Dennis And The Abandoned House

Dennis And The Abandoned House

By Paul McCann

Every day Dennis would leave school to have lunch at his Grandmothers house. It was always an interesting walk on the way to where his Grandmother lived because of the old houses and old tin huts around that were unused now . Near his Grandmothers house there was a  scrap metal yard where he loved to scale up the mountain of wrecked cars . He knew his way over and under and up through every single car on that scrapyard heap and whenever he reached the summit he would stand triumphantly raising his fist as if he was the ruler of scrap kingdom and King of the heap . On the other side of the scrapyard there were a few old ruined houses where he sometimes liked to explore .

One day after he had his lunch at his Grandmothers house he decided he would take a look inside one of the old abandoned houses there on the way back to school .

Before he got to the old house he saw Andy and one of his gang trying to get inside  another old derelict house , There was some rubble around the front door that prevented them from gaining an entrance , so Dennis thought he’d slip in a back window and play a trick on them just for a laugh . So in he went inside and as Andy and his friend were still trying to remove the rubble from the front door Dennis grabbed a rusty old paint tin that was there and a small iron bar on the floor and started to rattle the tin and making scary howling noises saying ,

‘Keep out of my house Andy and take that skinny freckled face Davy with you and if I ever see you here again I’ll make you sorry you were born “

You should have seen them both of them run screaming all the way up the hill back to school .  .

Dennis sat there in that old house on the floor of a room that would have been a kitchen at one time . He upturned the old paint tin and sat down on it . Pretending to be the man of the house making myself heard

“Is this what you call a dinner . two slices of bacon and a cold cup or tea”.

Then he tried to imagine the kind of people might have lived in the house and what kind of things might have happened there .He wondered if maybe their house had been hit by one of those bombs in the second war as many others in the village were The sun shone down through a small hole in the roof and reflected dust in the shaft of sunlight . In the hallway opposite he saw some ivy vines and leaves growing wild.  On the other side  of the room was a door frame that seemed to go to a parlour .

In his imagination he saw a family of four young children running around playing and suddenly he remembered he should have already been at school and so run all the way making his way back to school .  When he got there he saw Andy the bully with one of his gang being collected by their parents from school .

He soon discovered why .

Both of the tough boys had told everybody they saw a ghost in the ruins of an  old house . They were so frightened that the teacher had to send for their parents as they were too upset to stay in class for the rest of the day .

Dennis had to keep himself from laughing and at the same time dared not to tell anyone about the secret he knew .

Andy and Davy were taken away by their parents after they listened to the teacher who said they were disrupting the whole class . With all the commotion the teacher never even seen Dennis sneak silently back into the classroom .

Dennis sat himself at his desk and opened up his reading book . When the school bell rang at the end of the day he was really glad to go  home but told no one about what he did to Andy and Davy  . Two days later Andy and Davy returned to school .  and they were both made to read a page from the book the class were reading at school .As time passed everybody in the class still believed the story Andy and Davy told about the ghost in the ruined hose , except me who knew a different story .

The End

 By Paul McCann