everything was a wavering hue of brown, and there wasn't a single plastic item anywhere. Crocks, churns, enameled pots, dippers, wooden pipes, a ventriloquist's dummy, an art deco cash register that must of weighed two hundred pounds, four fire place bellows, two cases of flatware, dishes, furniture..
The house was was absolutely packed before any customers showed up, so the scene was a crammed spectrum of all sorts of uncomfortable people.

It was soon obvious that there was nothing we needed in this house. Fox and I were looking at the oldest vacuum cleaner I had ever seen when Jason and Rainer popped into the back bedroom. We were crammed in there with a dozen other people and when they arrived Fox and I were attempting to exit the room. I picked Fox up to facilitate our retreat and as I glanced over at my husband he exclaimed,

"NO SHIT! Look at that!! Crows picking a dead deer carcass RIGHT THERE in this creepy-ass place!! This place is TOO WEIRD!!"

His expression was one of rejoice and pure satisfaction; as if he had won a long sought contest of wits. Just outside the picture window of that bedroom was, in fact a large buck, collapsed in the initial stages of decomposition, covered in crows. A murder of crows, tugging, jerking, slinging, and flapping in the frenzy of feeding.




People tend to behave as if they were in a library while at estate sales. Whispering and tip-toeing, careful foot wiping upon entry, and appreciative courtesies when leaving are not uncommon. When Jason saw the biology in action outside, he forgot these conditions and his words were j-u-s-t short of yelling. Every person in the room stopped perusing and focused on Jason, then looked to the subject of his declaration outside, then looked back at him in utter disgust.

"THAT IS AWESOME! Let's go look at it! Come on Fox!!"
Jason exclaimed as he hustled our 10 month old daughter through the crowd and gestured at my son and I by tossing his head. Eyes rolled. Heads shook. Old ladies sent disapproving looks of pity towards my little family as we rushed out.
As we burst out the front door, Fox reeled as he stumbled towards the edge of the landing and yelled something about there not being a "handle slide thing", and I pulled him to safety before he fell into a murky mound of leaf litter.

Slipping between a moldy mini van and a holly bush we found our way around the side of the house. Passing an open cellar door we continued through a thicket, and climbed up a small bank to the back yard.
We approached the broken carcass and the black birds reluctantly relocated. Fox was quiet (for once) while Jason and I pondered the scenario.

Perhaps the deer had been hit on the busy highway on the other side of the subdivision then finally collapsed here. Or maybe it starved in this thinning, once wooded area. One thing is certain, and that is that something had eaten the deer's hind quarters, and someone had sawed off it's antlers.
Fox made a circle around the body and quietly asked where the deer was. We asked him why he didn't think the deer was lying in front of us, and he mumbled something about the hunter and the deer's eyes. Jason asked Fox if he was ready to go deer hunting, shoot, kill then clean a deer, and Fox smiled and shook his head. We turned to check out the Saw-esque basement and Fox sang a farewell over his shoulder.

4/2/2008 April Fools

Each morning while Fox eats his oatmeal, I go around the house and pick up all of his toys. This is something I would like to do in the evening before bedtime, but by the time darkness falls upon the land Fox has started his metamorphasis into wild nighttime crazy baby and there is no way to focus on anything else. And when I close the door after getting him to sleep my house looks like a bomb fell.
Yesterday I was picking up the few toys in the kitchen floor when I reached for an old fashioned, alligator toy; the hollow rubber type with an open mouth. When I picked it up I heard something liquid & splashing, and when I looked down it was pouring from the mouth of the gator.
Evidently it was grape juice from the day before, but the first thing that came to mind was blood.



I asked Fox to come and look to see if he remembered pouring juice into the toy and he looked at me as if he had never even seen the toy before in his little life.



Then I remembered that it was April Fools Day and figured that it made sense. Fox is going to be the ultimate prankster.
Later that day in the front yard, a beat up mini van pulled up in front of my house and the shirtless man inside yelled something at me. I begged his pardon and he leaned out the window and asked "Yall seen uh brown’n white cow up ’ere?"
Just to be sure I asked, "did you say cow?", and nodded in the affirmative and added;
"sum one told me they’d seen it up ear".
Wondering if I was involved in the South Knoxville version of ’Pranked’, or ’Candid Camera’ I told the man that I had not seen his cow.

Then I wondered what he planned to do with the cow if he did find it. Put it in the mini van? Tie it to a bus stop sign or a tree till he could come back?



We do not live in a rural setting.