The Quirk House

(Reposted 9/2010)

We heard about it from the tough kids who loved to terrorize us with horror stories. Supposedly Mrs. Quirk lived there alone. A shut-in who hadn’t been seen outside for over fifteen years.

It was a tiny white cape with a green front door. A row of small frosted windows were at the top of that door. The last window on the right had a crack that almost looked like an old lady’s head peering out. We’d argue about the crack while standing at the end of her front walk. 

“She’s looking at us! In the last window!”

“No you dummy, that’s a crack!”

“Shut up! She’s right there!”

The lawn was mowed every two weeks and the gutters were cleaned every fall. Storm windows went on after Halloween and came off at Easter. Mrs. Quirk’s metal garbage can was brought to the curb once a month! That fascinated us almost as much as the unseen woman. We, who had three overflowing plastic barrels every single week decided she must live on rotten garbage.

Beeno Papadopoulis did all the the handy work. Beeno couldn’t keep a regular job. He had to live with his parents. The tough kids said he was kicked in the head by a mule when he was little. While none of us would ever speak to Beeno alone, we teased him as a group to get him to shake his rake and swear at us.

“Hey Beeno! What’s Mrs. Quirk pay you with, dead babies teeth?”

“Get the hell outta here you shits before I beat your asses!”

We stopped debating about the crack in the window after Brian Seymour got hit by a car. He threw a dead skunk on her steps on Doorbell Night. We heard that after he threw the dead skunk, he was riding his bike home, swerved into the street and got hit. He swears he was trying not to hit an old lady that just materialized in front of him. We wouldn’t look at the windows, not even during the daytime after Brian got hit.

Then came the Women’s Group crusade lead by Mrs. Kent. She started a campaign to reach out to the less fortunate. The group made a special food basket for Mrs. Quirk at Christmas and delivered it to the front steps on Christmas Eve. That basket sat on those steps until Beeno brought it to the curb in the garbage can after New Years. This so outraged Mrs. Kent that she marched up to the Quirk house and banged on the green door for half an hour until her husband was called to fetch her off. 

“I’d never bang on that door!”

“I won’t even look at it anymore!”

“Not after Brian Seymour…Mrs. Kent is insane!”

Mrs. Kent was found dead from a stroke the morning after she banged on the Quirk door. We crossed the street if we had to go by or, more often, took the next street over to avoid walking in front of the Quirk house altogether. 

The Quirk house burned down after the dry summer. Neighbors heard screams and called the police. When they ran outside, they saw the house engulfed in flames and smoke. The heat was unbearable from across the street. All the fire department could do was try to soak the houses around the Quirk house to prevent then from catching fire. Mrs. Quirk’s remains were found in the area of the living room. Nothing else was identifiable, let alone salvageable. The fire investigation pointed to arson. 

While no one was ever accused of the crime, we knew who set the Quirk house ablaze. The Kent family moved away after the police were done with them. No one knew where they went. No one wanted to talk about why they went. No one ever talked about the Quirk house either. We still cross the street to pass by the empty weed lot today.

EF Sweetman