being constantly watched by unseen eyes. The doll on the
entryway table seemed to sit in silent judgment, its
mismatched button eyes following me as I paced the halls.
By the end of the week, I was a nervous wreck. I had
bags under my eyes and a constant tremor in my hands. I
couldn't live like this. The police had been unhelpful; I had
called them after the salt incident, and an officer had come
out, looked at the powder, and told me it was likely
fertilizer and that unless she caused physical damage or
made a direct threat, it was a neighbor dispute they
couldn't intervene in. "She's just a strange old bird," the
officer had said with a dismissive chuckle. "Maybe get a
higher fence."
A fence wouldn't stop what was happening. I needed
to understand the root cause. Mrs. Gable had mentioned
the "previous owners" and something being "buried." If she
wouldn't give me the answers, I had to find them myself. I
decided to take a day off work and delve into the history of
my property. Whatever was haunting my neighbor,
whatever she believed was haunting my house, had a
starting point. I just had to dig deep enough to uncover it.
CHAPTER 5: DIGGING UP THE PAST
The local historical society was located in the
basement of the town library, a dusty, dimly lit room filled
with the smell of old paper and decaying bindings. The
archivist, a quiet man named Mr. Abernathy, seemed
thrilled to have a visitor. When I gave him my address and
asked for the property's history, his eyes lit up with the
kind of excitement reserved for true history nerds.
"Ah, 42 Elmwood Drive," he said, tapping a pencil
against his chin. "That whole subdivision was built in the
late nineties, but the land itself... the land has a much older
story."
I spent the next four hours sifting through yellowed
plat maps, census records, and microfiche newspaper
Silas Blackwood had become obsessed with the sinkhole,
believing it to be a gateway to something dark. He spent his
remaining days trying to fill it, not with dirt, but with iron,
salt, and strange wooden effigies.
My blood ran cold as I read the words "wooden
effigies." The doll on my porch wasn't an original creation
of Mrs. Gable; it was a continuation of a century-old ritual.
But what was Mrs. Gable's connection? I asked Mr.
Abernathy if he had any records of the Gable family in
relation to the Blackwoods. He did a quick search through
his database and pulled up a land deed from the 1920s.
After the Blackwoods died out, the land was purchased by
a man named Elias Gable.
"Elias Gable," I murmured, staring at the name on the
screen.
"Yes," Mr. Abernathy said. "The Gable family owned
the land for decades. They never farmed it, though. They
just held onto it, leaving it undeveloped, until the town
forced a sale in the nineties to build the Oakhaven
subdivision. I believe a descendant still lives in the area. A
Mrs. Margaret Gable."
The puzzle pieces snapped together with terrifying
clarity. Mrs. Gable wasn't a crazy neighbor trying to curse
me. Her family had been the custodians of this cursed land