The hills are alive.. (part 2)

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The little girl of 5 years sat on the doorstep and stared suspiciously at the hilltop unblinkingly. Was it really true she wondered, her little mind in a turmoil. The stone house stood strong and sturdy on the slanted slopes of the hill. She could even see the door to the house from where she sat. Smoke unfurled from what looked like the chimney of the house and formed a little grey cloud in the otherwise spotless blue skies. The stone house was a nicely designed construction. Everything looked like it was planned with a well scrutinized eye and designed with care. Huge mighty creepers crawled all over the outside of the house, giving it a sinister look from this distance. A big salwood tree leaned against one side of the house for support.

But despite all the glamour it did resemble the houses of witches and wizards from the fairy tale books that father read to her at bedtime. It stood there ominously for a few hundred years now and threatens to stand there for another hundred more to come. Mother said that the strange old man who lived there was never to be seen in daylight. He mostly kept to himself and never spoke to anyone else. But often he was to be heard hobbling around on his crooked walking stick after sunset, rapping on the windows of all houses with little girls who refused to drink milk. He had his own dark clandestine network and his own means of knowing all the happenings inside the safe houses on the terrain. Stories run that he has only one real eye and the other was a glass one with which he stared down evilly at unsuspecting little girls. To this day no one knows how he hopped all the way upto onto the hills on his crippled leg.

She looked down at the glass of milk that ran cold by now in her hands with an eye of disgust. She looked up at the stone house perched on the slopes which now looked like it was on fire in the evening sunlight. A shudder ran down her spine and she quickly gulped down the milk. Mother watched all this from where she sat mending the darn in father's shirt and smiled and thanked the imaginary old man in the stone house in the heart of her hearts.

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(contd)
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