I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House Page #3

---

The house was built in 1812

by the two bare hands of a local man,

as a gift to his new bride.

The couple was last seen

taking their marriage vows

in the center of town.

And the very next day, they were gone...

disappearing before placing

a single piece of furniture.

The townspeople shook their heads

and clucked their tongues.

"Some people," they'd say,

"just get spooked."

Well, well.

You're not so big and tough.

The pretty thing

you are looking at now is me.

My name is Polly Parsons

and I came into the world

just as I left it.

I'm not more than a few minutes old

and my mother is already dead,

her forehead slick with sweat,

and cool with the pallor

of icebox butter.

I am tied to my mother's body

by a terrible rope

that is a shiny, twisted

midnight blue-black.

The doctor is holding me up to the light.

But now I am dead.

And yes, I left the world

just as I came into it.

I am wearing nothing but blood.

No.

Nuts.

Polly!

I am as white as a sail.

I tell this often to myself.

I tell myself that nothing gets on me.

But it does me little good.

The words pour right through.

I am too full of holes.

Grow up, you dumb old scaredy-cat.

It's just a bunch of silly old

make-believe typed words on paper.

"Dear Reader,

You should know that the true account

that follows in this book

was told to me directly by Polly Parsons,

the young woman who lived it

but, alas, did not survive it.

True to our heroine, my heroine,

I have written down

all that she cared to reveal.

All but the very ending,

which she was either unable

or unwilling to tell me herself.

Or maybe

she just couldn't see it anymore."

"And even if I was fiendishly tempted,

I have refrained

from pressing the subject with her.

Though it seems safe to assume

that, as endings go,

Polly's was not an especially pretty one.

But Polly wouldn't tell me herself,

and I couldn't have gone

and simply made something up.

So I have left it off altogether.

Out of respect for the dead,

you understand.

Because yes, dear reader,

Polly Parsons, the subject of this book,

is quite dead indeed.

Quite dead but not quite buried.

Carelessly concealed in a grave

too shallow to be rightly called

a grave at all.

Better to call it a... hiding place.

But I've said too much already,

and now will leave the rest

to Polly herself,

as was my intention in the first place.

Iris Blum,

Braintree, Massachusetts, 1960."

You silly Billy.

You silly Billy.

The walls and windows

are as thin as bones.

A person could walk right through them.

Just up and leave this old house.

No whammies, no whammies,

no whammies. Stop.

No whammies, no whammies,

no whammies. Stop.

No whammies, no whammies,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes